What is digital marketing

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New York University *

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Marketing

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Feb 20, 2024

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What is digital marketing? - When we talk about digital marketing, we're essentially talking about promoting your business online using a multitude of channels. And these channels are how you make your buyer aware of what you're selling. Some common digital channels might include your website, search engines, social media, online video, and paid ads. Your customer will intersect many digital channels in their day-to-day. And marketing is about showing up where they're at with the right message at just the right time. Now, if you're like me, when I was just starting out in marketing, you'd be asking yourself, "Okay, but what do I say? Where do I say it? How do I know who I'm talking to and what will make them pick my brand?" And, and, I know, (chuckles) and this brings me to a key point. I want you to internalize that marketing is rarely successful on the first try. One of the greatest joys I get out of marketing is experimenting, trying new things. And evolving your marketing strategies is really key to coming out ahead. Now, marketing is just as much a science as it is an art. And the digital aspect of marketing lets us get really scientific. We spend a lot of time experimenting, forming a hypothesis, testing it, and then using the data we collect to adjust course. Failure is just part of the journey. Data and near instant access to it makes digital marketing incredibly powerful. Just about every action you take on the web is tracked. Collect enough data points and you can build really powerful predictions about people's behavior, their interests, what they're searching for and why. Market, in its simplest form, is just persuading someone to take action. The more data we have and the better we leverage it, well, the more successful that persuasion will be. The building blocks of digital marketing - The foundations of digital marketing start with taking a look at the three types of media that you'll leverage in your marketing efforts: paid, owned, and earned. I'll break these down for you. When we talk about paid media, this is everything that you, well, pay for. And this includes channels like pay per click ads, affiliate marketing, and display marketing. Owned media will encompass channels that you directly control, like your website, the list of customers that you use to send out emails, and even a blog that you host. Earned media is the world of organic mentions, posts by others on social media, mentions in videos, and even articles written about you. Now, all of these channels can overlap. Social media, for example, can be a paid channel if you're promoting your content, an owned channel if you're publishing a post, and an earned channel if you're receiving interactions and mentions from others. Together, these make up the foundation of digital marketing. And while these media types also exist in non-digital marketing, we gain a huge advantage in the digital space, personalization. Imagine you're selling mattresses. If you used paid media in a traditional sense, you might put an ad in the local newspaper. And it's possible that someone reading the paper needs a new mattress, but most aren't shopping for it. So you'll run this ad for a long time, and it's rather inefficient. Most eyes that land on that ad, the eyes that you're paying for, are uninterested. In digital marketing, you can identify people who are actively shopping for a mattress right now. You can pay to deliver an ad specifically to them. And this is an incredibly efficient advertisement. Now, there's always exceptions in marketing, but for the most part, as you evaluate where to market digitally, you'll be evaluating how to distribute your message across all three of these marketing channels. The marketing funnel

- You'll hear a lot about funnels the more time you spend in the world of marketing. Purchase funnels, sales funnels, inbound funnels, regardless of the name, they're all ultimately describing the same concept. And I want you to get in the habit of visualizing funnels as you develop your marketing strategies. Here's how to think about a funnel. It's really just a way to represent the customer's journey as they move towards the purchase of your product or surface. At the top or the widest part of the funnel is where a buyer starts their journey. And the bottom, the narrowest part, is where you hope they end up. Your goal as a marketer is to funnel prospects into buyers, moving them from the top to the bottom of the funnel. The shape symbolizes the fact that a large number of people will never complete the journey through the funnel. You'll expose your product or service to a lot of people, but only a small fraction will actually convert. In reality, this funnel is rather leaky, as it has holes in the sides where people will fall out. Now, the marketing funnel is typically segmented into four phases: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. At the very top is Awareness. Someone has to become aware of not only what they want, but who's selling it. This is when a prospect is introduced to your brand. But they might also be introduced to the competition as well. Thus, the first hole or the exit from your funnel. Now, I know that I need a mattress, and I know that you sell one, but my initial exposure to your brand was uninteresting so I wandered off. Now, below Awareness, we have Interest. It's at this stage that a consumer will begin to explore the products or services available to them in more detail. Now, I'm wanting to know what feature that your mattress has compared to your competitor. If I'm not captivated, well, out the funnel I go. Next comes Desire, which we can also call Consideration. It's here that the prospect wants to make a purchase. They're in the final stages of evaluating whether or not to commit. And finally, Action. Your prospect is either going to buy or not. They may select you, someone else, or decide they're not buying at all. This is the foundational funnel. It's called the item model. You may also see it depicted with one last step known as Loyalty, which is the act of retaining your customer. Now, we often reference these different segments as top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. And this is important because how you manage your marketing will depend on where in the funnel your buyer is. Towards the bottom of the funnel, well, you have someone who is really close to making a purchase. Bottom funnel marketing focuses on identifying people who are in a buying decision and then converting them. They're right there. At the top of the funnel, you're focused on making people aware of your solution. You're trying to message to mostly the right people, but you know you can't be everything for everyone. But if there's zero top of the funnel marketing, well, there's nobody coming out the other side. So you have to get them in the door before you can start selling to them. And, as you might expect, middle of the funnel marketing is the nurturing process to keep the lead moving. It's giving them a great experience, and all the information they need at just the right time to make their decision. In many ways, this is the hardest part of marketing, figuring out how to keep that person in the funnel and not spilling out. Marketing works best when you understand which stage your customers in so you can tailor your messaging to move them to that next stage. The buyer journey - The marketing funnel is really just a way of evaluating a buyer's journey. We understand a buyer will go through the stages from awareness to action, but is that journey ever perfectly straightforward? The buyer may be moving up and down the funnel, exiting and reentering. There's so many variables that we as marketers are working to account for. And I want to put this into perspective. Think for a minute about all of the questions you might have regarding how someone came to buy a product. Where did they find

