Introduction to Digital Marketing

We will talk about the idea of a digital presence as a foundation for your digital strategy and online presence.

Terms & Concepts

• Value: The fact that something is important or useful to your audience.
• Utility: Something that is useful, helpful, profitable, or serves a purpose for the people who are meant to see it.
• Strategy: Long-lasting, usually with a clear start point but not always a clear endpoint.
• Campaign: Campaigns, on the other hand, usually have a clear beginning and end. Campaigns can be based on things like time (seasonal or for a certain amount of time), location, product, audience, or an exclusive offer.
• Relevance: Having the ability to connect directly and strongly to the wants, needs, or pain points of your audience.
• Goals: Statements about the future of your organization. They should be measurable and quantifiable.
• Objectives: Precise steps your organization must take to achieve its goals.

Environment

The business world is getting more and more active. There is a trend toward audience interaction, "consumer-generated content," or "CGC," and "crowdsourcing," which means getting input from the whole community.

The rise of social media is also making it easier for a lot of people to work together and share information.

This is changing the trend from businesses communicating with their audience through a single, one-way website to businesses interacting with their audience and building relationships and communities across multiple platforms.

This constantly changing online environment is quickly moving away from static websites and toward a dynamic online community made up of visitors, communities, and Web Marketers who talk to each other.

The Internet has given consumers more power and made it possible for one-to-one marketing and mass customization to become more popular.

Online Business Models

Publishing

Publishing is all about making content.

Some of the most important parts of publishing are:

• Indirect monetization
• Connects audience with advertisers
• Can be presented as text, graphics, video, etc.

Publishing business models include media sites with music, videos, and games, as well as traditional publishers who distribute news, information, and sports content.

eCommerce

The eCommerce business model provides a unique product.

Some of the most important parts of eCommerce are:

• Direct revenue model
• Buying or selling goods or services online
• Offers real products as a way to make money (books, CDs, movies, games, household items, etc.).
• Music, videos, and online games can also be sold as digital products.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of getting in touch with someone who has shown interest in a business's product or service.

The most important parts of a business model for getting leads are:

• Customer data collection is the most indirect way to make money (e-mail, phone number, etc.)

• Customer information can be used to make transactions easier in person (in-store purchases, financial transactions, direct mail, and telephone sales, for example). (Deals between businesses and meetings in person)

A lead-generation business model is used by businesses like financial services, websites for businesses to do business with each other, and companies with products that are hard to deliver through traditional channels.

Technology is a Facilitator

Looking at this short history of the Internet and the World Wide Web, you can learn about some of the things that led to the rise of online business, as well as the problems that were faced and the lessons that were learned along the way.

The Gartner Hype Cycle may be one of the best ways to look at how the World Wide Web has grown, changed, and been used.

The research company Gartner came up with the idea of the "Hype Cycle" to show how new technologies and technology trends are usually adopted.

The rise of the World Wide Web is a good example of how this model of adoption can be used to explain a number of technological trends.

Using the Gartner Hype Cycle model, as shown in the diagram below, we can map out the different stages of the development and use of the World Wide Web.

The Rise of the Internet

Web 1.0 had a variety of websites that didn't change.

Starting around 1994, when the Internet began to be used for business and the World Wide Web came into being.

Web 2.0 was created in 2004 as a new platform for the next generation of social Web apps and services that encourage users to interact more.

The Internet is quickly changing from a place where Web sites are static to a place where visitors and communities interact with each other and web marketers.

The Internet has given consumers more power and made it possible for one-to-one marketing and mass customization to become more popular.

What do we hope to learn from this test?

People thought that the World Wide Web was a separate business model, which led to the problems.

You still need a product or service that meets the wants, needs, and desires of your target market and can be made and sold profitably.

In terms of business, the Internet is:

• A powerful way to communicate
• Another way to sell and distribute products

The Internet by itself is not a way to run a business. You still need to know the basics of business.

Instead, the Internet is a form of technology, and technology helps people do things.

When used correctly, technology helps us get things done faster, cheaper, and better in many situations.

To take advantage of all that technology has to offer, you also need a strong business foundation.

From a business and technology point of view, the World Wide Web is a new way to send and receive information around the world.

A company's digital presence lets it sell, market, provide service, support, and help to customers all over the world almost instantly and deliver when needed.

Long Tail Theory

With this new web environment, we can focus on selling both low volumes of hard-to-find products and high volumes of popular items.

This idea is often called the "Long Tail" idea, which was first put forward by Chris Anderson. It shows how the Web's economy is moving away from big mainstream markets and toward smaller niche markets and products.

