{PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: 2020 Marketing Planning and Google BERT

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris discuss the latest changes to Google’s query processing using the BERT natural language processing pre-trained model, its impact on SEO, and how to holistically address the impact of machine learning models on your overall marketing planning.

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Christopher Penn
In today’s episode of In-Ear Insights, we are talking about all things 2020, the Google BERT SEO update, and so much more. It has been a just absolutely crazy last seven days as we record this, as Google rolled out its new search query methodology using their bi directional encoding representations for Transformers a mouthful, known as BERT play on the Sesame Street characters. And in the net change and there’s an entire blog post over at Trust insights.ai should just go and read that post because it’s, you know, there’s no point reading the whole thing out loud. But what this is, why it matters and how to adapt port including the 10 step process that we recommend. But the short version is this Google’s search queries now better understand context. If I say for example, to Google, OK, Google, where’s the nearest espresso shop? It’s open right now. The ability for the algorithm to understand that espresso is tech sama, taxonomic Lee related to coffee. And then to look up local coffee shops, even if my coffee shops website doesn’t necessarily include the word espresso or feature prominently, the algorithm will know to bring that up and around there. Now part of that also means that Google has to use BERT or another natural language processing technology like it to understand the context of the web page to match it back to what people are searching for. So this makes for much more human like search queries. It allows for longer search queries. It allows for more natural language, particularly with voice interfaces, which is what this is really intended for. But it also means for a lot of marketers who have created content that is keyword optimized, and you know, very stilted you know, the old SEO joke, an SEO expert walks into a bar pub tavern, so on and so forth. It means that a lot of our content was done the old way. may not be as relevant. So combine that with every client. So talking about 2020 planning what they should be doing, Katie, I think we have kind of an interesting mix of items in the in the cauldron, although Halloween is now over, so it’s not as relevant.

Katie Robbert
Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And I think, you know, everybody right now is scrambling to figure out what the heck am I going to do in 2020. January is not that far away, it’s less than two months away. Everybody sees January 1 as that fresh start, I can, you know, forget everything I did last year, and just start fresh. And honestly, I’ve never believed that that was a great way to think about it. But I’m not going to be able to change a whole culture from thinking that this certain day resets everything. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, it resets budgets. it resets. You know, for a lot of people just reset expectations and so One of the things that we’re working on, that we’re helping other marketers work on is, what the heck am I going to do when January 1 rolls around? And I think that the conversation about Google’s algorithm change with their natural language processing should be a part of that. Now, you know, the change isn’t that old. In terms of their announcement, they’ve been obviously working on it for a while, but marketers shouldn’t worry, like they should worry about it, but not in the sense that they have to redo their whole planning. Your goal should always be to create good, solid, readable, valuable content. If you’re doing that, then you don’t really need to worry too much about what’s going on with Google and their algorithm changes. Be aware of it. But don’t get your whole plan to start rewriting a content plan around what Google’s doing. Because that means you were probably not doing it the right way in the first place. Now something Chris that you were mentioning or Earlier this morning was, you know, a lot of marketing teams or a lot of teams in general will figure out the budget first. And then what can I do within the budget?

Christopher Penn
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting we’ve been talking about with with some of our clients like, Hey, what’s your 2020 targets be? We did budgeting back in September, because that’s when finance demanded that that we do it always struck me as something kind of backwards. Like we do all these metrics like cost per lead, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend ROI. But then, if we do that, and we do that, well, having the budget first really puts handcuffs on us. So let’s say you have a cost per acquisition of $20, right? Oh, make $100 because we keep it keep the math easy. You have a cost per acquisition of $100. If finance says, Hey, you have a $10,000 budget. Well, by default, then you can only generate 100 leads that you can’t use Basically you’re constrained by the laws of mathematics to not be able to to acquire more at that cost per acquisition. So, the only levers you have as a marketer that are either to drive your cost per acquisition down somehow or to go back to the finance and beg them for more money, but you cannot change the mathematics if you are only given $10,000 you can only get X number of leads if your cost per acquisition stays the same. As opposed to a company saying hey, we know that we want 1000 leads and you’re like cool thousand leads hundred dollars per lead is $100,000. Right? So you need to give us that money if that’s how much you want knowing that this is the cost to acquire it’s it’s like going to the store saying like I want I want 10 bottles or catch up and in single yet the bottle of ketchup is $5 so it’s got everything $50 a story field Bry $25 to the store. It doesn’t matter how much you want those 10 bottles to catch up. You only walk into the store with Five, right, because you just don’t have enough money to get it. And so it seems backwards to me that you’re saying, Here’s your budget, but it’s completely divorced from here’s the results. We expect marketing and generate. And I don’t know why companies do that.

