Module 1

Marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the
needs of a target market in terms of goods and services;[1][2] potentially including
selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emphasize
in advertising; operation of advertising campaigns; attendance at trade shows and
public events; design of products and packaging attractive to buyers; defining the
terms of sale, such as price, discounts, warranty, and return policy; product
placement in media or with people believed to influence the buying habits of others;
agreements with retailers, wholesale distributors, or resellers; and attempts to
create awareness of, loyalty to, and positive feelings about a brand. Marketing is
typically done by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Sometimes tasks are
contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency. More rarely, a trade
association or government agency (such as the Agricultural Marketing Service)
advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food
(e.g. Got Milk?), food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism
destination.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to
connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital
communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based
advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses
the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop
computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote
products and services.[2][3] Its development during the 1990s and 2000s changed
the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing. As digital platforms
became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[4] and as
people increasingly use digital devices instead of visiting physical
shops,[5][6] digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing
combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine
marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation,
campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media
marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display
advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace.
Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such
as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring
tones.[7] The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing
from online advertising.[
Understanding digital marketing process
5 Step Digital Marketing Process, that can be used for marketing anything on Digital
Media.
Step 1: Research
Step 2: Create
Step 3: Promote
Step 4: Analyze
Step 5: Optimize
Step 1: Research
At this stage, you will collect all the information that will be required for decision
making in the next stages. Information collected during the research will become
your raw material to strategize & create your digital marketing campaign. This stage
can also be called as Digital Marketing Research. At this stage, you will research 4
sets of information:
About Business
About Your Target Customers
About The Product That You Want To Market
About Online Competition
Each set is unique & equally important. You will require multiple sources to collect
the information.
Step 2: Create
Once you collect information at the research stage, you can now start creating:
1 – Digital Marketing Objectives / Goals: These are the ultimate goals that you want
to achieve through your Digital Marketing Campaign. Every business is unique,
therefore their goals will also be unique. Campaigns without clear goals will end up
spending money without the assurance of achieving goals. What goals you should
set, can be answered after looking at information collected at the Digital Marketing
Research stage. Learn more about Digital Marketing Objectives / Goals.
2 – Digital Marketing Strategy: After you set the goals, it’s time to create a strategy
to achieve those goals. Your Digital Marketing Strategy will include Positioning
Strategy, Branding Strategy, Content Strategy, Digital Marketing Channels Strategy.
What strategy should be adapted/created, will be answered from the information
collected at the Digital Marketing Research stage.
3 – Digital Marketing Plan: At this stage, you will lay down a documented plan that
will include all your detailed Digital Marketing activities with timelines.
4 – Creating Primary Digital Identities: The 3 primary Digital Identities of business
are Website, Blog & App. These are like your online office, shops, or showrooms.
These are the places where you want your target customer to reach & ultimately buy
your products & services. Before you move on to the next stage, i.e promote, your
primary digital identities must be fully ready. For businesses that want to sell their
products through major E-Commerce portals, creating digital identities can be
optional. But, it’s better to at least have a website for establishing some credibility
of your business.
Step 3: Promote
After your primary digital identities are fully ready, you will start promoting them.
That means you want relevant people to start coming to your primary digital
identities. This is also called as generating relevant traffic. Relevant traffic is an
important word here.
The more you get relevant traffic to your website, the more the conversion you can
expect. Your options to promote your website/blog / app will be:
Search Engines
Display Network
Ecommerce Portals
Social Media
Email
Messaging
Affiliate
The above are also known as Digital Marketing Channels, which you need to
promote your Primary Digital Identities (Website / Blog / App). There are sub-
channels & networks within some of the channels mentioned above.
Which channels, subchannels, networks to go for & whether to do organic or
inorganic promotions, these questions will already be answered at the Digital
Marketing Strategy creation stage.
Step 4: Analyze
Once you create your primary digital identities & start promoting them through
various digital marketing channels, it’s time to start monitoring your performance.
Analyzing is like looking at the outcome of your digital marketing work. You will
receive analytics for your primary digital identities, as well as the channels through
which you have done the promotions.
The most important & ultimate analytics for any business is the analytics of your
website/blog / app. Google Analytics is widely popular to generate analytics of your
primary digital identities. The 4 major sections of Google Analytics are:
Audiences
Acquisition
Behavior
Conversion
Step 5: Optimize
At this stage, based on analysis & observations, you start making changes (fine-
tuning). The changes could be in your primary digital identities or digital marketing
channels. Changes are also referred to as content & design of your identities &
promotional communication
.Increasing visibility
Today, having an online presence is not just an option, but a necessity. All brands,
and people working for these brands, are maintaining an online presence for various
reasons. It helps them connect directly with the audience and engage them with their
latest products and services.
Some people also consider internet visibility as an important factor to determine if
the brand is real or not. So, it is clear that having online visibility for every business
is very vital today. To achieve that, you must practice holistic marketing and
leverage on various content sharing platforms and social media. Apart from this,
here are five ways you can achieve this easily
Blogging
If you don’t have a blog on your website or for your business, you’re losing a lot of
audience and potential customers. A blog helps you to connect and engage with the
right audience and let me know about your expertise. So, start creating amazing
blogs for your business while keeping in mind your target audience. The more
valuable and unique content you share on your blog, the more audience will connect
with you. And if your content is awesome enough, they should become your next
customer as well
SEO
When we talk about the online presence or “visibility”, we cannot ignore SEO. To
become more visible on the web, make strong use of on-page SEO techniques to
make your content SEO-friendly. Create quality content for your website
everywhere. Whether it’s social media posts, guest posts, or any sponsored post for
a company, you must utilize every aspect of on-page SEO techniques. Unless and
until you work on SEO, it will be difficult to attain good online visibility.
Get Customer Reviews
Customer reviews and testimonials play an important role in deciding whether a
person should go for your product or service. It influences them to buy products or
avail services. To increase online visibility, you can encourage your existing
customers to leave reviews on your site or give an awesome shout out on social
media platforms.
Make use of social media like Facebook or Twitter to get connected with your
audience or simply write a professional email asking for a review on your website.
If people won’t see any customer reviews of your products and services you offer,
they probably think that your services are not popular. Hence, it may deteriorate the
trust
Digital Media
As discussed above, making the right use of social media can help you to boost your
online presence. Using social media, you can directly get the feedback and reactions
from the users about your products and services. But not all social media can be ideal
for your business. Choose the one that suits your needs and helps you achieve your
business goals.
Bringing targeted traffic
Targeted website traffic refers to the number of people visiting your website for a
product or a service that you offer. Increased targeted traffic can imply your website
is attracting potential clients.
There are two types of traffic: non-targeted website traffic and targeted website
traffic. Non-targeted website traffic refers to visitors simply looking at your website.
Targeted traffic involves visitors browsing your website with a specific goal. For
example, people who visit a shopping site to buy a vending machine form targeted
website traffic. People who visit the site intending to check the latest offers make up
regular website traffic. You can carry out digital marketing campaigns to ensure that
your websites generate targeted traffic.
You can use the following steps to generate more targeted website traffic:
1. Optimize your website for search engine optimization
Search engine optimization plays a significant role in driving targeted website traffic
towards your business. It helps propel your website to the top of the results page on
search engines, which can help you increase the number of visitors.
2. Build backlinks
Backlinks form when your website links with another website. It helps increase the
credibility of your website. Having several links from established organizations can
show your content is trustworthy, which can expand the reach of your website and
attract qualified traffic.
3. Launch search paid campaigns
Another strategy of boosting targeted website traffic is using advertising platforms.
They can allow you to run paid advertisements to promote your website in search
engines for specific keywords. Unlike SEO that attracts traffic for free, the
advertising platforms charge you each time a consumer clicks on your content in a
campaign. They can help you increase targeted traffic quickly, and you can use the
platforms for new or established websites
4. Use targeted social media advertisements to draw traffic
Today, social media networks have changed their methods to transform social
networking to target consumers directly. Using professional social networking
platforms can help you promote your content and gain more traffic. Different
platforms have different strategies of advertising to attract traffic. For example, some
websites might prefer short links, while others yield personalized search results.
5. Create video tutorials
Using tutorials can be an effective method to produce free organic-targeted traffic to
your website. Many people use social media and video-sharing sites for
entertainment and research. You can create helpful tutorials and videos that can
attract customers and link your website's content on the description.
6. Target your visitors again with social media ads
Individuals visiting your website may not act at the moment. They may visit your
website and leave immediately. Another group may spend time in their accounts,
while a small group may become subscribers. One way to appeal to visitors and
transform them into potential clients is to launch re-targeting campaigns.
Since visitors are already familiar with your products, they might find a relevant ad
on social media platforms, which means they're more likely to revisit your site. The
method works best by re-targeting people that took action while on the website.
7. Engage online
Engaging in online groups and on websites that impact your business can help you
gain more targeted website traffic. Answer questions people ask in groups, comment
on their blogs and social posts and participate in discussions related to your field.
The more you take part in matters surrounding your industry, the more exposure you
can get, which can translate to more targeted traffic to your website.
8. Invest in content marketing
Besides investing your resources persuading other websites to link back to your site,
you can also create unique content that sells itself. Investing in content marketing
can generate highly targeted traffic to your website as you directly address a specific
audience. It carries out keyword research to establish what most visitors are looking
for on search engines and develops SEO campaigns targeting the keywords that are
useful to your organization
Converting traffic into leads
Improve your content
Improving your website in general and your conversions starts with your content.
From keywords to product descriptions, to calls to action, and beyond, having good
content makes or breaks your website. If you’re not getting the kind of leads and
conversions you want on your website, it’s time to start improving your content. You
should create opportunities with your content for someone to fill out a form or
contact the company directly.
Also learn from your current customers about their pain points, common questions,
and what kind of experience they will get from your business. Then put that on your
website. Do that with an FAQ page, if they have a pain point that you can fix, make
that change across your business. Explain how you differentiate from your
competitors. Make it clear on your website what sets your business apart and how
you can fix customer pain points. Good content leads to better conversions. It’s that
simple.
2. Give social proof/case studies
When people come to your website, they want to first see if you can fix their problem
or answer their question. Next, they want to see if others have had a good experience
with your business. They will do this by checking your Google My Business profile
or other review sites. But it also helps to put some social proof and success stories
like testimonials or case studies on your website. People want to see that others have
had successful campaigns or interactions with your business. That way they have
more confidence that you’ll do a good job with their needs as well. Testimonials,
case studies, and positive reviews on pages with conversion and lead generation
points can really help to close that loop and encourage someone to take action.
3. Create a lead magnet
Lead magnets are things like free downloads or other valuable perks that could
convince someone to give you their contact information. This looks like a form
where people can put in their name, phone number, email address, and other
information you will find helpful for your business, and they get a free consultation,
a free white paper download, an analysis of their website or something else that you
specialize in. People who fill out these kinds of forms are warm leads, or they’re
more likely to convert because they’ve already visited your website, liked what they
found, and engaged with your content. Use these forms to collect data that you will
find most helpful in order to convert the lead. Things like employee number, job
title, etc., can help you better understand their intent behind requesting information
from your business website.
4. Improve your offering
If you don’t get a lot of leads and conversions through your website, there’s a chance
it could be your product offering itself. In this case you need to check to see what
your competition offers. Do you have the same product? Do you offer it at a
reasonable rate? What makes your business stand out from the competition? You
need to think long and hard about the answers to these questions
Improve your CTAs
We’ve already mentioned this in the article, but Calls to Action are crucial on your
website. If you want to convert traffic into leads, you need to make sure you have
CTAs on your site, and that they’re effective. For the white paper download
mentioned earlier, you need a button that grabs a user’s attention and urges them to
fill out the form. CTAs look like links or buttons that stand out from the rest of the
site. If you have an e-commerce site, a CTA could be the “buy now” or “add to cart”
buttons. On your blog, it can encourage people to sign up for a newsletter
Create A/B Tests, Conversion Rate Testing
Like we just mentioned, it’s important to test out your site to make sure your
conversion points are actually converting the way you want them to. A/B testing is
some of the best ways to make sure your website can convert traffic into leads the
way you want them to. This is a chance for you to test for most things mentioned in
this article. Make sure your content converts, see what messaging rings with your
audience, test to make sure you have the right target audience you’re reaching out
to. Conversion Rate Testing (CRO) also helps you to test various pages, messaging,
content, and more to make sure traffic converts to the maximum possible. There are
plenty of software options and digital marketing services who can help you with
your A/B or CRO testing. But it’s also possible to just try different messaging on
your own site.
7. Install a Chatbot
Do you have a chatbot installed on your website? If not, you’re missing a big
opportunity. Many are resistant to chatbots because they feel you lose that personal
connection with the customer. People today want to get their answers quickly, and
don’t always want to call into a business to figure out what they’re looking for. Every
year more and more people start using chatbots. So it’s time for your business
website to adapt as well. Load a set of responses to your most frequently asked
questions into the chatbot for times when an employee can’t be available to answer
as needed. And if someone isn’t available to answer live, and the pre-loaded answers
don’t answer their question, then you can capture their email address or phone
number which is a great way for you to grow your database and lead list
Newsletter Signups, Email captures
If you already have a decent amount of traffic or followers to your website, but you
want to increase conversions, start doing that with strategic CTAs that invite them
to visit your site again. You can do that by having a newsletter that distributes your
content. When they get it to their inbox, they have to come back to your site. You
can have an advertisement encouraging someone to sign up for the newsletter,
There’s also interstitial ads in your blog content, or have links that take them to a
landing page to fill out the form. Like we mentioned earlier, form fields and CTAs
are one of the best ways to convert traffic into leads, then leads into customers
Types of conversion
A conversion refers to an action that a prospective customer takes on your website
or landing page to further interact with your business or product. . Technically, this
can be any desired goal or action a visitor takes, but there are a few types of valuable
conversion types that commonly stand out.
Lead conversions
Used as part of a lead-generation campaign, lead conversions are used to identify
customers interested in your offering and provide a means for furthering the
relationship. This typically means they’ve provided their contact info in exchange
for an offer. Lead generation is the most commonly used of all conversion types.
When to aim for the lead
Lead conversions are most appropriate for higher-cost products and services.
They’re strategically valuable for offerings that require intensive information and
consideration before customers can come to a purchase decision.
2. Click-through conversions
As the name suggests, this means a person has clicked your ad and arrived at your
post-click landing page, where they will begin to evaluate your content. A
conversion in this case means that they click your CTA button. Typically this will
take them to another post-click landing page, with the goal of eliciting a higher value
conversion, such as signing up for a trial or making a purchase.
When to aim for the click-through
Use the click-through as a warm-up act to present your value proposition before
pressing for the sale.
3. Video view conversions
This refers to a conversion goal in which the user views a certain amount of a video.
This could be as little as 3 seconds, in the case of Instagram and Facebook videos,
or 11-30 seconds on YouTube.
When to aim for the video view goal
Video view conversions are a little different from the other types because they don’t
culminate in a lead or a sale, however they can be valuable at every stage of the
funnel. At the top, they’re great for introducing an unknown brand or figurehead; in
the middle, for providing educational content; and at the bottom, for proving your
effectiveness through case studies and testimonials. Ultimately, they serve to
confirm that some amount of awareness was brought to your brand or offering.
4. Purchase/sale conversions
This conversion refers to any action that leads to the exchange of money for goods
or services. It is the end goal that typically occurs at the bottom of the funnel, after
the prospective customer has moved through the buyer journey and been nurtured to
the point that they’re comfortable making a purchase.
When to go for the sale
While all sales occur at the bottom of the funnel, not all funnels are the same size.
So when to use the purchase or sale type conversion depends on your business and
industry. B2B funnels tend to be long, for example, because of the cost of the product
or service and complexity of decision making; whereas many types of B2C funnels
can be very short, in the case of inexpensive offerings, so going for the sale
immediately is a tactic frequently applied by e-commerce and retail brands.
Understanding conversion process
The conversion process always follows the same basic steps, no matter your goals.
The First Step Is Awareness
At this stage, potential customers become aware of your product or service. They
might see an ad, read a blog post, or hear about your company from a friend. Many
digital marketing strategies focus on this stage, such as search engine optimization
(SEO) and social media marketing.
The Second Step Is Interest
Once they know your product or service, potential customers will develop an interest
in it. They might visit your website, read more about what you offer, or compare you
to your competitors.
At this stage, it’s important to encourage customers to reach out to you. For example,
you should ensure you use the best contact form possible to help potential customers
connect with you and get answers to their questions.