this product? Was it research in advance or did they find it on a shelf? And if they found it on a shelf, what jumped out, the price, the label? Did they look at other products on the shelf next to it? Did they search the brand on their phone? Did they text a picture to a friend? Was the checkout process easy? Did a coupon motivate them to buy? And so on. I want you to try something, take out a pen and paper and write down all the steps you took when you made a recent purchase. The more you think about it, the more steps I imagine that you'll identify. And every time you go to buy something, at least in the next short future, keep a journal of your process. In fact, you can oftentimes realize that some purchases have been a brand that's been slowly chipping away at that awareness stage with you for ages. At each step, buyers are going to define their own path. So as you develop a digital marketing strategy, you'll need an idea of how a buyer will navigate your funnel. And this can feel like a rather robust undertaking. So I want you to treat this in an agile manner, be ready to iterate on your buyer's journey. You can't conceivably map out every step, every touchpoint and every interaction. What you want to do is define the most common paths a prospective buyer will take. So start by coming up with three to five answers for each of these questions. How will my buyer become aware of their problem? How might they become aware of a solution? Why would they become interested in my solution? Why would they pick my brand over another brand? What would motivate them to convert? What would be a hurdle to getting them to decide to buy? And what might they need to move down the funnel? Understanding your customer's journey helps you to develop the right messaging for the stage that they're in. It's key to the decisions that you'll be making across all of your digital marketing. Create a buyer journey map - One of the greatest challenges in marketing is knowing what to say and when. And I'll let you in on a little secret: you'll never get it 100% right. But with enough time and enough iterations, you'll get it really close. But that doesn't mean your first endeavor can't or won't be incredibly effective. So to help you land close to the target, I want you to build and maintain a buyer journey map. It is a fantastic tool for taking some of the mystery out of what a buyer needs to hear and when. Now there's no set form for this, but you can create a very simple template to get you started. Here's how I do it: I'll make a quick spreadsheet of sorts and you can do this in Excel or Google Sheets or whatever tool lets you evolve it and add to it as you go. Along the top as column headers, I list out the funnel stages: awareness, interest, desire, action, and loyalty. Then I'll create rows for the following: activities, goals, thoughts, emotional state, touchpoints and channels, and finally, objectives. Let's go through this together. Start with Activities. Moving left to right for each funnel stage, call out what your consumer is doing. Are they searching Google? Waiting for the bus? Listening to music? Reading a marketing email from you? And so on. Then Goals. This is what your customer wants to achieve during this phase. This is their goal, not yours. It could be to get more information, find a discount, and so on. Next: Thoughts. What are some questions or thoughts that customer might have that correspond with that stage? Maybe they're curious about your return policy for example. Now: Emotional state. Is the customer happy, excited, sad, frustrated? Are they interested or curious? Describe how they're feeling during this portion of their journey. I like to use a one to five scale of smiley faces and then I put a small quote that symbolizes what the customer might be feeling, such as, "This seems interesting." Okay. Touchpoints and channels. Where will the customer interact with your brand? Is it your website, social media, an email, a specific ad? And so on. Objectives. Here, you'll craft a few bullet points about what you need to do to move your prospective buyer to the next stage of the funnel. Now you may have multiple responses for each funnel

