Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Digital Marketing Reckoner/Notes

Chapter 1
Characteristics of Digital Marketing
Two-way Communication
Consumers decide which brands they wish to interact with. It is not a marketer-controlled
message but consumers co-create the brand and content.
Targeting of One
Marketer can precisely target their audiences based on multifaceted ways – age, location,
gender, etc. The communication can be highly personalised and interactive. Targeting on
digital platforms is very sophisticated using algorithm and technology to precisely reach the
intended audience.
Level Playing Field
Digital marketing creates a level playing field for all marketers. It does not require big budgets,
and hence small and medium businesses can also leverage it. It does not have huge costs as an
entry barrier like traditional advertising.
Measurability
Digital marketing has given power back to marketing as it enables measurement of
performance and calculation of return on investment. Marketers can close the loop as they
precisely know how many people saw the ad, how many people clicked, how many visited the
website, how many registered and how many bought.
Push and Pull
Within digital marketing, marketers have the choice to go for either push or pull medium.
Whereas search is more of pull medium, banner ads on websites chosen based on context is
push marketing. Digital marketing enables brands to do both strategic brand building marketing
and tactical sales-oriented activities.
Real-time
Marketers get instant feedback in digital marketing that enables them to optimise their
campaigns. They know what is working and what is not, and hence can tweak the campaign
mid-way. This improves the return on investment of digital marketing.
Zero Moment of Truth
In marketing, there are moments of truth which are instances when a customer interacts with a
product or service to form an impression about it. In earlier times, the first moment of truth
was the point of sales, the second moment of truth was when consumer bought the product and
third was when a consumer used the product. The internet has preceded all these moments of
truth and has become zero moment of truth as consumers look for information or reviews about
the product or service on search engine, social networks, websites and forums before they visit
a store.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Digital Marketing
Also known as internet marketing/web marketing/online marketing, it is defined as the
promotion of brands or products through different forms of electronic media. These forms
could be website, blogs, social media, mobile, applications, search, banner ads, etc.

Origin of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing started in 1990 with first search engine Archie. In 1993, the first clickable
banner went live and another milestone in the history of digital marketing was reached.
Afterwards, a company called HotWired purchased banner ads for advertising on websites.
Online advertising had arrived.
In 1994, a search engine called Yahoo! was born. That’s when people started searching the
web for information.
In 1998, another Internet company was born that you might have heard about: Google. It went
on to become the most popular search engine in the world.
In 2000, the Dot-Com bubble-burst occurred and many Internet startups failed. Many of those
companies are case studies in how not to start a business to this day. Soon, Web 2.0 came along
and marked an important point the history of digital marketing. Web 2.0 sites introduced us to
dynamic content, user-generated content, and what we now call social media.
By 2004, Internet advertising and marketing brought in almost $3 billion. In 2005, another
important milestone in digital marketing was reached: YouTube launched. Digital marketers
would soon discover that YouTube offered them great opportunities to promote their brand.
In 2006, Amazon’s sales reached the $10 billion mark. Also, Twitter launched and would
soon become another important social media channel.
In 2011, another social media channel appeared on the scene: Google+. Although it never took
off like Facebook or Twitter, it was destined to play an important role in the history of digital
marketing.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Traditional Versus Digital Marketing

Traditional Marketing Digital Marketing

Type of Structured and Clear Unstructured and Unclear

Marketing
Advertising campaigns, service Status updates, ad campaigns, blogs,
hotlines posts, comments, social media, etc.

Direction of Unidirectional (one to many) Multidirectional (many to many)

Communication
Information spread by company Both company and consumers talk
(active) and listen (both active). Consumers
can also create content, like or post
Consumers only listen (passive)

Scheduling Long-term Short-term

Communication Private Public

with Consumer
Communication only between Reactions to comments are public;
company and consumer (via email, anyone can read and join a discussion
phone); discussion is kept secret

Availability During Working Hours All the Time (24/7)

No direct support beyond regular Constant readiness to respond to
working hours (9 to 6) negative comments and consumer
requests

Language Formal, Legally Safe Genuine, Direct

Official Personal responses and short answers

Response time Longer as if somebody is interested
after seeing an ad in print or TV they
can’t see the additional information
at that instant, they need longer time
for gathering information about the
product.
Quickly as soon as they see the ad,
they can click the link and can get
more information so decision can be
taken quickly

Digital marketing is about maximising efficiency. Since it is possible to measure performance

of digital marketing in real time. In digital, there is always scope for improvement.
Mass media is priced on rate card basis for 10 second spot on TV or column centimetre for
newspaper, digital is priced based on auction. In digital marketing, marketers bid in auction
and price is determined based on bid as well as quality score.
Digital marketing creates a level playing field for all marketers. It does not require big budgets,
and hence small and medium businesses can also leverage it.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Cost of failure is low in digital marketing. Even if campaign does not work you will know
immediately and can take corrective action.
In digital marketing you should go slowly, commit small resources to an idea or campaign or
content. If it works then put more resources behind it.

Consumer Decision Journey as part of Digital Marketing Strategy

The AIDA Model, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action model, is an
advertising effect model that identifies the stages that an individual goes during the process of
purchasing a product or service. The AIDA model is commonly used in digital marketing, sales
strategies, and public relations campaigns.
Attention: The first step in marketing or advertising is to consider how to attract the attention
of consumers. It is assumed that the product or service already got the attention of the
consumers – which may or may not be the case. In any event, don’t just assume that everyone
is already aware of your product. One of the best approaches to attracting consumer attention
is what’s called “creative disruption” – breaking existing patterns of behavior through a highly
creative message. This can be done in several ways:

• Placing advertisements in unexpected situations or locations. This is often referred to

as guerrilla marketing.
• Creating shock in advertisements through provocative imagery.
• An intensely targeted message. This is also referred to as personalization.

Essentially, the goal is to make consumers aware that a product or service exists.

• Interest: Once the consumer is aware that the product or service exists, the business
must work on increasing the potential customer’s interest level. This is the hardest part.

For example, Disney boosts interest in upcoming tours by announcing stars who will be
performing on the tours.

For example, if the product or service is not inherently interesting, this can be very difficult to
achieve. Make sure that advertising information is broken up and easy to read, with interesting
subheadings and illustrations. Focus on what is most relevant for your target market in relation
to your product or service, and on conveying only the most important message you want to
communicate to consumers.

• Desire: After the consumer is interested in the product or service, then the goal is to
make consumers desire it, moving their mindset from “I like it” to “I want it.”

For example, if the Disney stars for the upcoming tour communicate to the target audience
about how great the show is going to be, the audience is more likely to want to go.

As you are hopefully building interest in a product or service, it is important that you help
customers realize why they “need’ this product or service. Think about how the content in
infomercials is presented – they aim to provide interesting information on the product, along
with benefits of buying it – benefits that ideally make consumers want the product more and

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

more. Infomercials do this extremely well by showing the product being used in several
creative situations. Convey to the audience the value of the product or service, and why they
need it in their life.

• Action: The ultimate goal is to drive the receiver of the marketing campaign to initiate
action and purchase the product or service.

The advertisement should end with a call to action – a statement that is designed to get an
immediate response from the consumer. For example, Netflix uses persuasive text to convince
the consumer to try their free trial. Netflix communicates how convenient their product is and
highlights its value, then urges consumers to sign up for a free trial.

