DIGITAL MARKETING

UNIT – 1

Introduction
Digital marketing being a comparatively newer field, many individuals are curious to know
about it as they are not aware. This blog is meant specially for them, as we will be discussing
various aspects related to this field like digital marketing definition, role of digital marketing
etc.
What is digital marketing (digital marketing definition)?
In simple terms, digital marketing can be called as the process of promoting brands or
products using the electronic media. It mainly takes place on the Internet. Other platforms
include mobile phones, digital displays and any other digital medium. As the name suggests,
it makes use of the digital technologies.
The primary way of marketing included business owners to publicize their services or
products on print media like radio and TV ads, hoardings, business cards and in numerous
other comparable ways where Internet or online networking sites were not utilized for
promotional activities. Traditional marketing strategies had constrained customer reachability
and extent of driving customers' purchasing pattern.
What all is included in digital marketing?
So what precisely is digital marketing and what does it include? Fundamentally, it's a
collective term which is utilized where advertising meets the web innovation and different
types of newer forms of media.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization):
Search engine optimization (SEO): is a method for optimizing the content of a site to enhance
its ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS). Assortments of strategies are utilized
to accomplish this and it's not a task for beginners truly as there are numerous pitfalls that
could have Google disapproving of your site.
Basic Concepts of Digital Marketing
Doing business without digital marketing is like nurturing a plant without giving it air, water
and sun. Yes, you got it right! If you want to grow your business, digital marketing is the
armor in your kitty to do it the right way. Digital marketing is also in-demand career skill if
you are a job- seeker or aspiring to make a career shift.
But, before you start shooting the arrow in the dark, you must know the basic concepts of
digital marketing. You can join an online program which covers the fundamentals. Ideally, it
is recommended to enroll in an advanced digital marketing course which will give you more
insight.
Understanding the Definition of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is much more than website, email and social media. It also encompasses
content publication, mobile optimization and data analytics. It is a cocktail of everything,
with each ingredient having its unique importance in the mix.
Digital Marketing Tools
A digital marketing strategy is executed of any of these two or more tools:
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO): One of the most specialized and sought after
tool, SEO focuses on making your business website rank top in the search engines
such as Google, Yahoo, etc.
 Email Marketing: Did you know that email marketing is the cheapest, most
preferred and most effective digital medium? It comprises building a subscribers list
and sending emails to the target audience.
 Content Optimization: Some digital marketing experts say that content is the silver
bullet of digital marketing. Whether it is a website, social media platforms or emails,
the quality, consistency, relevance and frequency of updation of content plays a
crucial role. Nobody likes information which is poorly written in context and full of
grammatical errors!
Do note that content can be published in various ways:
1. Web pages
2. Blogs
3. Infographics
4. Whitepapers
5. E-books
6. Videos
7. Webinars
8. Podcasts
 Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: Well, it doesn‟t cost you more bucks if you
prefer organic advertising. But, the number of people you can reach is only limited.
Whereas, paid advertising, especially on Facebook and Twitter, can increase your
digital footprint to a larger audience.
 Mobile Marketing: With 80% of internet users relying on their smartphones to
search information and buy products, mobile marketing is the way to tap them. It is a
tool to appeal the mobile device users via SMS, responsive websites, apps and
personalized notifications. (Source: Smart Insights)
Measurement
The beauty of digital marketing lies in the fact that ROI on every penny spent can be tracked.
Italso monitors the number of leads and conversions.
There are various executive courses in digital marketing that can introduce you to
digitalmarketing concepts through various modules.
Components of Digital Marketing
10 Components: What're they?
1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – THE TECHSHU WAY OF DOING IT
 Search Engine Optimization was THE DIGITAL MARKETING till 2010. The major
channel for sales and traffic. Still it is one of the most sought after profit blocks.
There isa general misconception that SEO is a long-term investment.
2. PPC - MANAGEMENT, OPTIMIZATION
PPC is useful. However if you do not optimize your campaign, do not experiment
with landing pages, you can't reduce the cost then you might end up spending more
without getting any significant return.
3. SOCIAL MEDIA - FROM SETUP TO MARKETING AND APPS
Social media leverages the power of word of mouth. Hence, it can influence buying
decision of people. As a marketer you can make the best use of it to promote your
brand and create brand awareness.
4. WEBSITE DESIGN THAT IMPACTS AND SELLS
Creating a website is no big deal these days. The question is - how you are designing
it, how much time the designer is investing to understand your business.
5. WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT - THE BACKBONE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Website is a technical thing after all. Though it is not that difficult these days to
create and maintain a website, still it requires thorough technical knowledge.
And when it comes to making an interactive website with a myriad of features,
engaging web solutions or mobile apps, you will need an expert.
6. AFFILIATES – IT CAN WORK WONDERS IF MANAGED PROPERLY
Affiliate marketing model is quite popular; you pay people for generating business for
you. There can be many affiliate members; you only need to pay them when they
bring your business.
7. ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT - MONITOR YOUR BRAND NAME
24X7X365
Do you know what your customers are talking about you? What if they post any
wrong or negative comment about you at a blog, forum or any consumer board?
Reputation management means different things for different companies.
8. CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION - WE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR
WEBSITE SELLS
All businesses invest in marketing in order to increase their sales. And Conversion
Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process that can grow your sales exponentially while
remaining in a similar setting.
9. EMAIL MARKETING - LET YOUR EMAILS SPEAK
Email marketing cannot be avoided when it comes to digital marketing. The
reason issimple - it is direct, affordable and often the best way when you have a
targeted database.
10. GOOGLE LOCAL OPTIMIZATION
There are many services for which people look for local vendors. Users prefer a
localvendor as it becomes easy for them to coordinate with them.
Need and Scope of Digital Marketing
Before we understand the scope of digital marketing in India let us first understand this
industry. Digital marketing is a marketing method to promote products in online. So in simple
terms, we can say that we are promoting our products to customers who are using the
internet. Many concepts of traditional marketing are applicable to digital marketing.
In every era, marketing has evolved based on what the customer is using. If you go back in
history, you can see that at times when customers used Radio, it gave birth to radio
advertising and marketing. Next, we got the boom of televisions; it is one of the widely used
device globally, which allowed the companies to reach a mass audience with TV ads. Even
today TV advertising is one of the most used advertising strategies for companies. Since the
boom of the Internet, more customers started using the Internet, which gave birth to a new
era of marketing originally called Internet marketing, which is now called Digital Marketing.
To understand the scope of Digital Marketing in Future we must understand its advantages
and how it can sustain over the period of time until we get a new generation of
communication.
Why companies use digital marketing?
Internet Users:
As per the internet usage stats, as of July 2016, 40% of the world population is using the
internet. (i.e) 3.42 Billion Users. The total number of users in 1995 was less than 1% of the
world population.

As we can clearly understand from the above stats that in the next few years more users will
be connected to the internet, which gives more scope for digital marketers to reach target
audience globally.
Mobile Phones:
Most of the users globally today use mobile phones for communication. As per a report 4.77
billion mobiles phone users globally, which will increase to 5.07 billion by 2019. Today‟s
majority of mobile phones are smartphones with internet access, which allows to customers
to connect with businesses anytime & anywhere.
Targeting the Audience:
In traditional marketing strategies, it is very difficult to advertise to the target audience with
specific demographics & details. Most of the marketing methods were aimed @ mass
marketing of the product. Today with digital marketing we have so many customized &
personalized methods to target the audience exclusively.
Ex: Today we can reach an audience by Location, age, gender, education, interests, personal
information etc. In fact, we have many advanced strategies to target a very specific audience.
Low Cost and High ROI:
Most of the small and medium scale companies rely mostly on digital marketing strategies
due toits low cost and high return on investment.
What is its scope of digital marketing in India for Professionals?
As we know that the digital marketing industry is growing, which brings more opportunities
to professionals in this industry? Following are opportunities available for professionals.
Get a Job in Industry:
The simple and best way to start your career in digital marketing is to find a job. In digital
marketing, we have many different specializations so you will have different options to start
yourcareer.
a. Digital marketing strategist
b. Digital marketing executive
c. SEO analyst
d. Social media specialist
e. Google AdWords specialist
f. Email marketing specialist
g. Web Analyst
h. Online reputation manager
And there will more specialized job roles to choose in digital marketing. Learn more about
Careers in Digital Marketing.
Become a Professional Blogger:
Many digital marketing professionals choose full time blogging as their career choice. With
dedication and hard work, many professionals are not successful bloggers in their chosen
niche. Bloggers can generate income with advertising & affiliate marketing strategies.
Earn with Affiliate Marketing & AdSense:
You can start your blog/website/app in a specific niche of your interest and initially work
hard to build traffic & viewers. After generating good traffic, you can make a good income
withAdSense & affiliate marketing techniques.
Start Freelancing Services:
Freelancing is the concept of offering your services to clients on a part-time basis from your
home. Sitting at your home you can build your clients globally. Thanks to online websites
like fiverr.com, freelancer.com etc. you can start offering your freelancing services.
Start your own agency:
If you have experience in managing a business & have resources, contacts. You can start your
own full-time digital marketing agency. With your agency, you can able to build marketing
strategies for clients and implement them with digital marketing.
Become a YouTuber:
You can choose to become a full-time YouTuber in a selected niche. You need to focus on
the quality of content and building your audience base on YouTube. Once you start getting
subscribers and views, you can make a money with YouTube monetization.
I hope you have understood the various aspects of digital marketing and scope in this
industry. If you have any questions, please leave your comments below.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
1. Digital marketing is the most powerful form of marketing.
Digital marketing has the potential to transform the way that you reach and engage your
customers. But you don‟t have to take our word for it. Here are some real examples of how
digital marketing tactics are helping businesses just like yours reach their target market and
influence conversions:
 Ecommerce candle company, Nidhi increased their sales by 714% over a 3-month
period using social media (with a little help from LYFE marketing).
 Forever Diamonds, a Georgia jewelry company, was able to reach and engage its
fans for less than $1 per engagement over the course of a year, increasing foot traffic
and leading to real conversions.
  We helped a snow motorcycle business selling snow equipment, generate $96,664.98
worth of SEO results in just 5 months!
 Our team also helped a local gym convert 210 new leads over 90 days at a cost of
just $4.33 per lead through effective and targeted Google ads.
 These cases are a true testament to the benefits of digital marketing. With the right
strategies and effective implementation, small businesses can increase their reach
and conversions in just a matter of months.
2. Using digital marketing tactics is the most cost-effective way to market your business.
One of the most important benefits of digital marketing is that it is the most cost-effective
ways to market your business. When it comes to traditional marketing, it‟s very difficult for
small businesses with limited budgets to compete with larger businesses for ad space.
However, with affordable digital marketing tactics, small businesses can get more for their
marketing spend.
Consider this – a small business can expose over 1,000 people to its products and services
for less than $3 using social media. While that same exposure through direct mail costs about
$57 and through television ads costs about $28.
While traditional marketing tactics also often come with various hidden costs, the only cost to
digital marketing is time. SEO, content marketing, and social media engagement take time to
work their magic. However, there are still digital marketing tactics such as pay-per-click,
display, and social media advertising that can produce quicker results.
3. Digital marketing is the most measurable form of marketing.
How do you know if your marketing is working?
The only way to know for sure is to measure your success over time. While it can be difficult
to track the success of a traditional marketing campaign like a radio advertisement or mailer,
every digital marketing tactic that you use is measurable. This benefit is every reason why
you need to invest into digital marketing.
Digital marketing analytics takes the guess work out of determining whether your marketing
is actually working. By measuring your digital marketing campaigns in real-time, you can see
which tactics are working and which are not. Then, you can adjust your campaigns for greater
success. You can also take the insights that you‟ve gained from the process to improve future
campaigns.
For instance, let‟s say that you want to create a social media marketing campaign for a new
product. You‟ve decided to publish a series of social media posts over a two-week period.
With social media analytics, you can see which posts were the most popular with your target
audience and which drove the most conversions. You can then use this insight to try to
reproduce this success with future campaigns.
Digital marketing analytics allows you to more effectively use your resources and allocate
your marketing budget. Since you are no longer guessing about what‟s working and what
isn‟t, you can reduce unnecessary expenses and focus your efforts on the strategies that are
most likely to improve your ROI.
4. One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing is that it allows you to target your
idealbuyers.
When you purchase billboard space or place an ad in a magazine, you‟re taking a shot in the
dark that this messaging will reach its intended audience. Though there are certainly ways to
increase your chances of success with traditional marketing tactics, it just doesn‟t offer the
same targetingcapabilities as digital marketing.
With digital marketing, you can ensure that the right consumers are viewing your content.
SEO allows you to reach those consumers who are searching the web for content and topics
that are relevant to your business. While pay-per-click, display, and social media advertising
enables you to target those who are most likely to be interested in your products or services
based on demographic information and general characteristics.
By improving targeting, you can work to get more for your marketing budget and resources.
With digital marketing, you no longer have to worry that you are spending money on ads that
won‟t reach those who are likely to be interested in your products. With sophisticated
targeting abilities, digital marketing tactics allow you to take comfort in knowing that you are
focusing your marketing efforts on strategies that actually work.
5. Most people are starting their buyer‟s journey online.
Think about how often you turn to Google or another search engine to find the information
you need. Your customers are no different when they start to research the products or services
that can help them solve their biggest problems.
In fact, according to Vimeo, 93% of online experiences start with a search engine. Before
consumers even know what product or service they need, they are going to the search engines
to look for answers to their questions and to learn more about their challenges.
This presents a great opportunity for small businesses to connect with potential customers
and educate them during the beginning stages of the buyer‟s journey. By creating relevant
and engaging content that‟s optimized for the search engines, you can improve your visibility
online and reach customers when it matters most.
6. Your customers are on social media, and digital marketing helps you reach them.
Perhaps the most important on our list of benefits of digital marketing is this. No matter what
industry your business is in, there‟s a good chance that your buyers are spending their time on
social media channels like Facebook or Twitter. According to eMarketer, 2.34 billion people,
or about one-third of the earth‟s population, uses social media platforms regularly.
Digital marketing helps you reach these engaged consumers. Not only are you able to
publish and promote unique content on these social sites, but you‟re also able to reach
consumers through advertising. Social media platforms like Facebook offer sophisticated
targeting options that help you reach the consumers who are most likely to be interested in
your products or services.
What‟s more is that social media also provides an effective platform for communicating with
and engaging your target audience. Rather than just posting content and never hearing from
your consumers, you can have one-on-one conversations in real-time that allow you to gain
valuable insight into your brand. That‟s something that traditional marketing tactics just don‟t
allow for.
7. SEO and local SEO helps you reach more qualified buyers online.
SEO is another powerful digital marketing tactic that offers a variety of benefits. By
optimizing your site content for the search engines, you can work to reach more buyers
online. Using
relevant keywords that help describe your product or service offering can help you bring
more targeted traffic to your site, which increases conversions over time.
SEO isn‟t just for national businesses. Many consumers are searching for local
companies online, and these searches eventually lead to a purchase. In fact, according to
Google, 28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase. Local SEO, or
optimizing your website for local search results, can also be a valuable digital marketing
tactic for businesses that operate in specific geographic locations, such as brick-and-mortar
stores, restaurants, and other service- based business.
8. Digital marketing helps you connect with mobile customers.
Yet another one of the many benefits of digital marketing is that it allows you to connect with
consumers who are browsing and consuming content on their mobile devices. Over half of all
online users are accessing the web from a mobile device. Digital marketing can help you
reach people on mobile devices, tablets, and desktop computers.
9. You can easily and quickly adapt your strategy and tactics for best results.
With traditional marketing tactics like television or newspaper ads, you have to wait until
after the campaign is complete to see the results. And although you can use what you learn to
adjust later campaign tactics, there isn‟t much you can do “in-the-moment” to adapt your
strategies for best results.
While traditional marketing tactics may require you to wait weeks or even months to
determine which strategies are working, digital marketing allows you to view the real-time
results of your campaigns and adapt your tactics to improve results as you go.
Digital Marketing Platforms and StrategiesDigital marketing platforms success factors
It's important to evaluate emerging digital marketing platforms carefully since it's impossible
formost companies to invest in everything and use it well for marketing.
So evaluating new platform options is important. Typical issues to review include:
 Current and predicted future levels of customer adoption
 Competitor use and plans for new platforms
 Revenue forecast for each channel based on sales-predictions or ad revenue
 How use of new platforms can change brand-perception
 Cost of implementation of new platforms and repurposing content for these platforms
 Overall cost-benefit
How to structure a digital marketing plan?
An integrated digital strategy will give you a foundation for all the key online marketing
activities we recommend in the Smart Insights RACE digital marketing planning framework.
This integrates 25 essential multichannel marketing activities covering all parts of the
customer lifecycle broken down in these sections:
 Plan - Use a data-driven approach to review your current digital marketing
effectiveness, customize analytics, set up KPI dashboards and SMART objectives
create a strategy of prioritized improvements to how you deploy digital marketing
media, technology anddata to increase leads and sales
 Reach - Build awareness using the 6 key online marketing techniques which will
drive visits to your site.
 Act - Encourage interactions on your website or social media to help you generate
leads for future
 Convert - Use retargeting, nurturing and conversion rate optimization to remind and
persuade your audience to buy online or offline if phone and face-to-face channels if
these are important to you.
 Engage - Increase sales from existing customers by improving personalized
communications using web, email and social media marketing

