Professional Diploma in

DIGITAL MARKETING

1
SUMMARY ​NOTES LESSON ONE
Your Introduction To Digital Marketing 

2
Table of Contents:
SUMMARY NOTES 2
STUDENT GOALS​: 4
DIGITAL MARKETING DISCLAIMER! 4
THE THREE LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS LESSON ARE TO UNDERSTAND: 4
THE HISTORY OF MARKETING IN RELATION TO DIGITAL 4
WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING? 6
SOCIAL MEDIA: 6
PPC: 6
DIGITAL BILLBOARDS 7
DIGITAL TV: 7
ORGANIC: 7
COMMUNICATION: 8
COMMON DIGITAL MARKETING ACRONYMS 9
COMMON TERMS: 10
WHAT IS AN “OBJECTIVE”?: 11
WHAT IS A KPI?: 11
CLICKS - WHERE ARE THESE IMPORTANT? 11
LEADS - WHERE ARE THESE IMPORTANT? 11
SALES - WHERE ARE THESE IMPORTANT? 11
LIFE-TIME VALUE (LTV) 12
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE MARKETING? 12
PERFORMANCE MARKETING STRATEGIES 13
CONCLUSION 16
WHAT ARE YOU GETTING OUT OF MODULE 1? 16
Student goals:
● P​rofessional self-improvement
● Starting a business
● Choosing a different career path
● Increase marketing knowledge

Digital Marketing Disclaimer!

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, at a much faster rate than its predecessors.
Algorithms, features, platforms and more are constantly changing, channels become
saturated as there are more advertisers, it is increasingly becoming more expensive to
advertise and therefore it is critical to get the “basics” right – an amazing site with great
usability and content, optimised landing pages, a good product/service that is competitively
priced, unparalleled customer service and more.

With that said, you don’t need to have a big budget to succeed in your digital marketing
efforts and one of the purposes of this course is to give you actionable skills and insights no
matter what you have to spend.

The three learning objectives for this lesson are to understand:

● The concept of digital marketing
● Learn about objectives and KPIs
● Applying objectives across performance-focused channels

The history of marketing in relation to Digital

(Wikipedia, 2019), (History Cooperative 2019)

● In 1840, the first advertising agency was setup in Philadelphia, with print
(newspapers, magazines) really being the only option at the time.
● Radio came out in the 1920’s, creating a big shift in marketing due to the different
format (audio) as well as reach
● Then TV came along in the 1950’s, expanding reach even further and introducing
another medium in which to communicate with people

4
● 1980’s saw the launch of cable. Channels like MTV, Shopping Network changed
strategies and spend completely, as instead of advertising being forced onto people,
they were actually tuning into it.
● In the 1990’s what was first called the WorldWideWeb was launched. It took a few
short years to gain traction in terms of marketing as it was initially just for the purpose
of creating and sharing information but of course advertisers started taking notice of
this new medium. The first sms was also sent out in 1992, reading “Merry Christmas”
● In 1998, the first content was sold to mobile phones - ringtones. Google also
launched their search engine in this year, initially without paid advertising. SEO
already had a few years under its belt, but increasing website rankings only became
a core priority around this time.
● Two years later, Google started monetizing their search engine with “Adwords”, now
called “Google Ads”. They started with 250 advertisers and now have millions. The
majority of Alphabet’s (the parent company of Google) revenue comes from this
platform.
● 2006 saw the launch of Twitter, a very different social media platform to the
Facebook giant which went live in 2004. Due to the “live” nature of the platform and
the short bursts of information it saw a rapid initial growth. This declined in later years
but it is still a solid platform.
● In 2007, Facebook started monetizing their platform. They had around 20 million
monthly active users at the time, an increase of 1900% since their launch in 2004.
Monthly users are now in the billions!
● Google launched the Play Store in 2008, introducing downloadable apps to millions
of people. It started with 500 apps and now there are too many to count. The future
of the app is uncertain as we move to a more “responsive” website experience but for
the moment it is still widely used.
● In 2016, Pokemon Go introduced augmented reality on mobile, on a huge scale. AR
had been around since 1990 but only within the military and space travel industries,
for navigation.
● Today, looking at the period in which marketing has existed, Digital is still very young
and rapidly changing. New platforms, targeting options and tech are introduced all
the time and each time they have the potential to change what digital marketing is.

5
What is Digital Marketing?:
Digital marketing is the promotion of products and/or services using electronic means. We
can’t possibly cover all digital channels - there are hundreds including some very niche (i.e.
small, work for very specific reasons/businesses) ones but we’ll go through the top / well
known ones.

