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COMING AT YOU WEEK OF 6.29.21

Weekly update

3 updates that could impact your upcoming strategies

  • Facebook announced new e-commerce updates, like Shops on WhatsApp and Shop listings on Marketplace.
  • Facebook has a guide designed to help businesses support our LGBTQ+ friends year round.
  • Google announced that it will phase out third-party cookies in 2023. This article explains what that means, particularly for your ads.

Something to make you look nice and smart
Four bills were introduced to the House of Reps attempting to rein in tech monopolies (i.e. Facebook, Google, Apple). Social Media Today broke down the bills and hypothesized some potential effects, like:

  • Google banned from promoting its own products in Google search results
  • A block on mergers where the acquirer is a competitor (basically preventing moves similar to Facebook acquiring Instagram)

Something to make you laugh
Apparently we’re voting people off the island planet, now? Almost 100,000 people have signed a petition requesting that Jeff Bezos be “barred entry back to our planet” after his space tourism trip next month.

    Interview with Jimmy Daly

    How you can take on marketing for a technical company and rock it

    Heather Alter

    Last week we shared why Jimmy Daly suggests marketing for technical companies. When you’re marketing for a complex product or service, he says you need to get really good at learning from experts.

    Ideally those learning conversations leave you feeling enlightened, but some of us have only left those meetings embarrassed and more confused.

    So how do you get good at learning from experts? According to Jimmy, you should (1) start with foundational context and (2) learn to ask good questions.

    Here’s what that might look like.

    It’s your first day marketing for a car mechanic shop that only offers oil changes, and besides knowing how to fill up with gas, you don’t understand anything about cars. (This isn’t the type of technical product that most of us will struggle to market, but it’ll be a nice example.)

    Over the next few days, you have meetings scheduled with mechanics and managers to learn about your company and its service. Here’s how you can prepare.

    Start making a list of the questions you want to ask.

    You might have questions like this:

    • What is an oil change?
    • What’s special about our service compared to competitors?

    Add foundational context questions to your list.

    Before learning too much about your company’s offering, Jimmy recommends learning about the industry and the business model. Some foundational context questions for our scenario might look like:

    • How does our company make money?
    • Why does a car need an oil change?
    • Why don’t people change their car’s oil themselves?

    Then, use your own resources to try and answer your questions.

    A quick Google search answers, “what is an oil change?”.

    So now you have an answer to your first question, but you might also have some new questions, like:

    • Why do cars need an oil change?
    • How often do cars need their oil changed?
    • What happens if a car doesn’t get an oil change as often as it should?

    Make sure to write down the answers you find and any new questions you think of.

    Repeat the process of using your own resources to answer what you can, while writing down any new questions you have.

    Here are resources you can use when trying to answer the questions yourself:

    • The Google, of course
    • Your company’s website
    • Competitors’ websites
    • Friends or family (maybe your cousin works on cars as a hobby and wouldn’t mind a phone call)

    At the end of this process you’ll have learned at least a bit on your own and you’ll have quality questions.

    Here are some rewards you’ll reap:

    • You’ll understand the experts’ explanations better.
    • You’ll feel more confident because you won’t be asking “dumb questions.” (Dumb questions = questions you can easily answer with your own resources.)
    • You’ll earn respect and gratitude from the experts because they won’t feel like you’re wasting their time.

    Now that you can learn well, you’ll be even better at persuading.

      Wordless wisdom

      You tell that ocean, Ronny

      Google is the new homepage