Good advertising should elicit a sense of urgency that motivates consumers to take action
RIGHT NOW. One commonly used method for achieving this goal is making limited time
offers (such as: free shipping). In digital marketing ‘advocacy’ stage has become important in
influencing other consumers and building loyalty. Hence, it is the fifth stage in the consumer
buying funnel.

Therefore, the AIDA model says that Awareness leads to Interest, which leads to Desire, and
finally, Action.

Advocacy – Consumer experience satisfaction or dissatisfaction after purchase. They may

share their experience on social media and spread word of mouth. If they are highly satisfied,
they develop bond with the brand and advocate the purchase.

The POEM Framework

The POEM model stands for paid, owned and earned media. As discussed above, this is now
the model you should use to promote your product or service. The right mix of these media
types can bring in new customers, deepen relationships with existing customers and ultimately
lead to the success of your business. With this method you create content or a strategy for each
different kind of media.
Paid media means just that – it’s advertising where you are paying for the space for your ads.
Paid media tactics include banner ads, paid search, email lists, advertorials, sponsorships, etc.
Marketers are generally able to control over their message, channels, formats and who sees
their ad. Paid media generally has the highest reach and reasonably easy to control.
Owned media is messaging on the channels that you own– your website, blog, mobile apps,
email, social media profiles, anything that is under your brand or company’s “name”. You have
the most control the content that appears on these channels and best used for building a stronger
relationship with existing customers/leads. However, there is expense to set-up and maintain
the content on that channel and the reach is typically low unless activated in conjunction with
paid or earned methods.
The hardest to control, but the most trusted, is earned media. An advertiser does not have
complete control across earned media – consumers and/or influencers can also control the
message. Tactics include reviews and ratings, commenting on social media and forum
comments – anything that is closer to “word of mouth.” Earned media tends to be the most
powerful – for positive or negative reasons. If someone is upset about your product or company
those negative reviews and comments can be a detriment to your business. But on the flip side
if the right people have a great experience with your brand and shout it from the rooftops that

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

can be the best thing that happens to your brand. Another thing that impacts how much impact
a negative or positive response can have on your business is the reach of the person or
organization that is talking about you.

Digital Landscape

Digital Marketing Plan

The outline of digital marketing plan is objectives, target audience profile (buyer’s persona),
content strategy, channel strategy, budget and measurement.
Objectives – first step is identifying objectives of digital marketing. This can be divided into
branding and performance objectives. Some campaigns and activities may have the objective
of increasing brand awareness and brand recall, whereas others may have the objective of
increasing sales or leads or conversions.
Buyer Personas – multiple buyer personas are to be identified. This should be done based on
analysis of past data and profile of best customers and not on assumptions. Rarely customers
would be so homogeneous that they can be categorized into one persona. The information like
who is the customer (age, gender, location, job title, responsibility, education, etc.), what (areas
of interest, needs, touch points, etc), why (why will they buy your product, USP, convince the
customer to buy, etc.). You can get useful information from audience reports in Google
Analytics.
Content – content strategy can be prepared based on what worked in the past and what did not.
You must analyse the performance of each of the content types such as video, image,
infographics, eBooks, webinars, games, etc.
Channel – As a part of channel strategy, how much would you invest in creating paid, owned,
and earned content? Based on the strategy, objective, target audience etc. an appropriate
channel of communication on digital platform should be planned.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Timelines – a month-wise calendar to record which activities will be done in which month.
Further content strategy, channel strategy, target audience week-wise so that there is a starting
point to refer to.
Budget – this depends upon what percent of the marketing objectives will be met through
digital. It also depends upon the industry and the role of marketing communications in
marketing mix and the role of digital in marketing communications mix. For certain industries
such as e-commerce, financial services, automobile and education, digital is very important
and hence higher percent may be allocated to it.
Measurement – the measurement metrics will be dependent upon the objective. If the objective
is branding then measurement will involve recall, attitude and association studies. If campaign
objective is performance then measurement is through CTR, leads and conversions.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Chapter 2 – Display Advertising

Unique Users Vs Page Views
Unique users – they are distinct individual users who have visited a particular site. This number
is tracked via cookie ID of the browser or the IP address of the device.
Page views – an individual visit a new page on a website, it is considered as a page view. Page
1: open Yahoo first time unique visitor 1 and page view 1. Page 2: open another page on Yahoo
unique visitor 1 and page view 2. Page 3: Open another page from page 2 unique visitor 1 and
page view 3.
Page Views Vs Unique Visitors
Both are equally important for long term growth of any website.
Choosing one out of two is on basis of type of website run, digital marketing goal for the
moment and phase in which the company is.
For generating revenues page views are important as they will contribute towards more ads
being displayed to the audience and in turn generate revenues.
For brand building unique visitors are important as no matter which page user visits your
objective is to create awareness about the brand.

Digital Metrics
Ad Impressions – An ad impression is recorded whenever an ad is displayed on the user’s
screen through your website. It is simply the number of times an ad is displayed.
When a website is visited and an ad is loaded it is considered one ad impression for the website.
Now suppose that on this website, four ads are shown of different companies then this will lead
to four ad impressions for the publisher’s website and one ad impression for each advertiser.
Clicks – A click is counted whenever a user clicks on an ad. Upon clicking, it redirects the user
to the landing page.
Click Through Rate (CTR) – CTR is the total number of clicks divided by the total number of
impressions.

CTR is an important metric in deciding the effectiveness of an ad. Ads with low CTR should
be improved as low CTR means users are ignoring the ads. In this case three factors are to be
checked and corrected:
Category (product category for which ad is placed)
Creative (eye-catching creative banners are the heart and soul of display advertising)

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Placement (beautifully designed ad placed at the wrong place might not yield results as
expected, placement is as important as creativity, eg: ad of shoes placed in salon portal)

Types of Display Ads

• Format – based on format display ads can be grouped into three categories.
Image Ads – They are static image related to your product or service. They have no effects and
are most standard form of advertising.
Rich Media Ads – It includes other interactive media elements such as animations, GIF. Best
example of it is page peel ads where when you click the peeled part of ad on top right, the ad
appears as the page peel off completely.
Video Ads – Videos are embedded in the ad. This format of advertising is extremely used in
YouTube. Effective in gaining immense popularity in the advertising world.
• Display Ad Size – they are put in various sizes. Popular, top performing and
standardized ad sizes are described:
Medium Rectangle – Available in both desktop and mobile format. Includes text, images or
other animations. Ad size is 300 (width) * 250 (height) pixels.
Large Rectangle – It has more ad space compared to medium rectangle and thus used to
communicate better. Only available in desktop format. Ad size is 336 (width) * 280 (height)
pixels.
Leaderboard – Placed above the main content at the top of the page. Only available in desktop
format and is generally found in portals, news sites, forums. Ad size is 728 (width) * 90 (height)
pixels.
Half Page – Biggest of all and covers most part of the webpage. Provides ample amount of
space to the advertiser. Ad size is 300 (width) * 600 (height) pixels.
Large Mobile Banner – It has more ad space compared to medium rectangle and thus used to
communicate better. Only available in mobile format and it is larger than the standard mobile
ad 320 (width) * 50 (height) pixels. Size of this ad is 320 (width) * 100 (height) pixels.
Large Format Ads – These ads cover a large part of the screen. They may expand on hovering,
hence known as expandables.
Skinning/Takeover – One advertiser takes all the ad spaces on a page. Objective of this ad is
user do not miss the ad and get exposure to the brand.

