Certified Digital Marketing

Professional

Module 1: Digital Marketing

Foundations.

PRESENTED BY

[SOBOTAMOH Elias M. Ngi]

Version 7.0
Certified Digital
Marketing
Professional
(CDMP)

Module 1

Digital Marketing
Foundations

Version 7.0
SOBOTAMOH Elias Manyi NGI

Board Chair@AdMeUp Digital Academy

• Digital Investment Consultant .

• Board Chair of 4 ROCKS Investment LLC.
• Board Chair of AdMeUp Digital Academy LLC.
• 19 Years experience in investment management
• Expert in Digital strategy and planning.
• Researcher in the applicability of IoT
• Member of IEEE.

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According to the Oxford dictionary, new media are defined as “means of mass communication using digital technologies
such as the internet”.

Digital marketing is defined within the parameters of technologies using digital formats and the internet. This can range
from computer, to mobile, to digital billboards. It encompasses online shared experience such as social media or digital
marketing software that helps marketers create, distribute, and track their campaign on digital platforms.

Here are some instances of how old media translates into a new media format today:

Books → Ebooks, wikis

Journalism → Blogs
Music → Pandora Newspapers
Magazines → Ezines
Radio → Podcasts
Television → Full episodes on the web, Netflix
Telephone → VOIP
Film → Amateur videos on the web, Netflix, Vimeo
Photography → Flickr,
Photo editor → Picasa Art

Historically, digital marketing began with the start of new media and the internet bubble of the 1990s. The first clickable
web-ad from AT&T, in 1994, prophetically asked, "Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.“ Today, banner
ads are so common that we have even developed technologies to block them from appearing and invading our screens.

That being said, digital marketing has developed to be a much more complex network of communication, collaboration,
community, creativity, and convergence beyond simple display ads.

The development of digital marketing has led to two marketing concepts: inbound and outbound marketing.

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With the new digital marketing experience, reaching out to an audience and bringing them through the buyer’s journey
requires new skills and positioning that were not required in the past.

In a knowledge-based world that provides a myriad of messages, not only do audiences rely on advertising to inform them
of new products, they can also review, comment, ask questions, and watch videos of other users testing a product. All of
this is happening without brands being able to monitor or influence their audience. If a community doesn’t approve of a
product or the product doesn’t resonate, it will be much more difficult to attract the desired audience.

That is where the concept of inbound marketing comes into play. According to one of the big players of inbound
marketing, HubSpot, inbound is defined as an approach focused on attracting customers through content and interactions
that are relevant and helpful — not interruptive. With inbound marketing, potential customers find you through channels
such as blogs, search engines, and social media.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, is an attempt to initiate a conversation about a product or service by rapidly
spreading word of its existence, using volume and repetition. This applies to digital as much as traditional media, while
inbound marketing is a much more web-based practice.

The development of inbound marketing came from the realization that traditional tactics did not develop healthy
relationships with customers as they were too intrusive and disruptive. In addition, inbound was influenced by the change
in consumer behavior with new media development, resulting in a shorter attention spans, more choice and information,
and the ability to reduce marketing noise in one click. For instance, in 2017, nine out of ten ad blocking users blocked ads
via desktop or laptop - translating to 24.0% of US internet users (emarkter.com). This could prove to be a serious issue for
brands focusing mainly on outbound strategies such as online banners and advertising.

We see this similarly with pre-roll banners, where 52% of US digital video viewers in 2016 said they simply skip a pre-roll ad
when presented with it. In the new media era, brands have little control over their ad viewing because users have gained
back control of the content. Inbound marketing can be achieved through all media types, but is mostly developed through
owned and earned media.

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In digital marketing, as in traditional marketing, we distinguish between types of media, based on the
control a brand has over the media in question.

We classify three main types of media: owned, paid, and earned. Let’s take a look at each of these types
and understand how the inbound and outbound concepts fit into each.

Owned media: This is media that incorporates a company’s own content, packaging, point of sale (POS),
and people who come into contact with consumers. In digital marketing, this relates to a website, mobile
site, app, blog, social media accounts, and any other platform that you develop and control. This type of
media is mainly driven by your content strategy to provide education and information, develop your brand
personality, and raise sympathy by making your brand relevant to your audience.

Paid media: This includes any marketing media that you pay for. In the digital context, paid media takes on
several forms, such as pay per click (PPC), banner ads, retargeting, and social media advertising. The main
goal of paid media is to create traffic on your owned media and start raising interest and awareness.
Depending on where your audience is in the funnel (a visual representation of the customer journey), paid
media can be used to generate traffic, leads, or sales and move the consumer onto the next stage of the
funnel. This type of media is heavily reliant on analytics and performance metrics that optimize a strategy
in order to minimize cost.

Earned media: This is free publicity generated by consumers, PR, influencers, and people who speak about
and share content related to your brand or product, either in response to content you’ve shared or via
voluntary mentions. In this case, the consumer welcomes the channel as a result of your content strategy,
product quality, and post-sales nurturing, keeping your customers happy and passionate about your
product and brand experience. The word of mouth promotion generated among internet users is generally
a result of well-thought-through and well-positioned owned and paid media.

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Some benefits of owned media include the cost efficiency, flexibility, longevity, and
power of developing a go-to platform for your niche audience. Owned media is
important for creating trust and legitimacy, as a flagship platform showing off all that
the company is, sells, and does. Your website is much like your flagship store in a
capital city; it stands out as the home for all of your content and should provide the
best possible user experience.