Comparison of Marketing and Digital Marketing Digital Marketing vs Traditional

Marketing:
Digital marketing or online marketing refers to the marketed related work that a business
does through the Internet or an electronic device such as a mobile phone. Any business
(regardless of its size) can leverage digital marketing to reach out to their target market,
connect with prospects and convert more of them into customers/clients. Everything from
search engine marketing to Facebook marketing comes under digital marketing. And we offer
an array of digital marketing services here at LYFE. Feel free to check them out and see
which ones might be best for your business.

The reason why digital marketing is crucial for a business today is because the Internet is
becoming one of the most used tools. More and more people are logging on the web to carry
out their day to day activities, which includes purchasing goods and services.
If you look at the past decade you‟ll see that online marketing has grown exponentially. So
when it comes to digital marketing vs traditional marketing, it‟s clear that that digital as
a definiteedge.
Successful marketing requires a business to connect to prospects and customers in the best
possible way, so that there is an actual return on the investment. Given the fact that a large
majority of people (especially the Millennials) are spending their time on the Internet, it
makes sense for you, as a business, to connect to them on it.
As technology grows and the new digital ideas are brought to life, the digital marketing world
grows with it. One of the reasons why it continues to deliver results is because it is a form of
inbound marketing. Which means, instead of you going out there to find people, they find
you. Whether it is running an advertisement on Google or creating marketing related content
for your blog, it‟s all about attracting your target audience and spreading awareness.
The idea is to get out there and gain exposure. Because the more people know about your
website, your brand and the products you sell, the more familiar they become with your
agenda. Which eventually leads to close relationships or bonding that is developed on the
basis of trust.
Being a business, the Internet offers you a way to build an authority in your niche and grow
youronline presence like never before.
Digital Marketing Trends
1) Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence will take over the world! Or at least the world‟s simpler jobs.
AI can analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, utilizing data from social media
platforms and blog posts to help businesses understand how users and customers find their
products and services. For example, Facebook messenger bots (which we‟ll talk more about
later) can help you automate and optimize your customer service.

Artificial intelligence also offers information and tips to users by getting into conversations.
According to Gartner, 25% of customer service will use chatbot technology by 2020, up
from less than 2% in 2017.
Businesses adopting AI in 2019 will be able to save costs and accelerate growth, getting an
edge over their competitors.
2) Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising means using AI to automate ad buying so you can target more
specific audiences. Real-time bidding or auctions, for example, is a type of programmatic ad
buying. This automation is much more efficient and fast, which means higher conversions and
lower customeracquisition costs.
It‟s changing the face of digital advertising so swiftly that, according to eMarketer, almost
90% of digital display ads in the U.S. will be programmatic by 2020.
To learn how to capitalize on this digital marketing trend, check out PPC Hero‟s guide to get
started.
3) Chatbots
Chatbots will continue to be an important part of digital marketing in 2019.
This AI-based technology uses instant messaging to chat in real-time, day or night, with your
customers or site visitors. With 1.4 billion people interacting with chatbots, 80% of savvy
businesses are already using or plan to use chatbots by 2020. And by 2022, chatbots will help
businesses save over $8 billion per annum, especially in the banking and healthcare
industries.
Many customers prefer interacting with chatbots as they are responsive, give answers
promptly, accurately recall your entire buying history, and never lose patience. These virtual
assistants offer outstanding customer service, meeting customers‟ expectations and
automating a repetitive task – which means you can focus on more important work.
Uber uses chatbot technology to communicate with customers, making it easy for them to
hire cars even on Facebook Messenger, from Slack or via Google Maps. Passengers can use
the menu to choose the type of ride, make a request, track the location of the car, send friends
a time estimate of their arrival, and even make payment.

4) Personalization
If you want to stand out in 2019, you need to personalize your marketing – and that means
personalized content, products, emails, and more.
With the availability of data like purchase history, consumer behavior and links clicked,
custom content has never been easier. In fact, 96% of marketers believe that personalization
advances customer relationships.
As Kevin George, Head of Marketing at EmailMonks, says, “The future of e-mail is real-
time, behavior-based personalization. A study by Marketo shows that personalized, triggered
e-mails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast e-mails.”
Businesses like Netflix and Amazon are already leveraging the power of personalization.
Logging on to your Netflix account, for example, immediately shows you the evidence of
this: the banner, carousels, order, artwork, text and search are all personalized for you.
As they say: Personalization = Maximize enjoyment + Minimize search time

5) Video Marketing
These numbers show the importance of incorporating video into your digital marketing
strategy in 2019:
 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand‟s video.
 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate.
 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more
confident inonline purchase decisions.
 65% of executives visit the marketer‟s website and 39% call a vendor after
viewing avideo.

And don‟t just think YouTube. To witness higher engagement with your video marketing,
you can make a video post or start a live broadcast on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
Live video is gaining popularity, with a large number of businesses using it for interviews,
product demos and “behind the scenes” glimpses of events, life in the office, how products
are made, etc.
With ever-decreasing costs of film equipment and the increasingly high-quality smartphone
cameras, businesses and marketers are heading for personalized video messages rather than
phone calls or emails, which is called the 1:1 video approach.
YouTube and other videos are displayed in the SERPs, so video SEO is becoming much more
important – like using text overlays and closed captions, in addition to your description, title
and file names. Check out this guide to learn more about YouTube SEO.
And 360-degree video content, which allows for a more interactive experience, is on the rise
– just look for the circular symbol in the top left corner to start sliding the moving image left
or right as it‟s playing.

6) Influencer Marketing
As Raghav Haran puts it, “Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that
focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand‟s message to the larger market…. Rather
than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead pay influencers to get out
the wordfor you.”
Using influencers is a very effective marketing tool that works to attract customers.
Influencers can be anyone from celebrities and Instagram or YouTube stars to well-known
bloggers and journalists who help spread the word about your business or product through
their social channels.
Because people generally trust consumer opinions over corporate statements, frozen food
retailer Iceland “ditched celebrities in favour of real people, tapping into a dedicated
community of micro-influencers” like “real mums”. After partnering with Channel Mum,
Iceland‟s approval ratings increased from 10% to 80%, which was a 72% increase above the
agreed digital KPIs.
7) Social Messaging Apps
Think social messaging apps are just for sending emojis to your friends? Consider these
numbers:
 1.3 billion monthly users are active on Facebook Messenger
 2 billion messages are sent between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger
everymonth
 WhatsApp has 1.3 billion monthly active users
 55 billion messages are sent via WhatsApp every day
 WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat have more combined users than
Facebookor YouTube

These statistics show the growing popularity of social messaging apps for business purposes.
Since people are spending more of their time messaging each other, it makes sense to market
your company‟s services where your potential customers are hanging out.
Social messaging apps can be very useful in sending messages to customers directly, as they
allow personalization (another trend) and add value to the users‟ experience. This differs
from the messenger chatbots we discussed earlier. You‟re actually able to market to customers
using messaging apps present!
For example, I sometimes receive automated marketing messages from Facebook pages I
like. Kimra Luna loves to send me event notifications for her webinars and shows:
8) Visual Search
Visual search can take the user experience to a totally new level. With visual search, users
canupload an image to conduct a search and get more specific results.
Not surprisingly, Pinterest has jumped on the visual search bandwagon – they came out with
Lens, a new visual search tool that allows users to take a photo of an item to find out where to
buy it online, search for similar products, or view pin boards of related items.

And Pinterest is not the only one with visual search.

Google Lens is a visual search engine by Google, which recognizes objects, landmarks and
otherthings visually through a camera app (currently only available on Pixel phones).
If you take a photo of a:
 Business card: You can save the phone number or address to a contact.
 Book: You can get reviews and other details about it.
 Landmark or building: You can get more details about it.
 Painting in a museum: You can get details about it.
And CamFind is a visual search mobile app, which enables users to search for anything
from their mobile phones simply by snapping a picture and this app will tell you what it is.
Instead of typing queries into a search engine, you can directly search through images
to find similar images, price comparisons, local shopping results, etc. You can also take a
picture of a movie poster and CamFind will show you movie information, trailers, showtimes,
and local theaters.
Marketers can get the edge on competitors by jumping on the visual search trend in 2019 to
drawcustomers and serve them the perfect product.
9) Micro-Moments
People spend an average of 3 hours and 35 minutes on their smartphones every day, and
by 2019, mobile devices will be the medium that gets the most minutes in the U.S. (finally
surpassing television).
This is changing the way brands must work to capture buyers‟ attention.
Micro-Moments is a “new consumer behavior,” as termed by Google, that delivers your
marketing message clearly and concisely in a way that is of interest to the consumers – all
withina span of seconds (otherwise, they lose their attention and are onto the next article!).
People generally make instant decisions on what to eat, which restaurant to choose, what to
purchase, or where to go, so Micro-Moments that that every marketer should know about are:
To take advantage of micro-moments in 2019, be where consumers search for information in

the moment – such as Google, Google Maps, Amazon, YouTube, and anywhere else people
search for information at a moment‟s notice.
Take a look at how a variety of brands are using Micro-Moments in their marketing:
10) Voice Search & Smart Speakers
Hey Siri, what time is Mission Impossible playing tonight?Alexa, find me a recipe for apple
butter.
The increasing use of voice search has made it important for companies to rethink their
digital marketing strategies in 2019.
 50% of all searches will be voice searches by the year 2020
 20% of mobile queries on Google are voice searches
 25% of all Bing searches are voice searches
Voice search plays an important role in providing all the relevant information that people are
searching for through audio content. Artificial Intelligence is getting smarter and the number
of errors made by voice assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google has reduced.
Many brands have included voice search in their digital marketing strategies to deliver value-
based content effectively to their customers. Domino‟s Pizza uses voice search technology as
a way to increase its sales, thus allowing customers to order pizzas through Alexa:

Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home are also on the rise: 39 million Americans
use smart speakers and 65% of them say they wouldn‟t want to go back to life without their
voice- controlled assistant.
Keep in mind that not only will more companies produce audio content in the hopes of
gaining brand awareness (so you should, too), but ads are likely to come in soon. Alexa will
tell you the answer to your question along with a “word from her sponsor”. Which means
you‟ll be able to purchase voice ad space – like Google AdWords, but for home speakers.
For all voice technology, remember to write in a conversational tone, focus on getting
featured snippets on Google, and think about keywords that people will speak rather than
type.
11) Social Media Stories
With the growing popularity of social media “stories,” it is important for marketers to
consider this format in their digital marketing strategy. Savvy marketers can even make use
of live video, one of the most profitable social rollouts to date, to promote engagement and
brand awareness.
First Snapchat came out with the concept of “My Story,” then Instagram and Facebook
stories were introduced, and now YouTube has unveiled their own story format, “Reels.”
Since stories disappear after a set period of time, this is a great opportunity for marketers to
make good use of FOMO (fear of missing out). You can feature your employees in the
Stories, show the story behind the making of a product, ask for reviews about your products
and services or get creative like Bark Box did when they created an Instagram Story of a
“doggie interview”
Conclusion
2019 will be about better customer experience with personalization, automation and AI-
powered technology, so to stay ahead of the curve and increase conversions in the coming
year, you‟ll need to get better at producing custom, conversational content – particularly
audio and video content – to share with your better-targeted audience.
Different Segments of Indian Consumers & Impact of Digital Media

