DIGITAL MARKETING LIKE A PRO

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

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FOREWORD BY NEIL PATEL

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INTRODUCTION: PREPARE, RUN, OPTIMIZE!

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PART I: PREPARE

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CHAPTER 1: SITUATION ANALYSIS

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1.1

31 31 32 34 36 38 38 41 42 42 44 45 46 47 47

MARKETING AND BRAND AUDIT 1.1.1

MARKETING AUDIT AND MATURITY ASSESSMENT

MCKINSEY’S 7S (1980) MCCARTHY’S 7PS MARKETING MIX (FIRST VERSION, 1964) UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL MATURITY HOW TO STAY ON TOP OF THE LATEST DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS

1.1.2

MARKETING TECHNOLOGY STACK

1.1.3

COMPANY DIGITAL ASSETS AND POINTS OF PRESENCE AUDIT

HOW TO PERFORM A DIGITAL POINTS OF PRESENCE AUDIT BURCHER’S PAID, OWNED, EARNED MEDIA (2012) HOW TO PERFORM A PAID MEDIA AUDIT HOW TO PERFORM AN OWNED MEDIA AUDIT QUICK SEO AUDIT QUICK OWNED MEDIA AUDIT QUICK CONTENT PERFORMANCE AUDIT

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HOW TO PERFORM AN EARNED MEDIA/SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT QUESENBERRY’S 5WS MODEL (2015)

1.1.4

BRAND AWARENESS AND SENTIMENT

HOW TO ANALYZE BRAND SENTIMENT

1.1.5

BRAND AUDIT AND TONE OF VOICE

HOW TO DEFINE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY AND ASSETS HOW TO MAKE A VOICE AND TONE GUIDE

1.1.6 1.2

EXTRA HELP: TRAININGS AND AGENCIES

MARKET RESEARCH FROM MARKET RESEARCH TO MARKET REPORT

1.2.1

CONSUMER TRENDS

TRENDS - IDEAS - DESIGN - INNOVATION TREND CLASSIFICATION

1.2.2

COMPETITOR BENCHMARKING

HOW TO PERFORM A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS COMPETITIVE SWOT ANALYSIS AND TOWS MATRIX (1982) PORTER’S FIVE FORCES (1979)

1.2.3

TARGET AUDIENCE

HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET MARKET HOW TO SEGMENT YOUR TARGET MARKET

1.2.4 1.3

BUYER PERSONAS

NETWORK ANALYSIS AND STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION HOW TO MANAGE STAKEHOLDERS

1.3.1

THOUGHT LEADERS

1.3.2

JOURNALISTS

HOW TO IDENTIFY ONLINE PRESS MENTIONS AND JOURNALISTS

1.3.3

ONLINE INFLUENCERS

HOW TO IDENTIFY ONLINE INFLUENCERS HOW AND WHERE TO FIND ONLINE INFLUENCERS

1.3.4

REVIEW SITES

1.3.5

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE COMMUNITY HOW TO KEEP YOUR COMMUNITY ENGAGED

1.4

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY 1.4.1

CUSTOMER PROBLEM DEFINITION AND PRODUCT INNOVATION

HOW TO ORGANIZE AN IDEATION WORKSHOP DESIGN THINKING PRODUCT INNOVATION

1.4.2

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CUSTOMER FEEDBACK: EXPECTATIONS VS SATISFACTION

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0 4 TACTICS THAT WORK

What are the proven and tested digital marketing tactics for channels and touch points like your website, Facebook Page, emailings, or e-commerce site?

Digital marketing can be hard, but it does not have to be. Thousands of other digital marketers have tried and tested digital marketing tactics before you, so it can save a lot of time and effort if you learn from their lessons and mistakes.

Best practices are essential for processes that you need to work out correctly.

The following best practices will help you reach your digital marketing objectives while improving the skills of your team, using digital platforms more effectively, and reducing waste of time.

4.1

YOUR WEBSITE OR E-COMMERCE SITE AS MOBILE-FIRST CONVERSION HUB How can your website or e-commerce site help you reach your digital marketing objectives?