The Third Step Is Consideration
At this stage, potential customers are considering your product or service as a
possible solution to their problem. They compare you to other options and research
your company in more detail.
During this stage, you need to provide potential customers with the information they
need to decide, including product details, pricing information, or testimonials from
satisfied customers.
The Fourth Step Is Intent
Now, potential customers are ready to buy and have decided that your product or
service is the best option for them. They might add items to their shopping cart, fill
out a contact form, or call your sales team to make a purchase.
The Fifth And Final Step Is Purchase
This step is when the consumer buys your product or service and becomes a paying
customer. But conversion doesn't end here. Once a customer has made a purchase,
you need to focus on retention and satisfaction with their purchase.
These efforts might include following up after the sale, providing customer support,
or sending them promotional offers for your other products.
Tools used like cpm cpc ctr and their relevance in digital marketing campaigns
CPM is short for cost per thousand impressions (the M is the Roman numeral
abbreviation for 1,000.) CPM is one of the most common ways of buying digital
media. You essentially pay for every time your ad loads on a webpage or in an app.
It’s a simple way to buy, but over the past decade it’s come under increasing scrutiny
because the client is charged for the impression whether or not a consumer actually
sees it.
On the web, for example, if the ad appears below the browser window and the user
never scrolls down, the advertiser still pays. On mobile, the same is true. This can
be vulnerable to fraud, with a typical scenario being a fraudster loading up 5, 10, or
15 ads in the same space, stacked over top of each other.
CPM has traditionally been used for brand campaigns, not performance campaigns,
because it’s a pre-action metric: no conversions involved. Ultimately, however
marketers are so used to it they’ll often back out a cost-per-click (CPC) or a cost-
per-action (CPA) or a cost-per-lead (CPL) to an estimated CPM.
CPC: cost per click
CPC is probably the simplest media buying model to understand. And thankfully,
there’s no Latin involved.
CPC is cost per click advertising. Here the advertiser (that’s you) pays when a click
is made on an ad. Some advertisers prefer to buy CPC versus CPM because they
believe they only pay when someone is interested enough in the message to want
more info. And that’s likely true. Some CPC programs are very effective, but there
is a potential for fraud if a company deliberately uses bots or some other technique
to drive clicks not initiated by a real person.
CPL means cost per lead. You as an advertiser pay a publisher or an affiliate when
a lead form is completed and submitted. CPL is common in B2B marketing, where
it is unlikely that someone will make a purchase immediately. It can be a very
effective way to buy, though there is some risk of fraud if bots are programmed to
fill in leads automatically.
That’s a little harder to do, however, than to fire off fake clicks.
CTR (Click through Rate)
When CPM and CPC indicate the cost of advertising, CTR measures its efficiency.
The number of clicks can be skewed by the number of impressions: an ad that is
published more times will have more chances of getting clicks. By dividing these
numbers, one obtains an efficiency percentage that is more relevant to the ad: the
number of clicks in relation to the number of impressions.
CTR = percentage of clicks per impression
How to calculate the CTR?
CTR = (Total clicks / Number of impressions) x 100
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the most important results or objectives that
you want to reach with every campaign, it allows you to measure if your actions are
working or need optimization. The KPIs are not only an advertising objective, they
are directly related to your business goals. For this reason, the same indicators should
not be used for all cases. However, if we talk about the essential KPIs, we cannot
stop highlighting: CTR marketing, CAC, CPC, and CPM. We recommend setting
one or two KPI (maximum) for every main stage of the Customer Journey. That is
to say, the instances that it goes through on the way to purchaseIn general, the
journey is divided into these four stages: knowledge, interest, consideration, and
sale. You can use each of them to identify which key metrics can be used to measure
your marketing efforts
Knowledge
In this instance, the user may not yet know your business and the solutions it
provides. Therefore, the key is to make yourself known. How to do it? Online
advertising, SEO, and social networks are the most used paths. How do we measure
it? CPM can be one of the most useful options.
Interest
At this time the user already shows some interest in your business proposal,
therefore, it is a key moment to capture their data and incorporate it into your contact
list. What tools will we use? Banners pop-ups to attract subscribers, marketing
automation, and, of course, email marketing. How do we measure it? With CTR
marketing and CPC.
Consideration
In this instance, the user still does not know if your business is the best option to
solve their problem. Therefore, it is very likely that you are analyzing multiple
alternatives. What actions can you take? A sequence of emails could be key to offer
discounts and promotions, talk about the benefits of your product and know the
success stories. How do we measure it? CTR marketing and CPA.
Sale.
And the last stage, when the sale is finished. Here are two fundamental metrics:
CAC and CPA.
Planning a digital marketing campaign
Digital marketing campaigns are the building blocks and actions within your digital
marketing strategy that move you toward a specific end goal.
For instance, if the overarching goal of your digital marketing strategy is to generate
more leads through social media, you might run a digital marketing campaign on
Twitter. You may share some of your business's best-performing gated content on
Twitter to generate more leads through the channel.
A campaign plan should be structured around these six areas. If you're looking for a
template to structure yours, see our Word campaign planning template.
1. Goal setting and tracking – which specific goals should be set for online
campaigns and how do we measure success? What response mechanisms will be
most effective?
2 Campaign insight – which data about customer and competitor behaviour is
available to inform our campaign?
3. Segmentation and targeting – how can we target and reach our different
audiences?
4. Offer and message development – how do we specify our offer and key
messages?
5. Budgeting and selecting the digital media mix – how should we set the budget
and invest in different forms of digital media?
6. Integration into overall media schedule or plan – how should we plan the
media schedule which incorporates different waves of online and offline
communications
Module 2
Understanding the existing social media paradigm and psychology
This is where social media comes into the picture, as now our dialogues have shifted
to these platforms. We no longer call a business, we are instead searching the internet
and even more often we are seeking them online through social media.
It doesn’t stop there, the majority of shoppers are consulting the rankings and
reviews found on social sites before making a purchase. Customers now expect
businesses not only be present but also active on social media. This infographic,
'Nurturing the Sales Funnel Using Social Media' gives us insight on how to master
our use of social networking and understand how our brain engages with social
media.
It points to six key strategies:
1. Awareness: Create compelling articles and run targeted ads.
2. Interest: Build a community, create a calendar and engage your followers.
3. Conversion: Offer an incentive on a landing page and collect emails.
4. Sale: Target your leads and use multiple venues to create interest in your
products.
5. Loyalty: Repeat visibility and engagement.
6. Advocacy: Social recommendation
After examining each point in greater detail, it continues on to describe how each of
these strategies actually goes into motion with the marketer and customer.
What else can we do? Do your homework, gather information, do your research
and be well informed. Check out a few of these tips for more effective social
marketing:
Look at the competition: It might sound sneaky, but take a look at
what businesses or industries are doing online, that are similar to yours. See
what is working for them and what doesn’t seem as effective. Don’t mimic their
campaign or duplicate their ideas, but see if something similar will work for you and
your business.
Set goals and follow-up: If your objective is to simply gain more followers,
keep track of your posts and see which are being 'Liked' and examine those that are
being ignored. If something isn’t working, get rid of it and try new angles or
approaches for those that are gaining attention.
Be more visual to be seen: Imagery is a very effective way to be seen and more
importantly engage with users. Post videos and photos on YouTube and link them
to your social media networking sites. Videos and pictures from your events will
help to humanize and personalize your brand image.
Running a more successful social media campaign can result in your company
enjoying more sales transactions and ultimately bigger profits
How social media marketing is different from other forms of internet
marketing
Social media is a part of everyone’s internet life. Anyone with internet access is
familiar with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Digital
marketing runs on these social media platforms, for increasing brand awareness
and engagement. Amidst the common digital consciousness with more than 3.6
billion social media users (Statista), the term social media marketing gets
confusing too easily. More often than not, it is loosely interchanged with the entire
concept of digital marketing, as both share the internet space. Or at least, newbie
marketers may consider it the best way to reach out to consumers as globally
everyone is connected and aware, 24/7. In fact, it is not the only advertising tool. It
is one of the many important aspects of digital marketing.
Let’s explore the difference between digital marketing and social media marketing.
Digital Marketing vs Social Media Marketing
Both digital marketing and social media marketing are part of marketing online.
Their objectives remain more or less the same – drive more profits, but the execution
from planning and communication to tools used are different.
Digital Marketing
While social media marketing relies on social media channels, digital marketing
covers more of the digital medium and even the offline world extending to SMS,
radio and TV. Digital marketing is important to any brand strategy. It gets a business
known through various channels available for internet users, who are over 4.66
billion in the world currently (Statista).
Digital Marketing Channels
Digital marketing is dependent on digital technologies to provide information on
what customers are looking for, no matter where they are from. It helps both existing
and potential customers find and buy a product or service.
While you can later read more on the best digital marketing strategies, any good
digital marketing strategy has all or some of the following components.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Pay Per Click Advertising
Video Marketing
Email Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing and Curation
Mobile Marketing
Digital marketers customise a strategy for every channel and may not necessarily
use all of the above, because it is dependent on the budget, target audience and what
the brand stands for. Through marketing research, they find out which type of
customers will buy the product. They also look into channels/components that are
going to be beneficial and make changes by analysing outcomes through Web
Analytics. They get to decide which component should be dropped from a
marketing campaign when it does not provide the desired ROI.
Digital marketing is necessary today as customers prefer to research before buying
a product. With this kind of marketing, businesses look into resolving customer pain
points and offer a piece of better information than their competitors.
Social Media Marketing
So social media marketing is a component of a larger digital marketing campaign. It
is the most effective of all components combined when done right. After all,
customers prefer to have an intimate connection with their favourite brands. Social
media channels provide the gateway for the target audiences to engage with the
business in a more personalised manner.
When a brand interacts with a customer on social media, it is there for everyone to
see. Social media platforms are also the best places to find out a brand’s admirers
who swear by the brand message and products. Anyone who checks the brand’s
profile on a relevant social media channel can observe the interaction (comments
and likes) or find out through word-of-mouth marketing. And based on these factors
they can either choose to buy or just give it a follow.
Social Media Channels
Choosing the right social media platform/s for business can make or break a social
media strategy. Some of the most popular channels are listed below.
Facebook (now Meta)
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
Reddit
Twitter
LinkedIn
Quora
Snapchat
Pinterest
Discord
WhatsApp
Tumblr
Social media lets businesses achieve objectives but the importance may not be given
equally to all the goals. Increasing website traffic may not be as important as brand
awareness or customer engagement. Creating social media content also differs as per
the industry. Live videos, stories, images and reels determine the channels to be used
depending on the brand voice and industry competitors.
Facebook marketing
Facebook marketing is a platform that offers a variety of highly targeted paid
advertisements and organic posts, allowing brands to put their products and services
in front of the massive audience. Over the last decade, Facebook has shifted from
the most prominent social medium on the internet into one of the biggest
marketplaces.
Why is Facebook good for marketing?
Has global coverage
Offers highly targeted paid ads
Makes organic reach possible
Allows integrations with other marketing channels
Benefits of Facebook Marketing
Precise targeting
Increased website traffic
Variety of ad formats
Customer support
Positive impact on SEO
Precise targeting. You already know that Facebook allows users to deeply segment
their audience but let’s take a closer look at the options available. Within
demographic targeting, you can select an audience with a particular income,
education level, life events, relationship status, or job. You can look for customers,
taking into account their interests, such as their preferred entertainment, sports,
hobbies, and shopping habits. Also, you can reach clients based on purchase
behaviors, intent, device usage, etc.
Increased website traffic. With this platform, you can drive your audience directly
to your website. Moreover, these people will be higher quality leads than users who
land on your site organically because they already know your company. Hence, you
have more credibility in their minds. Encourage your followers to visit your site to
find out more about your products. Besides, when linking to a site, Facebook
generates a full-size image if your site page has one. So, it will attract many users’
attention and help you boost website traffic.
Variety of ad formats. Facebook provides businesses with excellent opportunities
that allow them to showcase their products from the best angles. Ads on this platform
include both text and visual formats. You can boost your post by turning it into an
ad, produce stories to show your behind-the-scenes, make a slideshow of your new
collection, use carousel ads to demonstrate up to 10 products linking to the
corresponding pages, etc.
Customer support. A lot of people prefer to connect with a brand via social media.
Phone calls have become a thing of the past. Create a chatbot for Facebook
Messenger to communicate with users based on their popular queries — keywords.
They can include “price,” “delivery,” “payment options,” “purchase,” “book,” etc.
You only need to develop a scenario based on users’ FAQs and write the answers.
Your chatbot will imitate the real conversation. As a result, your support team will
have time for more complicated issues and you can automate routine tasks.
Positive impact on SEO. Some marketers claim that social media influences search
rankings. It’s believed that robots take into account your data in the About section
while ranking. Moreover, your social media engagement contributes a lot. Shares,
likes, and comments tell Google that people are interested in your brand and engage
with it. Although there is no exact proof, it isn’t superfluous either.
Formats of Facebook Marketing
Video ad
Image ads
Carousel ads
Collection ad
Slideshow ads
Lead generation ads
Facebook advertising
Facebook ads now come in several varieties. You can promote your Page, posts on
your Page, actions users took, or your website itself. Despite Facebook’s increasing
focus on native ads and keeping traffic on its site, you can still be successful in
sending users to your website.
There are also several ad formats including images, videos, carousel (multiple
images), Instant Experiences, and collections.
Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and profile
information. Many of these options are only available on Facebook.
After creating an ad, you set a budget and bid for each click or thousand impressions
that your ad will receive
Users then see your ads in the sidebar on Facebook or in their newsfeed.
As marketers, our main goal is generally to drive traffic to our own websites.
Building your Facebook presence is great, but when you bring someone to your
website, you control the medium, and this gives you the best chance of converting
on your goals.
Facebook’s other ad options are great for driving engagement and brand awareness,
but ads driving users off-site are still the best option for direct response advertisers
looking to make a sale.
Top Tips for Creating Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising has great potential but it isn’t as easy as just creating a bit of
copy and watching the sales come in. Getting Facebook Ads right takes a considered
approach and lots of optimization until you find the perfect strategy.
Here are nine top tips to help you optimize your Facebook ad campaigns.
1. Target Your Facebook Ads
At the beginning of this article, we asked: why advertise on Facebook? The two main
reasons were reach and Facebook’s almost unparalleled targeting.
The problem is, lots of businesses don’t take advantage of the targeting that’s
available to them. They go for a bigger is better approach, when in reality, what
matters is getting your products or services in front of the people who need them the
most.
Include Images
Facebook is a visual place. How often do you stop to read a post that’s made up
completely of text versus one that contains video or images?
The most important part of your Facebook ad is the image. You can write the most
brilliant copy in the world, but if your image doesn’t catch a user’s eye, you won’t
get any clicks.
Write Great Copy
After seeing your image, users will (hopefully) read your ad text. Here you can sell
them on your product or service and earn their click. Despite the 40 character
headline and 125 character body text limits, we can still use the famous copywriting
formula AIDA.
(A)ttention: Draw users into the ad with an attention-grabbing headline.
(I)nterest: Get the user interested in your product by briefly describing the most
important benefit of using it.
(D)esire: Create an immediate desire for your product with a discount, free trial, or
limited-time offer.
(A)ction: End the ad with a call to action.
Types of facebook advertising
Image ads
Facebook image ads, or photo ads, as some call them, feature a still image and
accompanying copy and a call to action (CTA). You can use boosted posts or create
dedicated ads for Facebook image ads. Many ecommerce advertisers use image ads
to promote a product and include a link to the product page.
Video ads
Facebook video ads are much the same as image ads, the difference being the
content format. Video ads feature video or motion graphics, while image ads are still
photos or graphics. You can create video ads in Facebook or boost organic posts that
have video.
Video ads tend to be more engaging than image ads. More than 1.25 billion
people consume video on the platform each month, and people spend almost
half their time on the app watching videos. However, video can also be more
complicated and expensive to produce.
Instant Experience ads
Facebook Instant Experiences (formerly Canvas) are full-screen, multimedia ad
types that deliver rich content experiences to audiences. Instant Experiences
encompass a lot of the features and capabilities of the other Facebook ad types—
users can view images, watch videos, swipe through carousels, click through to
tagged products, and even tilt to pan for unique angles.
Instant Experiences is a highly engaging Facebook ad type and leverages a
combination of assets to create an immersive user experience. In many cases, you
can use the images and videos you created for other Facebook ad types and then
repurpose them in an Instant Experiences package. This is a great way to make the
most of your investment in Facebook ad creative
Poll ads
Facebook’s poll ads allow you to survey your targeted audience with a question,
offering them two answers to choose from. This Facebook ad type is generally
effective for boosting engagement with your existing audience, as well as
generating brand awareness among new potential customers. You can create
Facebook poll ads with images or videos.