Buying Models of Display Advertising

There are mainly four different pricing models for display ads. The user has to carefully decide
which model is most appropriate for him/her based on the campaign goals.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

• Cost per click (CPC) – It is the amount the user is willing to pay for a click on their ads.
CPC is used solely to drive traffic to the advertiser’s website. They are comparatively
less risky because, as an advertiser one has to pay when someone clicks on your ad.
• Cost per milli (CPM) – It is the cost per thousand impressions, is the amount the
advertiser must pay for every thousand impressions served. The CPM model is mainly
used for brand building purposes. It ensures your ad reaches a wide range of audience
but does not necessarily drive traffic to website. This model is preferred by publishers
as they get paid irrespective of clicks and enables better cash flow projections for them.
• Cost per lead (CPL) – It is the amount an advertiser pays for acquiring a lead. Lead is
an intermediate action before final purchase. It is micro conversion with main objective
of the marketer to acquire leads and nurture them through continuous engagement for
conversions later.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – It is the amount advertiser pays for acquiring a customer
who buys your product or service. Cost of customer acquisition. This model is mainly
used to drive online transactions and is risk free as you only pay when the user buys.
The bid price is comparatively higher when compared to the other models.
• Fixed cost/sponsorship – advertiser pays a fixed cost per day irrespective of number of
impressions. Some premium ad placements such as YouTube home page banner ads
are sold on fixed cost model. In sponsorship model one can sponsor a website/property,
wherein you have logo presence and some ad inventory as a part of the package deal.
As a marketer one has to strike a balance between impact, reach and cost effectiveness.
Plan must have a good mix of sites which will break the clutter and make an impact,
sites that will give you reach and sites that will be cost effective.

Display Advertising Plan

Marketers need to prepare a display media plan which must include the following aspects:
• Site
• Section
• Ad Size
• Impressions
• Rate
• Cost
For preparing the plan marketer first must identify objective and target audience. Further, what
are the passion points of target audience and which websites are frequently visited by them?
The duplication in reach is then calculated to arrive at budget allocation to sites.
For plan refer Case on page 42 and 43 of text book digital marketing by Seema Gupta.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Targeting
Reaching right audience is extremely important for the success of the display advertising
campaign. This can be done efficiently by following various targeting methods as explained:
• Contextual Targeting – Delivers ads based on context target audience consumes. Uses
keywords or tags added to the ads to match them to relevant websites. 1. Keywords –
relevant keywords can be generated using URL of the website to get an idea. For
instance, if you sell bicycle spare parts you could supply a list of keywords
based around that subject. You might want to be seen in articles
mentioning cycling or bicycle safety, but not motorcycle gear or electric bicycles. 2.
Topic – refers to overall theme of a certain webpage. For instance; a fashion brand
might choose to be seen on Vogue Magazine’s site, but a company selling financial
services may have better luck with Forbes.
• Placement Targeting – used when there is clear idea about your audience activity on
the web. One can directly choose to display ads on website, few web pages, videos,
RSS feeds, mobile site, etc. (Native Ads). One can also use contextual and placement
targeting in combination for better results. For example, if you are selling cars, as part
of the placement targeting, you could choose to advertise in automobile websites as use
contextual targeting to determine the exact pages in the website which are more relevant
and advertise in those pages only.
• Remarketing – once the visitors views your page/products, they are tracked and shown
a relevant ad about your product on the other site. For example, consider you browsed
myntra for buying a T-shirt. Later, you exit without buying and visit some other
website. Now, you are shown ads on the new website you visit about the T-shirt you
browsed on myntra.
• Interest Categories – the user can reach out to audience based on their specific interests.
1. Affinity audience – set of audience who are segregated based on their long-term
interest types. 2. Custom affinity audience – one can choose to build his/her own
category of audience called custom affinity audience. 3. In-market audience – are those
who are presently engaged in the market i.e they are actively researching a product or
service in the market and are most likely to buy it soon.
• Geographic and language tagging – refers to targeting people based on their geographic
location and language they speak.
• Demographics – used to target people based on demographic factors such as age,
gender, parental status, household, etc. Narrows targeting and prevents your ads from
reaching inappropriate audience.
• Mobile – based on device, Wi-Fi, operating system. Bid adjustment can be done based
on device.
• Other targeting methods – Ad scheduling: allows you to run ads during specific time of
the day or during specific days of the week. Frequency capping: sets an upper limit on
the number of times a person sees your ad per day, per week, or per month.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Programmatic Digital Advertising

Definition: Programmatic advertising helps automate the decision-making process of media

buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Programmatic ads are placed using
artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time bidding (RTB) for online display, social media
advertising, mobile and video campaigns, and is expanding to traditional TV advertising
marketplaces.
Players in Programmatic Advertising
1. Publisher – The website which has ad impressions through which they monetise
the site and it is a major source of revenue.
2. Supply-Side Platform – it is a technology platform which enables the publishers
to manage their ad impression inventory and maximise revenue from digital
media. In other words, supply-side platform manages ad space. The SSP
connects to an ad exchange and tells it what kind of inventory (ad inventory is
ad spaces available) is available – and through Real-Time Bidding this
inventory is automatically auctioned off to the highest bidder.
3. Demand Side Platform - A demand-side platform is a tool or software that
allows advertisers to buy ad placements automatically. As more and more
publishers started offering advertising possibilities online, advertisers started
looking for a way to manage placements and purchases automatically rather
than dealing with salespeople and trading desks.
Process of Programmatic Advertising – The user requests for a webpage, which means there is
a potential to show ad impressions to the user. Every time a user requests for a page, ad
exchange holds a live auction. On behalf of publisher, Supply Side Platform (SSP) send a bid
request to Demand Side Platform (DSP). DSP examines potential impression in terms of target
audience and context match and returns a bid amount based on its value to the advertiser.
Winning bid is chosen by the ad exchange and that ad is shown on the publisher’s website.
RTB is a way of buying and selling ads through a real-time auction, meaning a transaction is
made during the time it takes a webpage to load; around 100 ms.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Ad exchange is where publishers meet advertisers and agree on a price to display their ads. It
functions much like the trading floor of a stock market, but for digital display advertising.
Nowadays most ad exchanges operate through real-time auctions, where an ad purchase is
made at the same time as a visitor loads a website.

As a visitor enters a website, a request is sent to an ad-exchange with information on the website
along with visitor data. This information is then matched against available advertisers and a
real-time auction takes place between those advertisers that match the criteria.

For instance, let’s say you visit a website that sells organic dog food, but you don’t make a
purchase. Later you visit your favorite news site (publisher), and suddenly there’s ads about
organic dog food everywhere!

These ads are placed in front of you with the help of Real-Time Bidding. The company selling
dog food has simply stated “I want to show my ads on these websites – but only to visitors who
previously visited my site and didn’t make a purchase.”
During the time it takes you to load the website an auction takes place between the organic dog
food brand and everyone else who’s also interested in showing you ads.
The winning bidder gets to display its ad to you on the publisher’s website.
Historically, advertisers would place ads on websites they believed matched their target
audience – so a company selling motorcycle helmets would maybe single out blogs about
motorcycles, and manually buy placements on these sites.
Their banner ads would then be displayed to all visitors of that website, regardless of whether
they’re relevant customers or not.

Data Management Platform (DMP) is used to collect, store and sort information.
In programmatic, DMP’s are most often used in combination with a Demand-Side Platform on
the advertiser’s side – or a Supply-Side Platform on the publisher’s side. In order to properly
target ads to specific visitors a DMP needs to be in place to sort and segment incoming cookie
data.