“Social media is a savior not a nemesis, an asset not a liability, a time saver not a time
killer for ad agency new business” – Michael Gass, new business consultant for
advertising agencies.
Along the process of evolving by leaps and bounds with every passing week, Digital Media is
also presenting marketers with end number of options for maintaining rich connections with a
larger number of people. The Digital Media has enabled marketers and advertisers to create a
digital world in which majority of the population is given access to a sum of human
knowledge and apt services. Indian consumers are known as one of the most discerning
consumers in the world. The Indian consumer behavior is a result of various elements like
family orientation, value orientation and word of mouth. Let‟s have a look at a simple
segregation of the different Indian consumers.
Socialite Consumer
This set of consumers can also be defined as the „Page 3′ consumers or the „Crème De La
Crème‟ of consumers. They mainly belong to the upper class. They prefer to shop in branded
stores and spend a good amount disposable income on luxury goods. Mostly, these
consumers prefer to shop at luxury malls and designer boutiques.
Conservative Consumer
As clear as it sounds, these consumers belong to the conservative middle class of the society.
This set of consumers has the individuals that spend a lot of time before actually buying a
certain product. As I mentioned before, the Indian consumer behavior is derived from value
orientation and word of mouth. A conservative consumer is a proper reflection of the Indian
consumer behavioral culture. These consumers mostly prefer durable products with high
functionality.
Working Class Woman
This segment has evolved tremendously over the last two decades. Catering to the
success, Indian women have been garnering, this segment has opened the floodgates for the
Indian retailers. Many retailers and brands have been heavily focusing on this segment as it is
home to women with a decent disposable income, own buying decisions and the urge to
shop and spendat the regular intervals.
Rural Consumer
As a result of increasing literacy in the country, satellite television and low priced smart
phones, this segment has witnessed a quick rise. There has been an upward surge in consumer
awareness amongst the rural markets in India. The volume consumption of fast-moving
consumer goods (FMCG) in this market is at its pinnacle.
These were the various segments of Indian consumers. Now, let‟s focus on how Digital
Media is influencing the behavior of these consumers.
The Digital Media has immensely influenced the Consumer Behavior patterns in the last
decade. Social Media and the e-Commerce Portals have played a big part in improving the
consumer awareness and reach across various corners of the country. Digital Media platforms
and e- Commerce provide a number of facilities like EMI options, Cash on Delivery (COD),
better prices than brick and mortar stores, huge discounts to turn the tide in the favor of the
consumer. Digital Media has also come out as a pivotal game changer of the rural consumer
market. With ecommerce and smart phones with internet, they are now able to order brands
which they wish to wear, without traveling to the city to buy those brands. Social Media has
also played an important role in influencing the Consumer Behavior. Nowadays, people buy
to get LIKES on their pictures. Buying has become very much a part of showing and flashing
those filtered pictures across several Digital and Social Media platforms. Now, consumers
prefer to check user reviews or a friend‟s review before buying goods or even watching a
movie. With lowest broadband connectivity, most Indians are turning towards smart phones
with internet, often checking new offers and products on mobile app. The internet penetration
in the country is still very much on the nascent side. With the latest happenings in Digital
Media and introduction of many innovative platforms in the pipeline, it will be interesting to
keep a watch on the changing Indian consumer behavior in the coming months.
Channels of Digital Marketing

Some of the digital marketing channels are listed below. A more detailed explanation of these
channels will be provided later in the article.

Some of the most popular digital marketing channels include the following –

 Social Media Marketing

 Search Engine Optimization
 Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
 Email Marketing
 Content Marketing
 Affiliate Marketing
 Display Advertising
 Online PR

How do you decide the right digital marketing channel?

While the aforementioned are a list of the most popularly used digital marketing channels, the
channels your brand or business should adopt depends on multiple factors.

First and foremost, you need to understand the digital marketing channels and platforms that are
relevant for your brand or business to be on. If you are a B2B business, it would not help much
to be on all social media platforms. Similarly, for a B2C brand or business, a platform like
LinkedIn might not prove to be as useful as, say, Facebook or Instagram or even Twitter. Next
you need to understand where most of your target audience will be on. This helps you get your
basic platforms right.

The right digital marketing channel for your brand or business also depends on your brand’s
business goals. If your goal is to generate leads for your business and you’re a B2B brand, it
makes more sense to use platforms that are business centric and have features that will help you
generate leads.

Digital Marketing Channels Explained

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing, as the name suggests, is a digital marketing channel used to promote
and market brands and businesses on various social media platforms. Some of the popular social
media marketing platforms include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on. The
platform you choose depends on whether you’re B2B or B2C apart from a whole lot of other
factors including your brand’s business goals.
Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is popularly called, is the art and science of getting
websites or specific web pages to show up on search engines when specific keywords are used as
search terms. SEO helps a brand gain visibility across search engines and geographies. The
process of optimizing a website for search engines begins quite early, more or less at the time the
website is being built. This is because the content that will ultimately go up on the website will
have to be optimized for search engines, while ensuring the keywords relevant to the business
and website are present in the content.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay Per Click Advertising is a type of digital marketing where the advertiser pays for every click
of an ad. Here, you can create multiple ads, monitorthem real-time, and optimize them as you go.
The advantage of this form of advertising is the paying bit. These are more specific in nature
since you get to define your audience to the T and these ads are shown specifically to those
matching the parameters you’ve defined. The amount you spend on PPC ads will depend, to a
large extent on the placement of ads, the type of ads (search ads/display ads), and so on.

Email Marketing

Email marketing, as the name suggests, is a digital marketing channel which is used to market
brands and businesses through emails. While email marketing runs the risk of emails getting into
the Spam folder, it is still a powerful means of increasing visibility of your brand or business.
Email marketing is used not just as a means of brand awareness, but also to generate leads,
highlight product offers, send out newsletters, and so on.

Content Marketing

Content is central to all marketing campaigns and activities. Content marketing involves
marketing various pieces of content written in your niche on several digital marketing channels.
What is most important for content marketing to work is high-quality, non-plagiarized content.
While non-plagiarized content is important, it is also necessary for you to ensure the content
you’re trying to market is relevant to your brand or business. The content you create can be in a
variety of formats including blogs, infographics, and other visual and written content formats.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a channel of digital marketing which works with the help of affiliate
marketers. It is a slowly catching up field in the area of digital marketing. Affiliate marketers
normally work on a commission basis where they charge a certain amount as commission for
every product or service they market through the process of affiliate marketing.

Display Advertising

Display advertising normally works more on the principle of placing display ads on various
blogs, websites, forums, and so on. In affiliate marketing, the payment works more on a Cost Per
Impression or CPM model rather than a Cost Per Click model.
Online PR

Online Public Relations is another field which, although not directly related to the concept of
digital marketing, can be considered to be a part of the overall digital marketing strategy of a
brand or business. It seems to connect more with Content Marketing, as a large part of PR is to
do with creating content about a brand or business.

Online PR

Overall, the aforementioned digital marketing channels work well if you have a solid digital
marketing strategy in place for your brand or business. Each channel has to be evaluated for its
relevance in your overall marketing strategy and needs to be aligned in keeping with your
business goals.

Irrespective of which digital marketing channel you choose to market your brand or business on,
it is important to periodically monitor the effectiveness of the channel and strategy so you can
finetune the strategy as per your business goals and other metrics.

Digital Marketing and Website Marketing

Digital Marketing VS Internet Marketing – What is the latest trend?

What is the difference between digital marketing and internet marketing, what is the latest trend
in the industry and how do big companies allocate their digital marketing budgets?

Digital Marketing

Digital marketingis a broad term that describes a set of marketing processes that encapsulates all
available digital channels to promote a product or service or build a digital brand.

Digital marketing has come to succeed traditional marketing and the transition from paper and
newspaper ads to Facebook and PPC campaigns.

The channels that make up digital marketing include: Web sites, Social media platforms, Banner
placement, email marketing, mobile marketing, SEO, pay per click campaigns, Web TV, SMS,
billboards and anything else with a digital foundation.
Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is a subset of digital marketing. It is in fact the most important component
since the majority of digital marketing activities fall within the boundaries of Internet marketing.

We will see below how digital marketing budgets are spent and their relationship with Internet
marketing.

Search Engine Marketing, Online Advertising

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business in an
increasingly competitive marketplace. With millions of businesses out there all vying for the
same eyeballs, it’s never been more important to advertise online, and search engine marketing is
the most effective way to promote your products and grow your business.

In this guide, you'll learn an overview of search engine marketing basics as well as some tips and
strategies for doing search engine marketing right.
7 Types of Online Advertising

Online advertising has evolved since its humble beginnings as a static image that pops up at the
top of a website. Now, there are a wide variety of advertising types you could use – we’ve listed
the seven top types here (and tried to give you the quick definition for it).

1. Display Ads

The original form of online advertising, these are visual ads that appear on third party websites
(usually ones that are related to your content or service in some way).

Display ads have evolved from the basic form of banner ads. Nowadays, display ads come as:

 Static images – these are your basic banner or square ads that appear around the content.
  Text – these are text ads that are created by algorithms to make text ads relevant to the
surrounding content.
 Floating banners – these move across the screen or float above the regular website’s
content.
 Wallpaper – these appear and change the background of a website, filling the whole
page.
 Popup ads – these are new windows that appear in front of the website content; newly
opened window displays the full ad so visitors can see.
 Flash – these are moving ads that “flash” different content at the viewer.
 Video – these are small video ads that autoplay or wait for the video to be played by the
visitor.

Display ads are usually very affordable. If you contact the third party site directly, their rates will
vary from site to site. If you go through a marketing site, they will charge you a base rate.

Some third party sites, like the Google Display Network, allow for demographic, geographic,
contextual and/or behavioral targeting – all of which help you target the audience that would be
most likely to be interested in your product or service.

2. Social Media Ads

In 2015, Social Media commerce totaled $30 billion in the US. It’s a marketing arena that is not
only efficient but effective. Very similar to Display Ads, Social Media ads can be anything from
a simple banner or image to an auto-play video.

Social Media advertising is great because you can target your audience perfectly. For example,
Facebook’s targeting options include age, region, interests, educational background and more.

Here are two types of Social Media advertisements:

 Organic – creates loyalty and gives you feedback from your target audience; new form
of Word-of-Mouth
 Paid – leverage promoted posts and reach specific people

The best platforms to target are:

 LinkedIn for B2B sales

 Facebook for display and top of funnel marketing
 StumbleUpon for amazing, attention-grabbing content

Other platforms to hit up if you have the budget for it:

 Twitter
 Google+
 Pinterest
 Instagram
  Tumblr
 Reddit

You can prepare your Social Media campaigns yourself or you can work with a marketing
agency to prepare your campaign.

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The most dependable form of online paid advertising (and also the most common) SEM works
based on keywords – you and other businesses like yours bid on keywords through search
engines in an effort to get your website up higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

All SEM ads that appear in Google, Bing and other search engines are text ads. They’re listed at
the top or sides of the SERP.

Paid ads can either be Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Thousand (CPM).

 PPC
 You bid on keywords and your results appear at the top of the SERP based on bid value.
 This is the best value package because you’re only charged when people click on the ad.
 Also, it’s the easiest to track during the campaign.
 CPM
 You’re billed a flat rate for 1,000 impressions.
o This makes it easy to apply a budget and you’re guaranteed a number of “shows”
on the SERP.
o However, you risk overspending – if no one clicks through you’re paying for
wasted results.
o Also, you can’t assess or track the campaign until it’s over.

You can also use SEM in the unpaid form by optimizing your website for keywords (also known
as SEO). Search engines list the unpaid results based on relevance so improving the SEO of your
site means you’ll be able to get more hits for free if you improve your site’s SEO.

The best platforms for SEM are Google AdWords, which allow you to create highly targeted
campaigns; to make the most of your Google AdWords campaigns. Another platform that’s great
for SEM is Bing, which has less competition than AdWords.

4. Native Advertising

Native advertising is those sponsored listings at the end of blog posts, appearing on your
Facebook feeds and posted to other Social Media.

These pieces of content are integrated and camouflaged into the platform on which they appear.
You can promote and post your Native Advertising through networks like Adblade,
Adsonar, Outbrain and Taboola.
There are several forms of Native Advertising:

 In-feed
 Search ads
 Recommendation widgets
 Promoted listings

5. Remarketing/Retargeting

The best way to market to people who already know about your product and service is to
remarket to them. Or retarget. Depends on who you’re talking to?

When people visit your site, you drop a cookie on them so that, as they travel around the web,
your ads will appear over and over to remind them about your product or service.

This form of advertising is inexpensive and, if done right, can be more effective than PPC. It
increases conversions because it reminds people of you who already know who you are.

You can try to set this up yourself on Facebook Remarketing, Google Remarketing and more.
Or, you can use a third-party platform or provider to set up your remarketing campaigns – read
our Retargeting Cagematch for the 4-1-1 on all of the available platforms you could use… and
which are best.

6. Video Ads

While YouTube ads are the most popular and well known of video ads, there are actually several
different formats, types and content options.

You can go the route of educational/informative. Or maybe you want to post a how-to. Try to
pull on the emotional strings of your viewers by creating a visual story. Ideal for branding,
especially if you have a product or service that is best demonstrated visually

Whatever you choose, Video Ads are gaining in popularity because they avoid blatant
advertising while also attracting the limited attention span of many YouTubers.

Once you’ve created your video, you can post to:

 YouTube/Google
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Vimeo
 Brightroll
 YuMe
 Hulu
 Live Rail
 Adap.tv
  Specific Media
 Tube Mogul
 Tremor Video
 AOL
 Auditude

YouTube also have the fun little Pre-Roll ads (those short… sometimes long… ads that appear
before the video you actually want to watch starts).

7. Email Marketing

Hanging out with Display Ads back near the start of online advertising, Email Marketing is a
cheaper, faster and effective form of advertising.

It’s a great way to build customer loyalty and boost sales; when you use an email campaign
manager (see the list below) to prepare and send your emails, you can easily track how well they
do and monitor your ROI.

Email Campaign Managers:

 MailChimp
 Constant Contact
 AWeber
 ConvertKit
 GetResponse
 Campaign Monitor
 Active Campaign

In order to succeed at email marketing, you first need to build a list of email addresses. You can
do so by using quizzes, or you can put a simple Newsletter sign-up on your site.

Then, you can send email campaigns that focus on promotions, discounts, features or content
you’ve posted to your blog. Most emails are short, sweet and to the point. A concise message
makes it easy to get your point across and increase conversions.

Just don’t forget to check your region/country’s spam rules.

Email Marketing Blog Marketing, Social Media Marketing

The term blog comes from the combination of "web" and "log" or "weblog," and was eventually
shortened to "blog." In the 1990's when blogs first appeared, they were primarily online diaries,
where people would provide personal accounts of their lives. At that time, blogs were
traditionally built websites that were updated and uploaded manually, limiting the number of
bloggers to only those who knew how to build and upload web pages. It wasn't until the late
1990s when LiveJournal and then Blogger developed platforms that didn't require tech
knowledge, that blogging expanded.
In the early 2000s, WordPress came along and quickly grew into one of the most used blogging
platforms.