The challenges of this type of media relate to the time necessary to build a
reputation and trust that guarantees high levels of traffic to your digital owned
assets. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean that people will visit it, and
Google will rank it first on relevant keywords. It requires optimization and the use of
other types of media, such as paid and earned.

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Paid media includes all forms of digital advertising or paid endorsement, such as pay per
click (PPC), social media, display advertising, paid influencers, and retargeting.

Some benefits of paid media include the immediacy and scalability of the media. By using
paid media, you have control over where, when, and what is seen. You can plan for
expected performance, return on investment, and traffic that the paid media strategy
will bring. Paid media is highly recommended when building awareness and generating
familiarity, as it provides the basis for repetition and selective targeting. For instance, by
buying ads on Facebook, you have access to granular targeting and ad placement. So, for
example, you know that females or males aged between 20 and 25, who have an interest
in hair products, will see your advertising in their feeds and on the recommendation side
bar of their Facebook page.

The challenges, on the other hand, keep evolving with the development of technology
and new media, as we have seen with ad blockers, for instance. Even though you can
know everything about who, when, and how your ad will be seen, this is a cluttered
market where audiences are flooded with ads on social media and websites. This makes
it harder to differentiate, which results in a lack of credibility. Finally, with the new
conditions of digital media, response rates are declining over time due to audience
adaptation and the possibility to skip, close, or report ads online.

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Earned media includes organic content created by users about your company but also mentions,
shares, reposts on social media, and reviews on specialized websites (such as. Amazon).

The benefits of earned media are amongst some of the strongest, as it creates credibility, is organic,
and tends to live on longer than paid or owned media. Especially in the new media era, consumers
rely heavily on peer reviews and will listen to experts and friends before investing in a product or
brand content. With earned media, the content around your brand is organically generated and
originates in interest and satisfaction (assuming that the media publicity it created is positive, of
course). Earned media can also shine a light on the negative side of things if consumers are
unsatisfied, or have had a bad customer experience. This is part of the challenge of earned media.
Other challenges include the lack of control, scalability, and the difficulty in measuring it.

Because earned media is at the discretion of internet users, it is difficult to control and may impact on
a company’s ability to provide great customer experience, content, and products. Measuring the
impact of earned media can prove challenging, and even if it is possible to monitor conversation
around your company, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will know the actual impact in terms of sales.
For instance, by understanding the audience of influencers that have talked about your company
organically, you can measure an average reach. If one influencer has an audience of 45,000 people
and mentions your brand, you can confidently say that based on their daily reach, your band name
has been exposed to 1,000 users a day. But apart from these users sharing, liking, or commenting on
your content, you know little about what they have done with the information. There is no
information provided on actual conversion.

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The buyer’s journey is the process a consumer goes through before purchasing a product or
service. This process can look different depending on the industry or product you are
associated with, but generally has five main stages from awareness to retention.

When you target an audience, you have to consider where in the buyer’s journey this
audience sits. Do they already know your product? Have they tried it before? Have they
ever purchased from your competitor’s brand? What do they think about your brand and
product? What are the pain points that would prevent this audience from purchasing your
product?

Understanding the context around your audience and the elements needed to move them
down the funnel are critical for a successful digital marketing strategy. Their place in the
buyer’s journey will influence the media you choose to communicate with them. Think
about these issues and try to understand precise decision-making processes that influence
the consumer. Each product category or service will have their own priority that customers
focus on before taking the purchase decision. The idea is to uncover these insights and use
them in your content strategy in order to move your audience to the next stage.

You should aim to create your own buyer’s journey based on research, adding precision to
the general model we are going to see in the next few slides. This is deeply rooted in the
inbound methodology – in other words, how to attract a highly qualified audience by
providing the necessary tools for their decision-making process.

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The buyer’s journey generally is divided into five stages: Awareness, Interest,
Consideration, Conversion, and Retention. There are many models that are also valid,
some with fewer stages, but globally they all focus on the three main consumer
touchpoints: being aware of your company, researching how your company fits in their
life, making a purchase decision, and so on. Each stage comes with its own challenges and
goals that will drive a marketing strategy.

1. Awareness: Communicate a benefit, and tell them about a brand, product, event, or
offer.
2. Interest: Increase emotional engagement.
3. Consideration: Bring your company to the forefront of the choice.
4. Conversion: Convert intent into action.
5. Retention: Make the consumer feels special and increase the chances of
recommendations.

To position your consumers on any of these stages, you need to understand their needs
and motivations, which requires in-depth psychological and behavioral research. In the
next few slides, we will see an example of a consumer going through each stage of the
buyer’s journey, providing a better understanding of how each stage involves the
consumers and the company.

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The Awareness stage represents the moment when the consumer becomes aware of a problem they want
to solve in their life and perceives your product ad as a potential solution.

In this stage, marketers should focus on creating visibility and recognition. This is a critical stage for new
products, brands, or added benefits to an existing product. This stage will focus on getting your product
out there, implementing it as part of a broader scope of existing solutions for an issue.

In this example, our consumer Mary is not satisfied with the state of her hair. Maybe she saw an
advertisement for a shampoo attracting attention to split ends, or maybe she has a friend with healthier-
looking hair than hers and also wants to be able to enjoy rich, glossy, and fabulous looking hair. At this
stage, understanding where this need emerged from will help you know what your product can actually
bring.