Social Media:
The most well-known channels are:

Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr

(more on these in lessons 5 and 7)

A note on social media as well as all other digital marketing channels - just because it is
there, you don’t have to use it. Would an insurance company advertise on Pinterest? Would
a B2B business allocate a big portion of their spend to social?

PPC:
Google Ads offers a ppc model as well as others.

Within Google Ads there are many different campaigns but the top three are: search
(keyword targeting), display (topic / audience / content targeting, with text and image ads)
and shopping campaigns (for ecommerce).

We will be looking at Google Ads in a bit more detail in lesson 6 and in a lot more detail in
Module 2

Amazon

Offers the same campaign options as the ones mentioned under Google Ads, with the
difference being that ads are served on Amazon only.

6
Bing

Microsoft’s advertising platform, is often ignored due to the low popularity of

IE/Edge/Chromium but although traffic is lower than Google, for advertisers this means less
competition and lower cpc’s.

3rd Party Platforms

There are many 3rd party platforms which assist performance or targeting with their product.
AdRoll is an example and it bridges the gap between what some platforms don’t allow, for
various reasons. For example, as a finance company you can’t retarget/remarket to site
visitors on Search engines but a company like AdRoll can.

Digital Billboards

Digital billboards are really only for brands that have a big budget and there are various
types of ad formats accepted. Unless there is an interactive mechanism, like the image on
the right, you can’t track performance of this media type as accurately as others, though the
potential reach is undeniable.

Digital TV:
Fire TV and Roku being two examples, are media players where you can stream audio and
video content. Video ads are sold on ad-supported channels and some media players allow
publishers to promote their channels on device home-screens.

Organic:

SEO

Like all things in digital marketing, SEO has changed quite dramatically over the years. New
updates are constantly released and it is no longer about adding a bunch of keywords to the
back of your site.

More on this in lesson 5 when we look at free advertising.

7
Google My Business

Incredible for branding and necessary for everyone, claiming your knowledge panel or
creating a My Business page is critical as it is here that your reviews can be seen, your
address, social media profiles and a general overview of your business.

Direct Website Traffic

This means people who put your exact address in the browser bar. It’s in the “organic”
section of this lesson but please note that someone typing / bookmarking your website in
their browser is likely due to your marketing efforts. It’s a really good thing to track if you
have a product / site where users login or need to visit it often, as well as for branding
purposes.

Customer Reviews

You’d be surprised at what you can get when you ask. Think about asking your clients to
leave a review (Facebook reviews, Google reviews, etc) - this essentially does what “word of
mouth” does. If you have a lot of good reviews, there’s a higher chance of converting
potential customers.

Communication:

Email Marketing

Email has seen a lot of changes. From personal email addresses being introduced in 1991
(previously available to students and employees), to automation systems that enable
advanced segmentation that allows businesses or advertisers to send highly targeted
communication.

8
Affiliate Marketing

Affiliates are essentially partnerships, ranging from paying a small company a % for every
lead they bring in, to multi-billion dollar partnerships that promote brands on a huge scale

Podcasts

Like radio, except you can download episodes to listen to. There are more than 550 000
shows, and hosts typically sell three slots for ads, generally read by the host as data shows
it is more well-received.

Chat Bots

When working effectively, they streamline communication and allow you to focus on refining
and enhancing your overall communication. You can integrate them with many different
platforms.

SMS/IM

Both are still widely used, though in many cases money could be better spent elsewhere.
Looking at WhatsApp as an example, you can integrate a Chat Bot within this and create a
business profile!

Common Digital Marketing Acronyms:

ROAS - return on ad spend

ROI - return on investment
CTR - click through rate
CPA - cost per acquisition
CPL - cost per lead
CPI - cost per install
CPC - cost per click
PPC - pay per click
CPM - cost per 1000 impressions

9
CPV - cost per view
SEO - search engine optimisation
CRM - customer relationship management
CMS - content management system
SEM - search engine marketing
CTA - call to action

These, plus some bonus ones, are in your starter pack.

Common Terms:
Device
What you are using when performing an action. E.g. mobile, desktop, tablet.

Organic
Traffic to your site that you have not paid for. i.e. not through paid media

Channel
Where you are going to be advertising. E.g. Facebook, Google Search, etc

Ad fatigue
An ad that has been seen so many times it is no longer noticed

Frequency/Impression cap
The amount of times your audience sees an ad

Metric
Different indicators you can manage performance against

Segments
Customers or info grouped together based on different criteria

Reach
Describing the number of people who see your ad

Algorithm

10
The method in which channels determine when/how to show your ad/content
Traffic
Visits to a website / physical location

What is an “objective”?:

Goals set by a business when promoting its products or services to potential customers,
which should be achieved within a given timeframe.