Difference between Websites and Blogs

One of the major differences between websites and blogs is the amount of site owner and visitor
engagement. Blogs are often lumped in with social media because visitors can leave comments
and talk with the blog owner. Prior to blogging, visitors to websites could sign a "guest books,"
but there wasn't a method to have a conversation online (except email) through the site.

Another aspect of blogs that differ from traditional websites is the frequency in which it's
updated. Many websites are static, in that once they're up, the information doesn't change. Blogs,
on the other hand, are like news sites, that are updated often with new content.

Like many new resources that pop up, visionary entrepreneurs recognized the blog format as a
marketing tool and began to use it to provide information and updates to their customers, and as
a way to draw in new business. From there, blogs grew into a new and effective marketing
strategy.

Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is the process of reaching your home business' target market through the use of a
blog. Initially, business owners had a blog separate from their websites, but today, you can easily
integrate the two to make it easier for you to manage, as well as easier for visitors to access.
Many business owners use a blogging platform, such as WordPress, for both their site and blog.
Further, as blogging has grown in ease and popularity, many people have created businesses
from blogging all on its own (as opposed to having a business first and then blogging).

For example, some food blogs are businesses in and of themselves.

The Pros of Blog Marketing

The very nature of blogging makes them ideal for marketing since they provide new content to
draw people back, and offer a way for consumers and businesses to interact. Here are a few other
benefits:

1. Inexpensive to Start and Run. While there are free blogging platforms, such as Blogger
and Wordpress.com, to maintain a professional appearance that allows for your unique
brand to shine through, use a self-hosted option, such as WordPress.org. For the cost of a
domain and web hosting, you can have customized blog marketing for you.
2. Easy to Use. Most blogging platforms are simple to use. If you can copy, paste, type,
drag & drop and upload, you can have a professional looking blog.
3. An Effective Way to have Bi-directional Traffic Come to Your Site. Offering tips,
updates, and other new contents give people a reason to come and/or return to
your business website, which gives them the opportunity to buy.
 1. Improves Search Engine Ranking. Google, in particular, likes to find and rank new
content, and many entrepreneurs use blogging specifically for search engine optimization
(SEO)
2. Allows You to Show Your Expertise to Gain Trust and Credibility with Your
Market. People like to know who they're doing business with. With a blog, you can
prove you're an expert, provide helpful tips and other valuable information, all of which
help consumers feel good about spending money on your product or service.
3. Connect with Your Market. While most businesses now use Twitter and other social
platforms more than blogs for engagement, blogs can allow you to have a conversation
with your market. This gives you the opportunity to build trust and rapport, as well as get
feedback and provide customer service.

1. It Can Make Money Beyond Your Product or Service. You can accept
advertising, promote affiliate products and get sponsors, adding additional sources of
revenue to your business.

The Cons of Blog Marketing

Like just everything else in life, there is a downside to blogging, including:

1. Time-Consuming. Creating new content and updating your blog can take a significant
amount of time. Hiring freelance writers and a virtual assistant, or using private label
right content can help.
2. Needs a Constant Stream of Ideas. Along with time, having something new blog about
is one of the biggest challenges bloggers face.
3. It Can Take Time to See Results. The Internet is overloaded with information, so
getting people to your blog takes time.
4. It Needs to Be Marketed Too. You're using the blog to market your business, but for it
to work, people need to know about it, which means you have to find your target market
and entice them to your blog.

How to Do Blog Marketing

Starting a blog and using it to promote your business can be set up within minutes. It's the
ongoing management and marketing that will take time.

1. Make a Blog Marketing Plan. What are you going to share on your blog? News, tips,
resources, etc? Further, how often will you update your blog? Daily, weekly, etc?
2. Create Your Blog. Decide on your blogging platform, and set it up, including
customization that fits your business. Be sure to use the same logo on your blog as on
your website (if you have a separate website) to retain consistency. If you use a free blog
platform (not recommended for business blogging), have a domain name pointing to the
blog to make it easier for consumers to get to your site.
 1. Fill Your Blog with Several Posts ASAP. Readers don't like to visit a blog with only
one or two posts. Add ten or more posts quickly, and then go to your regular post
schedule.
2. Market Your Blog. It's very easy to integrate social media into your blogs so that your
blog posts go out to your followers. Include your blog on your marketing materials as
well.
3. Reply to Comments. Remember, blogs are social, so people will ask questions, provide
feedback, or share their opinion. Delete spam posts.
4. Use Your Blog to Encourage Email Signups.Signups is another great way to keep
people who are interested in your business coming back to your blog, which again, gives
them more opportunity to spend money with you.
5. Get the right tool to kickstart your social media marketing efforts in 2017.

Social Media Marketing

Audio, Video and Interactive Marketing

Audio Visual Solutions

Cutting Edge Audio Video Solutions for Commercial Businesses

What is Interactive Marketing?

A Definition of Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing is a one-to-one marketing practice that centers on individual customer and
prospects’ actions. Interactive marketing involves marketing initiatives that are triggered by
customers’ behaviors and preferences; for this reason, it is a major shift from traditional
campaign-based marketing efforts. A customer-centric strategy, interactive marketing involves
reacting to customer actions and striving to meet their expectations and demands.
In order for marketers to pull off successful interactive marketing efforts, they must have access
to advanced technology that delivers complete, 360-degree views of customers.

Types of Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing includes many types of initiatives. Marketers may interact with customers
via dynamic content such as visual storytelling, personalized content, layered information, and
two-way interaction. No matter which type of interactive marketing initiative you implement, the
goal is to make content engaging and relevant for customers.

 Interactive Storytelling – Marketers can seize opportunities to be as dynamic with content

as possible; this may mean adding an animation or infographic to a blog post or creating
native ads rooted in storytelling that incorporated mixed media elements. Break up long-
form posts and advanced landing pages with text divisions, video and audio clips, and
interactive components that allow sharing and discovering more information.

 Personalized Content – Use advanced technology to gain insights into customers’

demographics, geographic data, lifecycle information, and more to deliver personalized,
relevant content and offers. When you know as much as you can about your customers as
individuals, you can create the most meaningful experiences for them. Customers will
relate to the content more fully when it is personalized appropriately, and they will be
more apt to interact with the content by sharing it.

 Layered Information – Educating customers has become a top priority for marketers, and
interactive marketing is a smart way to layer in information for consumers by delivering
detailed content in increments. Marketers have the ability to tell brand stories by
providing snippets of information in easy-to-read quick takes and then delivering more
detailed, informative content in other layers to audience members who want to know as
much about a topic as possible.

 Two-Way Interaction – Two-way interaction initiatives are at the heart of interactive

marketing because they give consumers a vehicle for active participation. For example,
interactive tools such as quizzes, calculators, branching content, games, and interactive
videos provide a more powerful experience for the audience.

Challenges of Interactive Marketing

One of the hurdles marketers must overcome when utilizing interactive marketing is a lack of
access to all customer data. Without individualized customer intelligence from all sources,
marketers cannot gain a complete view of customers. In fact, interactive marketing is an
incredibly difficult undertaking for organizations that have disparate customer data; data in
warehouses, CRM systems, contact center applications, data lakes, and online and social
activities remains siloed, and organizations struggle to know customers on an individual level,
when they do not have a customer experience platform that aggregates data from every available
source.

Other challenges of interactive marketing include grabbing the audience’s attention because of
all of the content available today, converting viewers to leads, making marketing efforts more
customer centric, increasing the reach of your content, and achieving marketing automation.

Benefits of Interactive Marketing

There are substantial advantages to using interactive marketing, especially now that consumers
expect companies to exceed their expectations. With interactive marketing, organizations
increase their chances of meeting customer needs because they already show an interest in the
product and marketers have the ability to respond to their actions. Interactive marketing reduces
risk and increases sales because it is rooted in customer behaviors and desires. The
personalization associated with interactive marketing results in more conversions and higher
revenue. Overall, interactive marketing can boost sales, enhances customer satisfaction, lowers
marketing costs, and opens the door to automated marketing.
Online Public Relations, Mobile Marketing

To be successful with online PR we suggest you review the range of options that are available
for getting your name out on to other websites. We have developed our Digital Marketing Radar
to help you think about all the options available

The Radar works by reviewing your main potential influencers within each spoke of the wheel.
You can place the most important ones close to the center.

Another way of reviewing your Online PR options is through these 4 types of strategy:
Online PR definition

Online PR activity is closely associated with improving results from many of the other digital
marketing communications techniques in particular social media, SEO (link-building),
partnership marketing and viral marketing / word-of-mouth marketing.

Take a mobile-first, mobile-friendly approach

The increase of media consumer smartphone use changes the game substantially for PR and
marketing professionals from a technological perspective. The execution of campaigns and
messages demands a new set of considerations.
Mike Munter, an SEO and online marketing consultant, noted that “Google recently changed its
algorithm to provide better search results for users on smartphones. What this means is every
business website is going to need to upgrade to be mobile ready if they want to get found. The
marketing impact is simple: You’ve got to upgrade your website to be mobile ready. 35 percent
of all organic traffic comes from mobile, and trending up. 68 percent of all websites lose traffic
because they aren’t mobile and thus difficult to navigate.”

Michael Harris, partner and co-founder of Uproar PR, pointed out the practical limitations of
mobile presentation, and what this means for PR strategy. “On mobile, less content is visible at a
given time. You have only a short period to give the user a picture of who you are and what you
do. Making sure your site is responsive and that your regularly updated content displays easily,
like your blog or social media, is one way to make sure your story gets told on the small screen,”
he said. “Mobile puts even more value on online content. The ability to read on the go and get
news anywhere and anytime has drastically improved a story’s potential reach. It still nice to see
your name in print, but really, the most value comes from your story landing front page of the
online version.”

Beyond website mobile compatibility, the details of the message and how it’s presented to
influencers are also crucial. Traditional journalists, for example, are very often on the go and
working with increasingly limited resources. Easy access to information that is also easily shared
is of utmost importance.

Christopher Penn, vice president of marketing technology for SHIFT Communications,

specifically noted the importance of mobile-friendly formats when communicating with
journalists and influencers. “PR professionals should be intimately familiar with mobile press
releases and constructing such content on mobile-centric platforms like Twitter. Twitter cards,
embedded with images, carousels, or videos are an easy way to pack a lot of relevant information
into a very small, mobile-friendly package.”

Know your audience, do your homework

While crafting mobile-friendly press releases and capitalizing on the power of social media are
essential to mobile reach, a firm grasp of audience characteristics and needs is still, as always, a
central foundation of good PR, and shouldn’t be left behind while considering mobile strategy.
Maria Gonzalez, senior partner of the Gonzberg Agency, pointed out that PR professionals “must
understand what their particular target audience wants. As before the prevalence of smartphone
use, this understanding requires doing the right homework in order to frame stories based on a
message that resonates with the target — i.e., making sure the story is market-centric, rather than
product-centric. Developing that message requires defining your target audience
by demographics, psychographics and sociographics (depending on the target, these all can vary
dramatically). Having an in-depth, three-dimensional target profile in place not only tells you
what makes the target tick and what they want to hear, but also how they want to hear it,” she
explained.

Gonzalez noted that while the audience has not changed, necessarily, their mobile habits have
changed the way we characterize this audience. “People now research everything at the drop of a
hat because of mobile device use. And, they also now have the ability to seek out
that information based on their preferences — resulting in a much more highly fragmented media
landscape than even a few years ago. Because options were limited pre-mobile, even a ‘one size
fits all’ mindset could produce passable results, but that is no longer the case. Modern strategies
must take into account this ever increasing fragmentation, and doing so requires using the in-
depth, three-dimensional target audience profile to map out the relevant ‘touchpoints’ in
their ‘customer decision-making’ journey based on the weighted importance of referrals, media,
type of devices in use, etc. And, even with all this fragmentation, any strategy has to ensure that
a consistent message comes across — one that is as clear in 25 characters, as in a 30-
second video.”

Tell a good story, regardless of format

The fragmentation of the media landscape and decreased attention span of most media
consumers dictates a need to adhere to the crux of PR, marketing and any type of media
communication: don’t skimp on the storytelling.
Jason Parks, founder and owner of The Media Captain, applied this to a mobile landscape.
“Marketing professionals need to tell their own story in a condensed and compelling fashion.
Site visitors average less than 15 seconds per page on desktop, and it is even less time on mobile
devices. This means outstanding copy, compelling imagery and easy navigation are key
components to effectively executing a mobile marketing campaign.”

Photo credit: Fashiontalenet via Flickr

Dan Lobring, managing director of communications for r Evolution, echoed this sentiment. “At
its heart, PR/communications is all about storytelling. So while the technology may change and
how people consume media may evolve, at its heart, the foundations of telling a good story have
to remain constant. So while you may target a message for a mobile format, i.e., does Snap Chat
make sense for my brand, is my website mobile friendly, am I engaging with my fans in real-
time around tent pole events, etc.; the bottom line is that if you have a compelling story and you
position it in an authentic and engaging way, it will stand out and have an impact.”

As CNN’s Brian Stelter famously noted in a 2008 New York Times article on reaching younger
audiences with political news, the attitude that becomes increasingly more evident, especially
with younger audiences, is “If the news is that important, it will find me.” Advancing this
thought into mobile, it becomes clear that we might now say, “If the news is that important, it
will find me on my mobile phone.”
Migrating from Traditional Channels to Digital Channels
Encouraging Channel Migration

Despite potential drops in satisfaction and engagement, it is still important for banks and credit
unions to find ways to migrate customers from more expensive channels to less expensive online
and mobile banking. Thus is especially true with customers who are less profitable to the bank.

While there are many strategies that can be used to encourage a customer to use digital channels,
it is important to first determine the optimal channels that will meet both the bank’s and
customer’s needs and the consequences (by customer segment) of channel mismatches.

Not surprisingly, customer’s preferences of channels are almost always more complex and
expensive than the channel(s) the bank would prefer the customer to use. This is why the closing
of branches generates such a highly charged dialogue both within the industry and with
customers. While a customer may not use a branch, they always want to know one is easily
accessible.

Channel migration strategies are further impacted by the fact that customers are very unique in
their channel use. For instance, Gallup found that in a randomly selected sample of 3,000 retail
banking customers, customers used more than 750 unique combinations of channels to
accomplish their banking needs.

It was also found that is is much more difficult to migrate a customer from their current channel
habits than to build an optimal channel use strategy at the start of a relationship (or to use a best-
in-class channel strategy to acquire customers who use the channels desired by the bank.