There is a difference in building a strategy for consumers whose motivation comes from confidence issues
about their physical appearance and beauty than one from consumers with hair-related conditions that
will need a more medical approach. Solving for the Awareness stage is one of the most expensive,
because it relies mostly on repetition, scale, and developing new content that will match the consumer’s
motivation and need. Achieving awareness requires being present in the places that consumers look for
solutions. At this stage of a consumer’s research, 72% will turn to Google for answers.

Ask yourself:
• Why is the consumer trying to solve this problem?
• What is the root of the problem?
• Where will they go to find solutions?
• What solution can your company bring?
• How does your company’s solution fit into the consumer’s knowledge and lifestyle?

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The Interest stage represents the moment when the consumer is looking for options that
will help solve their problem.

During this stage, consumers will look at possibilities and prioritize what they need and how
to find a solution to meet that need. For instance, they might look at different shampoos
and brands, and compare price, ingredients, features, and packaging of the shampoo. They
will prioritize their research around one or multiple criteria, such as finding a shampoo that
is low in price but one with natural ingredients.

At this stage, the consumer will have a selection of products in mind but will need more
information and experience to make a decision. This is a quest for knowledge that, in the
digital marketing landscape, translates into reading reviews, blog articles, social media, and
ad product websites in order to gain as much information as possible. We can consider that
this stage is influenced by earned media, as the consumer will turn to peer
recommendations to scope solutions to their problems.

Now, consumers are active and open to finding new content, so this is a great stage to push
your content out organically, send well-timed marketing emails, and develop relevant
articles that attract that interested audience. These consumers are what we call prospects,
who can be turned into leads. They are showing interest but haven’t yet actively engaged
with your company. The goal is to engage them emotionally, by appealing to their needs.

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The Consideration stage represents the moment when the consumer knows about your brand and thinks it is a
good fit for their needs or what they are trying to achieve. They may have other brands in mind, but your company
is in the top five possible choices. A more aggressive approach is needed from the marketing strategy in order to
strengthen the relationship with the consumer and prove the brand’s value through content, testing, promotions,
and staying relevant.

The consumer might have decided to follow the brand on social media and subscribe to a newsletter to get more
information that could influence their choice. They have shown interest by taking these actions and are waiting to
be convinced. At this stage, your product is compared with a selection of your probable direct competitors. This is
where differentiation will play a major role in decision making. You need to answer some questions for the
customer: Why is your product better? What is the added value? How difficult is it to buy your product? What is
the level of effort involved in using your product? What are previous customers saying about your product? Is your
product used by any trusted sources, such as influencers or friends?

In our example, Mary may have two or three brands in mind that meet her needs. They could repair her hair, be
low in cost, and use natural ingredients. These products and brands are slightly similar with different positioning
and Mary is trying to learn more about the quality of each. She will browse their website, follow them on
Instagram, look at reviews on Amazon, and consult her favorite beauty blogger for more insights. The influential
factors that help her make a decision at this stage might be any of the following: a special collaboration with her
favorite artist, an aspect of the product that impacts on the environment, and seeing lots of content related to one
brand.

At this stage, the inbound strategy makes even more sense because, if it is correctly realized, the brand or product
will organically occur in the consumer’s search and social media feeds. But using all three types of media (owned,
earned, and paid) will yield even stronger results, using an influencer’s voice and retargeting consumers that have
previously shown interest.

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The Conversion stage represents the moment when the consumer is ready to buy your
product. The consumer has done their research and, based on their needs and
motivations, has decided that the product is providing the best solution for their
problem. At this stage, the consumer has not yet paid for the product or service and the
role of the marketer is to create a point of contact to drive the conversions. This is
generally achieved with targeting and re-targeting, promotional offers, and creating a
sense of urgency. Thanks to analytics on website, social media, and marketing emails,
marketers can gather data that will qualify a lead for sales based on actions taken.

If we take our example, Mary has read reviews online, asked her friends, been on
several brands’ websites, and started following some products on social media.
Recently, she went on the website of product X, selected a few products, added them to
her basket and saved it, but didn’t convert. She came back to the company social
accounts and product pages a couple of times during the week. These clues give the
marketer information that she is actively considering the product and might be ready
for conversion. As a result, it might be a good idea to send a marketing email reminding
her of the product she left and offer a promotional code for her first purchase that will
be valid for the next few days. Another tactic can be to use social media retargeting
capacities on Mary’s social media newsfeed, showing relevant ads that showcase the
product and the brand.

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The Retention stage is often overlooked, but it is a key stage for ensuring reoccurring revenue and
creating a group of active brand advocates. Once the consumer has used the product and is satisfied, it
is crucial to provide added value and create a real relationship. This, on one hand, delights the
customer, who will feel special and part of the brand’s community and, on the other hand, this
encourages repurchase and thus additional revenue from an existing customer.

From a cost point of view, it is more cost effective to retain existing customers and encourage re-
purchases than getting new leads that might only be at the Awareness stage. In this stage, you are
addressing an already convinced consumer who thinks your product is great for them, but you still need
to keep them satisfied and create a desire to come back to your product.