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stage, but this format will help you map out your fundamental buyer journey. The goal is to keep it simple and lean. Don't fill out pages and pages. Let's fill out one column together. Let's say we have a pet grooming business and we're working on the awareness stage. For Activities, well, let's say the consumer is searching Google for "pet groomer near me". Goals: Well, they want to see what local businesses offer this service. For Thoughts, maybe it's "I hope I can book this online." And "I've never taken Fido anywhere before." I'll give their Emotional State a neutral smiley face. Touchpoints: Let's say Google map listings and website. Objectives: Make the customer aware of the business, most notably, how to book an appointment and how well reviewed our business is. With this first piece of the journey built, I can move through the columns, and once I'm done, I'll have a good picture of all the marketing activities I need to complete to have a full, funnel marketing strategy. It also helps me think through what information is most important or might even be missing from my strategy. Consider the journey that your customers experience and build a map. This way you can make the process more delightful, less frustrating, and ultimately, successful. How to develop a marketing strategy - Developing a marketing strategy can feel overwhelming. But when you break it down, I trust that you'll come to recognize just how really straightforward it is. Marketing strategy describes how you intend to reach your target audience. And contrary to what many believe, marketing strategies aren't multi-page intensive documents that have a solution for everything. Marketing is always in motion. You'll constantly be moving from one idea to the next and iterating along the way, so it's better to have a plan that's flexible. Let me give you a high level overview. A great strategy starts with a well-defined and established foundation. You start by understanding what it is you're selling. What makes it unique? What's your value proposition? From there, it's a matter of identifying who you're selling to, and this is known as your target market. You'll need to gain an understanding of who they are, what motivates them, and how your product or service solves their problem. And you might think you already have this covered, but take a minute to think again, really think, "Who is your target market?" If you misidentify your target, this whole process can come crashing down. You can't market to everyone. You have to figure out how what you sell fits with the market that you're going after. And this means tweaking your value proposition, or your audience, until you've dialed in the right fit. And then we'll be ready to keep refining after the marketing cycle is up and running. Now, there's also the matter of looking at your competition, the size of the market you have access to, and how you stack up in the mix. This strategic approach will then have you layering in marketing channel selections alongside the customer journey so you can determine how to best persuade your prospects to buy. Marketing isn't just about the messaging, it's about the entire journey. It's about how a consumer feels while engaging with your brand, how convincing your solution to their problem is, how pleasant you make the experience, and so on. You want a marketing strategy that encompasses every touchpoint. Marketing is by no means quick or easy, and the results aren't going to be instantaneous, but if you apply yourself and work through evolving your strategy and revisiting it often, it'll start to click. Things will fall into place and you'll be moving your marketing efforts forward, piece by piece, until you really pick up momentum. How to define your value proposition

- At the center of your marketing is your value proposition. It's a short, distinct statement that outlines exactly why a customer should buy your product or service. It should be something that can live as a headline with a supporting sentence, or a few bullet points. It should be front and center in your messaging and be the foundation by which you build all of your marketing around. Now a value proposition is not a jargon filled statement, nor is it your slogan. It must be simple, clear, and easy to understand in five seconds. The less known that your product is, well the better that your value proposition is going to need to be. When Uber launched, it's stuck to this value proposition, "The smartest way to get around, one tap and a car comes directly to you, your driver knows exactly where to go, and payment is completely cashless." Now it's tempting to create a value proposition that lists the key differentiators of your product, but this actually isn't the right approach. What you want to do is sell the result, or the experience of using the product, not just what features get you to that result. You're telling a story and focusing on the outcomes, and in a competitive market, you're attacking pain points of the existing solutions. With Uber, well they're calling out everything people hated about traditional taxis, but their main headline isn't Uber the on-demand taxi service. It's telling you that your current way of getting around is dumb. And the outcome of Uber is that you've picked the smart way. Let's say I'm launching a new smartwatch company. Sure, I could sell my watch on features, such as the durability of the glass, or the price, or even the battery life, and that would be important for a consumer to know. But I could instead lead with the idea of never missing moments, an always connected companion with just- in-time alerts, that keep you in touch with your family, your work and your life goals. I can position this watch in a manner that lets me market beyond features. I can now develop campaigns for those that are fitness inclined, campaigns for the working professional, or even for the stay-at-home parent. I can now tell stories that connect to the features that matter for that target market. Selling the results and the experience lets you think bigger. And it gives your buyer room to imagine the bigger value of that purchase. As you sit down to develop your value proposition, determine not how your product will be better than others in the market, but how your outcome is better. Write this value proposition down and then reflect on it every time that you go to produce any new marketing collateral. How to establish goals for digital marketing - You likely have a vision of what you need your marketing to accomplish. It might be to increase traffic to your website, drive more phone calls or get more customers to come through your doors. Now, these might sound like great marketing goals but these are all actually examples of marketing objectives. They're actually quite useless as is, to be effective they need to be measurable. Now a common approach is to create goals using the SMART acronym. This means that for a goal to be effective it must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. Now the approach that I use to map out goals, which is also in use at companies like Google and LinkedIn is to use a format called objectives and key results. And you'll hear these referred to as OKRs. It looks like this, first, you set the objective and objectives answer the question, where do we want to go? And then you'll define two or three measurable key results. And those answer the question, how do we know that we've got there? This is important because otherwise you can't decide if you've achieved your objective. Okay, let's say