Gallup found three overarching strategies for banks wanting to migrate customers to online and
mobile channels:

1. Offer positive — or negative — incentives.Examples of using incentives for online and/or

mobile use are the waiver of fees or even the paying of small incentives for performing specific
transactions through lower cost channels. According to the Gallup research, more than 70% of
customers would be willing to switch to digital channels if offered fee-based incentives, while
incentives that enhance functionality were less effective.

Disincentives include the use of fees for paper statements. Banks need to be careful, however
with fees since there is a hypersensitivity to any fees that may be applied to interactions that have
traditionally been free. The Gallup analysis showed that half of all customers will look for
another bank if fees are imposed (for example, if the bank increases interest rates on current
loans by 0.25%).
2. Set positive defaults. Another approach banks can use is to position the new online and
digital channels as the ‘standard’. By doing so, customers would need to “opt out” of a channel
strategy. This is advantageous compared to having the customer ‘opt-in’ to a channel.

To make it easier for platform personnel or to reduce abandoned online account opening
‘shopping carts’, banks and credit unions could reinforce not opting out by providing incentives
or rewards for customers who agree to use the bank’s desired channel. According to Gallup, the
key is to allow customers to select their own optimal channel use plan and pay appropriately for
it.

3. Provide interactive education. In addition to using incentives or positive defaults to change

customer behavior, banks can provide customers with interactive technology education within
the branch and online to encourage channel migration. This could be accomplished through
interactive kiosks in the branch or by building tablet learning tools or short instruction videos to
acclimate customers to new channels.
The 4 Financial Marketing Trends You Cannot Ignore in 2019

The Top 25 Search Terms on Banking Websites: Impacts & Opportunities

Potential Unintended Consequences

While moving customers to less expensive channels is imperative due to the high operational and
regulatory costs in banking, there can be unintended consequences to an increased reliance on
digital channels according to Gallup.

One of the impacts of moving less emotional and involved transactions out of the branch is that
customers will rely more on branches for involved advisory and problem solving transactions. In
addition, transaction levels will continue to plummet, eliminating the need for traditional tellers.
Most bank and credit union branches are not adequately configured for these changes either from
a personnel or physical perspective. Without the reduction in personnel and real estate costs,
moving customers to alternative channels could actually increase costs.

Another unintended consequence is that as more customers move to self-service channels, the
ability to interact, provide advice and sell will be reduced. In addition, the ability to move
relationships to another institution is made easier in an online/mobile world.

Your Strategy Going Forward

Moving customers to less expensive channels is required based on the economics of today’s
banking industry. But migrating customers who are already set in their ways comes with both
satisfaction and engagement risks which could result in attrition, reduced balances, lower
profitability and the unintended consequences of digital as opposed to human interaction.
As channel migration strategies are developed, it will be important to segment a bank’s and
credit union’s customer base based on profitability and current channel use to develop an
optimum channel strategy. Understanding the impact of potential channel migration strategies
will be important and the use of multichannel communication and training will be key to
acceptance.
Need of a Digital Marketing Plan
Why do you need a Digital Marketing Strategy/Plan for your business?

Let’s start with some really basic thinking… would you setup a new business without first
having planned out How is it going to be financed, Who is your target audiences, What will you
sell [services or products] and Where will you be based? NO! It would be madness! The right
approach is to develop a business plan to guide you towards success. So when you consider your
Online Business why assume that it is okay to go ahead without a properly crafted Plan?

Okay, before we move forward, let’s be clear about Why you have an online presence in the
first place?

In other words, why do you have a Business Website, Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn or
Instagram accounts? Why do you need these digital platforms and how are you using them?
Have you genuinely considered what it is that you want to achieve as a result of using these
platforms? In a surprising number of cases, many businesses do not have a clearly defined
strategy for using these platforms. As such, you are missing out on the real potential these
digital platforms have in developing your online business.

Consider this – if you don’t have a digital marketing strategy for your business, then you
have NO clearly defined Goals or KPI’s to measure performance!

Research carried out according to Smart Insights in June 17 shows that 49% of businesses don’t
have a clearly defined marketing strategy. Many companies believe that they have a digital
marketing strategy in place because they have someone in the office doing a bit of work on
Facebook and Twitter and their employees are on LinkedIn. Someone is posting on a semi-
regular basis and letting followers know about their products or services, special deals and so
on. Isn’t that enough? Put simply, NO! This is not a strategy, even if you get some likes and
shares. This is the ‘SPAY AND PRAY METHOD’ – not part of an overall plan to get genuine
attention for your business online from the clients/customers you want to do business with.

Think Of Your Online Business As An Actual Business

You should consider your Online Business as an actual business in its own right. There are two
main reasons for taking your business Online, the first is to generate a sustainable income stream
by selling your products or services and the second is to develop your Brand and Reputation.
For companies that are not directly selling products online, your key objective is to acquire
Leads that will result in new sales opportunities. So, is there any logic in thinking that this can
be done without planning and without a carefully crafted strategy? Not realistically!

Let’s move on to what is required:

The 5 Most Important Aspects of a Digital Marketing Strategy

o Understand your Goals and Desired Outcomes:

o Why develop an online business and What do you want to achieve
o Your Goals need to be realistic and achievable so it is wise to use the SMART
approach throughout
 o Understand the financial investment required to achieve your desired outcomes –
be realistic!
o Employ a number of Objectives to help you achieve your Goals

 Get to Know and Reach your target audience online:

o Get to know your audience, their likes and dislikes and their personas
o Quality SEO will help you reach your target audience and is key to getting found
online
o Know where your audience resides online – the channels they most often use
when online
o Talk to your audience in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them

 Develop Quality and Relevant Content for your target audience:

o This starts with your Website, which needs to be designed to facilitate the User
Journey
o Create and Curate content that is relevant and interesting for your audiences
o Develop your Social Media Channels and provide relevant and engaging content
for your audiences
o Develop and Build your Content Calendar – absolutely essential for success

 Measure Your Success:

o Use a set of analysis and measuring tools to enable you to see the progress of your
campaigns
o Key Performance Indicators will enable you to measure success
o Statistical Reporting – produce real-time reporting to keep you informed of
progress or issues arising

 Analyse& Iterate:
o Once you analyse performance you can begin to implement changes
o Implement changes to improve your return on investment (ROI)
o Use an Iterative approach to continually develop your campaigns and your online
visibility
o Reassess your budgets – keep them realistic and achievable based on your desired
outcomes

10 reasons why you may need a digital channel strategy?

1. You're directionless

I find that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have a clear strategic
goal for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper
relationships with existing ones. And if you don't have goals with SMART digital marketing
objectives you likely don't put enough resources to reach the goals and you don't evaluate
through analytics whether you're achieving those goals.
2. You won't know your online audience or market share

Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven"t researched this.
Perhaps, more importantly, you won't understand your online marketplace: the dynamics will be
different to traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behaviour,
competitors, propositions, and options for marketing communications. There are great tools
available from the main digital platforms where we can find out the level of customer demand,
we recommend doing a search gap analysis using Google's Keyword planner to see how you are
tapping into the intent of searchers to attract them to your site, or see how many people interested
in products or services or sector you could reach through Facebook IQ.

3. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share

If you're not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you're using an ad-hoc approach
with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!

4. You don't have a powerful online value proposition

A clearly defined online customer value proposition tailored to your different target customer
personas will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers
to engage initially and stay loyal. Developing a competitive content marketing strategy is key to
this for many organizations since the content is what engages your audiences through different
channels like search, social, email marketing and on your blog.

5. You don't know your online customers well enough

It's often said that digital is the "most measurable medium ever". But Google Analytics and
similar will only tell you volumes of visits, not the sentiment of visitors, what they think. You
need to use other forms of website user feedback tools to identify your weak points and then
address them.

6. You're not integrated ("disintegrated"• )

It's all too common for digital marketing activities to be completed in silos whether that's a
specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT or a separate digital agency. It's easier that way to
package digital marketing into a convenient chunk. But of course, it's less effective. Everyone
agrees that digital media work best when integrated with traditional media and response
channels. We always recommend developing an integrated digital marketing strategy and once
Digital Transformation is complete digital marketing activities will be part of your marketing
plan and part of business as usual.
7. Digital doesn't have enough people/budget given its importance

Insufficient resource will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is
likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond
to competitive threats effectively.

8. You're wasting money and time through duplication

Even if you do have sufficient resource it may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger
companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools
or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.

9. You're not agile enough to catch up or stay ahead

If you look at the top online brands like Amazon, Dell, Google, Tesco, Zappos, they're all
dynamic -trailing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.

10. You're not optimizing

Every company with a website will have analytics, but many senior managers don't ensure that
their teams make or have the time to review and act on them. Once a strategy enables you to get
the basics right, then you can progress to continuous improvement of the key aspects like search
marketing, site user experience, email and social media marketing. So that's our top 10 problems
that can be avoided with a well thought-through strategy.

So, the good news is that there are powerful reasons for creating a digital strategy and
transforming your marketing which you can use to persuade your colleagues and clients. There is
also now a lot of experience from how other businesses have successfully integrated digital
marketing into their activities as explained in the example digital plans, templates and best
practices in our digital marketing strategy toolkit.

Elements of a Digital Marketing Plan

8 Elements of a Successful Digital Marketing Plan

1. Online advertising

One of your first steps should be to spend more of your marketing budget on online ads.

If you’re new to digital advertising, it can be confusing getting a grasp on the variety of online
ads available.

We’ve compiled a short list of the primary online adverts:

  Google AdWords: These are online ads created within Google’s AdWords platform using
targeted keywords. If the words typed into Google match your keywords, your ad can
appear above the search results. Read our 14 Killer AdWords tips to help you get started.

 PPC Ads: With pay-per-click advertisements the cost of advertising is determined by the
number of clicks your ad receives. Check out our article about PPC.
 Display Ads: Image based advertising that often appears on the side, top or bottom
section of a website. Below is an example of a top and side display ad

2. Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) increases your brand’s online visibility through successful
search marketing. You need to use on-page optimisation techniques and keyword strategies to
get your brand in front of the people interested in your products.

In the past, SEO helped sites rank higher, sometimes in unethical ways. Today, SEO helps
legitimise your website(s) and should be used to benefit the consumer.

Small and medium companies can do quite well in search engine listings, and receive a
considerable return on investment on their SEO efforts.

For example, the figure below shows a search engine results page for the query ‘boat
manufacturers’.

The top organic result is evidence of the companies search’s status.“Hardymarine”, Warriorboats
and Fairline are the top three businesses found in our search query.
3. Online Content and Blogging

Blogging, along with other forms of content distribution has moved into the mainstream. The
lines between blogging and traditional media have blurred. Establish a blog on your company
website to help project personal and corporate messaging.

Brown, Broderick, and Lee (2007) found that blogs are the most trusted information source,
secondary only to newspapers. Use your blog as a tool to facilitate your relationship with
customers.

Fordway Solutions, an IT Infrastructure, Consultancy and Cloud company with 60 employees,

use their blog to share information and educate customers around new IT solutions and services.

4. Web PR

Online press release distribution improves online visibility and will help you connect with your
target audience.Press releases can be used effectively as part of an integrated link building
strategy. However, utilise your press releases only when the content is truly worth sharing.

For example, bookseller.com published a release by Lion Hudson plc, regarding the retirement of
their company’s MD Nick Jones. This release is newsworthy in the book publishing community
and thus appropriate content to share within said industry.
Another example, is a press release published by Horticulture Week, featuring the Online
Excellence Award being given to Crocus.co.uk, an online plant sales business. Not only is this a
great media piece, it also talks about Crocus.co.uk redesigning their website to include rich
content and videos, improvements resulting in double-digit conversion growth. Have a look at
their website for inspiration.

Reach out to various media related websites and send them over a sold pitch, they may write an
article on your company or feature your team in a blog post.

5. Social Media Management and Listening

Social media has become a significant source of interaction between consumers and their
favourite brand. Use this medium to have a conversation with your customers.

Connect Catering has both a LinkedIn company page and Facebook business page which they
use to publish updates regarding their business and interact with their customers.
The digital age have modified consumers’ expectations of branded communication

The result is that consumers expect your brand to interact with them in a medium where the
consumer controls every aspect of the conversation; the timing, the channel, and the content.

Establish some social media pages of your own and appoint somebody within your company to
use a social media monitoring tool to find out what people are saying about you, so that you can
respond in a timely manner.

6. Email and Online Newsletter Marketing

As long as they’re permission-based, email campaigns can be highly effective.

Milton Sanford Wines is a good examples of a company that creates highly effective email
campaigns tobring communities together, while stimulating their business.
Follow their example and prompt customers to subscribe to your newsletter. You’ll get their
email address and an open channel to communicating with them.

Email is one of the best forms of digital marketing as its cheap, direct, instantaneous, and easy to
track, and it pushes your message to your audience.Be sure to customise your messaging and
segment your email list.

Read our 13 powerful email marketing tips to transform your mailing list into a money-making
machine for your business.

7. Mobile Marketing

SMEs can access a wider audience through their mobile devices.

The use of mobile phones as a marketing medium is quickly gaining popularity.

More businesses are gaining access to mobile phone numbers and using SMS to advertise their
products and services.

Another factor is the growth of mobile web usage. Locally-based advertising also involves
mobile devices and GPS. It exploits the knowledge about where a mobile device user is located.
Users searching online for a product or service will get a list of options within their location.

For example, if you were in Oxfordshire and searching for a car dealerships using your phone, a
below list would have popped up on your search screen.

8. Web Analytics

Use web analytics, like Google Analytics, to measure your digital marketing effectiveness and
record online customer behaviour.

By using analytics you’ll gain a better understanding of your target audience.

This deeper analysis allows managers to better understand variations in message performance
based on time of day, day of week, audience, and engagement metrics.
Website traffic and activity is also traceable and measurable.

By using a program like Google Analytics, you company can find out how your visitors found
you and how they interacted with your site.

Use the information gained to help you plan your next digital marketing campaign and guide you
to online success.

Situational Analysis, Opportunities and Issues

Digital marketing plan - situation analysis

The situation analysis section of your digital marketing plan needs to describe the context in
which your digital marketing will take place. It should include an analysis of your business'
internal (micro) and external (macro) environments.

Internal considerations include your:

 customers
 market, and any trends in this
 current online proposition
 competitors

External considerations could be:

 social - how changing consumer attitudes could affect your approach

 legal - ie complying with digital marketing laws, such as data protection
 environmental - eg making sure your approach is ethical and sustainable
 political - how local or national government could impact on your plan
 technological - how advances in technology could affect your marketplace
 Goals and Objectives

There are 3 strategic objectives that digital marketers need to set and measure in order to
generate revenue.