The idea of the "Long Tail" is shown by search engine marketing: the most popular phrases/keywords are the ones that are searched for the most (the "head"). But when you add up the searches in the "tail," you get a much bigger number, which lets marketers reach a much bigger audience.

The Customer Journey

In order to get a better idea of how our digital marketing strategies and tactics will fit into our business model, it is helpful to briefly talk about the roles of Sales and Marketing in a typical organization.

This will help us build on what we know about the digital landscape.

At a high level, sales are usually measured by how much money they bring in (in most for-profit businesses, this amounts to the monetary value assigned to sales).

Marketing, on the other hand, aims to make as much money as possible for the company.

To reach this lofty goal, Marketing defines the audience (their profile, wants, needs, desires, and pain points), helps define product value (to meet customer needs), figures out price and distribution strategies, and does promotional activities to get people interested and get leads (people interested in purchasing the product).

As a result, they made more money and spent less. (Of course, this process should never come at the expense of building and protecting the brand.)

To better understand this whole integrated process, it helps to know about the sales process (also called the "customer journey" or the "life-cycle of the customer").

At a high level, and for our purposes, the stages of the sales cycle can be mapped to the three main parts of our audience-focused online marketing strategy: acquisition, conversion, and retention.

It's important to note that those of us who are in charge of defining and implementing digital marketing strategies have a solid understanding of the sales cycle. This means that our digital marketing efforts are closely aligned with efforts to increase sales while lowering costs, which maximizes the firm's profit potential.

3 Primary Elements of The Customer Journey

Acquisition

The process of getting or adding new online customers. This is what the rest of this course will be mostly about.

Conversion

The process of getting customers to do what you want them to do. Usually comes next in the customer journey after acquisition. Try to make your website a "conversion engine" that turns people who visit it into paying customers.

Retention

Retention is the process of keeping current customers and keeping them interested, which is usually an ongoing process in the customer lifecycle. Some common ways to keep customers are to send emails, target online content, and give existing customers special deals and campaigns.

Acquisition

Let's look more closely at the first step in selling, which is called "acquisition." We will look into how to get our target audience as the first step toward turning them into customers. We will talk about display advertising, email marketing, social media, search engine marketing, and mobile marketing as we look into the ways we can get customers in the digital world.

What is Acquisition?

Acquisition is the process of getting or adding new customers online. It is the first step in the customer process. Acquisition uses a lot of different tools and strategies, all of which can be combined and coordinated with offline campaigns to create synergy and make them more effective as a whole.

Some common strategies and methods for getting something are:

• Display Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Social Media
• Mobile Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing

Tactics for Attracting and Growing your Audience

Content Marketing

When talking about digital acquisition in-depth, you should also talk about marketing ideas like content marketing. Content marketing is a strategy for marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content with the goal of getting and keeping customers. It is characterized by the constant delivery of large amounts of relevant content and is often called "storytelling."

Content marketing is not a new idea, but it does come up when talking about digital marketing because the online tools and platforms that marketers can use help spread thecontent a lot. Social media is a great example of a technology that makes it easy and quick to create and share content and makes it easy and continuous for the target audience to consume it.

Viral Marketing

In the same way, a digital marketing strategy has a big effect on viral marketing, which is not a new idea. The word "virus" is where the name "viral marketing" comes from.

Viral marketing is called that because it is like a virus in two ways:

1. Spreads very quickly.
2. Uses other people's resources to spread.

When you think about how social media works, you can see how quickly and effectively a message (like a blog post or video) can spread and "go viral" on the Internet.

So, how do you use content and viral marketing to your advantage? Using the online tools we have access to, we can make digital strategies that help spread information quickly and continuously in a way that is easy to use and spread in the digital world. Keeping an eye on and joining viral trends gives your brand a chance to connect with popular topics and reach more people.

Content and viral marketing can be used at any point in the customer life cycle, from getting new customers to keeping the ones you already have.

Display Advertising

Display advertising is a type of online advertising that includes banner ads and rich media, among other things. Display ads, which are different from text-based ads, can use things like images, audio, and video to get their message across.