What is a KPI?:

A measurable value that shows how a business is achieving their objectives

Clicks - where are these important?:

● Traffic to site
● Awareness
● Branding

Leads - where are these important?:

● Branding
● Scale
● Sales
Sales - where are these important?:
● Everywhere
● Revenue
● Profit
● Increasing margins

KPIs for four common objectives

Branding
● Impressions
● Reach
● Traffic
● Engagement

11
 ● Organic results

Awareness
● Impressions
● Frequency
● Reach
● Ad Recall
● Engagement

Sale
● ROI / ROAS
● Conversion rate
● Keywords
● Bounce rate

Retention
● Lifetime Value (LTV)
● Conversion rate
● Frequency
● Engagement
● Segments

Life-time Value (LTV):

LTV is the projected revenue that a customer will generate during their lifetime

Calculation for LTV

Calculate average purchase value and multiply by average purchase frequency

Multiply this by your average customer lifespan to determine LTV

What is Performance Marketing?

An umbrella term that refers to advertising on different channels and paying only when an
action is completed (e.g. a click, lead or sale).

12
 Click - You only pay for the click, not the impressions
Objectives where clicks are important:
● Traffic to site
● Awareness
● Branding

Leads - you set a target CPA and only pay for leads
Objectives where leads are important:
● Branding
● Scale
● Sales

Sales - you have a target ROI / ROAS

Objectives where sales are important:
● All of them
● Revenue
● Profit

Performance marketing strategies:

True performance marketing encompasses a variety of marketing strategies and analyses

Analysis
Continuous analysis of your marketing channels and site. Tools to do this include Google
Analytics - more on this in lesson 2 - reports within channels (e.g. Facebook Insights) and
3rd party partners if you use any.

Optimising

13
Optimising based on data is really what puts the “performance” in performance marketing.
There are different optimisation techniques depending on the channel which we will be going
into later in this module and across the rest of the course.

Communication
You need to ensure that your communication is effective. How do you do this? The obvious
answer is that your content has to be relevant and regular. As you should have already
segmented your database/potential customers during analysis and optimisation, you are
then able to target them with different content/offerings. .

Budget efficiency
A big part of performance marketing and there are different ways to set/ calculate these,
depending on the channel. Be aware that just because you set a budget, it doesn’t mean the
platform will spend it. This is where all the above points come together, enabling you to set a
realistic budget which will cover what you need. We jump into budgeting in lesson 8 of this
module.

Initially the terms Affiliate Marketing and Performance Marketing were interchangeable but
Performance Marketing has grown to encompass many other marketing strategies and
channels.

Budgets and Performance Marketing - Recommendations

These recommendations will apply to everyone but in my experience there are priorities
depending on your budget

Smaller Budget
● Make your offering competitive and your website optimised and responsive
● Be selective about the channels you choose
● Optimise over a longer date range than usual due to potential limited data
● Consider ambassadors and small partnerships

Bigger budget
● Ensure all tracking is in place and data is accessible
● Choose many channels, then reduce

14
 ● Ensure you have not capped reach or saturated a channel - this can happen if you
invest too much money into one platform. Eventually you will run out of people to
convert at your desired CPA/CPL. A sign of this is an increase in cost (aka decrease
in performance) with a stagnant or decrease in reach
● Wasted spend is harder to “find” - this can happen quite easily if you have big
accounts and multiple people managing them / too few resources.

Choosing performance channels based on Objectives

Branding and Awareness channels

● Google Display / Programmatic
● Remarketing across channels
● Facebook / Instagram
● YouTube
● Digital TV

Sales channels
● Google / Bing Search
● Shopping / Product campaigns
● Email marketing
● Remarketing across channels
● Lead-gen campaigns

Retention
● Google Display Remarketing
● Email marketing and segmentation
● Facebook / Instagram remarketing
● Apps

Challenge
Imagine you have a budget of 5000 a month for a lead-based company, for a 3 month
campaign.
● List what the top KPIs would be for this objective
● List the channels you would choose and why
● If you are feeling daring, allocate a budget to each channel

15
Email your challenge in any format to ​marketing@shawacademy.com

Conclusion
You now have a basic understanding of digital marketing, the top available channels and
performance marketing. You also learned what objectives and kpis are, plus common terms
and acronyms used in the digital marketing space. In lesson two, we learn about tracking
and how to determine your objectives using marketing funnels/cycles and research.

What are you getting out of Module 1?

By the end of this module, you will have a solid foundation of what you need to create and
implement effective performance-based digital marketing strategies.

References

● En.wikipedia.org, 2019
● History Cooperative, 2019
● Finance.yahoo.com, 2019

16