The 3 strategic objectives are:

1. Convert leads into buying customers

2. Increase the LTV of your customers
3. Win-back inactive and lost customers

Let’s look at the customer lifecycle and its journey from a lead to a churning customer. The chart
above explains the journey visually, and thus are the strategic objectives:

1. Convert leads to customers

Most of the budget we invest in digital is directed towards acquisition strategies. SEO, PPC,
Facebook ads, banners, affiliation, etc. The true objective is to take the leads we invest so much
money in, and convert them into buying customers.

We need to measure how much money we spend on each channel against the conversions we
have. If we do not do that, then our acquisition strategy is merely a hobby. Assigning monetary
values to each channel and looking into conversions, is often called attribution. Which is why
we want to measure the increase in conversions against our actions while assigning desirable
targets? E.G 20% of my leads are converted into buyers each month.

2. Increase LTV

Given the investment we’ve made in acquiring the customers, every sell we will have from now
onwards will yield larger gross margins (the purchase cost doesn’t include the acquisition costs
anymore). And hence what we want to do here, is look into the increase of the spent from our
existing clients and make sure they are retained. Here you need to look into increase in the
average purchase from your clients, and increase in their engagement metrics (more visits,
increased time on site, review of products, etc).

3. Win-back

The third and last objective is trying to pull back the customers who churned or are inactive
toward the center of the customer lifecycle, so that the pool of customers we have will churn in a
slower pace (twist it, turn it, customers will always churn. The best you can do is delay their
churn).

I am not going into the tactics used, but looking at the strategy, you want to measure win-back
ratios (churning customers – churning customers who purchased again) and work against
improving this number.
Digital marketing plan - budget

The final section of your digital marketing plan will outline your budget for achieving your
objectives. This is best presented as a single spreadsheet, providing specific detail on:

 what you plan to spend overall

 how this will be broken down across tactics over a fixed period
 any financial key performance indicators or milestones that need to be met
 potential return on investment across channels
 a summary of projected benefits - which can be used in the executive summary

The summary of projected benefits should include estimates of how much traffic will be
generated from each tactic and the number of prospects that will likely go on to convert. Try to
back up your estimates with figures wherever possible. This will help justify the mix of tactics
you have chosen.

You should also include an analysis of projected sales, across tactics, and the profit that each will
generate. This will help you quantify the net profit from your overall digital marketing plan.

5 Ways to Improve Customer Retention With Social Media

Do you use social media to keep existing customers engaged with

your business?

Interested in effective ways to strengthen those relationships?

Social media marketing can help deepen your connections with existing customers so they
continue using your product or service.

In this article, you’ll discover five ways to increase customer retention via social media.
5 Ways to Improve Customer Retention With Social Media by Tamar Weinberg on Social Media
Examiner.

How Customer Retention Yields Revenue

It’s no surprise that new customers are an important source of revenue for growing companies.
But retaining and selling to existing customers can also be a significant source of growth.

A few years ago, the White House Office of Consumer Affairs pointed out itssix to seven times
more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain existing customers. Market Metrics
confirmed this in a study with its own research, indicating it’s 60% to 70% easier to convert an
existing customer than a prospect.

Does this mean you should give up on converting new customers? Not at all. What it does
suggest is that you should dedicate a lot of energy toward retaining existing customers. The
return on that investment will probably be substantially higher than efforts to attract new
customers in an increasingly crowded market.

One of the more effective ways to retain existing customers is through social media. The reason
for this is social media is a deeply personal platform that delivers deep insights into customers’
behaviors and preferences. Here are five ways to boost customer retention with social media.

1: Get to Know Your Customers as Individuals

Customers want to be more than just a number or email address you send invoices to. Get to
know them better and learn what’s important to them. The more you know about them as a
community and as individuals, the easier it will be to anticipate your customers’ needs and
offerappropriate solutions for new challenges they face.
Clearbit for Salesforce pulls in numerous data points to give you a complete profile of your
customer.

Profile enrichment services will help you fill the gaps in your knowledge about your customers
in your CRM solution. For example, Clearbit for Salesforce can scour social media services and
other available data sources for insights and deliver more complete profiles of each audience
member.

Armed with these insights, your sales team will be better equipped to personalize sales
pitchesand appeal directly to your customers’ real needs.

2: Reach Out on LinkedIn When Customers Visit Your Website

The vast majority of visitors to your website are anonymous. Short of your visitors logging into
your site or otherwise identifying themselves when they browse your pages, you probably don’t
know much about the individuals visiting your site at a given point in time.

This represents a tremendous opportunity. What if you could identify which of your clients visit
your site and what they dropped by to learn?
Leadfeeder lets you identify site visitors based on their companies’ IP addressesand thenbrowse
logs of which web pages each visitor is most interested in. The app syncs with your LinkedIn
profile to reveal your closest connections at visiting companies. It can also push this data to your
CRM.

Leadfeeder uses your Google Analytics data to show details about your website visitors.

These insights are a perfect starting point for proactive, personalized engagement. You can
follow up via InMail or phone call to offer more information, or upsell clients on a newer
solution that might provide additional value to them.

3: Make Sure Your Business Is Easy to Find on Social Media

This sounds obvious, but far too many businesses are difficult to find on social media. They
either restrict their activities to one or two social networks and ignore the others, or simply don’t
promote their social media profiles enough for anyone to notice.

The customer service experience has changed profoundly in recent years. Email and call centers
remain valuable touchpoints for customers. At the same time, however, increasing numbers of
customers are active enough on social media that they expect you to be reachable where they are.
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Solving this challenge is relatively easy. Identify the social media platforms where your
customers are active and talking about you, and be sure to maintain active profiles on those
platforms. Then promote your various social media profiles on your site and in your
communications with customers.

Make sure customers know they can reach you through the social network of their choice. Tools
like Zendesk and Sprout Social offer aggregate inbox interfaces that make it easier to interact
with people no matter what channel they use to message you.
Sprout Social offers a smart inbox that lets you view messages from multiple social profiles in
one place.

4: Serve Your Customers Where They Spend Their Time

Again, being dedicated to solving your customers’ challenges means your customer support team
needs to maximize efficiency and effectiveness on social media.

Traditionally, customer service interaction has been primarily conducted through call centers,
email, and companies’ websites via support forms. Fortunately, the major social networks have
embraced their changing roles and developed powerful solutions to help you optimize support
efforts from within social apps.

Twitter has expanded its Direct Messaging system to give customer support teams the ability to
automate welcome messagesandadd a series of buttons to expedite the resolution of common
issues.
Set up an automated welcome message to send to customers who direct message your Twitter
account.

Facebook has added integrated messaging to business pages, giving customers a direct line to
your support team. As with Twitter, you can add a custom welcome message and an away
messagetolet customers know when they can expect follow-up from your team.
You can set up a custom welcome message for Facebook Messenger in your Settings.

The benefits for your customers include more effective points of contact with your support team
and faster resolution of their issues.

5: Help Your Customers Spread the Word for You

Whether you’re listening or not, your customers are talking about their experiences with you on
social media According to Pew’s December 2016 Online Shopping and E-Commerce report,
39% of U.S. adults have posted on social media about their experiences or sentiment about
brands. Approximately 55% of Millennials and 50% of Generation Xers have done so.
Look out for customer testimonials on socialmediaand share themwith other customers. You can
do this through your Facebook page, on Twitter, and elsewhere whenever customers @mention
your business. Testimonials are a powerful form of social proof, which is that magical emotional
trigger that can drive viral shares.

Be sure toretweet or repost customers’ raves and reach out to them directly if they express
dissatisfaction on social media. When you reach out directly to a customer on social media, even
if you do it privately to address a complaint, you might be able to persuade an uncertain
customer to stick with your solution and even reverse a customer’s decision to move to a
different solution.

Conclusion

It’s astounding how often companies lose sight of the critical importance of preserving their
relationships with their clients. There’s arguably no better place to cultivate relationships aimed
at retention than social media. What’s more, social media channels are great for developing one-
to-one relationships and deriving deep insights into customers’ behaviors and preferences.

Social media marketing is an effective way to deepen your relationships with existing customers
and persuade them to continue using your solutions into the future.

Digital Media for Customer Loyalty

Search Engine Marketing and Online Advertising

Search engine marketing is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that
appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs). Advertisers bid on keywords that users of
services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services,
which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those
search queries.

These ads, often known by the term pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are
small, text-based ads, whereas others, such as product listing ads (PLAs, also known as Shopping
ads) are more visual, product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important
information at-a-glance, such as price and reviews.

Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put
their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re
ready to make a purchase. No other advertising medium can do this, which is why search engine
marketing is so effective and such an amazingly powerful way to grow your business.

Importance of SEM

Everyone can agree that the acceleration of online activity over the past five years has been
nothing short of phenomenal. Our global society has witnessed unprecedented growth in the area
of online activity from conducting research to shopping and everything in between. This growth
has spanned not only desk-top but mobile technologies as well. So why is it that some
businesses, or industries for that matter, may still fall behind a bit when it comes to prioritizing
SEM into their overall marketing strategy? Perhaps many don’t have a solid grasp of what it is
and how it can work for them, so we’d like to help with that. First, what exactly is Search Engine
Marketing? It’s a term that we hear tossed around quite a bit these days, but nevertheless, it’s
important to have a good understanding of what it is.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the entire set of techniques and strategies used to generate
more visitors from search engines to your business or marketing website. SEM seeks to promote
websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages through the use of paid
search, contextual advertising and organic placement.

Paid Search refers to the text ads that show up in search engines such as Google or Yahoo, which
are targeted to a user’s keyword search. Paid search is very targeted advertising, and when
supported with strong analytics, can be very useful in determining ROI. Paid search can also be
referred to as Search marketing, pay per click or cost-per-click advertising.

Contextual Advertising refers to text ads that are the targeted to writings on the web such as
blogs or news articles.
Organic Search or Search Engine Optimization are the results that come up via a generic search.
In order to have your business site rank high in a search, it is important that you optimize HTML
code, web page copy, site navigation and more. The higher your site appears in a search, the
more likely consumers will click on it. So, how can SEM work for you and your business? Well,
as stated above “SEM seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine
results pages through the use of paid search, contextual advertising and organic placement.”
Good SEM will literally drive business to your site, but to break it down into a few specifics,
here are four ways that SEM can support your over-all marketing strategy:

1. SEM can increase and enhance your brand awareness.

2. SEM can sell products, services or content online.
3. SEM can generate online leads and increase sales.
4. SEM can provide informational and educational content.

So, as you can see, SEM really should be an integral component of your overall marketing
strategy, not just an after-thought. If you’re not sure that you are optimizing your SEM, give us
a call. We’ve been helping businesses increase brand awareness, generate leads and increase
sales since 2000. We’d love to help your business as well.

Keyword optimization (also known as keyword research) is the act of researching, analyzing
and selecting the best keywords to target to drive qualified traffic from search engines to your
website.

Keyword search optimization is a critical step in initial stages of search engine marketing, for
both paid and organic search. If you do a bad job at selecting your target keywords, all your
subsequent efforts will be in vain. So it’s vital to get keyword optimization right.
But optimizing keywords isn't something you do ONLY at the outset of a search marketing
campaign. Ongoing keyword optimization is necessary to keep uncovering new keyword
opportunities and to expand your reach into various keyword verticals. So keyword optimization
isn’t a set it and forget it process. By continuously performing keyword analysis and expanding
your database of keywords, your site traffic, leads and sales will continue to grow.

Benefits of Keyword Optimization

In a recent survey, participants listed keyword optimization as one of the hardest tasks in search
engine marketing. Because of its difficult nature, most site owners, marketers and bloggers don't
spend enough time optimizing keywords. This is ironic since optimizing keywords is the most
important aspect of SEO and PPC. If you don't choose and use keywords your customers are
searching for, you won't get found. That means no traffic, no sales, no money.

So to look at the big picture, you must practice search engine keyword optimization to:

 Drive qualified traffic to your website: To drive searchers to your site, you must
optimize for the keywords they're searching for
 Measure traffic potential: Analyzing the popularity of keywords helps you gauge the
size of a potential online market.
 Write effective content: By incorporating optimized keywords into your website
content, you can connect instantly with potential customers and address their needs.
 Understand user behavior: By analyzing the words that your customers use, you get an
idea of their needs and how to service those needs.

Where Keyword Search Optimization Comes into Play

Keyword optimization plays a major role in every aspect of Internet marketing from content
strategy, to link building, to how you group your keywords in your AdWords ad groups, to how
your site content is organized, a.k.a your information architecture.

SEO Keyword Optimization

When it comes to SEO, the success of your organic search efforts rests largely on how effective
you are at discovering, researching, analyzing and selecting the right search engine keywords for
your website. All other aspects of SEO rely on successful keyword optimization. What's more,
optimizing keywords touches every aspect of your SEO marketing efforts.

 Title Tag: Your target keywords must be included in the title tag (and front loaded). This
is the most important piece of content on your website, both on and off-page.
 Links: Keyword optimization should be integrated into your link building strategy.
Internal links, inbound links, breadcrumb links, navigational links should all have your
top optimized keywords. It's also important to track and manage your link text efforts
 Content strategy: If you want to rank well and connect with searchers, you need to use
your target keywords in your content. WordStream for SEO helps combine keyword
research with content authoring (just saying...).
  Images: Don't forget to optimize keywords in the pictures on your website. Target
keywords should be used in your image alt attribute and file names, to name a few.
 Meta Description: There's some debate over whether or not including target keywords in
your text snippets helps rankings. But there's little doubt that having your optimized
keywords here produces more clicks in searches, which is optimal.
 URL: Be sure to include keywords for SEO in file name slugs, like I've done with this
page's URL. The page is about keyword optimization, so the slug name is /keyword-
optimization.
 Site Structure: Keyword optimization is also critical to how you structure and organize
your site content. Not only do you need to select the right keywords, but you need to
group them hierarchically and order the corresponding pages on your website
accordingly.

PPC Keyword Optimization

But optimized keywords aren't just for organic search marketing. There's tremendous value in
optimizing your PPC keywords. To be effective with your pay-per-click campaigns, you must
speak the searcher's language. The more keywords you select that your customers are searching
for, the more traffic you'll drive to your website, the more consumers you'll convert to customers.

 Creating a keyword list: Determining which keywords to target and bid on is the
linchpin for all your PPC marketing strategies. Different keywords have different demand
and traffic potential.
 Grouping and segmenting: Keyword optimization helps organize your keywords into
tight groups that are semantically related.
 Improved relevancy: The key to a higher click-through rate is being relevant to the
searcher's query. Higher CTR leads to better Quality Score. Optimized keywords are
instrumental in being relevant.
 Crafting ad text: To coax searchers into clicking on your ads, you need to integrate your
keywords into your PPC ad text.
 Landing page optimization: Once a user lands on your page, your message must match
the offer. So the optimized keywords that were present in your ad text, must be present on
your landing pages.