YouTube Advertising
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google search. The official
statistics by YouTube, it has over one billion users. Marketers on YouTube have two broad
areas of participation:
YouTube Channels – companies can promote their brands and products by creating quality
video content and curating it into a YouTube channel or profile.
YouTube Ads – YouTube allows you to capitalise on the millions of partner videos already
present on it, by targeting your display ads to relevant videos. These ads are available in two
different formats.
Display Ads – the ads appear next to the video on a laptop or a desktop in YouTube. This ad
format is not available on the mobile device and can be purchased in both CPC and CPM
formats.
Overlay Ads – Appears in a rectangular format in the bottom 20 percent of the video and is
available only on laptop or desktop and not on mobile.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Skippable Video Ads – the most popular advertising format on YouTube. Viewers can skip the
ad after watching it for five seconds. It can be inserted before, during or after the video. It is
available on desktop, TVs, gaming consoles and mobile devices.
Non-skippable Video Ads – these video ads are 15-20-second-long which can be inserted
before, during or after the YouTube video. For these ads, the publisher gets paid only when a
user fully watches the ad.
Mid-roll Ads – placed in videos over 15 minutes, mid-rolls are spaced between these videos
similar to TV commercials. For better viewing experience, publishers can choose to place their
ads at natural pauses between the scenes.
Bumper Ads – these are lightweight, non-skippable video ads up to 6 seconds long. They are
especially optimised for mobile devices.
Native Mobile Ads – these ads are display ads that appear in the same context as organic
content. As the name suggests, these ads are only available on the mobile device and can be
bought on a CPC or CPM basis.
Discovery Ads – the billing pattern in case TrueView Discovery ad is relatively simple. One is
charged whenever a user clicks on a video ad thumbnail or title and begins watching your ad
video.
YouTube Buying Models –
a. Cost Per View (CPV) is the amount you pay for your true video ads. With CPV bidding,
you will pay for video views or interactions. A view is counted when someone watches
30 seconds of your video ad or interacts with the ad, whichever comes first.
In case of instream video, there are two possibilities: 1. The viewer watches your ad
completely or watches atleast 30 seconds of your ad. 2. The viewer performs a desired
action on the ad, i.e. clicks on the ad.
Quality Score and AdRank –
AdRank = Max CPC * Quality Score
b. CPM – in CPM you are billed for every 1000 impressions and has to be booked six
business days in advance and the creatives have to be delivered at least four business
days in advance.
c. Cost Per Day (CPD) – the amount is charged to publish your ad for an entire day.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Chapter 3 – Search Engine Advertising

What is search engine advertising?
Search engine advertising (also known as search advertising, Internet search adverti sing,
or online search advertising) allows you to directly display your paid ads among the search
results on various search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Advertisers who utilize search advertising show their ads to users who are actively
searching for specific keywords, and they pay a fee every time their ad is clicked. Th is
type of PPC advertising is especially effective because people who conduct searches tend
to reveal a lot about their intent with their search query. When a user puts a search query
in search bar and requests it, the page display is known as Search Engine Result Page
(SERP).
• A headline, which should incorporate relevant, attention-grabbing keywords because
it’s the largest and most noticeable ad component.
• Display URL, comprised of your final URL domain, optional subdomain, and path
fields, to provide searchers an idea of where they’ll be taken once they click through
(hopefully to your post-click landing page). On Google, Bing, and Yahoo, display
URLs are green, directly underneath the headline. On Bing, they’re also bold:

Understanding Ad Placement
Search engines show advertisements in predefined areas on the result page. Google shows ads
in two areas – top and bottom. Maximum four ads can appear on the top and three at the bottom.

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Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Search engine show ads in less than 350 milliseconds. Completing the entire process of running
a live auction in real time every time a user types a query entails a huge cost of servers and
technology.
Top – the top position is considered as the prime location in SERP. Users usually click on
results on the first page and that too which are above the scroll.
Side – Google showed ads on the side too. Importantly, the side had only ads and no organic
results, so users naturally paid more attention to the results of the main section and less to
results on the side. Left side ads are called native ads as they come in the same place where
organic results come.
Bottom – AdRank for an ad is lower than the threshold for the top position, in that case even if
the top position does not show any ads, this ad is shown in the bottom area.

Understanding AdRanks
AdRank is the position at which the ad appears in the search engine results. Results that appear
in the top three positions combined attract more than 60 percent of traffic compared to all other
results.
The Ad Auction Model – the algorithm of Google search ads is as follows:
AdRank = Maximum bid * Quality Score

Search engine advertising operates using an auction-based system, in which advertisers

bid on certain keywords relevant to their product or service. It should be mentioned,
however, that bids and clicks are different. Just because you might bid $100 for a keyword
phrase, does not mean you will be charged $100 for each ad click.
Keyword selection determines which searches display your ads, so without in -depth
keyword research to identify the most appropriate terms, you could potentially miss your
target audience. Choosing the right keywords (ones with high volume and low
competition) can also make your ad rank higher and cost less.
Quality Score indicates how well your ad meets the needs and search intent of your target
audience, and is used by the search engine to provide searchers with the most useful results
possible. To calculate Quality Score, SEM platforms look at a variety of factors: click-
through rate, landing page, historical performance, various relevancy factors,
advertisement relevancy and keyword relevancy.

Landing page: each ad has a URL

configured for it which upon clicking
takes the customer to the landing page.
The content of the landing page must
match the ad and in addition to content,
search engines would also look at the
quality of the landing page.

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Expected click through rate: If people find the ad relevant and interesting, they will click on
the ad, and the CTR will go up. In contrast, if very few people find the ad to be relevant or
interesting, they will not click on it, and CTR will go down. CTR is high for top positions. CTR
is maximum for search ads as they capture the intent of users and are a pull medium. Search
engine give an estimated bid amount for each keyword.
Relevance: search engines give importance to relevance since high relevance indicates better
user experience. Relevance has two meaning here: first whether the search query of the user
matches with the keyword that the brands are bidding for and second whether the keywords
are appearing in the ad headlines and description.
Importance of AdRank
• Factors affecting consumers to click on ads:
1. Primacy Effect – Primacy effect is kind of cognitive bias, the individuals tend to recall
the information presented to them first, better than the information they are made privy
to later. It tends to make user think information presented first is more significant than
that presented later.
2. Competitive for Attention Theory – Explains biases in information processing.
Individuals can only process one of visual stimuli at a time. Means each cue is
competing. Ad in higher position has better chance of being processed than an ad in
lower.
3. Information Overload – Phenomenon to understand what happens when one receives
too much information. Research says that information higher than an individual can
process, tend to make poorer decisions. Information processing becomes challenging if
content is difficult or amount of information is too higher.

