Online Marketing Foundations

What is online marketing?
=promoting your business online using a variety of channels:
-search
-social
-video
-e-mail
-display.

Media types:
- paid (ads)
- owned (website, email)
- earned (organic, social, ...)


I. Digital marketing strategy
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1. Business strategy
- Mission statement: 1 sentence to summarize what we're trying to do
- Objectives:
- Value proposition:
    a) why do you stand out?
    b) what makes you unique?
    c) why should someone choose you over a competitor?
- Elevator pitch: short summary of your brand

2. Brand strategy
- reach the correct (=target) audience (eg. 35-45 male interested in sports)
- understand the goals of the audience (eg. perform better, see faster results)
- understand where to find the audience (eg. twitter, facebook, sport blogs, search, email ads)

what's our goal for this segment?
what's the shared value for this segment?
what are the key performance indicators (KPI)? Eg. how many units you sell, how many people visit your website
what's your target?

Audience: eg. 24-25 female interested in fitness

Business goals | sell H+ suppluements   | organic reach           | gain followers on fitness blog
Shared value   | faster results         | product is ecofriendly  | brand is authentic and owned by fitness experts
KPI            | # of sold supplements  | # of shares on facebook | # of visitors to blog
Target         | 1000 units in 3 months | avg 50 shares / week    | avg 500 visitors / week

3. Marketing strategy
= many individual plans, each tailored to one goal for an audience segment we specify

Audience: eg. 24-25 female interested in fitness

Channel  | Facebook                      | Pinterest               | Blog
Paid     | ads for supplement            | n/a                     | sponsored blog listing on fitness.com
Earned   | create a viral campaign       | create a viral campaign | add share links and encourage comments
Owned    | post 3x a week on supplements | create an inspirational | create 2 blog articles per week
                                           fitness board

II. Exploring digital marketing
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1. Definitions and terminology
- Call To Action: an instruction provided to your audience as a way to provoke a response, eg. "Save now!", "Buy today!"

- Bounce Rate: when a visitor arrives to your website, but leaves after visiting only one page.

- Click-through Rate: how many clicks an ad receives

- Impression: every time an advertisement is shown

- Abandonment: when a user does not complete the goal you intended for them. A user is following a particular path say to checkout from an e-commerce store or to complete an online form for more information, and then they leave the process early.

- Ad Impression: Each time your advertisement is displayed to a user it counts as an Impression

- Frequency: the amount of time a single user will see your advertisement
Eg. 10 Impressions of an ad, with a Frequency of 2, then 5 individual people would have seen that advertisement

- Conversion Rate: the percentage of visitors who entered into this experience and actually completed the goal

- Tracking Pixel: tiny one-by-one pixel images that are installed on your website to track conversions, website visits, and ad views

- Cost Per Acquisition: how much it costs you per goal completion.
If you ran an advertisement with a goal of getting an application download and that ad cost you $100, then if one person downloaded the app, despite the 100's that clicked on it, the Cost Per Acquisition for that single user would be $100.

- Lifetime Value: Every customer has a value. Some will buy once and never return, others will become repeat buyers. Your lifetime value is a prediction of the net profit attributed to that relationship

- Banner advertisements (Display ads): static or animated, that are used to generate brand awareness or entice a user to click. Most Banner or Display Advertisements will contain a Call to Action

- Landing Page: The first page they arrive on

- Organic Result: When you conduct a search, on say Google, you have two types of results: paid results, which are typically the first couple of links and a handful of links on the right sidebar; and Organic listings which are not paid and instead achieve their rank through search engine optimization.

2. Components of digital marketing
Important! Your strategy does not need to include every available marketing channel. You may end up using only some of them, or you may find success in leveraging other avenues that are not part of these core components.

If you're operating with limited resources, you may need to prioritize which channels you want to start with.

SEO, Search marketing, Social media and Video. The first thing we need to do is figure out what channel we're using for these areas. So for SEO, we're going to focus on Google. For Search marketing, we'll use Google AdWords, and with Social media, I'm going to start with Facebook. And then for video, we'll use YouTube.

These are just examples. The scores are specific to your business!

