Google’s Primer App is a great way to dive into the different disciplines of digital marketing in 5-minute-courses right on your phone. The app comes with great content and is a great companion for digital marketers of all skill level.
The content within the app is structured in five main categories. Overall there are ~35 courses, with strategy being the main category with a library of about 20 courses. Content is provided by Google itself or industry experts.
Who is the the target group for the app?
- Online marketers from small businesses and Startups. In general for people at the beginning of their career in marketing who want to get a quick overview of the most common online marketing tactics.
- People from other departments who want to get a glimpse about online marketing or who do work a lot with marketing (i.e. “How to define a target group” or “How to write a creative brief”).
- Online marketers who do want to refresh their knowledge — who on earth can be an expert in all disciplines?
Structure of a course explained
The chapter on Growth hacking provides a first overview on the topic. How did growth hacking evolve and what were the early examples of growth hacks, even before the discipline was around (in Primer it’s again the over-used email signature example). What follows is a short quiz where you have to drag & drop marketing activities into categories — is it “classic marketing” or growth hacking. That sounds very basic and it is. Other categories, like A/B testing, go a bit deeper, but most of the other disciplines have been around longer and you can expect that more people have heard about A/B testing then growth hacking.
Each course is structured more or less like this:
- Short Introduction on the topic
- Quiz: simple Yes/No Questions
- Industry best practice
- How would you apply this to your company?
- UX of course is based on Google’s flat design.
What makes this app special?
- Great design and user experience: It’s just fun to use it
- The format and length of the courses
- Pin cards to your “cheat sheet” for later reference
- The short exercises which are added at the end of some courses helping you get started right away
How could Google improve the app?
- Add further reading material: As said most of the courses are done in 5 minutes, so its really just a starting point. It would be nice to have added 3–5 links to well written articles to dig deeper into the specific topic
- Community involvement: At the time it seems people use the app-marketplaces to provide feedback. But it would be cool to have a comment section right within the app to discuss the content and meet other users. But this should be done in a way that you can still hide away all the community content to really focus on learning
- For newbies in online marketing the list of topics can be a bit overwhelming. With so many disciplines to master it’s hard to know where to start. Having the courses rated as “Beginner” or “Advanced” level and adding an introductory card telling people about how long this discipline is around would help. As a digital marketer at a Startup or small business you are facing the challenge of limited resources and need to focus on a few of the activities.
- When content does not come directly from Google it would be cool to provide a bit of information on the industry experts providing the content
Why is Google creating such an App?
The Primer App can be classified as an content marketing effort by Google. We get great content for free and Google positions itself as a master in digital marketing in our heads (and that also for topics which do not relate to any Google services at first sight). In the app there is no direct link to any Google service or any Google logo etc., but when screenshots are shown its either generic or based on Google services (which is a very subtle approach).
With Primer, Google created both a good looking and useful app for online marketers. Based on feedback on Google’s Play store its well appreciated by the community. Google is also adding new content. Let’s see how the app and content evolves over the year.
Primer App available for Android or iOS. Project Website