Your company does not need a website and domain name from day one – you might be perfectly happy serving your customers online through a Facebook Page or collecting email opt-ins through a simple landing page. A website does not have to be fancy or complicated either, although some of them have extra

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functionalities like a contact form, an online reservation form, or e-commerce features, which may suit your company’s needs.

Launching a website is an event of little importance if the strategy behind this website is not focused on conversion: the goal to change visitors into customers, or maybe even turning loyal customers into brand advocates.

When you sell goods or services online through an e-commerce site, the conversion goal becomes even more important: if the site does not generate enough sales, you will go out of business.

According to web analytics company StatCounter, combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices overtook the traffic from desktop computers somewhere in 2016. Ever since then, the rate of mobile traffic has kept rising every year.115 If your website is not fit to accommodate mobile visitors, you are missing out on more than half of your potential customers.

Another best practice is to connect all of your digital marketing channels to one central place: your website. This allows you to measure the incoming traffic through web analytics. This model is called the spoke-hub distribution paradigm, or the hub-and-spokes model.

HUB AND SPOKES Your website is the ultimate “owned media” that is openly accessible by anyone on the web, the only place on the internet you do have full control over. With inbound marketing, what it costs to build and maintain your website pays off as it will function as the central online platform that channels can lead to. Your website is, in other words, where the most interesting conversions happen.

Putting the “owned media” (your corporate website) at the centre of your strategy, pointing all web traffic to the only place where you can have full analytics, is often called the hub-and-spokes model. With this model, you can turn initial engagement on a blog or on social media into an asset to your company.

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04 - TACTICS THAT WORK

4.4.3

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CONTENT CREATION

Stop interrupting what people are interested in. Be what people are interested in.

The goal of content creation is simple enough: to create high-quality, useful, relevant and engaging content about what matters to your target groups. The difficulty lies in creating content that has true value for your audience.

Create content that teaches. You can’t give up. You need to be consistently awesome.

(Neil Patel, digital marketing thought leader)

Find your content tilt.

The content tilt is that area of little to no competition on the web that gives you a fighting chance of breaking through and becoming relevant. It is not just what makes you different, but what makes you so different that you get noticed; that the audience rewards you with their attention.

Focus on creating content for your audience rather than for your brand. Prioritize delivering quality over quantity. Above all: provide the right content to the right person at the right time.

Keeping up a content marketing strategy is a challenge, mostly due to limited staff, budget or time. To avoid content creation falling by the wayside, consider outsourcing to specialized agencies, services or freelancers.

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Tools and services to outsource content creation -

Contently: outsource content writing. contently.com Copify: outsource copy. uk.copify.com Book in a Box: outsource a book. bookinabox.com Visually: outsource visual content. visual.ly Dribbble: invite-only community for designers. dribbble.com Behance: biggest community for creative work. behance.net

Content can come in several formats: -

Written (blog post, eBook) Visual (images, video, slides) Audio (music, podcasts) Interactive (poll, quiz, online contest)

WRITTEN CONTENT As Neil Patel writes, content writing is not just something you do on the side:

It is a core component of what I preach and practice every day of my life. Content is that important.

(Neil Patel, digital marketing thought leader)

If you merely want to inform your audience, formats like news articles, press releases, product features, statistics and survey results are your best fit. If your goal is to entertain, use funny and highly shareable content to connect on an emotional, person-to-person level. This content might not be directly related to your products and services, but hinges on relevant topics and interests.

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05 - INNOVATIVE TACTICS

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BUZZFEED’S CULTURAL CARTOGRAPHY (2017)

BuzzFeed developed the Cultural Cartography framework to illustrate what makes something go viral. The image below is from BuzzFeed publisher Dao Nguyen’s TEDNYC Talk “What makes something go viral?” in October 2017.

Anyone who wants to create viral content has to look at it from the target audience’s point of view. What type of “job ”is your audience trying to get done?

Each bubble is a specific job, and each group of bubbles in a specific color are related jobs.