Source    |   Effort     Value
-------------------------------
Google    |     4          5
AdWords   |     3          4
Facebook  |     1          2
Youtube   |     4          2


Effort vs. value matrix:

Effort |                  Value
----------------------------------------------
       |  1      2     3    4    5      6
1      |
2      |     low value+     high value+
3      |     low effort     low effort
4      |
5      |     high effort+   high value+
6      |     low value      high effort


Start with the high value + high effort section, and work your way back around the matrix.

Just because something is High Effort and Low Value doesn't mean it's not worth exploring. We're simply scoring these in relation to one another. Low Value could still mean a significant return on investment.

3. The digital marketing landscape
Search is the #1 source currently used when making a decision to purchase something.
This comes from consumers all the way up to high level business decision makers. Your website's visibility and search is likely the most valuable real estate online because searchers are expressing intent and are of a niche, they're an ideal target.

Paid search is a key piece of today's digital landscape and the current leader to buy ads from is Google AdWords.

Emails are still effective, but it has to be mobile. Almost 50 percent of all emails are opened on a mobile device.

With mobile email, the digital market place demands a mobile website.

Building high value content for audiences is proving to generate significant ROI's for those doing it well. Users report interesting content as being one of the top three reasons they follow a brand.

III. Starting with the website
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All of that attention on your website makes it one of the most valuable pieces of digital real estate that you own. The better you're marketing, the more visibility your website has.

If your website doesn't work on mobile, you're already behind. Chances are, there's a competitor with a better online experience and your customers will seek them out if they're fumbling with yours.

1. Effective website:
- simple
- well thought out
- highly functional

Your website only needs to appeal to your target market, so spend your effort designing it to work for that audience.

- is it mobile friendly?
- does it load properly in all modern web browsers? (use www.browserstack.com)
- does it answer all the questions my users have or may have?
- is the site reflective of my brand? (your logo, tagline and the color scheme all reflect your brand. You definitely want things to be consistent)
- is it up to date? Nothing is worse than information that's out of date.
- are all of your services and products easy to find?
- are all of your policies easy to find? If you ship or handle returns, can the user understand the process clearly?
- how does it compare to your competitor? Are you proud or jealous?

Leverage your relationships with existing customers and colleagues as a way to get feedback on your site. Ask them what they like, what they don't like, and for any ideas.

Check out peek.usertesting.com. For no charge, they'll have a real person spend five minutes on your site, and give you honest and unbiased feedback.

2. Having the right domain name is essential.

3. Hiring a designer
- Review their website. How does it look? Is it appealing to you?
- look through their portfolio
- read through client reviews
- ask for a quote and a timeline

Good designers aren't inexpensive. The truth of the matter is, good talent usually knows what they're worth. But your website is so important, so it's worth a sizable investment. Look at behance.com, dribble.com, elance.com

Run the sites through Google PageSpeed Insights. You're looking for scores at least in the high 70's.

A mid-range web developer will likely cost you between $40 to $80 an hour. With high-end development agencies charging in the range of $100 to $150 an hour. I can't stress the importance of having good development talent working on your project.

4. Building your own website
Can I afford to spend my time building a website?
Wordpress? A very capable content management system.
Check also themeforest.net.
Try www.squarespace.com as well.
Shopify for ecommerce

5. Making your website convert
Depending on your audience, you'll have 2-6 seconds to convince them to stay once they've arrived. Visitors will click, take a glance, and then bounce from your site if they're not interested.

Landing page: reinforces decision to click, grabs attention, frames the information

Build goal-specific landing pages:
- teaser pages: the objective of a teaser page is to give your visitor just enough information to get them to click through to the next step of your process. Useful for products that are nearing launch. By creating anticipation and excitement, you can convince the visitor to take an action such as providing an e-mail address or even pre-ordering.

- squeeze pages: capture content and qualifying lead information. Typically, a visitor exchanges their contact information for something of moderate value. Say, a webinar, eBook, or an exclusive discount.

- infomercial pages: 1 page, typically a long page, and you'll share all the information about the product: what it is, how it works, its benefits, testimonials, and a special offer if you buy it today. Infomercial pages are effective at driving sales for certain products and are typically used by affiliate marketers when running large campaigns.