You can take your PPC optimization further by evaluating your AdWords account with the
AdWords Performance Grader, which grades your campaigns on important factors like ad text
and long-tail keyword optimization.

Social Media Keyword Optimization

Determining which keywords to target and how to incorporate them into your messaging is also
a big factor in social media marketing. This guide to KeywordResearch for Social Mediais a
good resource for determining which keywords your audience is using and covers everything
from how to conduct keyword research for YouTube to researching keywords for Facebook.
Traditional vs. Online Marketing

The Real Value of Your Online Marketing Efforts

When it comes to marketing—is digital really the new traditional? What do you think?

That’s a long-standing debate that has marketers on both fronts defending the merits of each.
1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) has been an effective paid advertising strategy for many years now, and this
trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down anytime soon. In fact, paid search marketing now
accounts for about 65% of “clicks," compared to just 35% being generated organically. Combine
this with the fact that PPC visitors are 50% more likely to make a purchase than organic visitors,
and it’s suddenly quite clear why pay-per-click advertising can be an effective way to spend your
marketing budget.

2. Social Media Ads

The power of posting ads on social media has grown exponentially in the past few years,
especially as social media sites like Facebook have begun offering users more paid marketing
options than ever before. For example, Facebook’s relatively new “Audience Insights" feature
makes it easy for marketers to hone in on their target demographic, learn more about their
preferences, and create great ad content.

Advertising on social media is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure your message
reaches your target audience—and social media users are in agreement. In fact, 57% of
Millennials surveyed agreed that the ads they’ve seen on social media are more relevant to them
than ever before.

3. Influencer Marketing

In recent years, influencer marketing has become an extremely effective source of paid
advertising. Specifically, influencer marketing refers to working directly with a well-known
industry name (such as a celebrity) to encourage your target audience to choose your
company/brand. This strategy can be especially effective on social media and is a great
alternative to paid ads, which some customers are now blocking. And in 2016, the use of
influencer marketing even surpassed print marketing for the first time

4. Banner Ads

Banner ads—those small, rectangular ads you often run into along the top or side bar of a web
page—have been around for decades. Today, it is not uncommon to see banner ads displayed not
just on desktop devices, but on mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) as well.

And despite many new paid online advertising strategies emerging in recent years, however,
banner ads continue to be one of the most effective. In fact, in 2018 alone, it is estimated that
businesses will spend nearly $25 million annually on desktop and mobile banner advertising
combined.
5. Ad Retargeting

One relatively new paid advertising opportunity that is picking up a lot of steam is known as ad
retargeting or remarketing. This strategy utilizes cookies on a website to anonymously track
users’ activities as they move across the Web. This data can then be used to ensure that users see
only ads that are most relevant to them. Generally, remarketing or retargeting tends to be the
most effective among websites that already have high traffic levels (ideally 5,000 visitors or
more each month). If this applies to your site, then it may be time to consider implementing this
paid strategy for yourself.

Landing Page and its importance

As you dive into the world of digital marketing, you’ll likely encounter a whole new vocabulary
and set of concepts. If you haven’t already, you’re bound to have questions about how landing
pages fit into your digital marketing strategy. Developing a landing page sounds like a simple
task, and it can be, but we want to stress that landing pages are vitally important to lead
conversion.

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is any web page that a consumer can land on, but in the marketing realm, it’s
usually a standalone page, distinct from your homepage or any other page, that serves a single
and focused purpose. A landing page is a follow up to any promises that you’ve made in your
content. Essentially, it’s the next step toward a visitor becoming a customer. Your landing page
lets you make a trade, some sort of special offer, piece of information or a deal, in return for
providing contact information.

Landing pages can be click through, leading to another page such as your e-commerce site, or
lead generation based. Lead generation landing pages typically offer items like an eBook, free
trial, contest entry or webinar registration in return for the submission of contact information. A
good landing page will do its job by convincing a potential customer that it’s worth it to provide
personal details in return in exchange for whatever you have to offer. Landing pages can be
found through a general search or via your company website, increasing the likelihood that a
potential customer will end up there.

There’s no need to have just one landing page, or even just one landing page at a time. In fact,
experts in the marketing would probably suggest that you maintain multiple landing pages,
targeted toward segmented customer populations.

Why Use Landing Pages?

You’ve done a great job building your brand and creating a website that represents it. Now you
have to make sure that all of that hard work translates into sales. If you are looking for an
effective lead conversion tool, landing pages are definitely the way to go.

A landing page is a great way to drive traffic, improve your SEO and build your brand.
Approximately 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to generate leads for future
conversion. Fortunately for you, 44% of these clicks are directed toward home pages, which, as
we’ll discuss, is not a good strategy. Landing pages lead customers to a specific product, service
or offer and encourage them to take action. This is your opportunity to create conversions and
build your customer base.

If landing pages are so important, why isn’t every business using them? Well, there is a
misconception that they are hard to create and maintain. Fortunately, that simply isn’t true.
Building an effective landing page is less about flashiness and more about getting the consumer
what they’re after.

What Makes a Good Landing Page?

First off, your home page should not be your landing page. You need to send prospective
customers to a page that will let them take advantage of whatever special offer you’ve promised
them. Since they are tied to something specific, your landing pages have a better chance of
capturing attention for a longer period of time. Good landing pages do several things:

1. They zero-in on the offer, not the company. Your future customers are clicking for a reason,
and duping them by not giving them what you’ve promised is not going to form a good first
impression. Now is not the time to give a detailed history of your company. This isn’t to say that
the landing page should not be tied to your company brand. Just the opposite. They should serve
a separate function, yet it should still be an extension of your brand.

2. They are focused and free of distractions. The content on your landing page should have the
end-goal of getting the user what they want while completing the registration process.

3. The forms are not intimidating. Lengthy forms can be daunting to visitors and may
encourage them to move on, rather than take advantage of whatever opportunity you are offering.
If you simply can’t shorten your form, break it into steps, and let the user see exactly where they
are in the process. For example, listing their name and address may be step one of four.

4. They speak to a specific audience. Segmenting your customer base helps you to target
specific consumers through customized campaigns. If you have a base that’s drawn to a
particular offer, such as an eBook or discount, your landing page can serve as a built-in
segmentation device, allowing you to nurture these leads effectively going forward.

5. They collect specific information about your prospective customers. Speaking of specific
audiences, even if you draw the right crowd, they can’t be converted if you don’t collect the right
information. The collection of demographic data should include more than simply a name and
email address. It should also give you some idea of why a person clicked and what their long-
term connection to your company might be.

6.They provide your special offers with a home. Unless they are tied to landing pages, your
online special offers will do nothing to benefit your business. Creating landing pages provides a
place for your offers to reside.
7.They provide a thank you. Your landing page should always be followed up with a thank
you. This is not only polite but assures the consumer that they have completed the registration
process.

8.They allow users access to other marketing channels. A customer likes what you’ve just
offered. Now you can provide links to other offers, your social media profiles or an email list
sign up.

There is no doubt about it, we are certainly living in a digitally connected world. Moving boldly
forward with a digital marketing campaign can easily be one of the best investments that you
make for your business. As you build your digital marketing toolbox, including landing pages is
a smart move, and both you and your customers will reap the benefits.
Understanding Social Media

Like with content marketing, due to the continuously developing internet marketing industry,
there are countless digital media and social networking sites, all of which have a unique
characteristic and purpose. As part of an introduction, here are a few social network examples.

Facebook is the biggest and arguably most powerful social network in the world with 1.55
billion active monthly users. Regardless if you are a startup or fortune 500 company, you need to
be on Facebook and start *engaging with your consumers. (*Positively. We don’t want to
replicate Amy’s Baking Company’s mistake).

Twitter is known as the ‘‘in the moment’’ platform and boasts a respectful 255 million active
monthly users. Twitter is a perfect online marketing tool for businesses that want to reach out to
people (and are ready for a reply). The key is to be quick and smart, ever heard of dunk in the
dark?

Instagram is a visual platform designed for customers to post, share, comment and engage
through digital media. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

LinkedIn is regarded as the professional social networking site. LinkedIn largely focuses on b2b
marketing rather than b2c.

Google +, Youtube, Foursquare and Pintrest are other social network sites that harshly miss
out on the list. And then there’s Snapchat, the new kid on the block, who recently recorded six
billion daily views. Should Facebook be worried?

What’s your take on any of the above social networking sites? Are there any other sites you
display your digital media and connect with consumers on? We’d love to know!
Social Media Marketing Strategy

Having a social media presence without an appropriate strategy and plan can be just as damaging
for your business as no plan at all. We have created a social media marketing strategy checklist
that should aid your online marketing operations.

“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant,

and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience.”

 Set Goals – Start big and work down. Do you need to increase customer loyalty?
 Know your target audience – Don’t just use demographics but expand with
psychographics.
 Social Media – Decide on which digital media will help you connect with your audience.
Will this take the form of a blog, video, podcast etc?
 Social Network Strategy – Focus on a social network that adds value. Just because a
network has over a hundred million active users doesn’t mean it will directly contribute
to your brand’s objectives.
 Measurement and Testing – What does success mean to you? You need to constantly
analyze your social media strategy to understand how effective it is. Engage with your
audience find out what works and what doesn’t.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing

For some of you, investing in a social media marketing service may have been identified as the
missing link connecting you with your consumers. However for the others, who are still
contemplating diving into the social marketing end, look no further than the following facts.

Social media marketing increases your brand’s awareness. 78 % of small businesses use social
media to attract new customers. Furthermore 33% of customers have identified social media as
how they identify new brands products and services.

Social media marketing helps to validate your brand. A company’s social media presence, when
done correctly, tells consumers that their brand is active and focused on thriving communication
with consumers. 63% of consumers who search for businesses online are more likely to use ones
with an informative social media presence. Need more help on how to validate your brand?
Check out our branding blog.

Social media marketing has the power to increase customer loyalty. 71% of consumers who
received a quick response on social media would recommend the brand to others.
Social Networking with Facebook

1. Facebook is the Biggest

Facebook has the most users of any social network at over 900 million (August 2012) and should
hit 1 billion by the end of 2012. This is unprecedented and makes it a very powerful global
network. Growth will continue, but will likely moderate over time.

Being the biggest means also means that most of your friends are already on Facebook so
moving to another social network means you will have to leave them behind.

2. Time Spent on Facebook

In the US, people spend 6:33 hours per month on Facebook. Tumblr comes in second at 1:38
and Pinterest at 1:17 hours per month, but only has a little over 11% of Facebook’s worldwide
user count. Much of that time spent on Facebook is not just passively consuming content, but
also sharing and re-sharing it too. You can share words, link, images, and videos that you find
online or upload. You can share others posts on your profile, pages, and groups. A single piece
of content can be re-shared many times by each user.

3. Everything Feeds Into Facebook

Most everything else you use in social media can feed into your Facebook account. Instagram
photos, Pinterest pins, and Foursquare check-ins, just to name a few. You can also configure
Twitter to also post to your Facebook timeline every time you tweet for an extra exposure kick.

4. People Get Emotional About Facebook

Folks have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. They use it all day, every day it seems. And
they get cranked up if they roll out a new feature or change. But they always seem to get over it
and come back stronger than ever. The high level of emotion that Facebook instills in its users
keeps them engaged.

5. Photo Sharing is the Big Deal in 2012

Posting photos, Liking, commenting, and re-sharing them seems to be the most popular activity
of the most popular people. You know who is popular because their photos and shares show up
in your feed the most and vice versa. With Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, photo sharing is
bound to grow. Competition from Pinterest with its popularity is bound to keep Facebook on
their toes. See “The Facts and Figures about the Power of Visual Content” for more detail.

Micro blogging with Twitter

Micro-blogging
It’s blogging, but smaller. But what’s blogging? “Blog” is short for “web log”, and it is keeping
an online journal of writings, pictures, and other multimedia, as well as news items and content
found on the web. Some blogs are just places where people write about their feelings and
activities so other people can read them. Some blogs are focused on a topic- like
ManageMyPractice.com focuses on health care administration. But all blogs are simply websites
that are updated by their authors fairly frequently around some common theme.

How does blogging become “micro”? By shrinking it down to its bare essence and relaying the
heart of the message, communicating the necessary. How could this be of use to you? What if
you set up a system where your kids received updates when you were going to be home later
than usual from work, telling them they were allowed to have a soda with their homework before
TV, and what would be for dinner when you arrived? Or maybe your kids need to update you
when their plans change. What if all your colleagues were updating each other about the goings-
on at a professional conference so they could decide on the fly which events to attend, and share
their experiences, and decide where everyone would be meeting afterward?

Anything that could be helped by contacting an entire group of people quickly with short
message could benefit from micro-blogging.

Twitter puts it all together

Twitter takes these two concepts, and merges the whole shebang with your mobile device.
Twitter lets you easily microblog to your social network over your mobile device. You don’t
have to use a cell phone or a Blackberry to use Twitter- you can send and receive updates over
the web, and through a variety of third party providers.

If you want to get started, go to the Twitter homepage at www.twitter.com, and click the green
button that says “JOIN THE CONVERSATION”. You will create a username and password,
and start adding contacts and you’ll soon be able to make your first micro-blog post (they call
them “tweets”).

On Twitter, anyone you want to receive updates from is someone you are “following”, and
anyone who is receiving your messages is one of your “followers”. You can also send messages
directly to just one user, or set up groups of people to receive certain updates – your co-workers
don’t have to see your notes to your kids, and vice-versa. You can also do fun things, like upload
a little picture of yourself to be your icon that people will see when they are on Twitter

Social Sharing with YouTube

1: Best Ways to Share YouTube Videos on Social Media via YouTube’s Share button, Facebook,
Google+ and Tumblr

2: Ideas for Sharing YouTube Videos via Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and WordPress?
3: Ideas for Sharing YouTube Videos via Reddit and Slide Share

Social Media for Customer Reach

1. Create a Facebook event

Even if you don’t have a “special” event scheduled around the holiday season, you should be
using the events functionality on Facebook for things like a sale, for example.

Why?

Because when you create an event on Facebook, the platform continually reminds your
customers, in their notification center, that your event is upcoming, increasing the chances they’ll
participate when the time comes.

Even more valuable, it shows their friends and people in your general vicinity that your event is
happening too, and pops up in their notification centers — thereby considerably extending your
organic reach!