that we want to increase online sales for a coffee shop. Here's how we'd set SMART goals inside the OKR framework. First I set my objective, it's specific, increase online sales for coffee, beans and coffee mugs. Next, we set our key results, these are measurable relevant to the goal and attainable within our timeframe. For this example, let's say sell 100 packages of coffee beans, sell 250 coffee mugs. Now all goals should be time bound and traditionally OKRs are time bound by a quarter. So we might say that this objective is due by end of Q1 next year, but you can set goals by the week, month and so on. As you can see, the key results are how I'm qualifying that we increase sales. I've decided that if I achieved each of those key results, well, then we hit our goal. There are many ways though to set goals. What matters is that you commit to setting goals and measure your progress. You can't simply point yourself in a direction to march forward. You need a plan. How to develop your digital marketing KPIs - As you move your marketing forward, you may have broad established objectives and key results for your quarterly performance, but you'll still need to establish granular success metrics for each marketing objective. A nimble and common approach for this is through the creation of key performance indicators, or KPIs. KPIs lets you measure the performance of a particular activity, such as an outbound email campaign or a fall sales event. Now, you may have many activities contributing to a large objective, but each of these activities will require its own measure of success. By monitoring your KPIs, you'll see what's working and what's not. Say, for example, I'm on a quest to sell 250 coffee mugs for my cafe this quarter. Now, I'm running online ads as one activity and email campaigns as another. For my online ads, I might be trying to get the dollar amount I'm spending per sale within an acceptable level. So, I might want a KPI that says achieve an $8 CPA, or cost per acquisition. For my email campaigns, well, I might want a KPI targeting an open rate goal or a goal for how many clicks that campaign generates. In marketing, we often have to fine tune each activity that nudges our customer along the journey. We can't get folks to click on a link if they aren't opening the email. So you'll often set your KPIs to map to the biggest pain point that you're trying to solve at any given moment on your quest to achieve the target objective. KPIs will always be unique to you and your campaigns, but I'd like to give you a few common starting places for setting KPIs. With online sales, you're likely going to be looking at your conversion rate and the cost per acquisition or action. For broader marketing objectives, set a KPI for total revenue and even the ratio of new to returning visitors. If you're using a landing page, then set a bounce rate KPI. That's to say how many folks dart from that page without taking any action. This way you can identify if your inbound traffic isn't targeted enough

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How to decide on a marketing channel - It's impossible to be active in every marketing channel. So you have to select the ones that make the most sense for your business. And in order to do that, you'll need to understand the platforms that you have access to and how they might benefit you. Now, this is a pivotal challenge in digital marketing. There are an endless array of channels. Some are big and have been around for a while and some are smaller and maybe newer too. You have everything from the major social media outlets down to very niche forums and groups. And what's going to work for you is really highly dependent on your audience. As a marketer, you'll need to go where your customer is but also where it makes sense to be active as a brand. Now, as you map out potential channels, I also suggest that you consider what mindset your customer is in while they're on that channel. Let's say you sell aftermarket parts for off-roading enthusiasts. A 30-minute product demonstration on YouTube might be really effective and enjoyable for a prospect already invested in YouTube. But for a restaurant, well, YouTube is less likely to return on that same investment. Now, it can be tempting to pursue a channel simply because it's popular but don't let yourself or stakeholders persuade you to over-invest in any channel that isn't the right fit for your consumer or what you're selling. Make an investment into exploring channels that are available to you. If they're new and foreign, well, join as an observer and follow other brands. Treat it like moving to a new town. Find a few locals to help you make the transition. Above all, invest in channels where your message lands with the right audience, where they're most likely going to be engaging with it. How to create lean messaging in marketing copy - If you want your messaging to be really effective and resonate with your audience, well, your marketing copy should be accessible and lean. If I were to visit your website or receive your newsletter or even see your latest LinkedIn post, I shouldn't be drowning in big words. Complex and verbose messages don't make you or your brand sounds smart. In fact, they might make you sound a little out of touch. Nobody likes to read complex jargon. Now, it's one thing to use industry terms, but it's another to string together business jargon. Instead, give visitors something that draws them in and keeps them focused on what you have to offer. The best messaging is short, concise, and to the point. Now, it can still be the voice of your brand, but the jargon has to go. And when it comes to accessible content, it's also important you're considering the assumptions that you're making. You see, we make lots of decisions daily, and rarely do we ever have every answer and every piece of information available. So we rely on our gut or our