- viral pages: invite your customers to enlist their friends. Have a reward that is earned through a number of shares. Eg. for each friend who signs up, you'll get a five-dollar credit. Your viral landing page might include a funny video or an infographic.

To build your landing page, select the right type and then focus on these five things. You wanna define the goal, what needs to happen. What information from the user do you need to accomplish that goal? Their e-mail? Phone number? Credit card? Outline what the user needs to do. Do they need to fill out a form? Invite a friend? And so on. What information does the user need to be convinced? What is of shared value to them? And finally, how will you track the results? It's important to make sure your landing page has your logo, an explanation of the offer, a very compelling headline, related testimonials and links to reviews, along with a strong call to action.

If you fix conversions, you can increase your revenue without having to increase your traffic

Make sure you add confidence to your visitors by linking to your e-mail policy, having a valid SSL certificate, and including your contact information directly on the page.

6. Creating engaging web copy
Writing a web copy
 - know your audience
 - write great web copy, not just content (see www.abccopywriting.com for more)

Remove long introductions
Avoid word-heavy descriptions
Write clear, concise and punctual copy
Use clever headings
Add bulletpoints

Look at each page of your website, and answer these questions:
- Who will read this copy?
- Why are they reading this?
- What should they feel when they read this page?
- What am I trying to accomplish with this copy?
- And what benefit and feature do I need them to really understand?
Use these answers to build your first draft, save it, and then write it again with half as many words.

7. Choosing responsive design
=allows your site to be adaptive. The page responds automatically based on the screen size, and even the orientation a user is viewing it in.

8. Installing Google Tag Manager
It includes google analytics as well

IV. Foundations of analytics
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1. Measuring data
Use data to
- improve experience
- find new opportunities
- discontinue failing ideas

Measuring data on your website
- number of visitors
- location of visitors
- individual page visits
- visit duration
- abandonment page
Track as much data as possible

Measuring earned media
Social media fans:
- mentions
- interactions
- tweets
- video views on youtube

2. How online analytics work
cookies, tracking pixels, eg. pixel.gif?ID=1234&aa=bbb

3. Using goal tracking
Goals could be:
- fill out a feedback form
- sign up for an account
- download a whitepaper
- buy something from your e-commerce store
- ...

You need google analytics (GA) for that

4. Looking at a conversion funnel
awareness -> consideration -> preference -> purchase -> retention

Setup: go to GA, admin, goals, goal details
Create steps, eg.
- membership landing page
- membership form
- payment page

Reporting / Conversions / Funnel Visualisation
Note: GA funnel doesn't work retroactively (no data before you set it up)

5. Defining your key performance indicators (KPIs)
By monitoring your KPIs, you'll see what's working, what's not, and what is impacting something else.

Creating KPIs
- align with your business goals
- make them measurable
- make them easy to understand

A good KPI: increase traffic 5% month over month
A bad KPI: increase traffic each month

Tie KPIs to marketing objectives

KPI objective:
- achieve a $40 CPA
- generate 100 sales per month at $40 CPA

Online sales: examine your conversion rate and the cost per acquisition
Broad marketing objectives: set a KPI for total revenue and even the ratio of new returning visitors
Landing page: create a bounce rate KPI

Avoid worrying about things that aren't impacting your bottom line!

You may track business and marketing KPIs with an Excel spreadsheet, or with software from https://www.geckoboard.com/ or http://www.cyfe.com to build out KPI dashboards giving you at-a-glance information.

Take your time, and pick the metrics that are relevant to you, and organize them in a way that makes sense for your business.

6. Looking at attribution models

Go to GA, Reporting / Conversions / Multi channel funnels / Top conversion paths

See which channels are actually bringing in the most revenue, and drive your efforts in that direction, or you can identify which channels aren't driving a lot of value, and see if you can work on those channels to increase their value.

V. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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1. How SEO works
Rank is determined by importance and relevance

2. Essential optimization techniques
It's an ongoing effort!
- have min. 1 regular, text-based hyperlink to every page on your site
- make your site easy to navigate
- mark important content clearly and prominently
- use natural language in your URLs, eg. www.clothing.com/mens/pants/denim
- create unique title tags for each page
- give each page a unique meta description, a meaningful sentence or two
- use heading tags in order
- give every image a name and an alt tag description
- use a sitemap in html and xml format

Use google webmaster tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home to evaulate your SEO performance

If you have a moderately sized site, check out the tool Screaming Frog SEO Spider at www.screamingfrog.co.uk

3. Conducting keyword research
What your target audience might enter to google (G) search?

To really know what to focus on, we should explore the popularity of these terms. If I knew that 10,000 people were searching for steam carpet cleaning Santa Barbara and only 1,000 were searching for carpet cleaning Santa Barbara, I would definitely spend my effort writing content around steam cleaning.

Start writing your search keywords, and pay attention how G automatically expands those words

When you have your keywords, look at the volume. Login to adwords.google.com, Tools / Keyword planner
Get search volume data and trends

We have here "carpet cleaning Santa Barbara" with 720 monthly searches and "carpet cleaners Santa Barbara" with 210, so carpet cleaning is a much more popular search term than carpet cleaners. So as we use language on our site, we might want to be using the term carpet cleaning more so than the term carpet cleaners.

4. Crafting a content strategy
You need great content!

When you build your content, keep in mind there is no magic number of words or times to repeat your term, instead build out the information that brings the most value to your user.

5. Leveraging local SEO
To draw local customers.
Go to www.google.com/business to get yourself listed
moz.com/local

6. Hire a professional?
Consider your budget before hiring a search engine optimizer
Costs:
- site audit: $3000-$9000 (for medium size business)
- strategy development: $3000-$9000
- monthly retainer: $1000

Improve SEO early on

True SEO professionals
- don't provide guarantees
- don't encourage link exchanging
- don't promise instant results
- avoid SEOs claiming to have special relationship with premium directory services

SEO blogs
Quora.com
Conferences

Does the SEO have any relevant examples related to your industry? Has the SEO been in business for a while? How many years of experience do they have? Ask what tools and resources they use. They shouldn't have any problems being transparent with you, and should at least suggest using Google webmaster tools. From there, dig deeper into the qualities of the person or the agency.

VI. Search and display marketing
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1. Introduction to search and display
Search marketing: placing advertisements on the organic results page of search engines. These advertisements are sold on a pay-per-click model, so you don't pay for impressions, but rather an actual action.

As a marketer, you'll create a custom list of words or phrases that you want to display ads against.

2. Launch text search ads
Go to Adwords

3. Launching display search ads
Go to Adwords

4. Deciding to use remarketing
Show advertisements to people who have visited your site before, and you do this by adding a special tracking code right into your website. From there, you can leverage the list of users that it creates as a targeting option in Google AdWords. Remarketing can really help to deliver customized and high-performance ads.

Go to Adwords

5. Succeeding at search and display marketing

VII. Social media marketing
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1. Building a social media marketing plan
Distributing content organically
We can buy some of the most targeted advertisements available on the web
Each platform has its unique and its own best practices, style and audience. So keep this in mind as we develop or plan

How much time can your team spend on social networks? You want to plan on at least an hour a day. You've got to remember that you need to write copy, design or find images to support your message and then evaluate results so you can improve the strategy.

2. Who's using social media?
Facebook:
- 71% of Internet users have an account
- college graduates
- middle class
- age 24-50

Twitter:
- 19%
- age 18-29

Linkedin:
- 22%
- professionals
- ages 30-64
- the most expensive

Pinterest:
- 22%
- 4:1 female / male ratio
- ages 18-29

Take a look at your competition or businesses in a similar market. Look at what they're doing, how their engagement appears and how responsive their audience is.

3. Marketing with Facebook

4. Marketing with Twitter

5. Marketing with Linkedin
Business page for generating leads
Campaign manager: create ads
This platform is excellent when you're trying to reach specific business professionals.

6. Marketing with Pinterest

VIII. Video marketing
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IX. Email marketing
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1. Understanding email marketing
- acquiring new subscribers to your list
- retaining and generating revenue from these subscribers

With email marketing, you can inform existing customers of new products, upsell them into a more premium package, or even encourage them to share your business with their peers.

Each message needs to be carefully crafted. Include a strong call to action and arrive at just the right moment to get noticed.