This is achieved by many tactics, such as content development, special promotions, events, newsletters,
community management, and so on. If we look at our example, Mary has purchased the product after
seeing a retargeted ad on Facebook. She used the product and her hair became much healthier, so she
posted on social media about her experience, and is currently happy with the product’s promise. Her
purchase might last her a month or so, thus the brand over this period of time has to ensure that her
next purchase, if only to renew the product, will be within their product range.

The brand can send a post-sales message to thank Mary, giving her a voucher for additional purchases
and also provide content about other products she might like. The company could also use research to
understand what other buyers in their community have bought and, if Mary fits any existing buyer
personas, that could provide extra information. If they know that she visits the blog often, they can set
up a lead flow to subscribe her to their newsletter and use smart content to show relevant articles.

Today with digital marketing, the Retention stage can be extremely rich and relevant based on all the
information gathered using online analytics. The more you know about your customers, the more you
will be able to provide additional value to them and delight them, not only with your product, but with
your brand experience and personality.

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The marketing functions are defined as the various roles of a marketing team in helping a business to identify and
source potentially successfully products for the marketplace, and then promoting these products by differentiating
them from similar products.

In business, marketing can be overlooked and can be a department where cost cuts come first, but reminding
yourself about the marketing functions can help you understand how important marketing is in creating a successful
business, as much as financial, and research and development departments.

The marketing department can be divided into functions that all focus on different business objectives and thus the
stages of the buyer’s journey. Specialization within the marketing department ensures better focus and
understanding of each stage of the buyer’s journey, uncovering relevant and pin-pointed insights. The more precise
a marketer can be about the function they are trying to accomplish, and the stages they are focusing on, the more
successful they are likely to be in bringing the consumer to the next stage.

There are several divisions in the marketing functions, but here we will generalize five functions that encapsulate
the main roles of marketing within a business:
• Planning
• Awareness
• Conversion
• Retention
• Analysis and Optimization

We will explore each stage over the next few slides to understand how these functions are realized and how they
tie into the business organization.

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The Planning function of marketing relates to the core preparation work of your marketing and product activation.

It helps a business understand their position in the market, as well as the opportunities and threats that need to be
addressed in order to succeed and grow. At this stage, the marketer focuses on the knowledge within the industry, building
the base for a strategy that will hit the right target, and the correct market and price positioning - all based on research and
strategic thinking.

For this function, marketing needs to work closely with the product and business team to understand and align with their
goals. It also provides an insight into the best direction to develop towards and adds value to the decision-making process by
bringing the consumer and community perspective into the discussion. This function also sets the ground for the following
marketing functions by communicating the objectives and necessary costs of the digital marketing strategy that will achieve
the global business objectives and promote and retain product adoption.

This function gathers activities such as:

• Market research: This activity is one of the most important in the planning marketing function. This is what will lead of
future strategic decisions, as no decision can be made without research. The marketer needs to know everything about
the market, competition, culture, and people that are targeted in order to be the most relevant on the market for their
product.

• Pricing: Product marketers will be charged with auditing different parts of the product and positioning the product the
best way on the market. This is important when talking about the pricing. Pricing development is an in-depth strategy
that allows a product to sit on the consumer’s mind.

• Objective development: The role of this function is to translate the business goals into marketing goals that will help
move the business forward. This is necessary to get buy-in on your budget by ensuring the relevance of the marketing
efforts and justifying the cost that it will bring, aligning with the business KPIs.

• Budgeting: Based on the objectives developed and the planning of the tactics that will be necessary to reach them, the
marketer has to budget every action for the business’s approval. Usually, a budget will be approved quarterly and on a
project basis for marketing agencies. In many cases, this budget is based on past marketing budgets and will be
evaluated up or down based on former performance and future needs of the business.

• Planning: This allows marketers to clearly communicate their strategy with team members and with the broader
business organization. Each marketing function might have their own planning activities, but a general planning stage
can help to create a vision of the bigger picture and how teams need to work together to move things forward. Planning
will be shaped as a document, illustrating marketing activities by date, time, and duration, also referencing the location
and campaign.

All activities in the Planning marketing function are related and will be the foundation for the next function to work from by
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The Awareness function of marketing relates to the creation of knowledge within your target audience. This function aims to
create relevancy of a product/brand/company in a specific industry to the potential buyers. If we take a new product that is
just being launched, the Awareness function is the most important and will help put the name of the product in consumers’
minds when thinking about the product category. Building awareness is the core objective of this function, by creating
involvement and relevancy. This function gathers many activities that will be unique and tie in with the planning stages.

In the market opportunities function, the core activity is to find the pathway to the consumer’s mind by identifying the
opportunities in the market. It is easier for a brand to be positioned in a market in ways that are unique and different, rather
than just following what the competition is doing. A similar product can be positioned and sold on a market in hundreds of
different ways. The Awareness function needs to focus on developing this differentiation through research started in the
planning stage.

Creative development will allow this positioning to speak by developing the personality, visuals, colors, and most importantly
the concept that will drive the brand. More specifically, the campaigns will be developed for awareness. This usually involves
a third-party of creative thinkers and trendsetters.

Content development is the next logical step after the creative development. Now that the concept is set up, the content of
each campaign, each visual, and each line will be created with the creative concept in mind. This is crucial in keeping the
product/brand experience consistent, which creates a much stronger impact in the consumer’s mind. One product, one
brand, one message, one concept is critical to working in the Awareness function. This will need to be communicated to the
other functions in order to keep that consistency.