intuition to guide us. Well, our intuition is built by our experiences and associations over time. And this will lead us to have preconceived notions which impact every buying decision we make. And this is why as you craft marketing messages, you need to ask yourself what messaging assumptions have been made. For example, many people still assume that eco-friendly cleaning products are not as effective as they're synthetic competitors. And while this is likely an incorrect theory, it's actually a widely held belief. The reality is, regardless of what you sell your consumers are going to make assumptions, if you don't fill in the gaps for them. So it's on you to make sure that your messaging tells the complete picture. How to optimize your website - Your website is an important piece of your digital marketing strategy and one of the most valuable assets of digital real estate that you own. Online consumers are fickle and that's because digital interactions are commonplace. So, users are spoiled by companies that are doing it well. They're used to things just working and they expect that the information they want will be available and accurate. When it's not, they're disappointed and credibility is lost for whatever brand they're interacting with. And the truth is if your website isn't good at delivering what your visitors are expecting to find, you're going to fall further and further behind. And if your website doesn't work on mobile, well, you're already way behind. An effective website is going to be simple, well thought out and highly functional. It should be intuitive and eliminate any and all barriers so your visitors can accomplish their goals effortlessly. As you evaluate your current website, take some time to ask yourself the following questions. For starters, is your site mobile-friendly? This is a non-negotiable. You should be testing all of your marketing on a mobile device. For example, how is the experience from clicking on a link from an email campaign through your website? Much of marketing is now what we refer to as a mobile first, meaning you design it intentionally for a mobile experience and then let the desktop experience follow. Okay, now from here, does it answer all of the questions visitors have? You want to identify the common questions your customers are often asking and make sure that information is easily and readily available online. Next, is the site reflective of your brand? Within the first couple of seconds, How to build landing pages that convert - Every page on your site has a goal, and it could be to distribute information, capture an email address, or sell a product. Now, you have between two and six seconds to convince a visitor to stay once they've

arrived on your site. What happens is these visitors will take a glance, and then bounce right away if they're not interested. So with every campaign you're running, you want to be driving traffic to a very specific landing page. Having a specific destination allows you to reinforce the messaging that inspired the visitor to click. If I click an ad for discount eyeglass frames shipped to my door, I don't want to land on a page to book an appointment for an eye exam. You want to provide an attention-grabbing visual or headline, and frame that information in a way that helps the visitor navigate towards your goal. Because you control the landing page, you get to create messaging that affirms that the visitor is in the right place, so be sure that you're talking the most important information above the fold. In other words, what's visible on the screen before a user has to scroll. Now, some visitors will inevitably arrive on your homepage, and that's okay, but it's important to avoid campaigns that drive visitors directly to that homepage. It's the least conversion-friendly page on your website, and it tends to be fairly broad. Again, the key to making your website convert is to build goal-specific landing pages, and it's important to make sure that this landing page has your logo, an explanation of the offer, Introduction to paid advertising - We live in a pay to play marketing landscape. Organic reach just isn't what it used to be. So if you want to reach more people, well, you'll need to pay for the opportunity. Now, the majority of paid advertising operates in an auction format. So, you'll identify what bidding model you're interested in, and then you'll set a price that you're willing to pay. The most common bidding model is pay per click. And just as it sounds, you're deciding how much you'll pay when a user clicks on your ad. Now, pay per impression is also incredibly common. In this model, you'll pay on what's known as a CPM basis, or cost per thousand impressions. So you'll be paying each time your ad shows up, regardless if it's clicked or not. Now you can also pay per action or acquisition, which is a model that essentially guarantees a conversion takes place for an agreed upon price. And in social media marketing, you can also encounter pay per engagement, which gives you the opportunity to pay for a like, a share, and even comments. And also within mobile app marketing, you can even pay per install. And then finally, video advertising is mostly based on a pay per view model. And these models are used across many types of advertising. One such model is search advertising, and this is primarily bid on a cost per click, or a cost per action model. Search engines, such as Google, allow advertisers the opportunity to place text ads alongside organic search results. And Google Ads is the single most popular advertising platform. But other search engines, such as Bing, also have platforms that allow you to reach audiences actively searching for offerings similar to yours. Now another common paid advertising channel is display

