Google’s Three Marketing Myths Busted in 2019 | Episode 119

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Today in IndustrialSage Episode 119, I’m going to talk about a article that Google came out with talking about Three Marketing Myths Busted in 2019.

Danny:

All right, so for today’s episode I’m going to talk about an article that Google came out with talking about “Three Marketing Myths Busted in 2019.”

So I came across this article that Google came out with about a week or two ago. I don’t know if I have the date here. This is December fifth, so this is last week. This is- We’re recording this- I don’t know what today is ’cause it’s been a really long day, but it hasn’t been that long since December fifth. So, “Three Marketing Myths Busted In 2019.” I thought some of these were really interesting and I kind of wanted to get into it. We’ll share this article, the link to the article, on our show notes and on the page on IndustrialSage where you’re watching this.

So one of them is, Myth Number One that Google debunked: they said that video is slow and expensive to produce. So, that was the myth that they said, “Oh, that’s the perception that we have out there in the marketplace.”

Well, it said Media Lab put together a team of people tasked with carrying out digital-first video experiments. Their goal was to find ways to make video faster, cheaper, and more effective, and the last four words says: “It can be done.”

So, this is really interesting. That stat is actually something that is a myth that actually at Optimum and IndustrialSage, we’ve actually been looking to debunk as well. There is a sense of video being really, really expensive. And our belief is that, yes, that is very true…if you’re doing it wrong. And I think there’s a right way and a wrong way, and there’s a lot in-between on how to do that. What do I mean specifically by that? You know, there’s a couple different things. There is an upcoming episode that I’m going to tease. It hasn’t been released yet, but we’ll release that in 2020, where we talk with Wistia. We were talking about a little bit of the convergence of technology and how technology essentially over the last several years has really made video production cost- has taken your video production cost and significantly reduced it.

So, a really great example is this. Everyone has the ability to create 4k, very high-quality, very high-resolution video content in their pocket. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can do it well, but it means you have the ability to be able to do that. So, if you can think outside of the box and you can put parameters and structure things, you can absolutely do that.

Apple came out with a great commercial where they were touting their new phone and they shot the whole commercial on the phone. You’ve seen them do that several times, and it’s absolutely amazing what you can do. Now, the average user probably can’t do that, but I think part of it is, when we look at video: there’s videos super wide, super deep, it can be a little ambiguous. And I think the real opportunity is, coming up with a plan and a structure on what to create and how to create it, and then repurpose the end scale of the content.

So what I mean specifically by that is a couple things. One, let’s say you’re looking at your product videos, for example. You’ve got a new product that you’re rolling out with. There’s a stat that says, and this actually came out from Google, that the average B2B buyer watches around thirty minutes of video content while they’re looking to make a purchase, or B2B product purchase. And so, get a sense of what that content should look like across the funnel, or from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. Yeah, you want to spend money at the very top. You want that– what we call the bacon-wrapped video: that element at the top. Spend a lot of your money there. That’s where you’re going to attract people in, you get them excited, and then as they move down the funnel and they want to learn a little bit more, that video can stretch out a little bit more, maybe be a little less creative. And then as they get further down the funnel, that’s when you can start getting into stuff that maybe is a little bit more transactional: like a webinar or a demo, or something like that where it’s a little bit more less glitzy and more informational.

And so when you look at it that way, the costs to be able to produce a webinar-style type video versus a high-level product video over here are going to be drastically different. The real kicker is, if you can take all of that and how you’re going to produce all of this content, and then structure out a way that you can create several different little snippets and deliverables off of this big bulk of content, that’s when you’re really going to win.

So it’s understanding how to create a strategy and a structure, how you can repurpose that content, and then the third piece is looking at ways that you don’t necessarily need to have super high-level content all across your funnel. (So from the very top to the very bottom.) Again, a little bit of a blanket statement- that depending on who you are. With your brand you may need to have super high-level stuff for the most part, or a decent consistency from a quality standpoint across the board, but by and large you can kind of reduce that a little bit as you get down to the funnel.

And use things like maybe use your phone, maybe from a sales enablement standpoint, is rolling out with video content that a sales person or your account manager can do to help to drive a better engagement of building relationships with people. So, anyways a lot to unpack there. So, I thought that was interesting.

Here’s another one: “The more data you have the better.” Okay, this is a really interesting thing. I think generally you might agree with that and say, “Yes more data, of course it’s going to be better.” But here’s what they kind said about it. “Just because you can measure something, does that mean you should? Spanier’s team has realized that, when it comes to data, less is more.”

For those of you marketers who are out there and they’re really involved in digital marketing, you understand very quickly how difficult it is to measure what is going on. The fact that we have digital marketing and you can measure things are super exciting. A lot of people have gotten involved in the game saying, “This is what we’re going to do, and we’re going to have– here’s our video content on social, and here’s our videos on our webpage, here’s blog articles, here’s all kinds of stuff!” And we’re generating data all across the spectrum. Trying to look at that and evaluate it is really, really, really difficult.