Architecture of Search Engine Advertising/Creating the First Ad Campaign

Google provides an online platform called AdWords to create and manage one’s online
advertisements. Advertisers must create an account to use AdWords, which is organised like a
tree structure.
1. Google AdWords Account
In case the advertiser has an existing account with Google, they can use the same details
to log in to AdWords.
2. Campaign
Setting daily budget is important which allows to set a maximum daily expenditure
possible for the campaign. Multiple region-wise campaigns can be created to save cost.
The bidding rates for the keywords will be different in different markets. Agency can
also choose respective currencies for different countries.
Bidding model is important where the advertiser can choose among cost per click, cost
per acquisition or cost per lead (mostly advertiser choose CPC model).
Another important setting is location either geographic or location of interest.
Ads can be created in different languages depending on their target customers.
3. Ad Groups

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Each campaign is made up of one or more ad groups. An ad group is bundle of keywords

and ads. The best practice is to have 10-15 tightly themed keywords in an ad group.
Advertisers can make multiple ads in an ad group.
4. Ad
Google provides a preview tool for ads within AdWords where one can view the ads
that are running based on device and location settings. It is strongly recommended that
the advertisers use the preview tool to know if their ads are showing or not for certain
keywords.
Anatomy of a search ad – it has three main components: i. headline, ii. Description
and iii. URL.
Due to space limitation, the ad can use only 30 characters for headline and 80
characters for description line. Two headlines of 30 characters, each can be given
and they are joined by a hyphen.
5. Keywords
Keywords determine the search terms for which the ads will be shown. Appropriateness
of keywords would determine if the ads are reaching the target audience or not. Poor
choice of keywords will not show the ads to target customers or cause one to spend
more on their campaigns or both.
Keywords should be relevant to the search term as well as the ad. Keywords can be
short tail or long tail. Short tail keywords are few keywords with high search volume.
Long tail keywords are phrases each of which has small search volume but together
they add up to significant percent of all searches.
Another classification of keywords is category, brand and competition.
Category keywords are generic keywords, which have high search volume. Brand
keywords will trigger ads only when users search for the specific brand. Brands can
take a decision whether they want to bid on competition keyword or not.
Ideally, one would want keywords that have high traffic, low bid amount, low
competition and are relevant to their business. The advertiser can start with 70 percent
of the suggested bid and if ad does not show or shows in lower positions, increase the
bid gradually.

Creating Advanced Ad Formats

Ad extensions are used to provide additional information along with the ad content. Some ad
extensions are available only to ads that appear in the top four spots on the Google search
results page.
Call extensions
Call extensions allow advertisers to append a phone number to an ad without including it in the
body of the ad text (in fact, your ad may get rejected if you try to include a phone number
directly in the body of the ad). Phone numbers using call extensions are clickable on mobile
devices, allowing users to tap on a phone icon to call the business directly (rather than clicking
through to a landing page).

Sitelinks
The original ad extension, sitelinks are a powerful way to add more links to your ads.
Each sitelink can contain up to 25 characters in the link text plus a two-line description totalling

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140 characters per link. As with most ad extensions, Google selects which sitelinks and how
many will appear with each ad and will show two to six sitelinks per ad.

App Extensions
App extensions allow you to include a link to your mobile or tablet app in your ad.
Use this extension If you have a mobile app that’s live in Google Play or the Apple App Store.
App Download Ads (and app engagement ads alike) allow you to showcase your app to relevant
tablet or mobile users.
The ads will auto-detect the operating system to showcase either the App Store or Google Play
where applicable.
The app must be live in either market to be eligible.

Location Extensions
Location extensions help people find your business.
These extensions show your business address, phone number, and a map marker with your ad
text. On mobile, they include a link with directions to your business.

Review Extensions
Review extensions are a great way to highlight customer reviews at the ad level on Bing.
Clicks on review extensions are free of charge and direct people to third-party reviews.

Structured Snippets
Structured snippet ad extensions allow you to highlight certain aspects of what you’re
advertising.
If you’re advertising a hotel, for example, you might feature some of the hotel’s amenities (e.g.,
free Wi-Fi, a business center, a fitness center).
If you don’t include structured snippets within your campaigns, Google may automatically
include dynamic structured snippets.

Price Extensions
Price extensions appear below your ad and show specific products and pricing information.
They can display in a couple different ways: Each price extension has its own link. People who
click on your price extension will be taken straight to the product on your website.

Callouts
Callout ad extensions let you include additional text to highlight specific information about
your business’s products and services.
Callouts will show in a variety of ways depending on device and other factors.
You can add callouts at the account, campaign, or ad group level.
You choose where to add them, create the callout text, and schedule when you’d like them to
appear.
Callouts should be used to highlight differentiators.
They’re often used to promote special offers, such as free shipping.
Think of them as benefits (vs. features) in your advertising.

Keyword Insertion
Advertisers can insert keywords automatically in their ad from the keywords in the ad group
by placing a keyword insertion code. They also must give the default keyword which will be
used by Google when dynamic keywords cannot be inserted.

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Google Maps Ads

Ads on Google Maps are primarily powered by location extensions and are treated as a search
partner in reporting. Sponsored locations will appear at the top of map search results on desktop
or mobile, and are charged on a pay-per-click basis. The key difference is “clicks” in this case
are essentially a click on the location (or directions or a phone number) rather than traffic direct
to site.

Shopping
Google and Bing Shopping Ads (the artist formerly known as PLAs) are the preeminent way
to get visibility for commerce-driven searches.
The ads take a number of formats on the SERP, from a straight bar of three to five products
above the SERPs to a “six pack” or “nine pack” on the formerly empty right rail.
In some cases, you can even find single ad units if there aren’t enough players in the auction.
Shopping Ads are a must do for any e-commerce retailer.

Dynamic Remarketing Ads

Dynamic Remarketing Ads are eponymous on the web – that pair of shoes you were looking
at that just won’t stop following you around.
The images are powered by the same feed as Google Shopping, and allow advertisers to show
site visitors images, prices, and other pertinent information from the feed.
Google offers a few simple ad templates in their Ad Builder, so matching branding isn’t always
perfect, but they’re a great place to start.
The ads are responsive, so they’ll mould themselves to fit into a wide variety of ad units.

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Chapter 4 Social Media Marketing

How to Build a Successful Strategy
1. Listen – listening is important skill, which is often overridden by one’s perception. In
social media strategy, listening is the art of discovering valuable insights from people’s
public expressions all over the Internet. But, organisations often set social media goals
as per their individual perceptions and fail to listen to what their stakeholders have to
say.
Social listening is the monitoring of your brand's social media channels for any
customer feedback and direct mentions of your brand or discussions regarding specific
keywords, topics, competitors, or industries, followed by an analysis to gain insights
and act on those opportunities.
2. Goal Setting

Brands should strive to set goals that are actually attainable. For example, shooting for
a million new Instagram followers in 2019 isn’t going to happen. By tackling smaller,
realistic goals, you can scale your social efforts in a way that’s both reasonable and
affordable. And on a related note, your goals will influence everything from your
budget to which social networks you’ll tackle.

3. Strategy

After defining a set of goals to achieve, strategy needs to be developed for three
sections: content strategy, target group and platform.

a. Content strategy – content forms heart and soul of social media marketing. An ideal
content strategy s one which receives word-of-mouth publicity from key influencers
in the industry.

• 70/20/10 approach:

The 70:20:10 rule helps you to easily build up your content plan, allowing your
brand to appear reputable, engaging and memorable.

70% of your marketing should be 'marketing as usual'. This entails focusing on the
marketing activities that have driven sales volume in the last couple of years. This
should already be successful, and, of course, you will have built up an in-depth
knowledge of how to go about things, so this 70% will be your bread and butter
campaigns. 70% of content should be proven content that supports building your
brand or attracting visitors to your site. Low risk.

20% of your marketing should also be 'programmatic', which is more rules-driven

and automated in response to various stimuli; so, it is not planned, but it is
responsive, and, typically, machine-driven and executed. 20% of content should
be premier content which may be more costly or risky but has a bigger potential
new audience, for example 'viral videos' or infographics. Medium risk.