This Cartography can be used as a system to understand how people use content to connect and create culture. The BuzzFeed publishing team uses it to create their tempting quizzes, lists, and videos.

BuzzFeed Viral Map161

However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover that at the core of any consumer’s every thought and every action lie three motives:162 1 to seek pleasure and avoid pain 2 to seek hope and avoid fear 3 to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection If you add the core motivations for jobs to be done, you can map your audience’s jobs to be done to your product or service’s Unique Selling Proposition. For Buzzfeed’s formats, the underlying motivation points mostly to getting social

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acceptance. Or, as they call it in online communities, the sense of belonging to a club of like-minded individuals.

See also 1.3.5: Online Communities for more about the concept of sense of belonging.

Table 29. What response do you want to elicit in your audience?

CORE MOTIVATION

JOB GROUP

LETS/MAKES YOU...

BUZZFEED FORMAT

Pleasure

Humor

laugh or smile

Funny internet jokes

Pleasure

Desire

want something

”I need this.” “You need this.”

Hope

Revelation

acknowledge new facts

”Too real.” “This is so true.”

Social acceptance

Identity

explain who you are

”This is so me.”

“This is my fandom.”

Social acceptance

Connection

connect with friend/other fans/family, bond with someone, learn something about yourself or another person, explain your story, settle an argument

”You are not alone.”

Social acceptance

Shock

feel shocked or amazed

”Blow your mind.”

“WTF.”

Social acceptance

Knowledge share

learn something, help you tell your story

“TIL (Today I learned)”

Social acceptance

Goals

overcome difficulties

”I can actually do this.” “Let’s do this together.”

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HOW TO PERFORM A KEYWORD ANALYSIS STEP 1: Organize a brainstorm to compile a list of your best keywords.

Pick the words you think your ideal customer would use when searching for a product or service like yours, or phrases you’d like to rank well for. Avoid industry jargon.

STEP 2: Test to determine if these keywords will bring you qualified traffic.

Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to determine which words and phrases are most likely to attract the most traffic.

STEP 3: Rewrite your site content to include these keywords in strategic places. These include the page title, any headers or sub-headers, early and often in the body copy, as well as in the internal links from one page to another.

Improved search engine visibility rarely happens overnight.

Continue measuring, adapting and testing to improve your search engine ranking. In Google Analytics, use the report under Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries to find out your site’s average ranking for keywords that resulted in impressions, clicks, and click-throughs. Another interesting report can be found under Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, which shows you how your website pages are fairing from a search engine standpoint.

STEP 4: Analyze the results. If the number of leads you are generating from the website is increasing, your work is making a difference.

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07 - DIGITAL MARKETING OPTIMIZATION

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TECHNICAL ON-SITE SEO -

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Mobile first: ensure website’s compatibility with mobile (directly affects its search rankings).

Page speed: ensure better user experience (so that Google will rank those pages as high as possible).

Secure website: move your domain to https.

Domain power: ensure exact-match domains (not as foolproof as it used to be, but it still has some influence).

Domain seniority: bear in mind that new domains have a harder time ranking for top keywords.

URL structure: have your website structure as shallow as possible.

Low bounce rate: good content, website structure and UX (user experience) can help you avoid this. If visitors leave quickly, it is because they are disappointed with what they saw or because they got tired of waiting for content to load.

Duplicate content: remove, or revise the content to avoid duplication.

High bounce rate: assess your site’s user interface if your bounce rate is higher than 60%.

Pop-ups: avoid at all cost (e.g. “Subscribe now!”, “Download our app!”).

Get your marketing plan updated to have a clear focus on your mobile visitors. Stop managing a separate website just for mobile. It is too much work!

Tools for on-site technical SEO: -

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Google Mobile-Friendly Test: see if Google finds your site mobile friendly. google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly Schema-Creator.org helps you structure your website content in the right format.

Structured Data Markup Helper: get markup with this visual tool by Google. google.com/webmasters/markup-helper Geo Sitemap Generator: generate a KML file to submit to Google and Bing if you have multiple locations. geositemapgenerator.com Similar Page Checker: compare two lists or web pages for duplicate content. webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

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