The next few deal with driving traffic to your online assets – and engaging this stream of potential and existing customers by building relationships with them. The beauty of the Internet is that you can track your traffic-driving campaigns and then use that information to measure your results, report on campaigns, and target your marketing more effectively.
It’s useful to consider all of these tactics in terms of their influence on the sales cycle. The sales cycle is the typical sequence of phases through which a customer moves. It’s often represented as a funnel, indicating that there are fewer consumers further along in the sales cycle – you learnt about this model in the Think section.
While one could argue that all channels are important at every phase of the purchase cycle, some are clearly more influential at specific times than others.
Online Advertising is the crucial first step – this is a tactic that builds awareness about and interest in your brand. Sometimes, performance marketing or Affiliate Marketing is used to drive traffic and awareness.
Once a potential customer knows about you, they can search for you. Search marketing, which comprises Search Engine Optimisation and Search Advertising, is powerful because it is closely aligned with a customer’s stated intent (in the form of a search query).
Choosing you as their preferred option often hinges on how favorably you are seen by others in the market. Being well represented on Social Media is important for brands marketing online, and online monitoring tools help you to understand how digital communities perceive brands.Video Marketing is another excellent tool for engaging and capturing your audience’s attention.
Digital then takes it further into the realm of building relationships with customers, using digital channels to interact and engage with them. Again, social media plays a big role here, as do traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tactics such as Email Marketing.
With the explosion in web access via mobile devices, it’s important to understand these various channels from a mobile perspective. Mobile Marketing is used to create awareness, drive direct action and build relationships.
While measurement and tracking will be discussed in each chapter, it’s worth going into the Engage chapters with an understanding of how we track, report on and pay for various online campaigns.
There are several terms you will see used throughout these chapters:
• Impression:when an advert or a piece of online content is served (and hopefully seen by a web user).
• Interaction:when a user interacts with an advert or content, such as watching a video, playing a game, or leaving a comment.
• Click: exactly what it sounds like – when a user clicks on a link or advert. This is different from an interaction, because when a user clicks, they go to a different page on the web.
• Action:when a user completes a predetermined action, such as making a purchase, signing up to a newsletter, or downloading some content.
These terms are reflected in the different ways of paying for and measuring online campaigns. Sometimes we talk about campaigns in terms of cost per thousand impressions (CPM). This is when campaigns are paid for based on the number of times content has been served. It’s a technique used frequently in online advertising, but is also a way of measuring social content.
One can also look at the cost of a user interacting with a piece of content. Some of the most successful online campaigns are run on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, where you don’t pay for content to be served, but rather for each click on that content. Lastly, payment or measurement can be regarded in terms of the cost per action (CPA): the cost of a user taking a specific action (excellent for the advertiser but risky for the publisher).
As you work through the following chapters, the above will be become clearer to you.
Remember, the chapters that follow are important arrows in your digital marketing quiver. However, a strategic approach is required in order for you to determine the best solutions to meeting your online goals. You don’t need to tackle everything at once: focus on the foundations first, and then track and measure in order to determine which channels are working best, optimising as you go. And always put your audience’s needs and wants first.
It’s useful to consider all of these tactics in terms of their influence on the sales cycle. The sales cycle is the typical sequence of phases through which a customer moves. It’s often represented as a funnel, indicating that there are fewer consumers further along in the sales cycle – you learnt about this model in the Think section.
While one could argue that all channels are important at every phase of the purchase cycle, some are clearly more influential at specific times than others.
Online Advertising is the crucial first step – this is a tactic that builds awareness about and interest in your brand. Sometimes, performance marketing or Affiliate Marketing is used to drive traffic and awareness.
Once a potential customer knows about you, they can search for you. Search marketing, which comprises Search Engine Optimisation and Search Advertising, is powerful because it is closely aligned with a customer’s stated intent (in the form of a search query).
Choosing you as their preferred option often hinges on how favorably you are seen by others in the market. Being well represented on Social Media is important for brands marketing online, and online monitoring tools help you to understand how digital communities perceive brands.Video Marketing is another excellent tool for engaging and capturing your audience’s attention.
Digital then takes it further into the realm of building relationships with customers, using digital channels to interact and engage with them. Again, social media plays a big role here, as do traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tactics such as Email Marketing.
With the explosion in web access via mobile devices, it’s important to understand these various channels from a mobile perspective. Mobile Marketing is used to create awareness, drive direct action and build relationships.
While measurement and tracking will be discussed in each chapter, it’s worth going into the Engage chapters with an understanding of how we track, report on and pay for various online campaigns.
There are several terms you will see used throughout these chapters:
• Impression:when an advert or a piece of online content is served (and hopefully seen by a web user).
• Interaction:when a user interacts with an advert or content, such as watching a video, playing a game, or leaving a comment.
• Click: exactly what it sounds like – when a user clicks on a link or advert. This is different from an interaction, because when a user clicks, they go to a different page on the web.
• Action:when a user completes a predetermined action, such as making a purchase, signing up to a newsletter, or downloading some content.
These terms are reflected in the different ways of paying for and measuring online campaigns. Sometimes we talk about campaigns in terms of cost per thousand impressions (CPM). This is when campaigns are paid for based on the number of times content has been served. It’s a technique used frequently in online advertising, but is also a way of measuring social content.
One can also look at the cost of a user interacting with a piece of content. Some of the most successful online campaigns are run on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, where you don’t pay for content to be served, but rather for each click on that content. Lastly, payment or measurement can be regarded in terms of the cost per action (CPA): the cost of a user taking a specific action (excellent for the advertiser but risky for the publisher).
As you work through the following chapters, the above will be become clearer to you.
Remember, the chapters that follow are important arrows in your digital marketing quiver. However, a strategic approach is required in order for you to determine the best solutions to meeting your online goals. You don’t need to tackle everything at once: focus on the foundations first, and then track and measure in order to determine which channels are working best, optimising as you go. And always put your audience’s needs and wants first.