With the aim of the Awareness function being to create a mental picture of a brand on a specific product category, the more
consumers reached the better. A media strategy is needed for reach and engagement. The function is based on scale and
memorability, creating impactful content shown at the right time and in the right place. Once again, research is foundational
for understanding where the target audience is and the best way to capture their attention. For instance, a business audience
will not be on the same website or social media as a music enthusiast. One might be found on LinkedIn and Twitter, while the
others will be on SoundCloud, Spotify, or Instagram. In addition, the media strategy will focus on frequency, which is key in
building awareness. The more a message is seen, the better it is associated with the creative and product.

The budgeting activity is one of the latest performed in any marketing function as it needs to be fed by all the previous
choices and activities. The budget gathers cost for the creative team and concept development, the time spent developing
content, the media buying, and the research. In the Awareness stage, a specific set of tools and media will be used in digital
marketing. We can think about site covering, video campaign on social media, first view format on Twitter, buying keywords,
special event that will be promoted online, and influencer collaborations.

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The Conversion function of marketing relates to the transformation of leads into actual customers. Different from the Awareness
function, the Conversion function will focus on smaller sets of audiences that have already shown interest. Using CRM tools, the
conversion marketer is able to gather data and insights on where in the funnel these leads are and what it will take to move
them into the conversion stage. This function is more tactical and requires less creative differentiation. It is no longer about
creating this extraordinary initial impact and experience, but keeping a constant stream of information and building a
relationship that will focus on a highly relevant and interested audience.

Selling is the core objective of this function, but the path to reach this goal can be varied and colorful. The more targeted, the
easier it will be to appeal to the audience in question. In order to achieve this, the conversion function will look at research and
positioning from the Planning and Awareness functions. Based on the findings and decisions made, the marketer will capitalize
on the differentiation points that are relevant to the leads in the funnel and adapt their messaging to be consistent with the core
positioning and concept developed by the Awareness function.

This function gathers activities focused on persuading by providing extra information, values, and urgency to the current offer.
Additionally, it aims to keep the product top of mind in the decision-making process by using repetition and retargeting.

• Identify media opportunities: Much like in the previous function, the Conversion function needs to focus on media formats
and tactics that will ease conversion. Retargeted advertising takes the consumer directly to the product they have been
looking at, providing content related to their problems, either in search or directly reaching the consumer through their
mailbox with relevant content. For the conversion function, the scale will not be as much of an importance; the ROI and
conversion rate will be prime in the media and format selection.

• Set quantitative goals: Compared to the Awareness stage, the Conversion stage taps into the actual number of sales, and not
on psychological components of the consumer mind. Measuring the success of the conversion campaign relies on setting
quantitative and measurable goals that will be easily translated in business objectives. Metrics might include an average
shopping cart payment, the number of items or the number of emails collected, and so on.

• Develop offers: One role of the Conversion function is to provide the correct message that will trigger conversion.
Conversions are often defined as sales, but can also be adapted depending on the business need. If a business is building their
CRM database, the conversion point will be a visitor converting into a subscriber. Depending on the type of conversion set up
by the marketer, the message will be adapted in relation to the consumer’s need but will also need to stay aligned with the
agreed positioning. Positioning and effective messaging may result in the consumer taking the decided actions that will lead
to conversion.

• Optimize content: The best strategy for the Conversion function is optimization. A successful message cannot simply be
researched, crafted, and launched on the market. Chances are it won’t always have the planned impact. Therefore, because
the conversion function is about efficiency and ROI, testing is key to finding the most successful and cost-effective content.
Often, conversion marketers will develop multiple versions of a campaign, test them, and each week assess the most
successful combination. They will kill the least cost-effective and re-invest in efficient content.
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The Retention function of marketing relates to the building of loyalty and delightful customer experiences. All marketers know that in
modern marketing, the product influence doesn’t stop after the product consumption.

Once the product has been consumed and experienced, the consumer will re-consider the brand for their next purchase. That is where
relationship building and nurturing come in play. A marketer’s ultimate goal is not only to convert leads into customers, but to convert
customers into brand advocates.

Brand advocates are among the best sources of promotion, as they will organically recommend your brand and product to their peers. If
you think about one customer and their direct circle of influence, it is cost-efficient to turn a customer into a brand advocate who will
then potentially create new customers at zero cost solely via recommendation and shared experience. Naturally, consumers are most
likely to trust a friend they share common value with over an unfamiliar brand and product.

For that reason, the Retention function is key to building communities and brand advocacy, making your product and brand lasting in
time. This function is about nurturing by providing extra content, experience, promotions, and so on. This is one of the core values of
the inbound strategy. By providing added value to your product brand and experience, you are likely to attract customers to come back
without having to forcefully push advertising to new leads or old inactive customers.

‘Customer delight happens when you surprise a customer by exceeding expectations. When expectations are met, you have customer
satisfaction. When expectations are exceeded, you achieve customer delight.’ - Impact.com

This function will once again base their tactics on the research of their audience, with in-depth attention focused on who the individuals
are beyond the customer and how to appeal to them in a human way. It will also be driven by customer behavior witnessed on the
company-owned media in order to understand their level of engagement and thus the best message to provide to them.

Some activities of the Retention function include:

• Identify buyers needs and expectations.
• Develop additional value.
• Develop a nurturing strategy.
• Monitor post-sales activity.