Carousel ads
Facebook carousel ads feature up to 10 images or videos in a format users can
click through. Each image or video can have a unique link, so this is a great Facebook
ad type if you’re promoting a product collection, for example.
You can also link them all to the same URL, which works well if you’re promoting
a single product but want to highlight various features.
Slideshow ads
If you’re looking to repurpose ad assets you already have, Facebook slideshow
ads could work for you. Facebook essentially takes your image ads and puts the files
together in a slideshow video format. This Facebook ad type will help you leverage
the power of video without needing extra budget for videos, which can be expensive
to produce
Linkedn marketing
LinkedIn is famous for connecting professionals all over the world. Many
people associate it with finding new positions and advancing one’s career,
but LinkedIn can also be a valuable space for expanding the network for
many types of businesses.
Professional freelancers, digital creatives, recently established companies
and even performing artists can use LinkedIn to promote their services to a
different audience than is available on other social networks. The key is to
take a smart strategy in approaching it. Here are 10 great tips to help you
get more traction on LinkedIn:
Create a company page
Highlight your business on your own profile
Update frequently
Use great visuals
Start a group
Participate in other groups
Get employees and partners on board
Write smart
Interact
Take LinkedIn seriously
Understanding linkedn
1. Create a great profile
The first step to using LinkedIn is making sure your profile stands out. To do that,
read our best practices for profiles, learn how to add skills to your profile, and see
how to add an introduction card.
2. Explore job opportunities
Once you create your profile, start your job search on LinkedIn. Click the links
below to understand how our Job search works, learn how to get notified about job
opportunities, and find out how to tell Recruiters you’re looking
3. Stay informed
LinkedIn will keep you informed about the News, People, and Companies that help
you be more effective and advance your career. Learn how to find connections,
follow people and companies, and subscribe to a newsletter.
How to do marketing on linkedin
LinkedIn is a job search site, a recruiting app, a social media platform, and
professional networking site all in one. It’s got more information about you than any
other media. Hardly anyone on Twitter or Instagram knows where you went to
school or what organizations you volunteer for, but on LinkedIn it’s there for
everyone to see.
That’s why promoting on LinkedIn looks a little different. Sharing updates and
engaging with your network in the comments is still an important part of a well-
rounded marketing strategy, but there are a few other tricks you should try out as
well.
1. Post LinkedIn-friendly video updates
Like all social media platforms, LinkedIn now values video highly in its algorithm.
Video posts often do better than text-only posts, so video should be part of your
strategy to promote your business on LinkedIn.
That being said, they types of video you post on LinkedIn might look a little
different.
Your videos should still be engaging and fun to watch. But the platform is more
buttoned up than other social media sites, so keep this in mind when you create
videos for promoting on LinkedIn. Vids of your office cat acting a fool = probably
not. A video showcasing your amazing office culture = yes please.
Optimize your personal profile
No matter what type of business you want to promote on LinkedIn, the personal
profile is where it all starts. To attract potential partners and customers, you need an
attractive profile that tells people exactly what you do and gives them a reason to
connect with you.
Create a company page
If you’re a marketer, business owner, or entrepreneur you need a company page. A
LinkedIn company page gives you a way to tell potential clients, partners, and
employees a bit more about your business.
A company page works similarly to your personal page. Your business name and
logo appear near the top, along with a Follow button. Underneath, in your About
section, you share more about your company and a link to your website.
Create LinkedIn posts
Despite having been declared dead many times, the art of writing a blog post that
engages your audience, solves a problem, and teaches something exciting plays an
important role in content marketing
Get active in LinkedIn groups
Get your name out there, raise awareness about your business, and do some good
old-fashioned networking by joining a relevant LinkedIn group. Much like Facebook
groups, there’s something for everyone.
Use LinkedIn search to find the perfect group for you. A quick search of “video
marketing” revealed 769 potential groups.
Advertisement on linkedin
To get started you'll need access to Campaign Manager. If you don't have a
Campaign Manager account, it only takes a moment to create one.
Choose your objective:
Each campaign begins by choosing the objectives that matter most, across
awareness, consideration or conversions
Select your targeting criteria
Reach the right audience by using LinkedIn’s targeting tools for campaign success.
Choose from over 20 different audience attribute categories
Choose your LinkedIn ad format
Now that you are logged in to Campaign Manager, it’s time to create and manage
your ad campaigns. You can use Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads,
Text Ads, or a mix of all four.
Select your budget and schedule
Now that you’ve selected your audience, it’s time to set the budget and schedule for
your campaign.
Measure and optimize your campaign
Congratulations, your LinkedIn advertising campaign is live! Now it’s time to see
how your ads are performing. You can access your analytics by visiting Campaign
Manager and selecting the campaigns you want to evaluate
By using LinkedIn ads, though, you can guarantee your brand’s voice makes its way
to the right audience. And, an audience of influential decision-makers at that.
Twitter marketing
Twitter marketing is how businesses use Twitter to create and disperse content to
targeted audiences and build community interest for their brand—and hopefully
generate sales. Twitter helps companies get in touch with a wide pool of potential
customers from around the world. In fact, more than 300 million monthly active
users are on Twitter.
Building a targeted and effective Twitter marketing strategy is a multistep process.
The first step involves creating buyer personas for your ideal customers. After that,
it’s a good idea to do Twitter research to get to know how your target audience acts
on the platform and what they’re interested in.
When you have some idea of what your intended audience wants, it’s time to start
making content for them. However, keep track of how users respond to your tweets.
Monitoring your tweets’ performance can help you adjust and improve your strategy
and find your brand voice.
There are also several small details that can contribute to the success or failure of
your Twitter strategy. For example, when you post can be just as important as what
you post. It’s vital that you release content when your target audience is likely to see
it.
Below is a list of some of the top advantages of using Twitter for marketing:
Brand awareness: Twitter helps alert consumers to your company’s existence and
educate them about your business and products.
Customer engagement: Twitter gives customers a quick and easy way to reach out
to you. This helps your business build relationships.
Drive website traffic: Twitter is a great tool for guiding users to your business
website.
Thought leadership: Twitter lets you start conversations with your audience and
share your opinions and views with them.
Customer research: Twitter has several tools that can help you research how your
target customers act on the platform and see what they respond to.
Business sales: Twitter is great for advertising your products and can help generate
sales for your business.
Develop community: Twitter helps you form a community of fans and supporters
of your business.
Marketing using twitter
Twitter marketing has become a complicated channel for even the savviest social
marketers.
Twitter has gone from a place for people to share their every thought into a powerful
marketing platform that lets brands speak to their audience in real-time. With over
321 million monthly active users, it’s easy to see why companies keep using Twitter
after all of this time. But it’s no longer enough to Tweet about the latest trending
topic occasionally.
Like every other social media platform, finding marketing success on Twitter takes
strategic planning and intentionality to stand out and keep your audience engaged.
• Audit your Twitter account
• 2Find your Twitter voice
• 3Use Twitter hashtags and trends
• 4Utilize Twitter ads
• 5Find out when to Tweet
• 6Schedule Tweets ahead of time
• 7Engage with your followers
• 8Set measurable Twitter goals
• 9Incorporate Twitter into your overall social media content strategy
• 10Additional Twitter marketing resources
tools for twitter marketing
SocialPilot is your go-to Twitter marketing tool when it comes to social media
marketing. You can bulk schedule 500 tweets in one shot and sort out even a month’s
worth of content in just a few minutes.
Add images, videos, GIFs, etc., to your tweets. Personalize them even more
with emojis, alt texts, and custom fields before sharing them with your followers.
You can also mention other Twitter profiles while composing tweets to gain
more reach.
ThreadMagic converts whole Twitter threads into well-organized, carousel-style
PDFs that are ready to share on your LinkedIn pages. And it’s absolutely free.
All you have to do is copy your Twitter thread and paste the link onto
the ThreadMagic tool online. Once you’ve pasted a link, you will get your ready-to-
share PDF in your inbox, where you can then download your file and share it with
the world.
Tweepi is the Twitter marketing software that guarantees engagement. If you fail to
engage with your audience, your followers, even in thousands, hold no meaning. But
it certainly takes a lot of time to engage with all for a handful of them to respond.
That’s where Tweepi makes your work easy.
Tweepi is driven by artificial intelligence. It is one of the best Twitter
marketing tools that offers such advanced features to shoot up your followers,
keeping them engaged. Set up your Tweepi account and feed in the relevant hashtags
and users/competitors you want to track. It will further study the targeted
hashtags and users to filter the most active and relevant users fit for
your engagement
Twitonomy, a Twitter marketing tool that provides with simple yet critical Twitter
analytics. The well-designed charts and visual analysis
are Twitonomy’s best features. It also has a feature where you can see all your
mentions from around the globe on a world map.
TweetReach is a helpful Twitter marketing software that helps you measure your
content performance. Learn which posts, hashtags, and URLs work better for you. It
also provides you with in-depth analytics and ready to share analytics
reports. You can also use this tool for competitive analysis and tracking leading
brands of your niche.
Advertising on twitter
Advertising on Twitter
Advertising on Twitter enables you to promote individual tweets or entire campaigns
dedicated to specific objectives. Businesses can choose between eight different
objectives -- including app installs, video views, and website conversions -- and set
audience targeting criteria for each ad campaign they create.
To expand your reach and grow your follower list on Twitter, consider
supplementing your organic efforts with the paid promotional opportunities Twitter
has built right into the platform. Using Twitter Ads is an easy way to get your
tweets in front of audiences that don't yet follow you, which is particularly useful for
generating new leads for your business.
follow the steps below to create your Twitter ad campaign.
1. Choose your ad objective
What do you want to get out of your ads? Depending on your ad objective, Twitter
will offer the best engagement types and actions for your campaign
Fill out your campaign details
The next page gives you the option to add more information about your campaign.
Here, you can name your campaign, set a budget and decide on a time frame.
Create ad groups
Next, you can start building ad groups. Ad groups roll up under a campaign and can
be used to separate out details like budget, targeting, and creatives so that you can
be more granular with your goals and creative testing. For the first campaign, it’s
best to start with one ad group. You can experiment with different ad groups as you
get more comfortable with Twitter advertising.
Choose your target audience
Which type of audience do you want to target for this ad group? Twitter lets you
decide on a highly specific target audience for each ad group.
For starters, you can choose the age range, gender, location and language of people
you want to target.
Choose your ad placements and creatives
Next, decide where you want your ads to show up in the different areas of Twitter.
Using youtube for business
Due to Google Universal Search, videos, images, news, books and local searches are
blended together in Google’s search results, so as to provide the most useful
information for people searching.
You might have noticed that videos are appearing more often in Google’s search
results. This shows that Google considers video to be as important as text-only
pages.
You can take advantage of this by writing high-quality articles on your site and
creating complementary videos in YouTube. Doing this will build backlinks to your
site, meaning you get found on Google more often by people searching.
By utilising YouTube as part of your marketing strategy for your business, you’re
also increasing the authority of your website. The more authoritative your website is
in Google’s eyes, the higher all your pages will rank in the search results.
Fun fact: Over 60% of searchers click on the first 3 results on Google, and over
90% of all Google searchers click on the first 10 organic results.
4 Top Tips For Using YouTube To Increase The Authority of Your
Website
1. Get other website owners to embed your videos on their websites
Every time someone embeds your video in their website, it counts as a vote
in favour of your video. The more people who embed your video, the higher it will
rank in the search results, as Google gives more authority to websites that have great
content, which is updated regularly.
2. Associate your domain name with your YouTube channel
Associating your website with your channel will tell YouTube that you are the
official representation of your brand on YouTube. This results in more relevant
video results pointing to your business when someone searches for your brand or
terms relating to the services you offer.
3. Get your videos shared on social media platforms
Social media metrics are a factor taken into consideration by Google when ranking
pages. If you can create high-quality videos that entice others to share,
you’re signalling to Google that you are producing content that is valuable to your
target audience.
4. Give your audience more options to consume
Providing your audience with a variety of ways to consume information – including
text, video illustrations and audio cues – will increase the overall engagement your
videos receive, as you are catering to different learning styles
Developing youtube video markwting strategy
YouTube marketing is the practice of promoting a brand, product, or service on
YouTube. It can involve a mix of tactics, including (but not limited to):
Creating organic promotional videos
Working with influencers
Advertising on the platform
To market your business on YouTube — whether you’re an entrepreneur or an
enterprise corporation — you need to produce what your target customers want.
Sounds simple, right? It is, as long as you know what your customers really want
and it’s not just what you think they want, which is a trap far too many businesses
fall into.
Create a YouTube channel for your business
First things first, you have to set up a YouTube channel.
Since YouTube is part of Google, you’ll need to create a Google account first to sign
up for a YouTube channel. You can use an existing account or create one especially
for managing your business
Learn about your audience
Alright, now for the tough stuff. What does your audience really want?
To figure this out, you need to answer two questions:
Who are you making videos for?
What are they already watching on YouTube?
Research your competition
The fastest way to grow on YouTube is to figure out what’s working for your
competition and then do that… but better.
You can start by looking up channels from the competitors you already know.
Perform a competitor analysis for the following:
Subscriber count
Average views per video
Frequency of posting
Overall video quality
What people are saying in the comments
The main topics they post about
Learn from your favorite channels
Besides learning from your competitors, you should also be learning from your
favorite YouTube channels. These don’t have to be channels related to your industry.
By consuming YouTube content, you will learn a lot about what’s working,
especially since it’s always changing.
Optimize your videos to get views
OK, let’s get specific about making you famous.
YouTube’s 2 billion users watch about 1 billion hours of video content every single
day. So how do you rise above the noise and get YouTube’s algorithm to show your
videos?
If you’re familiar with SEO and Google’s algorithm, YouTube works in a similar
way with 1 key difference: Personalization.
Upload and schedule your videos
This is it, you’re ready to go.
You can upload your finished video directly into YouTube Studio and either publish
it right away or schedule it for later. You can also schedule videos
with Hootsuite the same way you schedule all your other social content.
For scheduling, a few things to keep in mind:
How often are you going to post? Pick a schedule — daily, weekly, biweekly,
monthly, etc — and stick to it.
Think about the best day to post on for your audience. When are they most likely to
watch your content?
Step 7: Optimize your channel to attract followers
We’ve talked about optimizing individual videos but you also need to optimize your
entire channel. Make sure your channel art and profile photo reflect your branding
Try YouTube advertising
Not growing fast enough? Try YouTube ads.
Most YouTube ads are videos but you can also place banner ads, either in videos or
on the website. You can also make your video ads either skippable after 5 seconds,
or unskippable.
Try influencer marketing
YouTube influencers — called “creators” — are growing every year. YouTube
reported a 50% year over year growth in the number of creators earning over
$10,000 per year, and a 40% increase in those earning over $100,000.
Analyze and adapt
As with all marketing, you need to track your YouTube analytics at least monthly.
Use YouTube’s built-in reports to see what your audience is watching, what they
like the most, where your traffic is coming from and more.
Use analytics to track your channel growth, too. Write down your numbers monthly
for:
Subscribers
Views
View duration
Top videos
Watch time
Impressions
Your click-through rate (CTR)
Bringing visitors from youtube videos to your website
You can’t just create a YouTube channel and call it a day. For YouTube to become
a valuable tool for driving traffic to your website, you need a strong strategy for
doing it right.
1. Make sure your YouTube page and videos are optimized.
Your videos can be amazing, but no one will care unless they’re able to find them.
Make sure you optimize your YouTube channel and each video you load for
maximum visibility. That means doing keyword research to learn what terms your
audience is using when they search. YouTube’s autofill feature can be a useful tool
for finding relevant keywords.
Make sure you insert your keywords (naturally) everywhere it makes sense to, such
as your video title, description, and tags. Create attractive thumbnails that make it
clear what your video is about so more people will click. And invest in providing
subtitles and a transcript, which are good both for accessibility and discoverability.
2. Promote your website in your About section.
Your YouTube channel includes an About section you can use to provide viewers
more information about your brand. Make use of this section both to provide a brief
pitch for who you are and why they should care, and also to include a link back to
your website. You can include a link both in the description text, and in the Links
section below it.
Include links to your website in individual video descriptions.
In addition to the description section for your page, every video you load has its own
description section. These should all include a basic description of the video that
explains why viewers should want to watch it and include your target keyword for
that video. But this is yet another opportunity to urge people to visit your website.