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Finally, 10% of your marketing should be purely responsive - this is Oreo-

style Real-time marketing. 10% of content should be more experimental and high
risk.

• 50-50 content

Here, 50 percent of the content must be brand related, while other 50 percent should
be non-branded and should be a mix of humour, entertainment, monthly themes,
seasonal themes, product updates, etc.

• Brand Mnemonic

Mnemonic is a learning technique that aids memory. They are strong

communication tools which help in quick brand association and brand recall.
Mnemonics help in defining the brand character and building the brand image it
may include logos, taglines, brand mascots, etc.

• Brand Story

It is answers of why do people buy. It tends to communicate with the customer,

what the brand believes in and the unique reason for the existence of the brand.

• Engagement Ladder

The customer interaction can range from tactical to strategic. The varying levels
of interaction with the organisation are structurally defined using the social media
engagement ladder that starts with ratings and review, discussions, ideas,
advertisement, brands and products.

• Context in Content Strategy

Context forms a critical part of the entire content strategy, especially

‘newsjacking’ – it is the art of riding on the present market trends and aligning
the social media posts in accordance to the most happening things/events/news.

b. Target Group

Defining and targeting a specific set of the audience will help one promote the most
relevant aspects of their business to each set of audience. These sets of the audience
may be the general public, employees, customers, opinion leaders, investors, etc.
the content should be different for different target audience.

c. Platform

Different target groups are present in different concentrations on various social

media platforms. It is essential to reach out to the chosen target group on the right
platform, else all the efforts and spending may be in vain.

4. Implementation

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Planning only solves half the problem, it is implementation which is the key to success.
In case of social media, implementation consists of two parts timely posts and reaction
checks.

5. Measure

Measurement of social media performance is still evolving. There is no fixed method

for assessing success/failure and different companies use different methods. A better
approach would be to define the measurement metrics right at the beginning while
deciding goal. The campaign will be considered a success if goal is achieved. Some of
the most widely used social media metrics to measure the performance of a campaign
are: conversion rate (number of comments/reach), amplification rate (number of shares
or retweets/reach) and applause rate (number of likes or favourite/reach).

6. Improve

Once, the result is obtained, it should be compared with goal. If goal is achieved then
the listening exercise should be repeated to establish new goals and a new campaign to
meet the goal. Thus, the social media strategy cycle is completed.

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Chapter 10 Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine is a program designed to retrieve or search information on the web. The
search results are usually displayed in a line of results on pages known as search engine
results page.

How Search Engine Work

• It starts with web crawling (web crawling refers to looking for the content available on
the web which is crawled by bots/spiders/crawlers). It refers to looking for the content
available on the web. Websites are crawled by automated bots or spiders or crawlers
that are software programs that visit each webpage.
• Data crawled is taken to massive datacenters with thousands of petabytes worth of
drivers after which they are indexed (which is classification of pages into categories, by
identifying the keywords that best describe the page and assigning the page to
keywords).
• When the search query comes search engine processes it and starts calculating the
relevance of each of the pages in its index to the query.
• The last step in the processes is retrieving the pages with highest relevance score on top
of the search results and displaying them in the browser.

Concept of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)/ SEO Phases/SEO Process

Search engine optimisation is the process of influencing the visibility of a website or a webpage
so that it appears higher up in the organic search results. The purpose of doing SEO is to
establish a web presence and get discovered, so that one gets quality traffic that generates leads
and revenues for the business to grow.
The phases or process of SEO is as follows:
1. Website audit – the process begins when businesses conduct an audit for a reality check
so that they know where they stand. There are lot of free sources available to check
quality of website. Websites are scored out of 100, which gives quick and easy
understandable assessment of site performance. The target should be to score above 80.
The main elements of SEO audit are:
a. Keyword position
b. Sitemap
c. Browser, operating systems, devices compatibility
d. Backlink checker
e. Domain authority
f. Keyword cloud
g. Speed audit

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There are other several other aspects also. Audit will help in identifying strengths and
weaknesses of the website and hence give actionable insights.
2. Content – it refers to all the information contained in any webpage. The page content
can be displayed in the form of text, hyperlinks, images, audio, animation, or videos.
Text has advantages of speed, accessibility, and mobile responsiveness. It has faster
download capabilities from server than images, also consumes less space.
Content should be fresh, unique, original, and should add value to the target audience.
Quality content attracts visitors and also attracts websites to link to the brand’s site thus
enhancing their authority.
a. Robots.txt – after writing good content, it is important to ensure that it is crawled
and indexed. Robots.txt file is a text file that helps to regulate web robot behaviour
and search engine indexing. It must be stored at the ‘root’ of any website.
b. Sitemaps – a sitemap is an archive of every page in your website. One can visualise
their website as a tree with home page as the trunk and category pages as branches
and product pages as sub branches. Crawlers may come and crawl only the home
page and few category pages and go away as they may not know that deeper pages
exist. Hence, to avoid this sitemap should be added to the website.

3. On-Page Optimisation – it is easy as it is to be done on the webpages and hence is

within the control of marketer. There are several on-page optimisation factors that affect
search engine rankings which are as follows:
a. Technical Optimization – a good SEO roadmap is built on a strong technical
foundation. Unless the core technical components of the website are in place, all
other SEO efforts will go in vain.
• Site performance – is about the page speed, which is described by the time
it takes to load. The benchmark should be 2 seconds. Slow websites tend to
have high bounce rates. Tactics to improve site performance are: enable
compressions (by minifying {removal of unnecessary characters from the
source code without changing its actual functionality} HTML, CSS,
JavaScript), compress images and reduce redirects.
• Domain – domain names are internet addresses of websites. Domains have
extensions such as .com, .in, .org, etc that are purchased from GoDaddy or
BigRock, etc. It is important to have domain name memorability and
keyword-rich domains. Sub-domains are part of domains that are free to
create under any domain that a webmaster could access.
• 404/500 Errors – 404 error appears when the webpage that user is trying to
reach could not be found on the server, while 500 error are internal server
error.
b. HTML Tags – this is a markup language commonly used to create webpages by
using different tags so that web browsers can read the code and process them to
display on one’s screen. Meta tags are written to describe a page’s content and does
not appear on the front end to users.
• Meta Tags: For each of your pages, you can include a set of keywords in the
form of meta tags. These should be all the relevant keywords of your
content, which you will have researched previously.

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I use a WordPress plug-in on my sites called ‘All In One SEO Pack’. This allows
me to enter all of my meta tag keywords, meta description and page title at the
bottom of each of my posts before publishing. This simply inserts all of the
information into your page HTML format for you, making your life a little easier.
➢ Meta Title - Your page titles are one of the most important SEO
factors on your site. Each of your pages & posts should have its own
unique title, which includes the main keywords for that page.
For example, you could write a blog post about a new chocolate cake recipe
that you have tried. It is therefore vitally important that you include
‘Chocolate Cake Recipe’ within your post title, perhaps “Easy Chocolate
Cake Recipe” or “Chocolate Cake Recipe for kids”, etc.
This way, whenever someone searches for Chocolate Cake Recipes in a
search engine, your post has a better chance of showing up because you have
included those keywords.
➢ Meta Keywords – Meta keywords are used to define the content of a
webpage by providing a bunch of keywords or tags specific to that
webpage’s content. Best practice is to use keywords in all HTML and
meta tags such as title, description, Alt tags, anchor text and URL.
➢ Meta Description - Many people forget to include meta descriptions for
their pages. These descriptions are an important place to include relevant
keywords for your content, as these are used within the search results
when your page is listed.
For instance, if we continue to use the ‘Chocolate Cake Recipe’ example,
then a good meta description for that page would include those keywords
and related ones. So, “This easy chocolate cake recipe is possibly the most
delicious, mouth-watering, chocolatey cake ever made.” would be a great
meta description to use, as it is relatively short, whilst containing a number
of specific keywords.