Main benefits of display advertising:

• Build Awareness - Create interest where intent may be lacking (and reinforce branding)
• Drives Conversion - Helps other online campaigns by making them more appealing.
• Rich Media Experiences - Show interesting content that can't be found in text ads
• Targeting specific audiences, prospects, and customers - Behavior, geo-location, context, semantics
• Offers additional measurement capabilities - Mouse over, watched video, direct interaction…

Ads can be targeted by:

• User behavior
• Geo-location
• Contextual scenario

Process

Display advertising encompasses the following activities:

• Develop creative and offer - the campaign
• Determine target audience
• Select ad unit standard, specify the link to the landing page
• The ad is displayed (delivered) by a 3rd party server

One example of an ad network is Google AdSense.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has a number of advantages over other marketing methods:

• Highly targeted
• Low cost
• Fast and efficient
• Easy to test, track and evaluate
• Easy to coordinate with other campaigns
• Can embed a call to action in the message
• Higher response rates
• Email marketing is still a viable acquisition strategy as long as you don’t SPAM.

Email should be the front door to your website

Emails are like the front door to your website. They should be used to get people interested and bring them back to your website. Emails work best when they have interesting content that acts as a "teaser" to get people interested enough to want to click on the embedded links and go to your website for more information. Your email strategy will depend on how well you know what your audience likes.

Engage your audience with emails

There are many different kinds of emails, like marketing emails and email newsletters. Do a survey to find out how much and how often your audience wants to hear from you. If you send too many emails too often, you could overwhelm your audience and turn them off. Too few, and they might forget about you.

Optimizable elements in Email

• Sender address
• Subject line
• Offers and incentives
• Use of graphics
• Engaging content
• Embedded call to action
• Personalization
• Contact info, policy statements, an unsubscribe option

Email Sales Cycle Integration

It's important to make sure your emails work well with the sales cycle. Emails are great for building relationships, but they can also help spread and strengthen your brand and bring in a lot of leads. Embedded email links should, of course, go to landing pages as much as possible.

Social Media

Goals

• Add more places where your brand can be seen on the Web.
• Encourage your audience to interact with you.
• Build a relationship with your audience.
• Make a community around your brand.
• Serve as an online starting point for the entire conversion process.
• Obtain valuable marketing insights.

We should aim for an integrated marketing strategy that uses all of our marketing tools and tactics, including social media, to build a strong community around our brand, engage our audience, and then turn these prospects into customers. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking sites, video-sharing sites, and photo-sharing sites are all types of social media that can be divided into different channels based on their main functions.

Selecting the Right Channel

• What are your long-term goals?
• Do you have the money and time to keep up a social media strategy or campaign?
• Does your target audience use social media? Which ones, if so?
• Do you want people to respond and interact with you?
• What kind of content do you want to share? Blogs, podcasts, photos, or videos?
• How will your content be described?

At this point, it's important to think about the connection between social media and the use and spread of mobile phones. At the moment, mobile usage is growing faster than any other way we can connect with our audience. The number of people who use mobile devices keeps going up at a fast rate, and most social media is done on and depends on mobile devices. When mobile technology and social media come together, it changes everything.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites like Facebook let you build a fan base for your brand, no matter how big or far away you are.

Photo and Video Sharing Sites

Sites like YouTube that let people share photos and videos also let people and businesses upload and share videos. When making your videos, think about the idea of "infotainment," which means to inform and educate at the same time. Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok are all sites for sharing photos or videos that are meant to entertain and keep people interested.

Blogs

Blogs can be written by one person from a company or by many people from the same company. Our audience can also add to it.

People who use the Internet think that blog content is:

• More current
• Less affected by corporate politics
• More condensed and focused

The fact that more and more people who use the Internet depend on blogs as a source of "grassroots" information is important to us as marketers. In many cases, blogs are completely replacing websites as the main digital presence. This is because blogs offer a way for business people who aren't very tech-savvy or who are on a tight budget to quickly deploy and update content.

Microblogs, like Twitter, let you think and talk in short bursts. They are another way to connect with your target audience and grow your brand online.

Twitter is the most well-known microblog. (Say it in 140 characters or less!)

Ratings, Reviews, and Recommendations Sites

• Ratings - A rating shows how well or badly a product or service works for the purpose it was made for.
• Reviews - A review is usually a written or visual summary of what happened and what people liked or didn't like about it.
• Recommendations - A recommendation is a quick way to tell someone if something is recommended or not.

Ratings, reviews, and recommendations are some of the most powerful parts of social media. Give your website visitors places to add to the content directly and share their ideas with the rest of the community. Yelp is another way to use the power of ratings, reviews, and recommendations strategically. Yelp is all about ratings, reviews, and recommendations from the public, and getting your site listed there can be a good way to promote it.

Best Practices

• Don’t start until you're ready to commit the resources (time, people, money)
• Don’t get overwhelmed - implement in phases as your resources allow.
• Constantly measure and adapt.
• Develop a plan that documents your work.
• These new tools aren’t always applicable to every business scenario - be creative and selective.