For some videos, it may make sense to include a link back to your homepage. But
often, you’ll see better results if you link here to a relevant page on your site. So if
your video’s about how to create a small business budget, linking back to a landing
page for the free template viewers can download is a smart way to drive clicks.
4. Include a CTA (call to action) to your website in your videos.
Another useful place to urge viewers back to your website is in the video itself. You
can include a call to action in the script of the video telling people where to find you
online (“learn more at www.mywebsite.com!”). But you can also include a link
directly in the video itself using YouTube cards, a tool that lets you include
clickable links within a video.
Include a card with a link back to your website at the end of every video you create.
And for each video, consider if there are any opportunities within the video
itself where viewers may want a link back to your website to the product page of an
item you mentioned or to content where they can learn more.
5. Add a channel art link to your website.
YouTube also lets you add a link in the channel art section of your page. Take
advantage of adding your website to one more place within YouTube that makes it
easy for every interested viewer to find.
Find relevant opportunities to link to your website in the comments.
One of the best ways to improve engagement with your videos is to be an active
participant in the comments section. When people leave feedback or ask questions
about your video, pop in and provide answers. And while you want your comments
to be more helpful than promotional, anytime a commenter’s question can be best
answered with content you’ve already published on your website, go ahead and drop
that link.
Recommending relevant website content to visitors can be a good way to get your
most interested viewers back to your website.
Module 3
Online advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital
advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses
the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform
users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine
marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display
advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.
Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems
operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as
programmatic advertising
Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves a publisher,
who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who
provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other
potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place
the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics,
and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.
In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable
television and broadcast television. 14 In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in
the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in
revenues in 2016 And research estimates from 2019's online advertising spend puts
it at $125.2 billion in the United States, some $54.8 billion higher than the spend on
television ($70.4 billion).
Many common online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have
been increasingly subject to regulation. Many internet users also find online
advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of
reasons. Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers'
revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content
behind paywalls.
Types of online advertising
Social Media Advertising
Once you have established a clear social media marketing strategy, you can start
to consider advertising on social media platforms. Most social media sites now easily
allow advertisers to utilise their reach and promote their products from within the
platform. They also include good analytics tools to assess the success of the
investment made. This might include a promoted tweet or post, a promotion of user-
generated content or even an entire campaign that is released across multiple social
channels. , you can start to consider advertising on social media platforms. Most
social media sites now easily allow advertisers to utilise their reach and promote
their products from within the platform. They also include good analytics tools to
assess the success of the investment made. This might include a promoted tweet or
post, a promotion of user-generated content or even an entire campaign that is
released across multiple social channels.
2. Content Marketing
Content Marketing is another great way to get a brand and message in front of the
right people. It’s primary focus is to attract organic traffic to a website by improving
a site’s SEO, but once you have the strategy and content in place, you can increase
its reach and engagement by paying for the content to feature on relevant websites.
Paid advertising can help to increase the ROI of content marketing - i.e. without
promotion, the production costs can often outweigh the potential return.
Native advertising, a form of paid media, is a clever way of creating an ad that
follows the theme of the site where it is placed i.e. it is intentionally designed to look
like the media where it appears, and is sometimes referred to as an advertorial or
sponsored content.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing should be an integral part of your online communications as it’s an
important way to keep in touch with your existing customers. As such, consideration
and investment should certainly be on your radar. Whether you love or loathe
Amazon, they are undoubtedly one of the leaders when it comes to sending targeted
email campaigns and we can all learn a lot from them in this respect. We have gone
into the concept of email marketing in more detail on this page.
4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is designed to increase the visibility of your website on
the search engine results pages (SERP) by paying to appear on search engines, such
as Google. It is not to be confused with SEO (search engine optimisation), which is
the art of appearing as high as possible within the search engines without having to
pay for it. SEM is often called PPC (pay per click) and can be used on
Google Adwords or Microsoft Bing Ads for example. The effectiveness of the
investment is generally measured by CPC (cost per click) or CPI (cost per
impression).
5. Display Advertising
Display advertising is when your advert - usually made up of branded photos, videos,
graphics or rich media content - are placed on third party websites, which when
clicked, refer the user back to your own website. It’s important to consider the
journey the user takes when they click on an ad as it would be a waste of time, effort
and money to attract web traffic that doesn’t convert to business because the UX on
the landing page hasn’t been properly thought out.
Display advertising
Display advertising refers to the process of advertising a product or service through
visuals like images and videos on networks of publisher websites such as the Google
Display Network and Facebook etc.
Display ads are placed on relevant third-party websites in the form of banner, image,
and text ads. Display advertising is pretty much a blanket term that includes every
visual ad placed on a website, however, it can be divided into three basic
categories:
1. Site placement advertising: In this type of display advertising, the
advertiser/marketer chooses the website they would like to run their display ads on.
2. Contextual advertising: In this type of display advertising, networks place ads
on relevant websites, for example showing an ad for dog food on a pet adoption
website.
3. Remarketing: Remarketing display ads appear in front of users who have been
on your website or post-click landing page but have left without completing the
relevant conversion goal.
Display ads present you with the opportunity to showcase your offers in a wide
variety of ad formats. Plus, when you create display ads on advertising platforms
such as the Google Display Network, your ads have the potential to reach users on
millions of websites around the globe.
Display advertising is an excellent way to build brand awareness and get clicks,
conversions, and sales from users who might not have an interest in your business
per se but have found your display ad to be relevant to the solution they were
searching for.
benefits of this type of ad.
Helps build brand awareness. Unlike search advertising, display ads don’t
reach audiences with purchase intent. However, they allow businesses to make
people remember their brands even if these users have never needed their products
before. This way, they manage to evoke initial interest and let people recall it once
they have a need for it. As a result, this particular brand is associated with a certain
product they promote using display advertising.
Provides targeting opportunities. With display ads, you can narrow down your
audience to the most high-performing prospects. This is possible due to various
targeting opportunities available. You can reach people based on their
demographics, geographical position, language, general interests, behavior, and
previous interactions. The last one means you can win back leads who liked your
products and added them to their carts but didn’t make purchases eventually.
Enables to track results. After launching your display ad campaign, you can
monitor your number of clicks, determine when a prospect converted into a
client, identify on which platform conversion took place, and reveal the most
effective advertisements. This is a great chance to improve your future campaigns
and invest in more successful strategies.
aware of its shortcomings.
Low conversion rates. Compared to search advertising, display ads show lower
conversion rates. This should not come as a surprise — search ads are designed for
leads with purchase intent, while display ads allow businesses to create more interest
in a product. So, if you aim at increasing your sales, display ads may not be the best
choice.
Lack of reputation management. Since you don’t have that much influence on
the choice of platforms for your ads, they can sometimes be unrelated to your
business, which also means you’ll be charged either way. Besides, such irrelevant
ads may irritate site visitors. If your brand is famous and authoritative, displaying
ads on immaterial sites may damage your reputation.
Banner blindness. It has become a common phenomenon for many internet users
in the last few years. Banner blindness helps us deal with information overload and
ad fatigue. People subconsciously ignore advertisements, especially when they are
designed as separate blocks that strike the eye. To make your display ads stand out,
make use of rich media that attract users’ attention better.
Ad blockers. More and more people are using ad blocking technologies every
day due to ad fatigue. However, some brands try to cushion this negative impact by
asking their site visitors to allow ads or buy subscriptions.
Banner ads
A banner ad, also known as a display ad, is similar to a digital billboard in that it
uses imagery (hence the term "banner") to attract attention with the goal of driving
traffic to the advertiser's site.
Banner ads are placed in high-traffic locations on web pages, creating brand
awareness and generating click-throughs, purchases, and leads. These high-visibility
locations include the front, bottom, or the side of a webpage; places where the eyes
of browsers usually wander.
A great banner ad grabs the reader's attention and invites them to learn more about
what's being advertised. They're bright, welcoming, and don't have much text,
instead using images or multimedia to convey a message.
Banner ads fall into the category of digital advertising, one of the most lucrative
ways to generate revenue. In fact, in 2019's first quarter, revenue from digital ads
reached a landmark high of over $28.4 billion.
Banner ads are lucrative because of programmatic advertising, a term that
describes how advertisers place ads. The software of these programs matches ads
with the interests of website browsers.
There are two different pricing models for banner ads:
Cost per mille (CPM) - The price for 1,000 impressions (i.e. it has been "seen" 1,000
times)
Cost per click (CPC) - The price for each ad click
Banner ads can be static or dynamic ads that are strategically positioned on a website
to capture consumers’ attention. Through banner advertising, brands can promote
their brand as well as encourage viewers to visit the brand's website. Similar to other
forms of online advertising, brands leverage banner advertising for a multitude of
reasons. Whether a brand's intention is to build brand awareness, generate more
clicks, and/or drive traffic to the brand's website, banner ads can be effective in
fulfilling a brand's business goals
To get started in creating banner ads, brands should consider a few key principles
and steps to be most effective.
1Outlining brand goals and objectives. Brands must think critically around what
success looks like within a banner ad campaign and the desired action viewers should
take after seeing the banner ad.
2Agreeing upon a budget. Before launching a banner ad, it is important to know how
much a brand is willing to invest in order to know how much advertising spend can
go against the ad.
3Identifying the right audience. Who is the ad intended to reach? Ensuring the brand
has the appropriate audience in mind for the banner ad affects the overall success of
the ad.
4Create the right CTA. What do brands want viewers to do? This could range from
learning more about the brand or clicking on the ad to subscribe to their newsletter
on their website.
5What will the ad creative look like? This should be informed by both the brand’s
business goals and creative direction. Banner ad creatives should consider branding
logos, high-quality imagery, readable text, and overall company branding.
Rich media ads
Rich media ads are interactive ads that include multimedia features, such as video,
audio, animation as well as traditional elements like text and images. These ads offer
ways to engage and involve the audience to increase brand awareness and generate
clicks
Rich Media Types
1. Banner Ads
There are two main types of banner ads for rich media: in-banner and expanding.
In-banner ads show up as regular banners and have interactive features, such as
slide/scroll options. They can also include videos, audio, and animation.
This banner ad from CB2 is a rich media example that displays various products
from the brand’s collections.
In-banner ads stay exactly where they are and can be ignored more easily.
Expanding ads, on the other hand, expand when the user has taken a particular action
(usually a click). Pushdown ads, multidirectional, and floating ads are all examples
of expanding ads that animate across the page for a few seconds.
A floating ad is a great way to get a user’s attention, without disrupting the user
experience.
2. Interstitial Ads
An interstitial ad – think pop-ups and modals – is a full-page ad that covers the
publisher’s interface. It’s commonly used on mobile apps, during points of transition
in the user flow.
3. Lightbox
Lightbox ads are interactive ads that expand and use a combination of media
(images, video, illustrations) to capture the viewer’s attention.
Rich media ads are different from other ad formats because they're interactive and
include engaging multimedia elements including audio, video, or animation. On the
other hand, other ad formats like static only including text and images.
Steps to create
Get inspired.
Decide on the strategy.
Plan the creative assets.
Use ad creation tools.
Test and preview.
Track and measure success
Pop up ads
Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web.
A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window,
that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-
up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript[1] that
uses cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that
uses Adobe Flash.[2] They can also be generated by
other vulnerabilities/security holes in browser security.
A variation on the pop-up window, the pop-under advertisement, opens a new
browser window under the active window. Pop-unders do not interrupt the user
immediately, but appear when the user closes the covering window, making it more
difficult to determine which website created them.
Pop-up ads originated on the Tripod.com webpage hosting site in the late
1990s. JavaScript provided the capability for a web page to open another
window. Ethan Zuckerman claims he used that capability to launch advertisements
in separate windows as a response to complaints from advertisers about their ads
appearing on pages with sexual content.[3] Zuckerman later apologized for the
unforeseen nuisance pop-up ads had evolved into.[
Steps
Step 1: Create a Popup Campaign
Once you log in to your account, click on “Campaigns” on the left side of your screen
and create a new campaign by clicking on “Add campaign.”
Step 2: Choose Design for Your Pop-up Ad
You will be redirected to this page shown in the image. Here, you will find a wide
range of overlay types. There are more than 50 templates available, and you can
upload or create your own as well. Once you find a suitable pop-up for your
advertisement, click on the “Customize” button to start editing your overlay.
Step 3: Edit Your Pop-up Design
Now that you have selected your pop-up template, you can customize and make
changes as per your preferences. There are six options available on the left side.
Design – Select the background (image/solid color/GIF) and size of the pop-up. You
can either choose from the available images or can upload an image of your choice.
Fields – Edit the overlay text that displays on your ad. You can write your own
unique copy and CTA in the Fields option. Also, insert the redirect links for your
CTAs.
Options – Select the popup animation from the available options and choose the
position on the screen you want to display your ad. There are a couple of more
options as well to set when to hide the popup and how much curve you want on the
corners.
Banner Settings – If you want to trigger the popup when the visitor clicks on the
banner, you can choose the banner style, position, background color, text color, and
text.
Custom Fonts – Choose the font style, font size, font type, and font-weight for the
overlay text. You can also upload your custom CSS files to apply the font on the
popup text.
Personalization Settings – By enabling this setting, you can make the popup more
engaging by adding dynamic text like the customer’s name, products in the cart, or
anything else that’s coded.
Once you are done with all the settings, click on the “Save” button at the top right to
apply the changes you made to your pop-up ad.
Step 4: Configure Campaign Settings
The pop-up ad design is ready. It’s time to target the audience. Under the campaign
settings, there are some basic and advanced options. Here’s a quick walkthrough:
Firstly, enter the URL where you want to display the pop-up ads. You can
include/exclude multiple pages to run your campaign.
In the next setting, “When overlay appears,” you can select the timeframe under the
Schedule option.
Then, there are trigger options, as shown in the image below, where you can choose
when to display the popup. You can set the trigger rules here, such as time spent,
exit intent, scroll up/down percentage, and click on a particular element.
Choose the impression frequency for the same visitors. It simply means how many
times you want to display the pop-up to the same visitor. It can be one time per
visitor, every day, every week, or every month.
Finally, under the “Other options” settings, you can configure different options for
targeting the visitors to display your pop-ups like
Returning visitors, new visitors, or old visitors (to display the ad)
Location-based campaign
Visitors came from (anywhere, URL, another website, or search engine)
Device type (to display desktop pop-ups only to desktop users, mobile pop-ups to
mobile users)
Set the priority of the pop-up campaign
Personalize the pop-up data
Target visitors based on cookies
Reminder bar (similar to a banner)
After configuring all the targeting and trigger options, click on Save, and your
campaign will be active. You can see your campaign details and statistics under the
“Campaigns” tab we navigated in Step 1.
Pop under ads
The pop-under ad is the sneakier relative of the pop-up ad. While pop-up ads are
often shown (and closed) instantly, pop-under ads linger behind the current browser
window, appearing only after other windows have been closed
Popunders are completely non-invasive. Unlike popups, they don’t interrupt users
peacefully browsing the net by force-switching the tab or window and blocking the
site from view. While a pop up ad is screaming for attention, a pop under ad is
waiting for its turn to be seen.
This is beneficial in its own way. In a scenario where a user is focused on their
current browsing window, they would hate to have anything obstruct their view. And
when a pop up annoys you one time too many what do you do then? You install pop
up blockers.
Pop under ads let you cater to the audience that hates interruptions. A user who is
done doing whatever they were doing will check every browser window and tab
before closing them. And that’s your moment to shine. You pop under ad will be
there, waiting. If you’re hoping to score a conversion by getting someone to sign up
with their email address or a phone number, the most ideal time to show your
advertisement is when they’re done doing their business and focus their attention on
other things. Like, for example winning a brand new phone in a sweepstake offer.
Pop-under ads are similar to pop-up ads, but the ad window appears hidden behind
the main browser window rather than superimposed in front of it. As pop-up ads
became more widespread and more intrusive, often taking up whole computer
screen, many users would immediately close the pop-up ads that appeared over a site
without looking at them. Pop-under ads do not immediately impede the view of
content, but remain unnoticed until the user closes or minimizes the main browser
window.
Pop-under ad technologyEdit
A pop-under ad involves two JavaScript functions introduced in 1995 with the
Netscape 2.0b3 browser. Modern web publishers and advertisers use it to create a
window in front of the users screen, load an advertisement, and then send it behind
the screen.