• Heading Tags/Body Tags – When writing your articles, you should break
up your content into smaller sections & paragraphs to make it easier for
people to read. These sections can be given heading, which is
where H1, H2,H3, H4, etc. tags are used.
Generally H1 tags are reserved for your main page title, with subsequent
headings (just like the ones I have used throughout this post) being issued H2,
H3, etc. Search engines use these to determine what is important within your

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content. This is why keyword rich headlines are more useful than generic
ones. Make sure you write keyword rich headings in the order of priority in H1,
H2 and H3 title tags. They are used by many crawlers to differentiate important
content.

• Anchor Tags:
Anchor text - Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. SEO best practices
dictate that anchor text be relevant to the page you're linking to, rather than generic text.
The blue, underlined anchor text is the most common as it is the web standard, although
it is possible to change the color and underlining through html code. The keywords in
anchor text are one of the many signals search engines use to determine the topic of a
web page. Example – Bad anchor text is ‘Click Here’ while good anchor text is
Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cake Recipe, Chocolate Cake made Easy.
Image/video optimization - Using images within your content is a great way to make
your site more visually appealing and break up boring chunks of text. You can utilise
these images to help improve your site SEO. All your uploaded images have titles, so
treat them just the same as your page titles. Including relevant keywords can help people
find your site when searching on Google Images. You can also include Alt
Text and Descriptions for your images, making them even more useful with SEO.

c. Schema.org – it is a community activity that aims at promoting schemas for

structured data over the web for websites. A schema is a micro data type that allows
search engines to search for a webpage data easily. It works by adding some codes
directly into HTML code.

d. Keywords – they are words and phrases that make it possible for users to find any
website by using search engines. While writing any content, one should focus on
building a theme out of the content, which is formed through relationships between
concepts and group of keywords. Close related keywords strengthen the topicality
of any webpage. Use of synonyms and related keywords help search engines to
learn better about the webpage.
Choice of keywords – a thorough research needs to be done for choosing the right
keywords for optimizing the website. There are also tools available online for

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discovering keywords and also prioritizing them. The following should be kept in
mind while choosing a keyword:
o The word people would search for to find the product or service
o Keyword tags on competitors’ websites by viewing their page source on right
click.
o The website’s keyword cloud
o Think from the user’s perspective rather than having an inwardly focused
approach.
o Problems that a brand’s prospective customers may be trying to solve with their
product or service.
Long tail and short tail keywords –
Short tail keywords are very few and each one has millions of monthly search
volume. They are typically generic or category keywords. They give high traffic
but conversions will be low as user queries are generic. Market leaders use short
tail keywords
Long tail keywords have longer phrases and have only a few hundreds of monthly
search volume. They are specific brand or product related queries. They lead to
more conversion but less traffic as few people would search for them. New entrants
or small players may start with long tail keywords.
As a company grows, SEO strategy should evolve from long tail to short tail
keywords.
Keyword density – it is frequency of a keyword that appears on a webpage. This is
calculated in terms of percentage compared to the total number of words on that
page. Keyword density of words is 2 percent if it is repeated two times in a 100
word of a webpage. Ideal keyword density should be between 0.5 to 2.5 percent.
Number of keywords – research has shown that most domain rank high for only
very few keywords. Hence, ongoing SEO strategy should be broadening the pool
of keywords for which website should rank high
Keyword funnel – keywords correspond to stages of the buying funnel. Broad
category of keyword indicate customers are at initial stages of the buying process
whereas product and brand specific keyword indicate consumers are at the action
stage of the funnel. The keywords corresponding to initial stages of the funnel will
be the short tail and will have high traffic volumes and more competition but less
conversion. While keywords corresponding to lower stages of the funnel will be the
long tail and have less traffic and hence less competition but more conversion.
Page segmentation – keywords appearing in main body section have greater weight
in SEO than keywords appearing in header or footer or sidebars of the webpage.

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Synonyms – it is better strategy to use natural variants and synonyms instead of

using only one keyword so that search engines can understand what the page is all
about. It also helps for words that have multiple meanings.
e. RSS Feeds – Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication is an XML code that
contains recent information updates. It fetches the updates from the website and
delivers via RSS feeds named ‘feed reader’ or ‘feed aggregator’.

f. Microsites – are auxiliary websites, which are usually about a product or a service
that provide a separate entity for a brand. They are typically domain, but some exists
as sub-domain. They must interlink with each other and with the main website.

g. Site Structure
It helps us in understanding how the website is set up and how individual subpages
are hyperlinked. Crawlers should be able to find them quickly.
Breadcrumbs – it is a list of internal links in a hierarchical form that allows users to
quickly navigate back to a previous node or section in any website. Text in
breadcrumb is clickable in nature in order to improve the user’s experience while
they are viewing information on any website.
Optimize URLs – URLs create first impression in users mind about the webpage
before they visit the page.
Internal Linking – internal links are those links that point to another page on the
same domain, and are used for internal navigation purposes. Three major reasons
to use internal linking are i. they provide visitors with further reading option, ii. It
helps to improve the brand’s search engine ranking as internal linking in categories
or articles help search engines to crawl to their website better, and iii. The help in
spreading ranking power around the website.

4. Off-Page Optimisation - it involves backlinks. It is difficult part of SEO.

Outside activities of the web page that help in its ranking.
a. Authority and Hubs – authority is a website that is linked to by many websites and
a hub is a website that links to may websites. More number of sites hyperlinking
and the higher the quality of these sites higher would be the authority of the
website under consideration.
b. Backlinks – it is a process of getting hyperlinks not owned by a brand from
external pages that are to link to a webpage of their website. Link building is the
most popular and effective off-Page SEO method. Basically by building external
links to your website, you are trying to gather as many ‘votes’ as you can, so that
you can bypass your competitors and rank higher. Someone likes an article online
and refers it on his/her blog/facebook page, etc.
c. Blog Posts/commenting – blogs are informational websites displayed in a reverse
chronological order. It can positively boost one’s search engine ranking.
Customers can also comment in blogs of others and leave their link that can serve
as a backlink.
d. Press Release – a press release is a way to spread organizational news and
information to the news media. It can be recent updates, new product
announcements, etc. Nowadays a lot of PR has shifted online. There are wires

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such as Bloomberg, PRNewswire, etc., which carry press releases, some are free
some are paid.
e. Directories/classifieds - Paid or Featured web listing, Free or regular web listing,
Reciprocal web listing
f. Forums – share same interest and are willing to discuss problems or topics that
help fellow members
g. Articles Promotion and Syndication
h. Unnatural links

5. Social Media Reach – it is becoming increasingly important in SEO. Search engines

consider social signals such as likes, comments, shares, retweets, as a form of user
feedback. Content that is engaging and getting organic traction is considered good
quality by search engines. It is important to do cross posting of the content on social
media so that you can drive some traffics.