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advertising. With display advertising, you'll be placing text or image advertisements on sites around the web, and within mobile applications. These banner ads can have different shapes and sizes, and you've likely encountered these as you've navigated the web yourself. Now you can target your display ads based on the content on the actual page, a website itself, or even by user attributes, such as interests or demographics. Display is great for remarketing to visitors who didn't purchase, as well as for generating brand awareness, but it is harder to generate a direct response. Now, most display ads are shown to a very relevant audience, but that audience may not be expressing intent, or even purchasing behavior. Video advertising is another incredibly popular approach. In this model, you'll pay to run a short ad in a pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll placement. And this is referring to where your ad shows up. It's either running before the video plays, interrupting the video that's currently playing, or it'll show up at the end. And YouTube is, by far, the most popular video advertising platform. Now, from here, we have social media marketing, and in social media marketing, you can boost your social media posts, or even advertise completely separately from your social media profile. Now, social media ads boast some of the lowest costs, and can amplify your organic following tremendously. Paid advertising is an important component of any marketing strategy, so you'll want to explore how it fits into your marketing goals. How to budget for paid marketing - Budgeting for paid marketing is always a significant challenge with any new marketing initiative. We tend to want to make long-term plans and forecasts but often have very limited information to do so. And the reality is long-term plans are rarely accurate. Instead, I encourage you to be comfortable taking an adaptable approach. You'll develop a forecast, and then as you collect data, you'll continue to revise your model until it's more and more accurate. Now to be honest, there's hundreds of methodologies for budgeting your paid marketing spend. So I'm just going to give you a starting place when working within a cost-per-click model, and then you can build from here. So let's say we run a hotel, and we're willing to pay up to $100 to get someone to book a stay. This is our target cost per acquisition. So we can't set our maximum cost per click to $100, because then we would pay up to $100 for every click, and we know that every click is not going to result in a sale. So we need to first figure out how many clicks it takes before someone will make a purchase. To start, you can look at your current conversion rate from your online traffic. Loosely, take a look at your total number of sales from a particular channel, say direct website bookings, and then divide that by the total number of visitors for the same period. Let's say our hotel converts 8% of the traffic that visits to the website. Now truthfully,

pay-per-click advertising conversion rates are typically lower than what you'd see from direct traffic. So let's cut that number in half. We'll call it 4%. To arrive at our max cost per click, we need to take the maximum cost per acquisition and multiply it by your estimated conversion rate. In our case, that's $100 times 4%, which gives us $4 for our maximum cost per click. Now eventually you'll get real data on how your ads perform, and you can adjust your model. But for now, you have to make loose assumptions to see if you can build a sustainable paid strategy. We do a lot of experimenting in marketing, and you have to spend some money to get that data. When it comes to determining your overall budget, well, you'll have to evaluate how much you're comfortable spending and how many sales you need to achieve your goals. To give you some perspective, the average cost per acquisition with Google Search is $60, and a typical small business will spend between 4 and $9,000 per month in paid advertising. So don't be afraid to find a starting place, test your campaigns, and adjust your model as you scale. Social media marketing: First steps - At its core, social media marketing has the ability to bring a new kind of exposure and interaction to your business. For starters, social media marketing creates the opportunity to hear from your customers. Oftentimes they'll share things directly with your social channels or ask questions that might help you identify the good or bad in your business. Now, whether you sell directly to consumers or business to business, social media has tremendous potential. Most notably, is access to real-time conversations. You as a brand can participate in discussions that are relevant to your industry. You can advance social causes or educate followers on niche, industry updates. Social media also gives you an outlet to establish credibility. Today's savvy consumers are spending more time researching brands and products before spending any money. With an active social media presence, well, you'll allow customers to indirectly advocate for you. If they're leaving a positive comment, sharing a review or interacting with your materials it'll boost your overall credibility. You'll also begin to develop a sense of community and a community is an important tool for driving awareness to your business. As customers become advocates, they'll turn to social media to leave a compliment or they'll share what you're posting. Even if they're having an issue, your timely responses will signal to others that you have excellent support. This amplification is incredibly valuable. It's this community that will ignite your word of mouth marketing and help you reach untapped territory. Friends often look to friends for recommendations and social media allows you to activate those opportunities and expose your brand to a new audience. And social media is fascinating. It's a rapidly evolving space that will challenge you, primarily because what works for one brand won't work for another. So as you evaluate your use of social media, you'll have to really understand your

landscape, your audience, and question why your consumers would be following your social accounts. Social media marketing is a world of its own. So I highly recommend the course, Introduction to Social Media Strategy. Now, with these guidelines in mind, don't hesitate to make your brand heard. How to decide on a social media platform - It's impossible to be active in every social media channel, so you'll have to select the ones that make the most sense for your business. Now, there are many social media brands. Some are big and have been around for a while. Some are smaller and maybe newer too. There are networks that are focused on the general audience, and then there are niche social networks or groups within a network that focus on bringing people together who have a similar interest. The social media landscape can be divided up in a few categories. Here's a popular diagram by Fred Cavazza. He categorizes the social media platforms in networking, publishing, sharing, messaging, discussing, and collaborating. And you'll find that the most popular or biggest platforms touch on all of these aspects, so they're in the center of this diagram. Now, different products not only serve a different purpose, but they appeal more or less to different age groups. YouTube and Facebook are used by people of almost any age group, but Snapchat, for example, sees little usage from older age groups. LinkedIn sees slightly more adoption among the 30 to 49 year olds, primarily due to its specific focus on professional networking. Not only do you have to evaluate the reach of a particular network, but you also have to consider the volatile nature of social media. New platforms rise all the time. Some gain immediate traction. Others fizzle. Some, such as TikTok, start with a niche focus and in a short window of time become prolific. It's good to keep this all in mind as you start planning your digital marketing strategy. Joining an early network is higher risk but also higher reward. It's all really going to depend on your goals. Take time to evaluate the various networks, and aim to make sure that your message lands with the right audience on a platform where they'll most likely be paying attention to it. How to build and leverage followers - Social media isn't very social if you're lacking followers. And when you're starting out, the early traction can be really challenging. So I encourage you, start small, and close to home. Once you've set up your social media accounts, then invite colleagues, coworkers, friends, and those in your extended network to start following your brand. Next, make sure to include your social media links in all of your own media, start with your website and your blog, but you can also include links in your emails or newsletters. Then, focus on posting valuable content. If you post content people can use or are