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is a form of targeted
advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as
content displayed in mobile browsers. In context targeting, advertising media are
controlled on the basis of the content of a website using linguistic elements. The
advertisements themselves are selected and served by automated systems based on
the context of what a user is looking at.[1]
A contextual advertising system scans the text of a website for keywords and
returns advertisements to the webpage based on those keywords.[2] The
advertisements may be displayed on the webpage as pop-up ads. For example, if
the user is viewing a website pertaining to sports and that website uses contextual
advertising, the user may see advertisements for sports-related companies, such as
memorabilia dealers or ticket sellers. Contextual advertising is also used by search
engines to display advertisements on their search results pages based on the
keywords in the user's query.
Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising in which the content of an
ad is in direct correlation to the content of the web page the user is viewing. An
example of contextual advertising is an ad offering a special price on a flight to Italy
appearing on a website concerning traveling in Europe. Contextual advertising is
also called "In-Text" advertising or "In-Context" technology.
Apart from that when a visitor doesn't click on the ad in a go through time (a
minimum time a user must click on the ad) the ad is automatically changed to next
relevant ad showing the option below of going back to the previous ad.
Contextual ads are less irritating than traditional advertising. That is why it
influences user more effectively. It shows user area of interest thus increasing the
chance of receiving a response
The benefits of contextual advertising
1. Easier and more affordable to implement
The success of behavioral advertising relies on data. Lots of data (the most valuable
being first party data). Which means you need tools to collect and analyze it,
strategies for using it, and people to optimize that process. For businesses with fewer
resources, and less customer data at their disposal, behavioral advertising may not
be worth implementing right away.
Contextual advertising can offer an alternative that is easy and affordable to start
with, while providing a level of relevance in its own way. And though it may not be
as personalized as behavioral advertising, its reach will be broader in most cases,
providing a valuable way to get visitors off other websites and onto your own.
2. Not constrained by privacy legislation
The General Data Protection act was the first legislation to classify cookies as
personal information, laying out strict rules for how it can be collected. Since then,
its governing body has handed out big fines for violating user privacy
3. More brand safe
It’s not just legal safety brands need to worry about, but the safety of their reputation,
too. And for behavioral advertisers, it’s been difficult to maintain in some cases.
More and more, brands are discovering their advertisements in non-brand safe
environments, like adult or extremist content. But this is the risk of placing
advertisements based on your user’s behavior alone.
With contextual targeting, however, the web page your ad will display on is the heart
of the campaign. You specify the topics, subtopics, keywords. And this makes it less
likely your ads are going to follow a user to an environment where they don’t expect
(or want) to see advertisements, and where you don’t want them showing up.
4. Sometimes context matters more than behavior
Advertisers know that personalization is a powerful marketing tactic. But that’s only
because it makes an ad more relevant. And sometimes, an ad personalized based on
past behavior isn’t totally relevant to present wants or needs
In text ads
In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific keywords
within the text of a web-page are matched with advertising and/or related
information units.
Although contextual advertising in general refers to the inclusion of advertisements
adjacent to relevant online context (e.g., Google AdSense), in-text advertising
places hyperlinks directly into the text of the webpage. In-text advertising is
commonly available from In-Text Ad Networks like Kontera using technology
such as IntelliTXT, or offered by publishers using Ad Serving technology
from PowerLinksMedia.
In text advertising commonly works on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, which means
that each time a website visitor clicks on an In-text ad, the websites owner gets paid
by the advertiser. Other models include cost per impression (CPM), cost per
action CPA and cost per play CPP for multimedia content ads (also known as Pay
Per Play (PPP))
In-Text Advertising is where you allow a company to monetize words within
the content of your site. It is also known as Inline Advertising.
The concept is that certain words will be highlighted, and when a user rolls over
them a box will pop up with advertisements related to that word.
The ads which pop up related to the word can be wide in range. Anything from
selling a product related to that word to having news stories related to that word
(advertising the news provider) are to be expected.
In-Text Advertising trades on utilizing users’ focus on content to
make advertisers feel that users will focus on their adverts as much as the content
they sought out. While this feels unlikely, the prevalence of In-Text Advertising at
least implies that it is quite successful at doing this. Having said that, it is rarely more
effective than display advertising.
If you are trying to make your product synonymous with a word, then this type of
advertising may be suitable for you. It is generally quite reasonably priced, however
that depends on the words you want to use. The sites you can advertise on is also
comparatively very limited.
In image ads
In-image advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific images
on a website are matched with related advertisements
In-image advertising uses “data about the image, its tags, and the surrounding
content to match images with ads that are contextually relevant.” [2] Once a website
owner integrates the scripts onto their publishing systems, site visitors can move
their mouse over the images or look at an image for a certain amount of time to
reveal an ad.
Most in-image advertising have the following characteristics:
When a user mouses over an image on a website, a small overlay on the lower
segment of the image appears.
The overlay can be closed out by the user.
Some in-image ad technologies produce a pop-up box when visitors mouse over
images.[3]
Clicking on the text of an in-image advertisement directs users to a new page.
In-image ads were first introduced by GumGum in February, 2008,[4] as a way for
publishers to pay image licensing fees on an ad-supported basis. Picad Media, which
launched its "in-picture ad network" in September, 2008,[5] was later renamed
Image Space Media and was acquired by Vibrant Media in January, 2012. [6]
Since the turn of the decade as the web has shifted towards one with increasingly
visual content [7] new companies have emerged such
as Znaptag [8] and Advant Technology Ltd. In June
2014 NetSeer introduced InImageLinks,[9] a service that embeds contextual text
and display ads within editorial images and addresses challenges associated with
new Viewable Impression metrics.
In-Image advertising works on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand
impressions (CPM) model.
In video ads
Video advertising is a marketing strategy that involves creating a short and
informative video that promotes a product and is played before, during, or after the
main video. It helps tell a story, improve sales volume, create buzz, convey
information concisely and captivatingly, and reach a wider audience.
It’s always critical for marketers to find new, effective, and unique tactics and
techniques that help a product or service stand out in a market overwhelmed by
competitors. Video advertising is not a new kid on the block. It’s an established way
of communication with consumers that brings visible results to businesses. With its
help, entrepreneurs create quality and unique content that boosts their outreach,
sales, and brand recognition.
It’s not a secret that people who lead a hectic lifestyle would rather watch a short
video and obtain all the necessary information about a product rather than read long
articles. Although this one is the key pro, there are even more for you to consider.
Video advertising also helps:
obtain great sales volumes;
tell a story;
communicate the necessary information fast;
receive high organic traffic;
educate people on a topic in an interactive and engaging way;
gain more social shares;
go viral;
attain wider customer reach;
establish brand awareness.
There are many benefits you can reap after implementing video advertising.
However, to reach your goals, you should identify the most suitable video ad formats
for your company. In the next section, we’ll help you find out the key types of video
ads and decide which ones can help you attain your business objectives.
Types
In-stream ads. You can see this ad type when video content is played before,
during, or after the main video on YouTube or other platforms. In-stream ads can be
both skippable and non-skippable. In the first scenario, a viewer can skip the video.
These ads help establish brand awareness, reach leads and customers, and drive
organic traffic to a website.
Out-stream video ads. These are mobile-only ads users can find outside of
YouTube. Out-stream video ads appear in apps and partner websites. You can easily
recognize out-stream ads since they play with a sound off. If a viewer is interested
in the promoted product, this person can tap the video to unmute it and receive all
the necessary information. This video ad type is perfect for companies that need to
increase their reach at an affordable price and boost brand awareness.
Bumper ads. These are unskippable 6-second ads that can appear before, during, or
after the main video. People can encounter this type of video ad on YouTube, sites,
and apps. Brands that use bumper ads pay for them based on the number of ad
impressions. If a company strives to reach out to its target audience with a clear and
short message, this type is a perfect choice.
Video discovery ads. These ads can be found in related YouTube videos,
YouTube search results, or on the YouTube homepage for mobile devices. The ad
includes a thumbnail (a snapshot of a video) and short text. The length of this
promotional video can vary depending on the placement, but this ad type always
contains an invitation to watch the video.
Masthead ads. The format is perfect for promoting a new product and boosting
awareness. It will help reach a wide audience and create a buzz within a short
timeframe. Viewers can see an advertising video playing automatically with the
sound off for around 30 seconds at the top of the YouTube Home feed.
In page ads
Sometimes called Native Push, it is a type of display ad that is designed to look like
a Push Notification, however unlike traditional Push Notifications, In-Page Push ads
are not displayed within a website’s browser, but directly on the publisher’s site, just
like banner ads. The format is fully responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile.
You can decide where the In-Page Push is displayed on your website. On the
horizontal Top (Default), Center, Bottom and on the vertical Right (Default), Center,
Left. Additionally you can set a delay in seconds after the webpage loads before the
In-Page Push Notification is shown to the end user.
You can also choose between showing 1 or 2 In-Page Push Notifications and set the
timing in seconds of when to show the second In-Page Push after the first ad has
been displayed on the webpage to the end user. Test the positions and timings to see
which bring you the best engagement and highest revenues. Be careful with user
experience
Step 1 : Create Zone
In your admin panel under Publisher go to ‘Sites & Zones’ then click ‘New Zone’.
A drop down menu will appear with a list of your websites, select the website you
want to enable In-Page Push Notifications for.
This will open the ad format selection page. Click on the drop down menu Push
Notifications, select ‘In-Page Push Notifications’ and click ‘Next.
Step 2: Choose the settings for the In-Page Push Notification
Position
Now you need to decide how the In-Page Push Notification will work on your page.
These are the different positions you can place the ad zone:
Vertical Position: Choose whether to display In-Page Push at the Top (default),
Middle or Bottom of the page.
Horizontal Position: Choose whether to display In-Page Push at the Right (default),
Center or Left of the page.
Triggering
You can have 1 or 2 In-Push Notifications per page, here are the settings. Please note
the second In-Push Notification will not be shown to the end user unless they have
used the close ad x button on the first In-Page Push Notification.
Delay for 1st Notification: Set the time delay in seconds for the 1st In-Page Push
Notification to appear.
Max Number of Notifications on Page: Set the number of In-Page Push Notifications
you want to display on the page: 1 or 2
Delay between 1st and 2nd notification: Set the time delay in seconds between the
1st and 2nd In-Page Push Notifications being displayed on the page.
Once closed, hide for: Set the amount of time that the In-Page Push is hidden for
once the user closes it.
User Session Capping: Set a limit on how many times a single user will see In-Page
Push display in a single session.
Step 3: Generating the ad zone code
Once you have clicked ‘Create’ the ad zone code is automatically generated for you
so that you can cut and paste it into your site
Different online advertisment platform
Google ads
With Google ads, ads can show on both desktop and mobile devices. When
using display ads, you can use device targeting to target only smartphone and/or
tablet users. On this platform, you can publish ads within apps, browsers, and Google
search results.
Here are the types of ads you can use on smartphones and tablets:
Text and image ads
Image and video app promotion ads
True View ads for app promotion campaigns
The key differentiator for Google Ads is its access to the most popular search engine,
which gives advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of the largest
audience on the planet.
Bing Ads
Bing Ads are effective for capturing traffic from Bing and Yahoo, the top two search
engines after Google. As advertisers, you can reach 15-20% of total search engine
share because Bing powers ads on Yahoo as well as on partner sites and its own.
Also, your dollar will go farther because bids on Bing are significantly cheaper than
on Google Ads.
To make the most of Bing Ads, use negative keywords to keep clicks on targeted
phrases only and to minimize extraneous spends. You should also keep track of your
ad copy, analyze it, and optimize it for more click-through rates. Also, segment your
campaigns by desktop and mobile for accurate tracking.
Facebook ads
Facebook has hundreds of millions of users across a mixed user base, making
Facebook ads a viable online advertising platform for all types and sizes of
businesses. You can place ads that target demographics and not just key phrases, so
you can reach a specific audience or market.
Get the most from Facebook ads by duplicating your top landing page, customizing
it for those who visit your Facebook page, and sending your Facebook traffic there
first. Also, determine who your audience is or who you wish to target and
focus only on this group with ads. To maximize value from Facebook ads, leverage
the platform’s retargeting tools to show ads to people who have visited your landing
pages without taking action.
Instagram Ads
Instagram is useful for consumer brands to generate leads and boost sales, especially
if your target audience is very active on this social media platform. In fact, Instagram
has over one billion active users every month and 80% of all the accounts follow
at least one brand on Instagram.
To fully leverage your Instagram Ads, you should have a clear and actionable CTA
such as “buy now” or “shop now” instead of “find out more info” that links to your
website or eCommercepage. It is also important to note that Instagram is a visual-
centric platform, hence, you should be posting high-quality, attention-drawing, and
self-explanatory pictures that can quickly grasp the attention of your audience for
your ads
Twitter Ads
Twitter Ads are ideal for building an audience of interested followers and picking
up retweets at affordable rates.
Get the most bang for your buck on Twitter by using promoted posts for tweets that
provide interesting content. These posts should include a link that goes back to your
website. Use the promoted account option to get followers and build your Twitter
base. Other options on Twitter include a recurring Promote Mode that pushes your
most popular tweets every month for a set fee, and boosts for app installs and
downloadable content and videos that you feature in your feed.
. LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn offers a dedicated social network for professionals that reaches hundreds
of millions in your target markets. Ads on LinkedIn are similar to those on Facebook,
but with the added advantage of segmentation based on key professional
demographics like title, seniority, and skill set. Campaigns can be targeted to be seen
by specific LinkedIn Groups that are made of professionals with similar interests.
YouTube
YouTube advertising is managed through Google Ads and allows you to display
your video advertisements to a large audience of potential prospects based on several
possible targeting options. You can target based on keyword search, channel type,
content format, industry, and even other websites where Google’s display network
is able to show ads.
Introduction to google adwords
AdWords is the service where you can buy ads on Google and Google's search
partners. Using AdWords, you can display your website above, besides or under the
organic search results on the search engine result pages (SERP). A SERP is the page
you see when you have typed a search within Google.
Pay-per-click
Placing an ad with Google AdWords operates on a ‘pay-per-click’ basis, meaning
that someone advertising only pays when a visitor clicks on their advert and is then
re-directed to the advertiser's website.
It's free for advertisers to create their ads with AdWords and you can create as many
as you want and then choose relevant keywords related to your business. AdWords
then places your ads on Google when people search for your specified
keywords. The higher you're willing to bid on a set keyword, the more likely it is
your ad will rank highly (e.g. on page 1 results).
Campaigns
AdWords is set up so you can create campaigns and ad groups to manage different
types of campaigns. For example, if you have a product campaign and a content
campaign, each of them can be managed separately. Within each campaign, you can
break down your ads and keywords into ad groups.
You have full control to change up your ad strategy - you can make changes to ads
at any time, and you also have full control over your budgets – as explained earlier,
you only pay for the clicks. You don’t pay for ‘impressions’ (when the ad is seen);
you only pay for what's working, those that actually result in clicks on your ad.
Google Ads can help advertisers attract interested, relevant customers to their
websites through targeted search. The process is simple. If a user enters a relevant
or closely related word to an advertiser's product or service, Google Ads will show
that ad in its search results. The idea is to target users who are most likely to buy a
product or service. Ads also help manage and control advertising spending by
offering several pricing options. With Google Ads, advertisers pay only if a user
clicks an ad and visits a site, making it a wise economical choice.
Overview of Microsoft ad center
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads, Microsoft adCenter, and MSN adCenter)
is a service that provides pay per click advertising on the Bing, Yahoo!, and
DuckDuckGo search engines. In 2021, Microsoft Advertising surpassed US$10
billion in annual revenue.
Microsoft adCenter (Now Known as Bing Ads)
Microsoft adCenter was a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform similar to
Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM).
Microsoft adCenter was previously branded MSN adCenter. Microsoft has since
then combined advertising networks with Yahoo! To form a new advertising
platform, Yahoo! Bing Network, to serve Bing Ads.
How does Microsoft advertising or Bing Ads work?
As with Google advertising, whether or not your PPC ad displays and in what
position is determined by your maximum bid as well as your ad’s click-through rate
(CTR) and other factors affecting Quality Score.
Ad-rank-auction-microsoft-adcenter
In this guide, we’ll share a few best practices for making the most of your online ad
campaigns in Microsoft/Bing.
Microsoft Ad Best Practices
To obtain a high Quality Score in Bing Ads, and consequently better online
advertising ROI, it’s a good idea to follow the PPC best practices that apply to all
SEM ad platforms:
• Ensure a high degree of relevancy between each keyword and its corresponding
ad and landing page. The best way to achieve this is by grouping keywords by
relevance from the get-go.
• Create small keyword groups (the Microsoft adCenter blog recommends groups
of 20 or fewer keywords).