6. Maintenance – SEO is not a one-time task as search engine algorithms constantly

change. Moreover, SEO must be done on a regular basis for new content that is posted.
To maintain one’s web presence and stay at the top of SERPs, one must regularly do
SEO.

a. SEO Tactics
i. Black Hat SEO – Black hat SEO refers to a set of practices that are used to increases
a site or page's rank in search engines through means that violate the search engines'
terms of service. One someone deliberately manipulates indexes of a search engine
to improve the ranking of webpages, then we can call that as usage of black hat
SEO. Hence, one should avoid it for which there are several techniques like:
keyword stuffing, cookies stuffing, hidden text/links, cloaking, gateway pages,
mirror site, blog comment spam, social networking spam, link farms, and
cybersquatting.
ii. White hat SEO – The term "white hat SEO" refers to SEO tactics that are in line with
the terms and conditions of the major search engines, including Google.

White hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat SEO. Generally, white hat SEO refers to
any practice that improves your search rankings on a search engine results page (SERP)
while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the search engines'
terms of service. These tactics stay within the bounds as defined by Google. Examples
of white hat SEO include:

• Offering quality content and services

• Fast site loading times and mobile-friendliness
• Using descriptive, keyword-rich meta tags
• Making your site easy to navigate

Examples of black hat SEO, by contrast, include purchasing links or using deceptive
cloaking techniques. Any tactics that are considered deceitful or harmful for consumers
would qualify as black hat. Black hat tactics are extremely risky and, as Google's
algorithms evolve, less and less likely to work.

Dr. Neha Mehta L. J. Institute of Management Studies

Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

Chapter 11 Web Analytics

Web analytics is the process of tracking, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data. It
provides a number of key metrics which when analysed can provide actionable insights.
Key Metrics
Key metrics in web analytics are of three types: Behaviour Analysis, Outcomes Analysis and
Experience Analysis.
1. Behaviour Analysis – Behaviour analysis is what is traditionally called click stream
data analysis. It is the process of collecting, analysing and reporting aggregate data
about which pages a website visitor visits and in what order.
a) Visit/sessions – page requests with a gap of no more than 30mins between each one. i.
clicks vs visit – click is when one clicks on ad or link, upon clicking the user visits the
webpage. ii. Unique visitors – unique visitors are the number of different users
requesting webpages.
b) Time on site – it indicates engagement of the visitor, more time spent means greater
stickiness of the site.
c) Page views – it is number of pages viewed or requested by a user. More pages views
mean more engagement.
d) Bounce rate – it is the percentage of single-page visits and user leaves from the landing
page without interacting with the page.
e) Exit pages – to know from which pages users are exiting the most. Pages from where
visitors are dropping off in the process of buying a product are called exit pages.
f) Traffic sources – there are three types of traffic source, i. direct traffic – user typing
direct URL. ii. Search traffic – based on search query. iii. Referral visitors – as website
was mentioned on another blog or website.
g) Share of voice in search – it is the percent of search traffic a brand gets from SERPs as
compared to the competition.

2. Outcome Analysis – the website may get many sessions and visitors, but what is more
important for a business to track is the business outcome of visits and sessions.
Businesses are interested in knowing how much revenue was generated, how many
conversions happened, etc.
a) Conversion rate – it is the percentage of users who perform an action that is desired by
the website owner.
b) Average order value (AOV) – it can be formulated as the sum of revenue generated,
divided by number of orders.
c) Multi-channel funnel – enables understanding of the different channels users interact
with on the path to conversion.
d) Visitor frequency and recency – how often visitor visits the website is visitor frequency,
while visitor recency is how long has it been since a visitor last visited a website.
e) New vs return visitor conversion – on must keep an eye on how many new visitors they
have in comparison to returning visitors. If returning visitors are less means users are
less loyal.
f) Value per visit – there is certain value that one must assign to every single visit to
website these are categorized into two conversions micro and macro.

Dr. Neha Mehta L. J. Institute of Management Studies

Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

g) Percent of visitors who view product pages

3. Experience Analysis – it is vital to do research on a continuous basis to know if visitors

can find the information they are looking for and if the webpage served its purpose.
a) Research data – through site survey, usability testing, site visits.
b) Website experimentation and testing –
i. A/B testing is sometimes also called split testing where one compares two versions
of their webpage to see which performs better. Pros and cons of doing A/B testing are:
Pros
A/B testing is cost effective way of testing cutting edge ideas and yet exercising control
on them by testing on only a few users. One can be ahead of their competition by testing
new ideas. One can click on ‘Experiments in Behavior’ tab of Google Analytics and set
up the experiment. One must choose the objective of the experiment, percent of traffic
to experiment, set a minimum time for the experiment to run, and choose confidence
threshold.
Cons
It is difficult to control all the external factors like campaigns, search traffic, press
releases, etc. Thus, one will not be 100 percent confident of the results on one’s A/B
testing. One may know which page variant leads to more conversions, but they may not
be able to discern which elements of the page contribute the most.
ii. What to test – important pages like home page, calls for action, value proposition,
creative, price and promotions.

Types of Tracking Codes

Google analytics code – this code is for tracking web analytics such a unique user, pageviews,
bounce rate, etc. Google provides a free web analytics service that offers tracking and reporting
of users for the website. When the code is put in the global elements like header or footer which
are common across pages, and not local elements such as deeply embedded pages then the
codes gets applied to all the pages of the website.
Google AdWords Conversion Code – this code is used for tracking conversions from
campaigns run through Google AdWords.one can take the code from ‘Tools’ section in Google
AdWords and put on the ‘Thank You’ or the ‘Action Confirmation’ page.
Remarketing Code – if one wishes to remarket and show ads to users who visited their site,
they must generate a remarketing code. Different codes are generated by different platforms.
Google Tag Manager – it is a tag management system that replaces hard-coded tags with
dynamic tags for easier implementation and updates. It is useful for all types of businesses.
One can add or update tags of Google product like AdWords and Analytics, and non-Google
third-party tags instead of editing website code.

Competitive Intelligence
Successful digital marketers need to keep tabs on their competition. For example, Flipkart
needs to know how Amazon is performing in India. An insight into a number of unique users,

Dr. Neha Mehta L. J. Institute of Management Studies

Digital and Social Media Marketing Reckoner

page views, bounce rate, time spent, etc. on Amazon.com which will help Flipkart to strategize.
Some of the competitive intelligence methods are:
1. Panel Based – like TV ratings, which are based on peoplemeters installed in people’s
homes, the panel data is based on software installed in panel members’ computers
which track the online behaviour of members. In addition to the macro behaviour such
as pages viewed, time spent, bounce rate, etc this method also captures complete
conversion data such as products and services bought, average order value, etc.
2. ISP-based Measurement – Internet Service Providers (ISP) is used to access internet.
Our requests go via servers of these ISPs and are stored in their server log files. The
data collected by the ISP has different elements that get passed around in URLs like
websites, webpage name, keywords, etc. One’s ISP can also get the information like
browser types, and even the user’s operating system.
3. Browser Toolbar – toolbars are add-ons that enhance the functionality of web browsers.
Most search engines such as Google, Yahoo! And Bing provide toolbars. There are
many other sources of toolbars. When the user installs toolbars, some browsing
behaviour is captured such as pages visited, time spent, etc. The data is not personally
identifiable, though.
4. Benchmarking Data – web analytics vendors have access to a lot of data which they
aggregate together to share the benchmark data for your vertical. One can use this data
to compare their performance against others. In these tools, one can compare your
performance with other companies in the same industry or vertical. Google analytics
provide benchmark data for free.

Dr. Neha Mehta L. J. Institute of Management Studies