All these activities aim at taking the customer back into the funnel and re-purchasing after a set period of time in order to serve the
business development.
In terms of tactics, the Retention stage will use all the most direct forms of communication such as email marketing, social media
messages and posts, push notifications in-app, re-targeting on owned media, leveraging influencers, creating community events and
discussions, lead conversation online, request feedback, and reviews.

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The last marketing function relates to the analysis and optimization of the previous tactics, planning, and budget. As seen in
the Conversion function, optimizing all aspects of your strategy will help bring cost-effective success. Specifically in digital
media, the flexibility of the buying models and assets allows marketers to upload, test, measure, change, and go through
the cycle again.

This marketing function happens three times within the marketing process:
1. When researching the audience and market for planning
2. When testing and optimization all along the Awareness and Conversion stages
3. After a campaign to draw conclusions and plan the strategy for the next campaign

Before making any strategic decisions, marketers involved in the analysis function should study the market, audience,
trends, culture, and competitors using multiple research tools available online (that we will cover later in the module).

Once the strategy is set up based on the findings of the previous analysis, the role of marketing will be to monitor the
success of its effort through measurements such as form submissions, engagements on social media, page views, clicks,
conversions, and so on. This will dictate the success or failure of specific creatives and content, allowing marketers to adjust
according to the response of the audience on what is being presented. Successful content, timing, and collaboration will be
reproduced, while those which are under-performing will be stopped. In that situation, setting up objectives during planning
is crucial as you will measure the content against these objectives to decide if they are worth keeping or not.

Additionally, monitoring social media and website performance will be an ongoing task, even outside the broader campaign
planning periods. This is necessary in order to better understand the organic activity of the brand’s owned media and the
impact of a specific campaign or marketing tactic.

Lastly, after a campaign, this marketing function will be used to assess the success or failure of the strategy by collecting
data and comparing them against the original marketing ad business goals. Where these goals reached? Did the strategy
over- or under-perform, and if so, where? Where can it be improved? Where was there a lack of investment? These are
some key questions that the optimization and analyst marketers might ask.

This last function is important for presenting the success of the strategy to the broader business organization. It will be the
role of the analyst to convert the marketing results into more tangible business results by assessing their impact on business
objectives.

24
As we can notice by the naming of each function, they tie very closely to the buyer’s journey. This parallel allows teams to focus
on specific areas of the buyer’s journey to be more relevant, knowledgeable, and re-active when working and launching
campaigns.

When we map both the marketing functions and the buyers’ journey, you will notice that Planning and Analysis and
Optimization do come into play but are not quite directly impacting the buyer’s journey. They are the support foundations and
tools used to develop content and strategy that make the Awareness and Retention functions as efficient as possible.

On the other hand, we can map the following:

• Awareness: The Awareness function takes care of defining and spreading a unique message that will potentially bring up new
consumers in the funnel or make them grow. For instance, by spreading a message that appeals to a larger audience, the role
of the Awareness function is to direct unknown consumers to the company-owned assets and start interacting with them,
bringing them at the Awareness stage of the funnel. Additionally, by creating content and positioning the product/brand on
the market by differentiation, the activities taken by this function also appeal to existing consumers in the funnel – leads –
that will show even more interest due to the novelty of the content presented. Therefore, they might move from the
Awareness stage, where they know the brand but haven’t given it much thought, to the Interest stage where their curiosity is
triggered and has led them to interact and learn more about the product or brand.

• Conversion: In a similar manner, the Conversion function relates to the Consideration and Conversion stages of the buyer’s
journey. When consumers are still in the Interest stage, they don’t have strong opinions or an understanding of how the
product is actually suited to solve their problem. The Conversion function takes care of getting the correct level of
information to the consumer in the early stages to show just how relevant the product is. This can take the shape of
influencer endorsement, blog articles, trials, newsletters, whitepapers, special offers, and so on. It includes any content and
format that will lead the consumer from the stage of “just looking” to actively researching why your brand is suited for their
needs. Once the consumer gives this type of attention to the product, the role of this function will be to create the
opportunity through the correct touchpoint for the consumer to convert the easiest way possible.

• Retention: Lastly, the Retention function relates to the Retention stage of the buyer’s journey. While the customers have now
experienced the product and are not looking for the next purchase specifically, they might still have interest in the brand
values, history, and community. That is why the marketer under the Retention section will provide additional value to this
customer by keeping a relationship going and initiating new conversations that will interest the customer. Because people are
investing in the brand it becomes more than a product; it becomes a base for their choices on lifestyle, values, personality,
and recommendations. These can be used to build a stronger relationship and engage the customers to become brand
advocates.

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Digital marketing has a set of primary components/channels that are used to achieve the marketing goals set for each function. These will overlap
because multiple components/channels can be used for different functions. As you can see on the slide, each component/channel links to the buyer’s
journey.

• Content: Based on the inbound methodology, content is king. It is your content that attracts interested consumers to find out, learn, and research
about your product and brand. Content marketing is the number one priority in your inbound strategy as it will be at the center of all efforts and
campaigns as the added value to build trust with the consumer, and eventually convert them into customers.

• Display & Video Advertising: Based on an outbound strategy, marketers and brands can use engaging banner and audio visual formats displayed to
audiences who fit a certain profile on channels across the web. This can be done by targeting interest groups, programmatically or using retargeting
methods to ensure you are targeting the ideal audiences at all times. Goals and KPIs for video and display tend to be awareness driving outcomes
rather than direct conversions through the channel.