• Keyword-grouping-microsoft-adcenter
• Do your research: At the very least, use a basic keyword research tool
like WordStream’s Google keyword tool, so you know you’re bidding on
relevant terms.
• Include keywords in the titles of your text ads.
• Include several versions of the ad for each ad group for testing; this way you can
discover the wording that captures the most clicks.
• Add and update negatives: Strong use of negative keywords means you can
employ the broad match type to it best effect.
• Use deep links as your destination URLs; these are more likely to be targeted to
specific keywords than a home page or broad index page.
In addition, you should be aware of a few differences between adCenter/Bing and
other paid search marketing platforms:
 • You can increase your bid for certain demographics. For example, you can raise
your bid by up to 100% for women between the ages of 50 and 70. Your ad will
still display for other demographics, but you may get more impressions and
better ad positions for that demographic. This is useful if you determine that a
certain demographic is more likely to convert.
• The ad approval process can be more stringent in adCenter, so be sure that your
ad is not only highly relevant to the keyword and landing page, but also free of
grammar and spelling errors. Don’t over-punctuate or use phrases like “Click
here!”
• It’s been noted that conversion rates on adCenter tend to be higher than for
AdWords or YSM. However, total number of impressions and traffic generated
may be lower.
Technology
Similar to Google ads, Microsoft Ads uses both the maximum amount an advertiser
is willing to pay per click (PPC) on their ad and the advertisement’s click-through
rate (CTR) to determine how frequently an advertisement is shown. This system
encourages advertisers to write effective ads and to advertise only on searches which
are relevant to their advertisement.
Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to target their ads by restricting their ads to a given
set of demographics and by increasing their bids whenever the ad is seen by a user
of a certain demographic. As of November 2006, no other PPC advertising system
has a similar feature. Similarly, Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to run their ads on
specific days of the week or certain times of day.
Similar to Google Ads Editor, Microsoft Ads provides a desktop tool to manage
campaigns offline, called Microsoft Ads Editor. Using this editor allows users to
make offline changes to their campaigns and later sync it online.
Microsoft Ads also provides APIs that can be used to manage advertising campaigns.
Performing root cause analysis
Root cause analysis (RCA) is the process of discovering the root causes of problems
in order to identify appropriate solutions. RCA assumes that it is much more
effective to systematically prevent and solve for underlying issues rather than just
treating ad hoc symptoms and putting out fires. Root cause analysis can be
performed with a collection of principles, techniques, and methodologies that can all
be leveraged to identify the root causes of an event or trend. Looking beyond
superficial cause and effect, RCA can show where processes or systems failed or
caused an issue in the first place.
Broadly classified, the need for performance analysis in digital marketing occurs
under one of two scenarios.
One involves experimentation, where hypotheses are formed and tested against
control groups. In this case, interpreting results is relatively straightforward, since
almost all of the work was completed during the planning phase.
The other scenario — appearing far more often in reality — is when performance
changes occur under uncontrolled situations, and there are a myriad of different
factors that could have impacted the change.
My preferred approach to this type of investigation falls under a method known
as Root Cause Analysis (RCA), which is used across a number of industries and
business functions to determine causal factors of events and to identify appropriate
response actions.
The Digital Marketing Analysis Tree
One way of conducting RCA analysis involves a causal factor tree, linking higher-
order outcomes to lower-order causes. For marketing, this can be represented as a
hierarchy of KPIs and metrics
The objective behind this approach is to break down higher-level KPIs into more
manageable, foundational metrics, each of which is only impacted by several factors
at a time. This allows us to better assess which factor(s) contributed to a performance
impact.
This approach is applicable not only to paid search, but for any digital marketing
channel with a hierarchy of metrics. For instance, metrics such as impression
frequency come into play for programmatic display and social, whereas other
metrics like position fall off.
For unit-based KPIs such as orders, the tree will look very similar except with CPA
(cost-per-action) replacing ROI, breaking down into CPC (cost-per-click) and
conversion rate.
The Importance Of Granular Analysis
In a live campaign, external factors such as market competition, seasonality, and
inventory changes are constantly affecting performance, creating results that can be
misleading when observed on a higher level.
While controlled experiments provide a definitive answer to any single question,
there is often not enough time or budget to design and set up experiments for all
initiatives executed against, and they cannot help with spontaneous performance
changes.
RCA represents a data-driven approach for breaking down the chaotic digital
marketing environment and identifying the root cause(s) behind performance
changes. Over a long term, this leads to more accurate learnings and better
optimization.
Module 4
Email marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group
of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or
current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to
send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email
marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary
objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to
sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship
with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat
business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase
something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.
Types of email marketing
Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails:
Transactional emails
Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a
company. To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these
communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete, or confirm a
commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the
sender" along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional
messaging.[3] Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages,
password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails,
reorder emails, and email receipts.
The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the
action that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6%
for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend
the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer
questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.[4]
Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which
gives companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of
transactional emails. There are also software vendors that offer specialized
transactional email marketing services, which include providing targeted and
personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing
campaigns (such as customer referral programs). citation needed
[ ]

Direct emails
Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional
message (for example, a special offer or a product catalog). Companies usually
collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional
messages to, or they rent a list of email addresses from service companies
Email Newsletters
One of the most common and popular email marketing campaigns are Email
Newsletters. As a small business you can use an email newsletter to provide
subscribers with helpful knowledge and tools. It is important to add value to your
subscribers’ inboxes; to do so create engaging content, include thought
leadership, how-tos, and announcements about new services/ products. To measure
the effectiveness of your newsletter ask yourself if the content helps build
a relationship with subscribers, increases retention and engagement, and strengthens
subscriber loyalty.
2.Acquisition Emails
Acquisition Emails can help your small business acquire customers who have opted
to receive your emails but have not yet converted into customers. By creating
attractive offers and informative content you can show those in your email list the
value of becoming an active customer. Acquisition emails are a great way to move
leads through the conversion funnel faster, grow your business and drive
additional revenue, and target users who have expressed some interest in what your
business has to offer.
3. Retention Emails
If you have some experience in email marketing campaigns, consider Retention
Emails for your small business. By sending a message requesting feedback or an
offer to subscribers who haven’t interacted with your business or emails campaigns
lately, your small business can keep the lines of communication open. Retention
Emails are a very useful email campaign strategy that can help you keep your hard-
won customers.
4. Promotional Emails
Promotional Emails are a great way to drives sales, signups, and new product
offerings for your small business. Promotional emails include offers that entice
and encourage your target to buy a new product/service. Use promotional
emails to reward engaged subscribers with exclusive offers, drive new product or
services to subscribers, and cross-sell products to your customer base
Email marketing strategy
Personalize your messages
When we say personalized email marketing, we don’t mean that you send an
individual email to every single subscriber. Personalization means that you
use customer data to create a personalized message.
A great example of a company that does personalization well is Amazon.
All of Amazon's emails are personalized.
It's not "Dear valued customer", but "Dear Steven".
It's not, "You might like these... (randomly generated)", but "You might like these
(based on my purchase history)".
To Amazon, email marketing is not just another marketing channel. It's key to of the
overall customer experience.
few more tips to help you get started with personalization:
Ask for the right information upfront: Great personalization starts way
before you hit the ‘send’ button. It all starts with your sign up form. Without data
such as name, company and location, you will be very limited with your personalized
communication. Remember to only ask for the information you need, rather than the
information you want. This is one of the ways that GDPR has impacted
marketing teams.
Use a real reply-to email address: When you
use [email protected], it takes away the authenticity from the messaging.
You want your readers to engage and respond to your campaigns. Use a real reply
address will improve credibility and appear more personal.
Use your real email signature: Just like using a real reply-to email address, you
want to use real contact information within the email and the best way to do that is
to include your contact details in the email signature. Giving your readers the
opportunity to contact you or connect with you online is a great way to be personal
and build a relationship with them.
2. Segment your subscribers
According to email marketers, segmentation is second on the top initiatives list this
year.
The best way to get small business owners to turn up to your event would be to create
a segment of people who list themselves as a small business owner that lives within
20 miles of your event and then send them an invite by email.
The segmentation part is simple and can easily be done through CRM software.
Send mobile friendly emails
Test copy, design and buttons
Whether you test your home page, landing pages or email templates, testing provides
us with data to make practical decisions that will improve our marketing
performance.
And email marketing is no different.
Most marketers have A/B tested their email campaigns.
Automate email campaigns when possible
Trigger-based emails are emails that are sent out automatically based on user
behavior.
The most common forms of trigger emails are ‘welcome’ emails, ‘thank you’ emails
and ‘transactional’ emails, such as order confirmation email and email receipts.
The data behind trigger emails shows us that trigger emails perform much
better than traditional email.
For example, Epsilon found that:
Open rates for trigger emails are as high as 49% (95% higher than traditional email
open rates)
The average click-through rate (CTR) for trigger emails is more than double the rate
compared to traditional email click-through rates
The best converting websites in the world, sites that convert as much as 40% of their
traffic, use trigger emails.
some examples of trigger mails you can send;
Activation: A new user creates an account but, they do not use your product within
the first 7 days. Create an "activation" campaign that sends an automated email
with their login information, steps on how they can get started and include a video
demonstration for additional support. You can also invite them to a one-on-one
meeting to walk them through the product and answer any questions they may have.
Win-back: An existing customer is soon approaching the end of his yearly
subscription. The customer hasn't used your product in 3 months and you need a way
to win them back and keep them for another year. Create a "win back" email that
sends an automated email to all customers that are coming to end of their contract
with a list of new product features and a short plan on expected releases in the next
six months.
Surprise: Customer loyalty is the key to success. And you can reward your loyal
customers by giving them something for free every now and then. Create a "surprise"
email that sends an automated email to your best customers that offers a free yearly
license to your software for them to use, a gift card or even a coupon code to redeem
a box of cupcakes. It’s a small cost for your business but, the reward is huge!
Challenges faced in sending bulk emails
YOUR SENDER REPUTATION WILL SUFFER
Your IP address(es) or domain(s) may be blacklisted by internet service providers if
they see a sudden spike in email volume. Your emails may be completely blocked
by the ISP or filtered into your recipients’ spam folders if they are blacklisted.
Fortunately, utilizing properly acquired email lists, reducing spam complaints, and
gradually expanding send volume over time can all help your company maintain its
reputation for integrity with your chosen email provider.
YOUR BULK EMAIL ENGAGEMENT RATE WILL DECREASE
Your recipients may not want to engage with your messages if you send them too
many unpersonalized and unrelated emails. As a result, engagement metrics like
open rate and click-through rate will suffer. While tinkering with subject line copy,
sender name, and send time can assist in improving open rates, your engagement
will remain stagnant if your email content continues to disappoint subscribers.
MORE OF YOUR EMAILS WILL BE MARKED AS SPAM
If you send a high volume of bulk email filled with uninteresting or uninvited
content, your recipients are more likely to designate your emails as spam. ISPs may
begin blocking your messages if you receive enough spam complaints, which means
that even people who do wish to receive your messages will be unable to do so.
YOUR LIST UNSUBSCRIBE RATE WILL INCREASE
Finally, if your subscribers do not value your messages, they will unsubscribe.
Losing subscribers will have a negative impact on your email KPIs as well as your
ability to accomplish business objectives.
While subscribers come and go, you should strive for an unsubscribe rate of less
than 1% and work to expand your email list with every (targeted) email ‘blast’ you
send.
Methods to overcome these challenges
To avoid blacklisting and send bulk emails you need to follow the below-given
points:
You will not receive a notification when your email gets blocked. Keep a check on
the blacklist status. There are various bulk email verifiers that you can use to do so.
Sending unwanted bulk emails might tick off your recipients and you would
probably end up being blacklisted. Make sure to check your list thoroughly. Only
send emails to those who have opted in.
Never send attachments in bulk mails. Attachment raises a red flag and the recipients
might block the sender. Rather insert hyperlinks in them.
Keep updating your recipient list.
Never send emails to inactive users constantly.
Make sure to authenticate your email id before sending a bulk email.
Opt in emailing and bulk email
Bulk email spam: Spam is any email sent for commercial purposes without
permission from the receiver. This means that if you’re sending emails to your
friends, family and colleagues, it does not qualify as spam. However, if you’re
sending a batch of emails to people who never asked to receive them from you,
promoting your latest line of shaving products, you’re most definitely sending spam.
Opt-in email: Opt-in email is any commercial email sent to people who have
specifically signed up to receive it. Permission, in this respect, is clear-cut. If you
have a list based on people who have signed up to receive emails about travel in
general but not your travel agency, it doesn’t qualify as specific permission. If you
have a list of people who have agreed, in some form of writing, link clicking or other
evidence, that they want to receive emails from your travel agency specifically, you
fall well within the bounds of opt-in.
The case for opt-in permission
What makes permission email marketing different is not just that you have the
approval of the customer to send to them, it’s that you, by getting permission, are
sending email campaigns to people who really want them. Even with permission
email marketing, every once in awhile a person who gave you permission will hit
the spam button. But at least you have the proof showing your email service provider
that you had permission and you followed the proper procedure.
Opt-in email: advantages
Preserves your email marketing reputation
Shows customers that you respect their privacy
Helps you email people who are interest in what you’re selling
Saves you time and money by micro-focusing your list
Lets you be more targeted in your campaigns
Helps you build long-term, trust-based relationships with customers
Can boost your sales and product interest
The perils of bulk, uninvited email
Sending bulk email spam puts your email marketing reputation at risk -period. When
you send mass emails to people who never asked for them, they’re going to hit the
spam button. This will get you in trouble with Internet service providers, and at
worst, get your email and IP address blacklisted
The disadvantages of sending bulk email spam:
Your recipients will be unresponsive
You’ll waste time sending to an unresponsive audience
You’ll waste money sending emails to people who don’t want them
You’ll ruin your email marketing reputation
You’ll ruin the reputation of your company or business
You’ll see your open and click-through rates drop
With so many filters with varying sets of rules from so many email service provides, even the email marketer following the
very best practices can count on as many as 20% of emails not making it to the inbox.
When you send out spam, you can flip that number and you’ll see less than 20% actually make it in, if that. So we recommend
getting permission. Create a Signup Form and put it on your site. Sign up customers for your emails when they make a
purchase. Whatever you do, make sure you have permission so that your email marketing campaigns aren’t sent in vain.
Benchmark email makes it easy to build a permission-based email list. Craft a custom Signup Form to gather subscriptions on
your email Website and watch them get automatically added to your email list
Best platforms to do opt in and bulk email marketing
.Pabbly Email Marketing –
Pabbly Email Marketing is a renowned name in the list of best opt-in form email
marketing services. It not only lets you create & broadcast professional email
newsletters in bulk but also benefits you with extensive features like subscriber
segmentation, autoresponders, Google Analytics integration, inbox preview,
personalized tags and a lot more.
Additionally, you will get built-in SMTP that cuts down your efforts in setting up an
SMTP server manually.
MailGet –
MailGet is an email marketing service that caters some of the advanced services at
a cheap and affordable rate.
With its features like drag and drop email editor, excellent email
deliverability facility, list management options, scheduling drip campaigns, web
form embedding, etc. you can easily design and plan robust email campaigns.
PowerMailer –
PowerMailer is an email marketing solution that lets you design a professional email
newsletter and send them with a few clicks.
Other features that PowerMailer includes are list and subscriber management
system, sophisticated email tracking and analyzing reporting system, etc.
Campaign Monitor –
Campaign Monitor, a big name in the field of email marketing services, provides
numerous services with which you can build and deliver custom designed emails.
In their services, you also find some really amazing features such as integration with
the business app, marketing automation, etc.
Mailigen –
Mailigen services you with an all-in-one marketing platform presenting you with
email, mobile, and social marketing tool. Through their email marketing service, you
can design and send professional looking emails, track emails and efficiently
manipulate contact list.
Creating a broadcast email
An Email Broadcast is an individual email sent to a list of subscribers from
your Contacts tab. An Email Broadcast can be used to create Newsletters,
Announcements, and more to reach your contacts.
To create a new Email Broadcast:
Open the Marketing tab from your Dashboard.
Select Email Campaigns.
Click + New Email Campaign on the Email Campaigns dashboard.
Select Create Email Broadcast
Select the email editor
Next, you can choose to create your Email Broadcast with the:
Visual Email Editor by selecting a Kajabi Template or a custom email
template:
Classic Email Editor by selecting Classic Editor in the top right corner or the
bottom of the template list
Keep in mind, if a user has not opted in to receive marketing emails they will not be
added to the recipient list when creating your Email Broadcast
Schedule your email broadcast
After you have selected the Email Broadcast recipients and edited your email
content, you will need to schedule when your Email Broadcast will be sent. An
Email Broadcast can be sent immediately by choosing the Send right now option
or sent at a later date by selecting the Schedule for later radio button.