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interested in, then chances are, they'll share it. And the wider your content gets shared, the higher the chances that you'll pick up some new followers. Now, from here, really consider using hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are a way to classify content online. Anyone can create a hashtag to refer to a specific content or topic. And by using the hashtag, will you indicate the relation of your content to that specific topic. And hashtags are searchable on several networks, and with many networks, people can even follow hashtags. So they'll see content related to that tag appearing in their feed. It's also a great idea to include popular or trending hashtags, to get exposure to people who are not in your immediate network. And then, they might even become your followers. On many networks, you can also use @mentions in your post. An @mention will call out another platform user. And by doing this, that user then gets alerted to your post and it gives them a chance to consider resharing it if they find it relevant. It can also get you exposure to a whole new group of potential followers. Imagine you own a coffee shop. You could post a picture that includes an awesome assortment of fresh pastries with the caption, what's better than fresh pastries from @localbakery alongside your morning coffee? Another way to grow your followers is to rely on an influencer. A post from an influencer could give you a lot of exposure. However, this typically doesn't come for free. If you're interested in getting help from an influencer, tools like Socialbaker or Tagger can help you find the right fit for the audience you're targeting. Finally, you can create an advertising campaign to help you generate awareness and followers for your business. Now, one piece of advice here, you want followers who have a genuine interest in your brand. So make sure that your ad campaign is focused on building authentic followers. Now, there are a ton of tools out there that can help you advance your following, so I encourage you to learn more about them. You can explore the course, Marketing Tools: Social Media. Now you don't build a following overnight, but if you follow these steps, you'll find that your audience can grow, well, faster than you think. The power of email marketing - To many, email marketing feels old and antiquated, but this is far from the truth. Now, the days of buying email lists are long gone, but emailing those who have opted into your list is still a prime strategy. And this is because many customers welcome communication from brands they already interact with. Just like our own acceptance and use of snail mail coupons from businesses we frequent. Now, on one hand, your email marketing efforts will be about acquiring new subscribers to your list and on the other, retaining and generating revenue from those subscribers. With email marketing, you can inform existing customers of new products, upsell them to more premium packages, or even encourage them to share your business with their peers. Email marketing is very strategic. Each message needs to be carefully crafted; have a strong call to action; and arrive at just the right

moment to get noticed. If it's not relevant, it gets deleted. Think about your own email habits. What are you opening and why? What are you clicking on? Try to identify patterns and use those ideas to your advantage. Now, good email marketing is built on detailed customer segments. Anytime you acquire an email address, you should track where that subscriber came from. And if you have the resources, it would be ideal to also track which email addresses made purchases, how much revenue that individual subscriber drives, and even start associating demographics or persona information if you have it. For example, I might have multiple email lists for an online storefront. I can have a list of customers that made a purchase in the last 30 days, customers that are high value, 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, and good email marketing is often hinged on the idea of a drip campaign. So, how this might look is you can take the abandoned segment. And from there, I might send an email in the first 24 hours that says, "Hey, you left this in your cart. There's only one step left to checking out." Maybe 72 hours later, I'll drop another email. "Free shipping, today only with coupon SHIPFREE. View your cart now." Now, that's just one example of many, but automated email marketing is a must have in today's digital landscape. There's just so much potential revenue sitting in that email list. To get the most value out of email, you won't be using a typical email client. Instead, you'll need to leverage an online provider such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. These systems will let you tailor your lists, set up automatic triggers, and track your results. Email marketing is still a valuable tool. Focus on generating and leveraging that email list. How to develop an email marketing plan - To get the most out of email, you're going to want to build a plan that is tailored to your target audience. But before we even get into the emails you're sending, let's talk about how to go about gaining new members to your list. Now, beyond capturing emails through transactions or signups, common techniques are to run campaigns specifically targeted at capturing email addresses. You can build lead generation landing pages, or leverage your website to post an enticing message that prompts the user to share their email. Once you understand how you'll capture the audience, think about the actual email strategy itself. And I want you to start by identifying your goals. Maybe you want to generate more sales, or reactivate former customers. You need to make a list of your key goals and then make a note of which customer segments are most likely to convert towards those goals. Now, I often start by working the most valuable problem first, from marketing to abandoned customers. You've done all of the work to get someone to share their information, and then if they didn't become a customer, well you should work to develop campaigns that aim to close that deal. These nurture or drip campaigns can be very effective at recapturing revenue. Now, when evaluating what messages to send and