• Social Media Marketing: Social media advertising, community management, content sharing, and competitions are at the heart of this marketing
component. Social media marketing enables you to create a real connection with consumers, keep them informed, and make it easy for them to
reach your website, ask for information, and provide feedback. Social media also includes platforms for showing your brand’s personality and
connections with other companies, influencers, and causes, making your company more relatable. In addition, a social platform such as Facebook is
often used as a search engine and is therefore a key tool for raising awareness and interest. Facebook has over 2 billion daily active users.

• Paid Search: This component is central for awareness. Because consumers turn first to their search engine to find answers to their solutions, being
top of search engine results pages (SERPs) is a competitive advantage. Knowing that consumers online will click on the top five to six links presented
and rarely look past the first page, it makes paid search a component of digital marketing worth investing in.

• Search Engine Optimization: SEO is also at the center of digital marketing strategy as it enhances natural website authority over organic search. The
better the SEO, the less effort the consumer will have to exert to find your website and the more relevant your content will appear to be for the
search engine, ultimately ranking your content closer to the top of the page.

• Email Marketing: The consumer doesn’t always proactively come on your website, or find you on Google. Some are interested but don’t take the
time, as your product is not their number one priority. Email marketing is the component that allows you to reach out to subscribed consumers who
want to hear form you.

• Automation: This is one of the principal components in digital media and analytics. Thanks to the development of various software, digital
marketers can set up campaigns for lead nurturing such as email marketing and social media marketing, based on their database and the quality of
the leads they have in the marketing funnel. Setting these workflows up in advance allows the software to work in the background, while focusing
on optimizing and creating new content.

• Analytics: Analytics are the spine of all your content and platform. They allow you to connect each campaign, visits, and conversions, and tie it all
together to understand the consumer journey through your marketing and sales funnel. Different analytics tools are incorporated in social media,
Google, and website platforms, all of which provide vital information on the health of your assets and your database. They are at the heart of
optimization and re-targeting, allowing data on your visitors, customers, and advocates to be collected.

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As we have seen on the previous slide, the different marketing components are better suited for
bringing the consumer from one end of the funnel to the other. Even if most of them will be used in
sync to cover the full scope of the consumer’s need, others are used to take the buyers to another
stage.

The Awareness and Interest stages are driven by discovery when the consumer slowly becomes aware
of their problem and the potential solutions. This stage is driven by your content’s relationship with
the main topic. A user may not carry out a detailed search, meaning that positioning on a broad topic
and sharing content that stands out (video or advertising) will help your product become part of the
conversation. The ideal situation is for your content to be engaging and interesting, bring added value
to the conversation, and provide solutions to the consumer’s problem. Developing a strong social
media presence and engagement is recommended for bringing your product forward organically and
on your target timeline.

Consideration and Conversion are stages where the consumer is more focused. They know the
available solutions and are now wondering which one to choose by looking for additional information,
experience, reviews, and creating a mindmap of the best quality/price/value ratio. As consumers will
likely search for additional information by asking precise questions about the product, optimising your
content for search engines and investing in paid ads on keywords translation will ensure the
'Consideration' stage is well engaged in your strategy. The more your product or brand is associated
with a specific topic and keyword, the stronger the association will be shaped in the consumer’s mind.
This can increase content discovery and engagement significantly.

Retention uses more personal components, such as email marketing automation and analytics, to
provide a consistent customer experience, reaching out, following up a purchase, and using the
correct information to create a sense of intimacy between the customer and the brand. Using
information such a birthday date, membership start date, or favorite topic or product can produce
engaging content that triggers an emotional response from the customer.

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If we apply this model to our previous example of Mary and her quest for the perfect
haircare product, this is how her journey might look and how she can be brought from
one stage to the next by means of the different digital marketing components.

Take some time to ask yourself the following questions:

• Think about your own example. How would you move a consumer from stage to
stage?
• Think about your own experience. When was the last time you had a need and looked
for a solution to fulfil this need?
• How did you research?
• What made you convert?
• Did you engage with the content beforehand?
• What marketing component built confidence and trust for you to purchase that
product or service?
• How did the marketing component appeal to your needs and values?

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Now that we have an overview of the digital marketing sphere, the buyer’s journey, and how the two relate,
let’s take a step back to think about new and traditional marketing and how strategies on both sides align and
differ.

When talking about traditional marketing, what comes to your mind? Media that didn’t develop with the
digital era are most likely the ones considered as traditional and part of a traditional media strategy.

Traditional media, or old media, are often defined as the “established or traditional means of mass
communication considered collectively, especially contrasted with newer means; specifically media which are
not interactive or do not involve the Internet”, according to Oxford Dictionaries.

Let’s see some examples that apply to a more modern period:

• Direct marketing: Promoting and selling directly to the end buyer from the manufacturer with no middle
man or intermediary involved.
• Print: Form of advertising that uses physically printed media to reach consumers, business customers, and
prospects.
• Broadcast: Commercials aired on either television or radio, which are typically called spots. It's also known
as on-air advertising, and it's the primary revenue generator for commercial television and radio stations.
• Referral: Promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth. Such
referrals often happen spontaneously.