Mobile Marketing

With so many people using mobile devices, we can use mobile as a great way to get new customers and spread the word about our business. With mobile acquisition techniques, you can strike where and when the iron is hot, which makes it more likely that you will reach and buy local audiences. Instagram, Snapchat, and Periscope combine social networking with the power of video to let people share real-time experiences visually. This is an example of how web, video, social media, and mobile technologies are coming together.

Tactics

• Click-to-Call
• QR Codes
• Mobile Display Ads
• Mobile Search

Click-to-Call

Studies have shown that 61% of searches done on a mobile device lead to a phone call. Think about adding a "click to call" button to your mobile website or app. Add a phone number to your Google page to make it easier for people to call you from the search results or map results on their phones.

Mobile Search

As mobile devices become more common, search engines are increasing the value of the results we see when we look at them on a mobile device.

You should think of mobile search as an important part of your mobile strategy. Based on search engine algorithms (the software that search engines use to look at your site and rank it), a searcher will see different results depending on the device they are using. These results may show information like location and will probably be formatted to look good on a phone.

Things to think about when we manage our mobile search activities:

• Choose keyword phrases that are related to your location and post content that goes with them.
• Listing your location on search engine mapping services will give you the best chance of showing up in map-based results.
• Also, run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with ads that target mobile users based on keyword phrases related to their location.

Mobile search results may be different from those on a desktop because they may include click-to-call, directions, or business hours.

QR Codes

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be easily encoded with marketing information. They hold a lot of information in a small space. QR codes help people move from the real world to the Internet.

QR codes can be put almost anywhere, like in a magazine ad, on a website, on a movie poster in the lobby of a theater, on a vending machine, or on the front of a store. Use your QR code to "catch" your mobile audience and bring them back to one of your online points of presence for more information, to build a relationship, and to make a sale.

Even though QR codes are a great way to connect the offline and online worlds, businesses and consumers have been very slow to use and adopt them. There are two things that make this trend happen:

1. It's easier for users to search or type in a location in their browser than to download an app that can read QR codes.
2. Businesses don't fully understand how useful and valuable they can be, so they don't know how to use them properly.

The first one is easy to solve: QR code readers are already built into (or are starting to be built into) the camera of mobile devices, or they will be soon. No more putting apps on your phone.

The second question needs a bit more thought. Here's the trick: Through relevant content and features, QR codes should be useful and easy to use. The best way to explain this point is with a few examples:

Example 1

A QR code on a movie poster in the lobby of a movie theater. So, I use the QR code feature on my phone's camera to scan the code, and I'm taken to the website for the theater chain's home page. I don't want to see that!

I was hoping to find the following at the other end of that QR code:

• Who made the movie.
• Who will be in it?
• When and where it is playing.
• I want to see trailer.
• I want to buy tickets for the next showing... online.
• I'd like to reserve a seat (if my chosen theater allows that).
• I might even want to have my popcorn and drinks ready (having also been paid online and applied to my rewards card.)

This is what I want, what I expect, and what makes me want to use my phone to take a picture of the QR code and read it. That's worth something, that's useful, and it makes me more likely to keep reading QR codes.

Example 2

You are looking for a new home. You are driving around and see a house with a "FOR SALE" sign in front. The sign has a QR code on it. When you take a picture of the QR code, you are taken right to the homepage of the real estate chain. So what? What you'd like to see the most is:

• Asking price
• Options for financing
• Rating of the schools in the area
• Recreational facilities in and around the neighborhood.
• 360-degree interactive house tour
• Floor plan
• Click-to-Call feature

Social Media Strategy

We can build a community around our brand and get people interested in it with social media and we can turn those people into customers from there.

Social media comes in multiple channels. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking sites, video-sharing sites, and photo-sharing sites are some of the most popular ones.

Ask yourself questions like, "What are your goals and objectives?" to help you figure out which social media channels you want to focus on.

Do you have enough money and time to keep a social media campaign going?

What do you want to put out there?

Blogs, photos, videos?

After you've decided on the right channels, there are a few things you should do.

Don't start until you have all the resources you need.

If you don't want to feel overwhelmed, implement it in stages.

Measure your results often and make changes as needed, and make a plan to keep track of your work.

Also, don't forget to use user-generated content and the power of the crowd.

For example, you could make a campaign that asks your audience to tell you what they like best about a new product.

You could give them a reason to buy that product, like by giving them a discount on it.

Mobile devices are now the main way that businesses and customers talk to each other. It's also important to know that most social media is made and shared through mobile platforms.

Because so many people have mobile phones, we can use social media as a powerful way to get new customers.