Katie Robbert
You know, I, I do and I don’t, you know, because when working on the budgets, you have to factor not just, hey, here’s what my marketing team needs, but you’re factoring things like payroll insurance, like the CFO is looking at everything holistically, and very rarely is really thinking about how much money does that team actually need to do their job, versus how much money do I think they should be allowed to spend to do their job? You know, so let’s take that example. Again. Let’s say that, you know, you were given $10,000 you know, cost per acquisition is $100 per lead. Well, you have a whole bunch of channels that you need to disperse that money over. And I think that that’s where people get caught up is well, I only have $10,000. So I guess I’m going to put that all towards ads to get leads in the door. Maybe that works, maybe that’s what your customer journey says. But how do you then disperse that money across all of your channels in the right way? I know a lot of I’ve seen a lot of people just say, Okay, I have six channels, I have $10,000 each channel gets, you know, 1.1 thousand $500. And I will work within that constraint. So they kind of like, build it backwards. And to your point, they really constrained themselves down to the point where there’s not a whole lot they can do.

Christopher Penn
Yeah, your only option is how do I make things cheaper? And there is in in the world of, of economics, basically, there’s the whole you get what you pay for, right? Yes, you can occasionally get lucky. And you know, have a blog post that goes crazy. For example, and drives, you know, thousands of visitors to your site without, you need to spend money on those visitors. But that’s a really terrible strategy. Like, let’s get lucky that that that doesn’t work out. Well. The other problem that seems to me is if you if you do that first about, hey, you only get this much money. Yes, it does help you plan and make choices and priorities. But it also removes any flexibility you have. Because if you allocate every single dollar in something pivots, say the beginning of second quarter, you’re kind of hosed. I mean, there’s, I don’t see companies investing any money in in data and analytics above the bare minimum for the SAS software they buy. I don’t see companies budgeting any money in marketing for r&d, like zero. I have not talked to a single marker this used to get my r&d budgets this, they don’t have that and so they fall further and further behind. How do people fix this? How do they plan you know, the CFO gave them the pile of money, and you get what you get you can’t you Really twist this the CFO is our much one that so how do how do we plan around this to to give ourselves more flexibility to give ourselves more adaptability to create room for growth rather than just, you know, as, as one of our colleagues recently sat down just I get caught in the trap of getting on the treadmill and doing the same thing every single day?

Katie Robbert
Um, well, you know, I know that what you’re saying is that companies aren’t are investing in data and analytics. But you as a marketer, you don’t have to be a data scientist in order to run some reports, take a look at your own data, see what’s working, you know, if you take a look in one of your various social listening platforms, and you see that your social channels, they’re not doing a whole lot, maybe you you know, D prioritize some of your paid social and really just focus on posting really good content to those channels, organically. You start to think about where can I make cuts in terms of my spend. And a lot of it comes down to, you know, your effort and your paid activity. So it, it only costs you time to write really good content. And writing really good content is something that you can do and use across multiple different channels. You can use it across email, you can use it across social, you post it on your website, so that it’s your own content, you can SEO optimize it, there’s a lot of different things you can do. So I would say, for a marketer start to figure out the types of things that your customers are responding positively to, what are the pieces of content on your website that they’re visiting the most, you can go into Google Analytics and look at the page traffic reports. Where are people going? What channels are they coming from and you can start to without having to be a data scientist or have really fancy analysis tools. Figure out Okay, this is the stuff that’s working, if you have goals set up, but you should have goals set up, you can figure out what pages are bringing people to those goals specifically. And then you can start to put together a content plan. And this kind of brings us back to where we started the conversation around, you know, Google’s algorithm changes. Google’s going to continue to adapt and change their algorithms. And it’s going to continue to change the SEO game, but ultimately, nothing. That changes nothing. The thing that isn’t changing the constant is writing really good content that’s valuable to your customers. So if you have a constrained budget, or if you’re not sure where to start, start there.

Christopher Penn
I completely agree. The other thing that costs you nothing but time and has beneficial knock on effects that are difficult to measure, but worth doing. Anyway, we were talking about this a little bit this morning. And our planning meeting is Hey, try talking to your customers. I try asking them what’s on their minds with no expectation of getting new business out of them with no expectation of pressing them for a sale just like just tell us what’s, what’s the pain points that you’re facing. If you’re in, for example, the coffee shop industry. What’s the pain point is, you know, a Starbucks app kicking your butt? Do you not have mobile strategy? When people come into the coffee shop? What’s their biggest problem? The little things like that just talking to people, your customers? Believe it or not, are your subject matter experts external to your organization, the other folks who know best what they need, because they are the ones who need it. And when we look at what’s inside things like the BERT algorithm, and understanding context, understanding deep language, understanding major topics. Your customers are the subject matter experts that can provide you that content. It costs you nothing to pick up the phone, or start a video chat or text them or whatever. Let’s say Hey, can I spend 20 minutes with you understand your problem? Problems with and I’m not going to pitch you on anything, I could try and sell you a thing. I just want to hear from you, in your own words, what’s going on? What’s on your mind? What are you struggling with for 2020 planning so that we can write better content, create better things give you more stuff that is helpful to you. In doing that, you will check the box on everything that BERT is optimizing for. Because to your point, Katie, it really is Google’s North Star to say, we want to have better results for humans, because the more people who use Google, the more they see their ads, and so on and so forth, or use their Fitbit, whatever. So it’s Google’s taking over the world, but it would look but that talking to customers part I again, I don’t see a ton of marketers just picking up the phone or or going out for a cup of coffee with their their customers.