Try to identify patterns and use those ideas to your advantage. Good email marketing is built on customer segments. Any time you acquire an email you should track where that email came from. If you have the resources, it would be ideal to also track which emails made purchases, how much revenue did that email drive, and even associate demographics or persona information if you have it.

I might have multiple email lists for an online store front. I can have a list of customers that made a purchase in the last 30 days, customers that have made repeat purchases, and a list of people who added an item to their cart, but never converted.

Each of those segments would receive a different email from me.

Automated email marketing is a must have in today's digital landscape. There's so much potential revenue sitting in your email list.

2. Creating an email marketing plan
How are you gaining new members to your list?
- an email sign-up link on the important pages of your website or even in your footing.
- use a lead generation page to capture information
- exchange a coupon for their email when they first visit the site
- email lead generation through social media

Goals
- generate more sales
- increase signups for a conference
- reactivate a former customer

The audience you identify will become customer segment, and you'll load that segment into your email tool.

What does the customer need from you in order to take action? What will motivate them to follow through with the objective? You might find that many customers need a handful of emails before they'll take action, and in that case, you might design a campaign that has three or four steps before your big ask. Once you know what your customer needs, build your content to support that answer. It might be an image, a video, testimonials, or even detailed instructions on how to complete a step in the conversion process.

Short and sweet is key. The content needs to be compelling, the subject engaging, and the call to action apparent

Most of your audience will be reading this on a mobile device

3. Tools to launch successful campaigns

Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Emma.

4. Measuring the success of email
- delivery rate
- open rate
- click rate.

Include links in your content that are tracked separately.

X. Content marketing
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1. What is content marketing?
All about creating articles and media that in turn drive brand awareness, create new customers and generate revenue.
It works because good content is valuable to customers. Good content answers a question.

The right content is authentic. And if it does a good job of answering the question, it can sell without being pushy.

Content marketing is also authoritative. If allows people and brands to establish themselves as authorities on particular topics. A carpet cleaning company might use content marketing to publish articles on the best methods for removing stains. They may even add videos to their articles helping to demonstrate how their method works.

Good and relevant content will also add value to your SEO efforts.

2. Creating a content planning model
Writing articles through the use of a blog is one of the most common types of content marketing

Identify the core audience, what you want them to do, how your content will get them to do it, and what you'll measure to know if you've succeeded.

Keep things closely related or neatly categorized so, as people start connecting with your content, they're inclined to read more and more.

- adding related articles to your blog
- having a next or previous link at the bottom of the page
- linking to other articles throughout the copy of each

The long-tail keywords, eg. "Why is my ice tray always breaking?" or, "What are ice trays made out of?"

You need a lot of content and you need it on a consistent basis, and this takes a lot of time.

Plan on creating one article a week to start. This is probably the bare minimum. If you're using dates on your articles to demonstrate their recency, it's even more important to keep things fresh. As always, measure your results to determine what content is popular or trendy, and then continue to build around those ideas while trying new things.

3. Setting up a blog
An example how to host it at wordpress.com

XI. Mobile marketing
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1. The mobile marketing landscape
Text a short number for special offers, or scan a QR code to pull up product details.

2. Mobile applications
A mobile application needs to provide significant value to your users, especially because they require a lot of time and effort to develop

Decide what it is you're trying to accomplish with your application. If your app is just an extension of your business, then first determine if it allows a customer to interact with your product or service in a more meaningful way than your website.

App development can be costly, especially if you're looking to put your application on multiple devices like the iPhone and Androids

XII. Expanding your digital marketing skills
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1. Running A/B marketing tests
Try a different call to action, say, buy now versus buy today. The best A/B tests only have one variation, which makes the results easy to understand. Difficult to pick the winner. Check out getdatadriven.com/ab-significance-test.
You need +90% certainty.

2. A look into affiliate marketing
Affiliates to sell your products for a commission. Affiliate marketing is a lot of work.

Sign up to a preexisting affiliate network, which will handle tracking sales and paying your affiliates.
Sign up as an advertiser, meaning that you'll be promoting your product to publishers who will list it on their Web site and earn those commissions.

The two most popular networks are Rakuten and the CJ Affiliate program.