why, put yourselves in the shoes of your customer. What does the customer need from you in order to take action? What will motivate them to follow through with the objective? You may find that many customers need a handful of emails before they'll take an action. And in that case, you might want to design a campaign that has three or four steps before your big ask. Now, when in doubt, refer to the marketing funnel model, and design your email to take that consumer through each phase of the funnel. Once you know what your customer needs, well then you can build your content to support that answer, might be an image, a video, testimonials, or even detailed instructions on how to complete a step in the conversion process. As with most things, short and sweet is key. The content needs to be compelling, the subject engaging, and the call to action apparent. The design shouldn't hamper the experience. So always test your design on mobile. Good content will be lost, if the email doesn't load properly on a mobile device. So make sure to outline any special considerations for mobile users. You might need to use smaller images, bigger buttons, and of course you want to be directing traffic to a mobile optimized landing page. And finally consider your timing. How often do you need to send your message? Is it best distributed during the day or at night? Is it seasonal? Now there's no magical answer, but you'll have to use your data to help guide you in that decision. Email marketing plans evolve in scale as your audience grows, so it's normal to continuously try new ideas and even new content types. How to decide what to track in marketing analytics - Effective marketing is a science. In order to pinpoint a strategy, report on results, and evaluate opportunities for improvement, well, you need to be capturing and analyzing data. There's no excuse for relying on basic metrics, like website traffic and the number of conversions each day anymore. We live in a world that is data driven. We have the tools and resources to measure, well, just about anything we want. Reviewing analytics as part of your day to day will help you become a better marketer and provide you with ideas on how to further improve your marketing strategy. That said, the real issue tends not to be a lack of data but rather a lack of focus. There's no time for a 10 page report of all of the business metrics. So to avoid information overload, you want to focus on the metrics that matter most to your marketing vision, your customer needs, and company goals. Now, what metrics you actually measure in these areas will depend on the stage that your business is in and those goals. And before we look at what metrics we'll want to pay attention to, I want to quickly talk about the five critical areas to any business. The first is Acquisition, which is converting your consumer. Then Activation, which is users having a good first time experience. Then we have Retention, essentially keeping the customer. Referral, this'll be customers telling their friends. And then Revenue, well, all of the money that you're

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bringing in. Dave McClure, a Venture capitalist and angel investor, described these areas as the Pirate Metrics, named because, well, when you take the first letter of each of the stages, it sounds like a pirate, AARRR. Now the goal is to identify a key metric from each of those areas. So for Acquisition, this might be the number of conversions. For Activation, this might be time on your site in your product or even your customer support ticket volume. Retention is your churn rate. Who's leaving? Referral is the number of conversions from a referral source. And then Revenue. Well, you're going to start looking at your actual monthly revenue. Once you start to invest actual marketing spend, you'll want to increase your focus, layering in more metrics. For Acquisition, think about conversion rate and cost per acquisition. For Activation, it's really about understanding that customer lifetime value. For Retention, it's your churn rate for recapture, perhaps your email open rate. For Referral, well, maybe you have an affiliate program growth rate. And Revenue, well, now you can get complex by looking at your compound monthly or annual growth rates. The goal is to make sure you're looking at your metrics daily and that you have metrics that cover the five critical business areas. Your key metrics should act as the vital science to help you understand the overall health of your product and serve to influence the changes you make to your marketing strategy. How to generate reports for marketing analytics - In digital marketing, you'll have tremendous data at your fingertips. And in order to make sense of this data, you'll need to synthesize it into your reports, but your reports need to have purpose. Too many times, I see data collection and reporting just for the sake of having data, and that's not all that helpful, as it can actually distract from your overall goal. So every report that you create must have an actionable outcome and influence change. When you report on something, it's really important that you focus on what you want the key takeaway to be. For example, let's say we look at a chart like this, and I summarize that traffic declined significantly in July from the preceding month of June. Well, that isn't really enough. We need to layer in the context. Your report would need to show the decline, the supporting data that hypothesizes the source of the decline, and then whatever the key takeaway is. So I might layer in data that shows we decreased our advertising spend on say, LinkedIn, and then subsequently saw a drop in traffic. I can now connect the dots to what the ripple effect of this impact is and what we should do about it. Always tell a story with your data, and always have a clear takeaway, so that you can take action. If things are bad, explain why. If things are good, also explain why. If the data doesn't contribute to the story you're telling, well, then it's okay to leave it off your reports to help you simplify. Now, reporting doesn't have to feel overwhelming, and you don't need to summarize all of the data. Just find

where the most actionable opportunities are, and keep the narrative simple and easy to understand.

What is digital marketing

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