Katie Robbert
I think that that’s a really good point. And you know, as you know, BERT and other changes come to Google’s algorithms. All of these things are based on what people want what people are searching for how people are using and interacting with technology. So if you go back to, you know, the conversation we were having about, what do you do if you do have a limited budget? Where do you get started, maybe instead of throwing all that money towards paid ads and hoping for the best, you build a small focus group, and you test your ads and your content and your copy within that group. The other thing is a B testing within Google Optimize is free. If you have Google Analytics, you all the free version, then you can also use free versions of Tag Manager and optimize and search console. Those are all things that you can do. Again, without having an advanced degree. You don’t have to be a data scientist to do a B testing. We recently ran a series of blog posts on how to do data driven AV testing. You can find that on Trust insights.ai you So there’s a lot of ways that you can make your dollar stretch in a valuable way. But Chris, I think you’re absolutely right. If marketers took some of that little budget that they have, and focused on a focus group with their customers or who they think their target audience is, then they could spend the rest of their time creating really valuable content that they know people already want. And then they can spread that content out over a variety of channels. And hey, look, isn’t that wonderful? We’ve just done the exact thing that our customers want and with very little money,

Christopher Penn
there’s a great exercise that you should do if you’re a marketer who’s trying to figure out what to do. Imagine your funnel, right, your marketing operations from the audience prospects, leads, deals and customers. And to what Katie was just saying, Do you have an advisory board of three, four or five, maybe even 10 people at each stage in that funnel, and you talk to those people, talk to your best customers figure out what they need, right? They have some content, therefore That will nurture other customers, talk to your best deals in progress, hey, I don’t want to mess up beyond a negotiation is going on. But just let us know what’s on your mind as you’re in this part of the process. And as you go up your funnel and you add you talk to people at each stage, you will get interviews and content from each people where they are in their journey to a sale. And guess what, you will create content for every stage of your customer journey. Right? Again, doesn’t cost you any money except talking to people. But in doing so, you are creating optimized content for intent at each stage in your journey based on the things that people are telling you is on their minds. If someone’s new in your audience and you have no relationship, you’re clearly not trying to sell them anything right? That would be a foolish thing to do. But toxins like like so, what is on your mind? What are you back to the coffee shop? So what do you see happening in the coffee shop industry, right? That is awareness content. When you talk to people who are like the last stage of the signing deal for your coffee shop software say, what are the problems that you’re having. And they tell you all about how they can’t make checkout faster at the coffee shop, guess what now you got to create a whole bunch of content about expediting customer sale interactions. And that is content that is deep funnel content that is maps to the attempt of somebody that stage bonus when you do that, if as long as you have great tagging and taxonomy, your website, you can now measure traffic and intent to each of these pieces of content and how they map back to the customer journey. So you, as a marketer are sitting on the gold, right? You’ve got the people that at each stage in the funnel is your funnels empty, in which case that’s a separate show. Do this exercise, call those people talk to them? Build Content for their problems for the humans, and you’ll knock down BERT. You’ll cut your costs. And you’ll create stuff that tells you exactly what people at each stage in your journey are thinking and create a robust content strategy.

Katie Robbert
And double bonus, you’re building those relationships with your customers. So then when they think of, Oh, I have a problem that it solved. I know, I’m going to call this company who really actually cares about my opinion, and builds things and creates content that reflects the things that that I see myself in. Because humans are creatures of habit, majority of humans, if they don’t see themselves in the thing that they’re buying, they’re not going to buy it. So if you can reflect back to your customers, what they’ve said, they are more likely to stay loyal to you. So it’s a win, win, win all around. And all you’ve done is just ask people, hey, how can I help you? What can I do for you? What are you thinking? That costs you nothing?

Christopher Penn
Exactly. So to summarize, if you want to optimize for the latest algorithms and meet your budget planning, it’s simple talk to the humans you’re trying to optimize for create content for them, help them out, help yourself out, and Have a winning 2020 strategy. As always, please leave your comments on the blog post that goes with this podcast at Trust insights.ai sign up for our newsletter while we while you’re there, you get fresh new data every week of stuff that you’re not going to find anywhere else. And, as always, we can help you out. We’d love to again go to Trust insights.ai Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time.

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