If you choose Schedule for later, you can select the date and time you would like
your Email Broadcast to be sent:
Rules
Personalize each email broadcast campaign
Don’t let the word ‘bulk’ fool you. Yes, email broadcasts are usually sent out to
thousands of subscribers at once. And yes, we are all perfectly aware that every
marketing or sales email we get is 100% automated. Still, there’s some room for
personalization. And we still expect those emails to be a little bit humanized.
Segment the audience
Bulk email personalization can go way beyond those attributes, though. The golden
rule of broadcast emailing is to segment your recipients by whatever criteria you find
relevant for your goals — from countries and languages to subscription types to
registration date.
Keep your emails short
Every single marketer has fallen into the trap of long email broadcasts at least once
in their lifetime. It’s just that we have so much to share and we’re convinced that
everybody wants to hear about it. Well, usually, people don’t really care about long
letters — nobody has got time for that.
Understanding autoresponders
Autoresponders are automatic messages people receive when they perform an action
such as emailing a recipient or sending another form of message. They’re typically
used to confirm to the sender that the message has been received
An autoresponder is a series of emails, usually focused on a specific topic, delivered
in a predetermined sequence at predetermined intervals. The process can begin when
someone subscribes to your general email list. Alternatively, you can create new lists
catered specifically to those who want the content.
Generally, the autoresponder aims to transfer know-how, but making offers and
attempting to sell are not out of bounds. You’ll probably need to experiment to arrive
at the right balance of educational and promotional copy. You’ll want to consistently
address your prospect’s needs and stress the benefits of your products or services.
If things go as planned, your email autoresponder series will build trust with your
prospects. Your messages will make regular appearances in their inboxes. And,
you’ll be sharing useful lessons and progressively gaining mindshare. If your content
is well received, you’ll essentially be training the reader to open your emails, visit
your website, and ideally, do business with you.
This is the formula, simply stated:
Repeated touches and visits = familiarity = trust = sales.
Select a smart topic for your autoresponder
If your autoresponder series is to be a hit with your readers, it has to satisfy an
informational need, so you’ll want to choose your topic carefully. As you would
smartly plan the development of any content, you’ll want to tap into your audience’s
needs and uncover leading pain points.
To find these, try some combination of the following:
Ask readers – Your current readers are a logical starting point. You might use a
reasonable sample of current customers and simply question them via email or
telephone. You can also use a survey. Another possibility: tap into a group you lead
or participate in a social network or via a forum.
Listen to social media – Social media is your ideal market research tool. Look at
some of the better blogs in your industry to see what generates the most sharing and
commentary.
Pay attention to the hashtags being used in your niche. Dig into question sites such
as Quora and Yahoo Answers.
Assess your own content – You might get ideas for your autoresponder series
simply by assessing the interest in your existing content. Which posts have
performed best? Look at the shares, comments, and your analytics.
If your site includes a search tool, you can look at what visitors have searched for.
Chances are, you field questions via email and/or chat. Take note of the questions
and look for common threads and themes.
Research keywords – The Google Keyword Planner tool won’t literally tell
you the topics your readers are interested in, but you can test your hunches by using
it to check the popularity of various keyword searches.
Tricks to land in inbox instead of spam folder
1Only send emails to people who opted-in.
One of the first major must-dos to keep your emails from being marked as spam:
only send to your subscribers, the people who opted-in.
Shady list-building tactics, such as buying email addresses or sending unsolicited
emails, are undesirable. And, since they’re against the law, you could incur some
hefty fines for engaging in them.
Unless someone confirmed they want to receive your marketing emails (according
to the CAN-SPAM Act, this is called “express permission”), do not send to them
under any circumstances.
2. Avoid subject lines with spam trigger words.
Did you know that email filters look for specific trigger words in your subject lines
to help determine whether your messages are spam?
Yes, there is a lexicon of spammy-sounding language. It turns out that spammers
often use the same types of wording to trick buyers.
3Keep an eye on your sender reputation and spam score.
Email providers do a lot to determine whether your email will show up in recipients’
inboxes, including looking at your sender reputation.
Also called your IP reputation, sender score, or IP score, this refers to your sender
IP address. Different factors like the quality of the email content you send, the
engagement you get, and the quality of your email contacts all influence your score
and determine your reputation
4Don’t send too many emails...
While you’re at it, don’t forget to avoid spam-like behavior at all costs.
A big no-no is sending too many marketing emails to your subscribers. For example,
if you send out multiple emails per day, that can easily get you flagged as spam.
5. But do send emails consistently.
On the flip side, if you send marketing emails inconsistently or randomly, you’ll be
more likely to get sent straight to spam.
Instead, stick to a consistent schedule for sending out your messages. Once or twice
a week on the same day is a good best practice to try.
6. Make sure the content you send is targeted and relevant.
A major way you can avoid the spam folder is by focusing on email content that’s
relevant to your readers. After all, the more they enjoy receiving your emails, the
less likely they are to flag them as spam.
Here are a few tips to stay relevant:
7Know your subscribers. Understand their preferences.
Use segmentation to divide your audience into smaller groups and target each
individually. This helps ensure the emails you send are super-relevant.
Always aim to add value to your readers’ lives with each email you send. If there’s
no value in it for them, don’t send it.
8Ensure your sender information isn’t misleading.
According to the CAN-SPAM Act, the emails you send must not have “false or
misleading header information.” That includes the sender information in the “from”
and “reply-to” fields as well as the routing information.
9Check your email deliverability record.
More often than not, your ESP (email service provider) will have different metrics
available that you can monitor to track where your messages end up and how
subscribers engage with them (or not).
The most common include:
Open Rate – The percentage of subscribers who opened your emails.
Delivery Rate – The percentage of emails successfully delivered to subscriber
inboxes (can include landing in spam!).
Click Rate – The percentage of clicks within an opened email.
Unsubscribe or Opt-Out Rate – The percentage of email recipients who unsubscribe
or opt-out of your email marketing
Module 5
Purchase behaviour of consumers in online marketing format
The internet is a game-changer in every sense. Almost every aspect of modern life
is in some way altered through the inclusion of internet functionality. In the area of
Businesses and Marketing, gone are the days of spending a significant amount of
cash on traditional marketing efforts.
Social media platforms are without a doubt, one of the biggest contributing factors
in digital marketing. Companies have come to realise that products only sell when
people talk about them
Facebook not only changed the social interaction scene but also ushered in the next
generation of word of mouth marketing ploys. Companies now connect to their
customers through social media. Using it as a platform to humanise the brand in a
more casual setting.
Viral trends are being utilised and integrated into brand posts in order to attract
customers to buy more. User suggested advertisements are created from user
searches, online reviews and likes and then promoted within their feeds to perpetuate
sales.
Providing customer satisfaction through a more casual setting like social media
creates a positive customer experience. This means that Social Media is doing half
of a business’ job, marrying Customer Satisfaction and Customer Happiness
together.
With 624 million internet users in India alone, marketers have a chance to reach their
customers directly through online platforms and increase their exposure. With such
a massive user base, digital marketing can help capture large audiences and influence
their purchase decisions.
With the transition from traditional to digital marketing, consumer behaviour has
greatly changed and is more streamlined today. With information being available
online, irrespective of the day and time, consumers can shop, go through reviews,
compare and do many more things at the same time.
Online customer expectations
Changing customer and consumer behavior is nothing new. It always happens. In
the past, however, the changes usually revolved around the nature of where they
were making a purchase. In brick-and-mortar retail, the customer was always king,
and customers adapted to expecting to be treated in a certain kind of way in stores.
With brick-and-mortar now also digitizing, customer expectations have undergone
seismic changes over the past few years.
Their expectations are now way beyond fair pricing and service. They now expect
proactive service, personalized interactions, and connected, seamless experiences
across digital channels at all shopping locations and on all touchpoints and channels.
Internet is changing the customer’s expectations as well as behaviour.
Understanding the customer behaviour pattern holds the key to successful online
business for Companies. Companies have begun to realise that the product as well
as marketing strategies that work for traditional sales channels do not hold good for
their E Commerce business models. We now see that Organisations are slowly
moving away from focussing on product technology, production efficiency as well
as cost reduction strategies and getting to understand their product delivery and
services from the E Customer’s perspective.
E Customer’s perspectives are forcing the E Commerce companies to change the
value proposition of their business. The Customer’s perception of value is what
holds good in the E Commerce scenario and the Companies have got to re engineer
their business strategies as well as functions in line to deliver the so called ‘Value
Innovation’
Amazon’s customers are not the same as those who would buy from any book store.
The geographic spread of the customers is across nations and international sales
happy to hold a major share in its total sales, which means Amazon needs to have
end to end service capability across all countries to be able to effect deliveries to the
customer at his door step. Innovation, building back end capabilities and continuing
to listen to the Customer and pre-empting his requirements for the future are the
drivers that help with the Company’s business strategy.
Online b2c buying process
B2C -- short for business-to-consumer -- is a retail model where products move
directly from a business to the end user who has purchased the goods or service for
personal use. It is often contrasted with the B2B (business-to-business) model, which
involves exchanging goods and services between businesses instead of between
businesses and consumers.
The term B2C is applicable to any business transaction where the consumer directly
receives goods or services -- such as retail stores, restaurants and doctor's offices.
Most often it refers to e-commerce businesses, which use online platforms to
connect their products with consumers.
In recent years, B2C e-commerce has experienced a surge in popularity, accounting
for 56.9% of retail gains from 2018 to 2019, with contributions from large
companies such as Amazon. While some B2C businesses use their platforms to
market and sell their own products, others make money by connecting buyers to
sellers, using content traffic to sell advertisement spaces or restricting content to paid
subscriptions.
Among e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay, other recognizable B2C
companies include The New York Times, Facebook, Netflix and Uber
B2C businesses sell goods and services directly to their consumers. A consumer can
be defined as an end user who purchases a product or service for personal use.
Though many businesses sell their own products, this is not a requirement for the
B2C model since many companies also sell products purchased from other
businesses.
A B2C retail experience can be shopping at a local grocery store or purchasing new
headphones from an online store. A B2C service experience can be a visit to the
doctor, visiting a hair or nail salon, dining out at a restaurant or using the Uber app
to purchase transportation.
Decades after the e-commerce boom, B2C companies are continuing to eye a
growing market: mobile purchasing. With smartphone apps and traffic growing
year-over-year, B2C companies have shifted attention to mobile users and
capitalized on this popular technologyBusiness-to-consumer (B2C) is among the
most popular and widely known sales models. Michael Aldrich first utilized the idea
of B2C in 1979, who used television as the primary medium to reach out to
consumers.1
B2C traditionally referred to mall shopping, eating out at restaurants, pay-per-view
movies, and infomercials. However, the rise of the internet created a whole new B2C
business channel in the form of e-commerce or selling goods and services over the
internet.
Although many B2C companies fell victim to the subsequent dotcom bust as investor
interest in the sector dwindled and venture capital funding dried up, B2C leaders
such as Amazon and Priceline survived the shakeout and have since seen
tremendous success.
Online b2b buying behavior
any high-value complex B2B sales environment involving new projects with
multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours and motivations that drive your
customer’s decision-making journey are inherently complicated and may be
impossible for the average sales person to ever completely understand.
For anything other than inevitable purchases, your customer typically has a number
of potential options - each with their respective pros and cons. Each of the individual
stakeholders are also likely to have different personal motivations, priorities and
decision criteria - often making it hard to establish consensus.
It’s perhaps no surprise that so many apparently promising sales opportunities end
with the customer either deciding to do nothing, or to postpone the project until some
often-undefined future date. And it’s no wonder that many studies have found that
“no decision” is now the most common outcome for such projects.
B2B purchases are, on average, higher value than B2C purchases. B2B products can
also be more customized or complex than B2C products.
And once a B2B product or service is purchased, customers often have limited ability
to change supplier, either because of a lack of alternatives or because the change
would be time-consuming or expensive.
As a result, B2B purchasing decisions can be more business-critical and involve
more risk than B2C purchases.
To minimize the risk of making the wrong decision, organizations take a slightly
different approach to buying products and services than consumers. As a result, B2B
purchases typically involve several stakeholders and several stages
B2B purchasing decisions tend not to be impulsive, often involving multiple stages
over time. Indeed, certain purchases can take a year or more.
There is evidence that the time taken to make B2B decisions has increased. In 2019,
68% of buyers indicated that their B2B purchases were taking more time than they
had previously.
Each organization’s decision-making process is different. To make it easier to
evaluate and compare these processes, analysts have developed a variety of decision-
making models. These models typically standardize the B2B buying process into 5-
7 stages. For example:
Recognizing there is a problem or need
Evaluating and comparing available solutions
Defining the requirements for the product or service
Selecting a supplier
Justifying the decision
Search engine optimization
SEO means Search Engine Optimization and is the process used to optimize a
website's technical configuration, content relevance and link popularity so its pages
can become easily findable, more relevant and popular towards user search queries,
and as a consequence, search engines rank them better.
Search engines recommend SEO efforts that benefit both the user search experience
and page’s ranking, by featuring content that fulfills user search needs. This includes
the use of relevant keywords in titles, meta descriptions, and headlines (H1),
featuring descriptive URLs with keywords rather than strings of numbers, and
schema markup to specify the page's content meaning, among other SEO best
practices.
Search engines help people find what they’re looking for online. Whether
researching a product, looking for a restaurant, or booking a vacation, search engines
are a common starting point when you need information. For business owners, they
offer a valuable opportunity to direct relevant traffic to your website.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of orienting your website to rank
higher on a search engine results page (SERP) so that you receive more traffic.
The aim is typically to rank on the first page of Google results for search terms that
mean the most to your target audience. So, SEO is as much about understanding
the wants and needs of your audience as it is about the technical nature of how to
configure your website.
Search engines provide results for any search query a user enters. To do so, they
survey and “understand” the vast network of websites that make up the web. They
run a sophisticated algorithm that determines what results to display for each search
query.
Forms of search engines
Google
Google is a search engine that was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.
It is one of the most popular search engines on the internet and is used to search for
information on a variety of topics. Google also runs a number of other services, such
as YouTube and Google Maps.
2. Bing
Bing is Microsoft's search engine that provides a default search experience for users
of Windows 10 and the latest versions of the Windows Phone operating system. Bing
does not have a web browser experience and cannot be used to search for websites.
Yahoo
Yahoo is a web portal and search engine founded in 1995 by Jerry Yang and David
Filo. The company was acquired by Verizon Communications in July 2017 for about
$4.83 billion.
Yahoo is currently a part of Oath, the new parent company formed after Verizon's
acquisition of AOL.
Yahoo was one of the first web portals to offer a search engine that was based on
natural language processing, which allowed users to conduct text searches across the
entire site.
As the company's web traffic decreased, it began to focus on mobile search and
advertising technology.
4. Baidu
Baidu is a Chinese web search engine that serves as the country's primary search
engine.
As of March 2017, it is the fifth most popular website in the world, with more than
300 million active users.
Baidu has been described as Google China, as it dominates the Chinese search
market and has a large share of the Chinese internet user base.
5. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is based in the United States. It offers a more
private and secure search experience than many of its competitors, including Google,
Yahoo, and Baidu. DuckDuckGo does not track or store user data.
DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, who wanted an alternative
to the dominant search engines at the time.
The company initially raised money from venture capitalists and began operating in
2009.
DuckDuckGo has since expanded to include a mobile app, which was released in
November 2016
Working of search engine
Search engines work by crawling billions of pages using web crawlers. Also known
as spiders or bots, crawlers navigate the web and follow links to find new pages.
These pages are then added to an index that search engines pull results from.
Search engines work through three primary functions:
Crawling: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each
URL they find.
Indexing: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once
a page is in the index, it’s in the running to be displayed as a result to relevant queries.
Ranking: Provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher's query,
which means that results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant.
Major functions of a search engine
Crawling – discovering information on web pages
Every search engine has this vital software component called the crawler, or spider
or bots that go through (or “crawls”) each of your web pages storing its contents in
the search engine database. A crawler can either scan up the new contents on the
web page or also locate older data. The bots crawl all the contents on web pages;
often several websites at a time, following each and every hyperlink that links to
both internal and external pages until it can no longer find any more information.