And that’s where I think when you get into your Martech stack for example, you can get… It can be a little bit of a challenge because we become a little ADD, and myself 100% can do that. And you get really excited, like, “Oh wow there’s a really cool tool that we can measure impressions across all the channels! Ooh, now we can measure video engagement on videos on social! Ooh, now we can measure…” So on and so forth. And there’s so many pockets of data that’s scattered all over the place that is structured, then it becomes unstructured because it’s just all over the darn place, and then you have so much data that you now need to spend more time to create the spreadsheet to organize it…

So, I think what they’re getting at, and I totally identify with it, is that maybe we don’t necessarily need to measure all the things.

I think maybe taking a step back and measuring the important things. Maybe that’s getting back to KPIs. I think it’s interesting that when you see a lot of product innovation, you’ve seen this a lot in technology certainly because of IoT and all this stuff. “Hey, we can build a product and this is amazing.” Well, from a product development standpoint, just because you can develop a product, doesn’t mean you necessarily should. Is there an addressable market that really has a need for this product? Certainly you can do it, but should you? I think that’s the argument here with that. So, maybe less data is more. Let’s think about, what are the really important things that we need to be measuring against and not get distracted about? Well, not just because, “We can get all this data, this is awesome!” Should we? Does that make sense? That’s a big, big, big, big trap to sort of fall into.

And then the last one is, “Humans are being replaced by machines.” Oh wow, you hear about machine learning and AI and chatbots that are coming in and they’re all automated, and it’s going to be amazing, and all this learning that’s going on in the back end, and, “that’s going to completely eliminate jobs, isn’t it?” I mean, your marketing job as you know it is gone! I mean gosh, we have this thing called Marketing Automation! I mean, that’s it right?

Well, “It’s about understanding what machines do better than us and letting them get on with it, freeing up humans to lean into what we do uniquely well. It incites inspiration and creativity.”

There is, it’s kind of funny, I was kind of joking about the whole marketing automation thing because, as you know, if you’re evaluating that or if you’ve heard from your leadership or other people in the company, “Hey, marketing automation’s amazing because of the name it has, Automation,” and you would think that, “Oh, we just set it up and it just goes by itself.” No, no, no. We all know this is not true. And the same can be said for a lot of other technologies that are rolling. I mentioned chatbots earlier before. I’m seeing a lot of news and a lot of things about that on how we have AI-driven chat and all kinds of different things. Well, the interesting thing is, it kind of starts to remove that relationship. It removes that creativity a little bit. And I think you kind of know when you’re engaging with something that is not really fully human. And trying to replace that is going to be a little difficult.

Right now it’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it can replace a chunk of it, but it’s not going to completely take it over. Right now. At least right now.” I guess that’s the myth on there. And I think kind of like with the whole data thing, that it kind of goes in parallel with it, that just because you have something that maybe is leaning on machine learning or AI and it’s going to be driven, there’s a lot of great insights in data that we can get and we can further things down the road. Yes, there’s definitely some areas where you can have some automation. Actually going back to the chat thing, I think it’s awesome using chat on your website where you can start driving your viewers to where you want to go. Ask them questions and kind of help move them down the funnel, help get them the information they’re looking for, and do that in an automated way. But to completely replace the human aspect from it is absolutely not 100% accurate.

That’s a big thing where a lot of pushback we hear: “Oh, digital marketing? We’re just a very relationship-driven business,” and I think there’s a little bit of a misnomer that bringing in digital marketing and all these other things is going to push out the relationship, and that it’s supposed to replace it. You and I know that’s not true. That’s not what it’s supposed to do.

So, anyways, I think it’s interesting. This is a great article. This is “Think With Google, Think At A Glance.” This is their “Three Marketing Myths Busted In 2019.” We’ll put that article up there, you can take a look at it yourself. There’s a lot of other interesting things: “More than 55% of shoppers say they used online video while actually shopping in a store.” Kind of interesting. Have you done that? Do you do that? I certainly do. Actually, that’s when I go in a store, and I haven’t really gone in a store in a while to buy something like that. But that’s a different topic for a different day.

So, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Hey, if you have any comments. Am I right? Am I wrong? What do you think about this? Maybe make some comments in the blog or you can comment on the social. We create a conversation around that.

Thanks for listening or watching. That’s all I’ve got for you today. If you have any questions and you’d love to have them answered on the show, I’m happy to do that. You can reach out to us at IndustrialSage.com/questions. We’ll answer them for you on the show. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching, and I’ll drop another episode next week. Thanks.

(Looking for this episode’s blog article? Read it here!)

 

 

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