And you don’t need to have a paid, ticketed event to use this feature.

Have a sale coming up? Create an event.

Want to remind people to think of your business on Small Business Saturday? Create an event.

Think of the events calendar like a more powerful News Feed and post content to the event
listing too.

2. Use location tagging and advanced search functionality

On Twitter, location matters. As a small business owner, you can leverage Twitter’s desire to be
a “local” platform by using some of its location-based features to your advantage.

First, when you’re posting a new tweet, make sure to toggle on the location setting (it looks like
a map pin) and mark the location of your business.
This functionality helps people searching nearby to discover your content more readily.

When you want to find potential customers, you can use Twitter’s advanced search instead. Set a
location (perhaps your town or state), then add any keywords people might be using about
products or services you sell, and bingo: you’ll see the tweets of people near you that may be
interested in your business.
For example, if you own a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., you could run a search for “want pizza”
near the city and find potential customers like this.

And just like pizza topping options, the possibilities with this tool are endless.

3. Use hashtags

It may surprise you, but I’m not the biggest fan of hashtags. They have great uses, but I get sad
when people don’t know how best to use them or use them gratuitously in every post.

But, events like #Thanksgiving, #BlackFriday, #ShopSmall, #CyberMonday and

#GivingTuesday are ideal times to use hashtags in your posts. Your potential customers, donors,
or attendees are clicking on hashtags they see in other posts, leading them hopefully to find your
content.
Measurement of Digital Media

1. Define what value means to you

Before you dive into any analysis, modeling or optimization to try to improve the value of your
marketing efforts, you need to define exactly what that value is. Spending the time to create a
formal measurement framework will help you define the specific objectives your organization is
striving for — and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will expose success or failure.

And we’re not talking about just pulling a bunch of metrics out of your current reports: I can
guarantee you that there’s no annual board meeting where the success of the company is resting
on your bounce rate. What we mean by a measurement framework is that we define our business
goals in the context of different user segments and different stages of a complex, multi-device,
multi-touch path to purchase.

For example, what are the organizational objectives for a user who would be classified as a
“loyal customer” in the “retention” stage of the customer journey? What exactly do we want
them to do across specific channels, and even device-level experiences?

Once we’ve obtained this specificity across our key segments, we can then identify the five, ten
or maybe a dozen different KPIs that collectively tell us if we’ve done a good job with that
specific goal or if we need to focus on improvement.
This becomes our basis for measuring real, tangible value, and upon this framework, we can
begin to improve.

2. Testing, personalization & optimization

Whether you’ve already invested in the latest solutions or are looking to test the waters first,
there’s a range of ways to start optimizing your digital efforts quickly and with minimal
resources.

Testing and optimization are low-hanging fruits that too few organizations are making use of.
Our “State of Digital Marketing Analytics in the Top 1000 Online Retailers” (PDF) report shows
that just 37 percent are leveraging testing and optimization tools, leaving a significant
opportunity to create and refine customer-driven online experiences on the table.

The marketplace for testing, personalization and optimization tools is full of options, so there’s
no lack of technology available to help marketers run experiments, personalize and optimize at
scale.
Joining the list of leading tools like Adobe’s Target, Optimizely, Monetate, Maximizer and
more, Google recently launched Optimize 360, along with a free standard version of Optimize,
which is likely to help drive better adoption of these critical functions.

Whichever tool or methodology you choose, building a robust testing, personalization and
optimization practice into your digital strategy can help you achieve better results, attain greater
ROI and save valuable resources by continuously identifying and improving upon the highest-
value marketing activities.

3. Digital attribution

In the digital space, attribution is crucial to understanding the impact your digital media
investment is having across all the channels you leverage.

There’s a path toward evolving sophistication here, and most organizations start out with the
core reports of web or app analytics tools. They’ll tag their campaigns, track their conversions,
and then look to see if a click on those ads resulted in that conversion. This is known as a “last
touch” model, and while it’s certainly better than not tracking performance at all, it leaves out the
impact of every single touch point before the click that resulted in the conversion.

To see the full value of upper- and mid-funnel activities, marketers will quickly move into other
rules-based models, like first touch, linear, time decay and more. And looking at the data through
the lenses of these models can help marketers better understand which channels are working at
which points along that path to purchase.

The next step is leveraging massive amounts of data and the power of data science techniques to
model and predict the actual lift each of your channels is providing. This data-driven approach
can provide a much more accurate valuation of your campaigns. A host of digital attribution
vendors and tools can help you model optimal spend allocations across all of these different
channels to maximize your return.

4. Econometric modeling

While the digital realm is lucky enough to use actual cookies, user IDs, device graphs and more
to map actual digital interactions all the way to conversion actions, the offline world is a little
tougher.

So far, there’s no cookie you can drop on someone as they drive by your billboard or read your
magazine ad in a waiting room, and while things like addressable television and more are picking
up steam, traditional media still largely struggle with mapping an interaction directly to a
conversion outcome.

To address this challenge, econometric modeling has been used — most notably in Marketing
Mix Modeling (MMM).
Essentially, this approach looks at inputs and outputs, and models how those inputs of
advertising channels interact and ultimately impact the output of sales. Traditionally, this has
helped marketers figure out how to best split their marketing budgets across television, radio,
out-of-home, print and more.

With the new wave of digital channels crashing down, savvy marketers have evolved their
approaches to include the rich digital data sets to understand the interplay of things like search,
video, display, social and more across paid, owned and earned.

Leveraging econometric techniques to holistically optimize budgets across channels, you can
then use digital attribution to drill down and optimize even further. Organizations that can use
both have the ability to not only spend their marketing dollars wisely, but also to enjoy a
significant competitive advantage.

5. Create a culture of accountability through governance

When organizations start getting serious about measurement and optimization, it touches lots of
stakeholders across lots of functions. Beyond the various teams in the marketing organization,
there are likely to be IT stakeholders, agency partners and more, and managing the resulting
complexity can be difficult.

With different groups and individuals all creating and executing campaigns across this wide
array of media, an environment of “organized chaos” will barely keep things afloat, much less
provide opportunities for optimization.

The solution is formal governance. Creating accountability around a shared strategic vision,
coupled with process and change control, can be the catalyst for a step change in the digital
marketing function.

This means simple things like aligning teams and partners responsible for activating different
campaigns across different channels on the measurement framework that will be used to judge
success or failure.

It means having in place standard reporting and data visualization solutions that communicate
the right data to the right stakeholders at the right times. You need formal, documented
processes, protocols and procedures that are regularly audited to ensure things like media tagging
and data collection are being done consistently and holistically.

At Cardinal Path, my employer, we help our enterprise clients establish and maintain a playbook
to clearly outline the approach and delivery of any insights and analysis across the business.

Having this formal reference keeps everyone on track, ensures that all the right good, clean,
relevant data is coming in, and that the steps are in place to surface the meaningful insights that
are the whole point of this investment in measurement and optimization.

Analyzing Website Performance

1. Web Page Test

Web Page Test is great too but it has one distinctive advantage – it has over 40 locations to
choose from and over 25 browsers (including mobile). If you click on “Page Speed” after
running a test you’ll find an overall grade as well as a checklist of some suggested changes (in
order of importance) for increasing your website’s speed. It assigns you a grade from F to A
based on different performance tests. It’s report is divided into six sections which include a
summary, details, performance review, content breakdown, and screenshots. One cool feature of
Web Page test is the ability to select the country from which to run your test. This can be used to
track how your speeds vary across the world.

2. Ping dom

Ping dom is a great free tool that offers great analytics. Their reports are divided into four
different sections which include a waterfall breakdown, performance grade, page analysis, and
history. Ping dom lets you examine all parts of your web page (file sizes, load times, and other
details about every single element of a web page), share your results and trace your performance
history. Every time you test your web page on Ping dom, the results are saved and you can
review them later and also see how things change over time.

3. Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights grades your website on a scale of 1 – 100. The higher the number
the better optimized your site is. Anything above an 85 indicates that your website is performing
well. Page Speed gives you reports for both the desktop and mobile versions of your site. It also
recommends what improvements you should make next.

4. GT metrix

GT metrix goes into great detail as it checks both Page Speed and YSlow metrics, assigning your
site a grade from F to A. It’s reports are divided into five different sections including PageSpeed,
YSlow, waterfall breakdown, video, and history. It’s free to register and you can test your web
from 7 different geographical locations. Video playbacks are available – they help you analyze
where your bottleneck is occurring. And you can run Adblock plus on it to see how much ads
affect your loading.

5. Website Test

Website Test from Yottaa lets you test your website speed from multiple locations around the
globe using real browsers and consumer connection speeds. Enter multiple URLs to compare
them side-by-side, or compare sites against industry pages. Perform advanced testing, including
multi-step transactions, video capture, content blocking and more. It’s extremely simple to use
and the results are easy to read. Simply said, it’s a great free tool that’s easy to master and gets
the job done.
6. Dare Boost

Dare Boost allows a stunning number of over 100 different checkpoints when analyzing your site
for speed. It gives you a score of 1 – 100. You can test on desktop vs mobile, Firefox vs Chrome,
and five different locations. There’s a free account and a paid version that gives you much more
services. The reports are great too, they show you how good is your SEO, the code quality and
how accessible is your site.

7. Google Chrome Dev Tools

Another great free tool from Google It’s extremely simple to use and you can launch it anytime
in your Chrome browser. They’ve recently added an aggregated details panel into the waterfall
timeline. This allows you to more easily see what is costing you the most time, and you can then
break it down by domains, sub-domains, etc. We recommend this for beginners because it’s so
easy to use and it gets the job done.

Analyzing Advertising Performance

If you're investing in digital marketing, chances are you're running some type of digital
advertising campaign or campaigns. So you probably already know that digital advertising is an
effective way to improve brand awareness and, in the case of paid search, to drive instant traffic
that can be turned into sales and leads. It's relatively easy to get started with digital advertising.
Minimum spend thresholds can be low, which means that it's realistic for small businesses to
start advertising on most platforms. But unless you're a paid media specialist, how do you know
which metrics to pay attention to in order to measure the success of your campaigns? Being able
to analyze campaign performance is critical to maintaining the overall health and return on
investment of your advertising initiatives. Here are a few ways to ensure you're looking at the
metrics that can help you analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Goal-setting
Establishing goals is a critical first step to understanding the performance of your digital ad
campaigns. Knowing what your goals are will enable you to hone in on the specific metrics that
are the best indicators of performance. Campaign goals may be quite different depending on a
variety of factors. For example, a campaign you run on Instagram will likely be less focused on
direct response than your paid search campaigns will be. Success with a brand awareness push is
measured differently than success with direct response. It's important to understand upfront what
your goals are so you can identify metrics to measure performance against those goals. Clear
goals enable you to focus on the right metrics that will indicate success or failure of your
campaigns.

Traffic metrics
Traffic metrics like clicks, impressions, and engagement are valuable in measuring the success of
brand awareness campaigns. Monitor upticks in trafficTraffic generated from your ad campaigns
indicates you are have been successful in attracting users through a combination of ad creative
and messaging. Traffic that comes directly from paid sources is obviously to be expected (it's
what you're paying for, after all), but you should also monitor for increases in branded search
and direct visits that coincide with campaign launches. Branding campaigns can often lead to
user interest that doesn't result in immediate clicks, but does cause users to search for your
company name later or to visit your website directly. Analyze click-thru-rate Click-through rate,
or CTR, measures the number of times your ad is clicked compared to the number of times it has
been shown to users. If your ad is shown to 100 people and 1 person clicks on it, then you have a
1% CTR. CTR can help you determine the effectiveness of your targeting and ad creative. Low
CTRs are an indication that something isn't working -- either that your message isn't reaching the
appropriate audience, or that your message is reaching the right audience but is failing to compel
them to click on your ad. On the flip side, strong click-through rates generally indicate that your
ads are reaching the right people and are doing a good job of appealing to their needs or desires.
You can use this information to analyze what's working and apply it to future campaigns, or
existing campaigns that are under-performing.

Conversion metrics
Conversion metrics are the ones that are most closely tied to ROI, and for that reason they're the
ones you should pay the most attention to. It should go without saying that you want to have
conversion tracking set up to be able to accurately tie conversions to ad dollars and clicks.
Conversion rate Conversion rate tracks the rate at which users take a desired conversion action
on your website. A conversion action might be a purchase, the completion of a request-a-quote
form, or a phone call. Your business defines your own conversions based on whichever user
actions are valuable to you. Monitoring your campaign conversion rates will tell you how
successful each campaign is at getting a user to take the desired action you've specified. Strong
conversion rates indicate that your campaigns are targeting the right people, and that the
information they encounter on your landing pages when they come to your website from an ad is
working to convince them to take an action. Weak conversion rates can be indicative of a
problem somewhere in the path to conversion. It might be that there is a problem with your
landing page, or that your ad copy is misleading. That said, ads that target users who are higher
up in the purchase funnel will likely have lower conversion rates because users are simply not
yet ready to buy or get in touch. Cost per conversion Cost per conversion, also known as cost per
acquisition or cost per action, is the overall cost of the campaign, divided by the number of users
who take an action defined as a conversion. Basically, what it costs to acquire a conversion. So if
your campaign cost $100 and you get 2 conversions from it, your cost per conversion is $50.
Cost per conversion helps you understand how much you have to spend in order to acquire a lead
or customer. You can compare this cost to the value of an average sale in order to get a sense for
whether the amount you're spending on that acquisition is worth the return. Conversion value
Ideally, you want to also be able to track the value of a conversion. Not all conversions have the
same value. Different service or product offerings can attract different types of customers --
some with needs that are more expensive than others. Certain services might be short-term ones
that do not attract as much repeat business as other services that attract long-term clients. This
means that the value to your business of different types of conversions can vary. Identifying
conversion value and tying conversion values to your campaigns allows you to see which
campaigns perform the best in terms of attracting high-value clients.

Return on Investment
The bottom line is that most businesses should be looking at return on investment (ROI) as the
key to analyzing the performance of their advertising campaigns. ROI measures the profit
generated from an investment. In our case that means the company profit generated by a digital
ad campaign. In order to calculate ROI, you need to be tracking the conversion metrics covered
above. In order to attribute ROI to specific campaigns, you need to be tracking ad clicks all the
way through to the close of a sale. Doing that will allow you to tie sales to campaigns, which is
much more powerful than simply tying conversions to campaigns, especially in cases where a
conversion may be a simple request for information. Analytics is a complex field, one that can be
difficult to navigate if you're new to digital advertising. Having a grasp on the fundamentals laid
out above is a great first step to understandings which of your ad campaigns are performing and
which still need to be improved if they're going to bring you results.