Indexing – creation of index database
After contents of the web pages are crawled, they now have to be indexed based on
the occurrences various keywords. This would increase the efficiency of the search
engines in accurately fetching information corresponding to a particular query in a
short span of time. Every query given by the user will consist of a few phrases or
keywords. While indexing the contents on a web page, common articles such as “a”,
“an” and “the” are avoided and the indexed information is stored in an organized
manner.
Search engine designers develop search algorithms that search for contents by
looking the match between the keywords entered by the user with those found within
the web page content using the index. If there is a good match between these then,
search engines consider it as one of the results.
Results – fetching of the relevant data
The different hyperlinks displayed after you search for a particular key phrase are
the results. Every search engine has its own algorithm that sort and displays the most
relevant data as results.So, you may not get the same website rankings for a single
keyword on various search engines. As mentioned earlier, comparison for equality
of keywords is done by the algorithms using the index.
Introduction to content marketing
Content marketing is the creation and distribution of media to consumers on the
internet.
It is a practice that aims to:
Improve the quality of content available online
Help audiences find the products, services, and expertise for which they are looking
Help products, services, and expertise find their appropriate audiences
Improve the visibility of websites in major search engines
Content encompasses an astounding variety of consumable media, and
disseminating that media through marketing requires knowledge of every digital
marketing channel available.
The Meaning of “Content”
Content is anything that is consumable on the internet.
Any complete piece of media that you find on the internet can be considered digital
content. There’s a long list of media that we call content, which means a content
creator’s job requires an unusual breadth of skills
There are as many types of content marketing as there are types of content–far too
many to cover here. My intent is to give you an introduction to content marketing
and get you thinking like a content marketer so you’ll see the opportunities all around
you. Soon you’ll be coming up with 50 content marketing ideas every day. You
won’t be able to stop seeing opportunities to create content. Here are five examples
to help your mind start percolating.
Infographics. These are generally long, vertical graphics that include statistics,
charts, graphs, and other information. If you need some examples, here are 197
infographics on the topic of content marketing curated by Michael Schmitz,
head of Content Lab at Publicis, Munich. Infographics can be effective in that if one
is good it can be passed around social media and posted on websites for years. You
can get a professionally designed infographic by hiring a contractor on a site
like oDesk or if you want to remove some of the risk you can go with a company
like Visua.ly. A decent infographic will usually cost you at least $1,000 to have
designed, but can cost several thousand dollars if you are hiring a contractor or
agency to include strategy and planning, research, copywriting, and design. There is
also the matter of promoting that infographic to bloggers and the media. Or you
could set up a board on Pinterest and curate infographics on a topic related to your
business. That is also a form of content marketing, and it costs nothing but your time.
Hey, it worked for Michael.
Webpages. What’s the difference between a normal webpage and a webpage that is
content marketing? Consider The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz, a
provider of SEO related tools and resources. This resource, offered for free, has been
viewed millions of times, bringing in countless customers who otherwise might
never have stumbled across Moz and the services they offer. Or take a look at a case
study from the design firm Teehan+Lax. Most case studies are boring. Their case
studies are fascinating. That’s the difference between simply putting content on your
website, and content marketing.
Podcasts. Michael Hyatt, author of the best-selling book Platform: Get Noticed in
a Noisy World, practices what he preaches. His “This is Your Life” podcast is
downloaded 250,000 times each month. As Hyatt elaborates on his blog post 4
Reasons You Should Consider Launching Your Own Podcast , “A podcast
gives you visibility in a completely different world—primarily iTunes. I have had
scores of new people say they had never heard of me until they stumbled onto me in
iTunes.” Hyatt gives valuable information and advice in his podcast–all for free. But
that podcast leads to more sales of his books, signups for his courses, and requests
for him as a speaker.
Videos. Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of content marketing using online video, just
take a look at his YouTube channel. He got his start creating videos to promote
his family’s wine store and through those videos and other online marketing he
eventually grew it to a $45M empire.
7 step strategy building process in content marketing
Goal:
When you start your planning, you need to define a goal that the strategy and long-
term activities should lead towards. Having a clear goal helps you to focus, and
defining a goal makes it easier to measure the success of your content marketing. If
you haven’t set any goals, how will you know if your implemented measures are
successful?
Goals of a Content Marketing Strategy can be business related, such as increasing
revenue, marginal returns or profits. Specific e-commerce goals can include
increasing the conversion rate, or increasing the time spent on the page. General
marketing and online marketing goals such as brand awareness and online visibility
can also be the basis of the Content Marketing Strategy.
An important goal is also to develop unique selling points through content. The
content should show that your company, your brand, your team and your products
are unique and have advantages over competitors' offerings.
Your goal should be "S.M.A.R.T" , that is
Specific
Measureable
Action-oriented
Realistic
Time-sensitive
For only "smart" goals can lead to systematic success.
2. Target audience:
The internet is a global communication medium with a scope of several billion
people. Of course, it doesn't make sense to appeal to all users. You can only create
effective and successful content if you know who the content is meant for. It is
fundamentally important to know and define your target audience. Only this way
will you be successful in creating relevant content that ranks well, making your
brand visible in search engines.
The more intensely you scrutinise and segment your target group, and use their
needs and segment specifications as a basis for your Content Marketing Strategy,
the more successful the content marketing will be. For instance, do you know which
devices your readers use? Have you looked at the preferred search terms or the topics
that are particularly popular on social media? These and other aspects of target group
segments are a good foundation for creating content that is relevant for your target
group.
Inventory:
Before creating new content, you should carry out an inventory check. Experts call
this a content audit. That means that every single piece of content is listed, giving
you an overview of your content and the impact on your target group.
A content audit also gives you the opportunity to find optimization gaps. When you
have compiled all existing content, evaluate it according to the defined goals, and
ask yourself a few questions:
Was the customer's issue resolved with this?
How relevant is the article?
Is it still up to date or should it be revised?
Should any content be deleted, because it is out of date or the effort to optimise it is
too great?
Are any topics missing that are important to the target group?
How high is the bounce rate for your articles?
Which posts generate most traffic?
Comparison with the competition:
After you have gained a sound overview of what your content has to offer, you
should now check what the strengths of the competition are in the context of your
defined goals and target audience.
First, you should pick at least three competitors. If you aren't sure who the strongest
competitor is, you can identify it with a Google search. For this, use the keywords
that you and your target group use and search for your competition. It's important
that the competition covers similar topics. After selecting competitors, look at the
published content and pay attention to factors such as:
Frequency of posts
Writing style
Selected channels and
What topics are covered
Do your competitors have content covering similar topic areas or entire topics that
you haven't covered yourself? Find out where and how you can differentiate
yourself, and how you might offer better content.
5. Content Management Systems:
Content Management Systems (CMS) can help you efficiently manage your
content. This includes planning, creating, and analyzing content. Similar to content
audits, your aim is to get a better overview with the appropriate CMS.
You should use your CMS as an editing schedule so that you can easily structure
when which article is published, so as many facets as possible are presented. Using
an editing schedule helps to measure the success of new posts, helping you to
improve constantly. You can combine a social media calendar with the CMS to
advertise content that is to be published later.
Using tools like Google AdWords Keyword planner, you can determine the best time
to publish content for seasonal topics. That way you can find out when the search
volume for keywords like 'changing tires' is highest for the topic. Key figures like
that should also be included in a CMS.
6. Planning for topics:
Good content involves a lot of hard work, and producing it can be expensive. A long-
term content creation and publishing plan is therefore all the more important. Your
Content Marketing Strategy will help you there too.
Seasonal topics can be covered in a content calendar, as well as when the right
moment to publish is. Long-term production should also be managed via scheduled
topic planning. Travel might be necessary for specific photos or videos, and this of
course has to be planned in advance.
Measuring success:
The last step is measuring results that you achieve with your content. Is your scope
increasing organically on Google? Has the number of YouTube subscribers
increased? Are your users considering your website or your shop a unique offering?
These and other goals should be checked regularly, so your content measures can be
critically assessed.
Tips and techniques for a great compelling content
5 techniques for crafting compelling marketing content for websites will guide you
back to your storytelling roots.
Know Your Audience
This is at the heart and soul of any writer’s craft. You must know who you are
addressing before you can develop content that will be meaningful. Marketers build
a buyer persona to provide a specific target, or audience, to directly address.
By knowing your audience you will know what level to write at, where to start,
and what type of details to put into the story. This information will change from one
step in the buying process to the next but the basic needs of the audience won’t
change.
Select Frame and Premise
The frame is the audience’s world view. A strict vegan will have a difference world
view from a barbeque aficionado. A 16 year old high school boy looks at the world
differently than the 45 year old mother of a 16 year old high school boy. If you know
your audience you will know how to present the story so it fits within its frame of
reference. Who are you writing to?
The premise is how to tell the story. This is what provides the dramatic tension by
delivering the framed story to the audience in a way that draws it in and brings it
along for the ride. How can you present the story so it makes logical sense to your
target and fits within their worldview?
Determine a Focus
What is the kernel of your story? Boy meets girl? Bo knows baseball? Without a
focus a story risks scope creep. Pretty soon you are trying to address everyone at the
same time and have lost the momentum of a personalized experience.
You should be able to tell your focus in three words using a noun, a verb, and an
object. These words imply what the customer wants.
Create a Character
Stories are always more interesting when they are about someone, preferably
someone like your target audience. Your character is your buyer persona expanded
to human form. You give it a name and use it to give your story a human perspective.
Example: Bob Businessman received a query from a potential client that would
really put his business on the map. But it took him 3 days to put together a proposal
and the client went with a company that completed a proposal in just a few hours.
Bob wondered if there was a way to streamline his proposal process.
Follow a Dramatic Arc
Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. The dramatic arc drives the narrative
forward bringing the reader with it.
Beginning = Exposition: This is the starting point where you give the reader
context and a beginning for the action.
Middle = Conflict and climax: The middle is where the problem is presented.
You are telling the reader about the change in circumstances that creates a problem
that must be resolved.
End = Conclusion: The end tells the reader about the resolution to the problem
and ties the story up. It is a logical and/or emotional stopping point
Keyword research for content ideas
The key is knowing the right keywords. Not only do keywords impact your rankings,
but they also can – and should – be used as a starting point for creating great content.
Which means some keyword research is in order.
Before you begin your content creation, it is essential that you conduct proper
keyword research. From identifying your target market to conducting competitor
analysis, your keyword research will help you better understand the needs of the
customer and what they’re searching for. This will ensure that you are producing
optimal content for your target market and getting your message in front of current
and potential customers.
So, how can you find out what keywords are ideal for your brand?
Step 1: Identify your target market.
In order to identify optimal keywords, you first need to determine who is searching
around your industry. Who are your current customers? Are there new markets that
you aren’t reaching yet? What groups could benefit most from your
products/services?
Your target audience should range from current customers all the way to niche
markets that you’re hoping to enter. These various groups likely have different
needs, so it’s important to remember these differences later on when creating your
keyword list. This will help you focus your content to attract customers you aren’t
yet reaching, as well as to keep clients coming back!
As we go through each step in the keyword research process, imagine you have your
own local real estate company, and you’re looking to increase traffic to your website.
Your target market may consist of first-time home buyers, experienced landlords,
and home sellers. You also want to target house flippers, an industry you have not
yet entered.
Step 2: Know what questions customers are asking.
Now that you have identified your target markets, you need to know the questions
customers are asking so that you can provide the answers through relevant content.
As an expert in your industry, you should already be clued in to what your customers
are asking. With new markets, though, you may need some help in determining these
questions. A great tool that can help you in this search is Answer the Public.
Step 3: Explore popular content in your industry.
Next, it’s time to explore your competitors’ and industry leaders’ websites and
content. Look for things you like. How can you emulate and improve on what they’re
doing? Also, look for things you don’t like. What topics should you avoid? How can
you make your content stand out?
Step 4: Build a list of keywords.
Now the research phase is over. It’s time to build a list of keywords that you can use
to start planning your content. You’ll have to be strategic with the keywords that you
choose. For example, “buying a house” will be extremely difficult to rank for since
it’s a broad topic with a lot of existing content. Instead, focus on long tail keywords
– longer, more specific phrases that will be easier to rank for. A long tail
keyword you can add to your list could be “buying your first house in Houston” or
“what you should know before buying a house”
Step 5: Use a keyword planner.
After you’ve created your list, you can get more information about the keywords
you’ve chosen by uploading them into a keyword planner. If you have an AdWords
account, Google’s keyword planner is a great tool to help you organize your
keywords and conduct further research. There are also some free versions,
like Moz’s keyword suggestions, that offer similar functionality with a limit on
the number of keywords you can search for each day
Step 6: Pick a keyword and write content surrounding this keyword.
It’s finally time to start creating content! Focus on one or two keywords to start, and
then begin creating content around those keywords. It’s helpful to look at the SERPs
(search engine results page) of those keywords, to get a better understanding of what
is already ranking and what content might be missing that you could create.
Optimizing content for search engines
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is an ever-changing field. But throughout all
these changes, one thing has remained constant, and that’s the importance of content
to SEO.
Content and SEO go hand-in-hand. People use search engines to find answers or
solutions to their questions and search engines serve up the most relevant content
available. While the top search result might be a blog post, a YouTube video, or
a product description – it’s all content.
There is a deep relationship between content and SEO, and it can sometimes be
difficult to understand how they relate to each other. This guide explores that
relationship and provides actionable insights into how businesses can use content to
support their SEO efforts
Perform In-Depth Keyword Research
Uncover a few relevant keywords to target within the piece of content.
2. Include Target Keywords throughout the Content
Implement the target keywords in a natural-sounding way. Be careful not
to overstuff the keywords and risk a Google penalty.
Ensure Correct Spelling and Grammar
Nothing makes a site look less reliable than inaccurate spelling and grammar. Run
your content through a spell-checker a few times before hitting publish.
4. Build Internal Links
Internally linking to other relevant pieces of content on your site is a good idea.
This helps Google index these pages more quickly and gives you more of a chance
of showing up in search results.
5. Include Multimedia
There’s nothing worse for readers than a big block of text with nothing to break it
up.
Adding images, graphics and videos is a great way of keeping your users engaged
with the content and increasing dwell time.
6. Don’t Forget Meta Descriptions or Title Tags
Create enticing meta descriptions and catchy title tags to grab your readers’
attention while they browse the search results.
Ways to market content
Send an email broadcast
Your email list is (hopefully) composed of people who signed up because they’re
interested in your brand and want to receive your latest updates. According
to Campaign Monitor, you’re six times more likely to get a click from an email
campaign than a tweet. That’s a great audience to promote your content to because
they’re already engaged and much more likely to share
Engage with your community
Plenty of tools and platforms will help you join your industry’s conversation and
give your content more reach at the same time. Here are some options:
Social media groups
Facebook and LinkedIn groups are great opportunities to dig deeper into a social
platform and target your niche audience. Join groups that your content is relevant to,
join the conversation, and suggest your content naturally. You can also join and
contribute to specific boards on Pinterest.
Pay to promote
Advertising your content is a fairly new concept that can work well, especially
compared to traditional direct-marketing tactics. Pay per click or by number of
impressions to help your content get more reach on a variety of platforms.
Facebook Ads
Facebook makes it possible to create targeted ads based on all kinds of criteria,
including demographics, location, and specific interest categories. If you know
your target audience well, you can take advantage of these features for your
content promotion.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon offers a paid discovery feature with a pay-per-click model. Its users
are mostly college-age millennials so if you have content relevant to this
demographic, look into it.
Reach out on social media
Social platforms are crowded, so there’s no guarantee interested people will see and
share your content. To improve your content’s visibility, target interested people
directly.
Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find social media users who share content like yours.
Just take a keyword from the content you want to promote and type it into its search
bar
Connect with influencers outside of social
Social media isn’t the only place you should target influencers. Email is another
option likely to capture more attention, especially if your influencer has a busy social
profile. A cold email to a previously identified influencer can help you with a lot of
things — building links, getting comments, or encouraging sharing.
Ask to include your content
Getting your content to appear in roundups is a great way to get more reach and build
backlinks at the same time. You can find relevant link roundups to target with the
help of Google. Include your niche keyword and one of the following in your search:
Roundup
Weekly
Monthly
Best of
Top 10
Link love
Write for others
Attract people from the web to important pages on your website (e.g., a squeeze
page or sales page) by guest posting or blogging. Create amazing content and pitch
it to other sites. If they let you, include links in the content and your author bio to
key pages on your site.
There are tons of guest post opportunities, and finding them is easy. Most serious
blogs will have a guest post submission page. Use Google to find them:
(Niche keyword) + “guest post submission”
(Niche keyword) + “write for us”
(Niche keyword) + “contribution guidelines”