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Traditional marketing happens in traditional channels. Let’s see some examples that apply to a more
modern period:

• Direct marketing: Mailing, flyers, coupons, brochures, and other forms of print material distributed
directly into the consumer hand. It also includes telesales and telemarketing, catalogs, field sales, and
promotional items.

• Print marketing: Includes posters, magazine ads, and billboard coasters that are distributed as a
unique format but repeated through several mediums.

• Broadcast: Involves using the airwaves to go from one emitting system to a receiving one. Broadcast
includes film, TV, product placement, program sponsorship, TV ads, cinema, and radio.

• Referral: Traditional “word of mouth” and public relations published on printed magazines fall under
the definition of traditional referral. It can also translate into fidelity cards with vouchers, discounts
for sponsorship, or collaboration between two stores via placement of poster or business cards in the
store directly.

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Digital and traditional marketing, new and old media, don’t work separately. Actually they can be very
complementary and can be used with flexibility to achieve marketing goals.

If we look at the slides, we can see how some of these relationships work. Let’s take the example of Mary
again:

• Mary is watching TV when an ad comes on about the hair conditioner she bought, prompting her to tweet
the company after seeing their Twitter handle at the end of the commercial.
• After seeing this ad and remembering her experience with the product, Mary goes online, on desktop and
mobile, and tweets and visits their website to see what’s new.
• She goes onto the website and there is a banner using the same commercial she just saw on TV, expanding
on the message and content. It tells her that the founder of the hair product company will be interviewed.
• Mary tunes in and watches the interview later that day.
• She also wants to find a store so she can talk with a member of staff about the product and problems she
has had.
• She goes into the store with all the previous information and experience and buys a product. At the
cashier’s desk, she notices a poster mentioning the brand’s presence on Facebook and the event and
promotion they post there.
• She takes out her phone and decides to follow them on Facebook and read or watch some of their content.

This quick example shows how digital and traditional marketing work together to bring the buyer through the
funnel by taking them by the hand and multiplying the brand experience across media. This repetition and
resonance makes a company even more relevant as it is present online but also offline, on billboard, posters,
TV, magazines, and so on. Traditional media, due to its importance, cost, and reach, can complement digital
strategy by bringing legitimacy to products and brands that becomes part of the familiar scope.

31
Even if traditional and digital marketing can work hand in hand, they are profoundly different in their
communication style and effect on consumers.

If we look at the history of advertising influenced by media development, the primary aim of media was to spread
one message to the largest number of people and the only thing the audience could do is view the message. There
was no way to interact or challenge that message, like we can see today on the internet. We will deep dive on the
differences in the next few slides.

Based on these differences, marketers need to strategically plan where they will invest and what will be the best
ratio between traditional and new media budget. Each media will talk to a different audience and have different
impact on the audience’s perception of a company.

A simple example is to look at the generational gap in media consumption. While 18-34 year old adults in the US
consume 20hrs 24mins of TV a week, 50+ year old adults consume 47hrs 18mins. On the other hand, 18-34 year
olds spend 14hrs 23mins on their smartphone against 8hrs 7mins among 50+ year olds in Q1 of 2016.

Additionally studies have shown that the impact of physically reachable media, such as print, have a greater
impact on memory than digital media. For example:
“Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media (5.15 vs. 6.37), suggesting that it is
both easier to understand and more memorable. Post-exposure memory tests validated what the cognitive load
test revealed about direct mail’s memory encoding capabilities. When asked to cite the brand (company name) of
an advertisement they had just seen, recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail
piece (75%) than a digital ad (44%).” according to a Canada Post study done by the TrueImpact neuro-marketing
firm.

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In the previous slides we saw that traditional and new media are different and carry different
attraction and impact across audiences.

They are four main categories where we can compare the difference between the two:

• Reach: This is the total number of different people exposed to the media who are influenced
by the environment in which the media is consumed. This helps define if a media is more
geared toward mass or individual reach. Reach covers whether the message is consumed by
a number of people at the same time or only by one individual.

• Engagement: The level to which an audience is able to interact with the content will define
the level of engagement with this media. How invested is the audience when the message is
received?

• Relationship: How is the message received and perceived by the audience? The relationship
between the media and the audience is defined by the nature of the message, and how
targeted, familiar. and relevant it is to the audience.

• Method: This is the main tactics used to bring the consumer through the buyer’s journey. As
we saw earlier, this can be made by pulling consumers through content or pushing content
to them. Each channel will have a certain level of scope, depending on how the content is
found and used, and how it influences the buyer’s journey.

33
Traditionally, the media landscape was divided among multiple forms of media such as TV, press, and radio,
differentiated by the format of the message, video, print, and sound. The characteristics of these traditional
media influence the traditional scheme of marketing.

Through traditional media, the marketing effort can be expressed in certain ways that no longer apply to the
new media landscape. Let’s take a look at the previous categories in order to define the specifics of traditional
marketing:

• Reach: The scale that is obtainable through traditional media makes traditional marketing a mass
marketing experience. TV for instance can reach millions of individuals at the same time, securing impact
and visibility (similarly with radio or press). The number of consumers reached is easily calculated based on
subscribers, viewers, and listeners who will all be tuned in at the same time.

• Engagement: Traditional marketing is the base for one-way communication. If we talk about it in terms of
communication theory, traditional marketing gathers a sender, a message, and a receiver. The message is
sent from the sender to the receiver. Once received, the message is processed and the communication
stops. The audience is passively receiving a message and is not engaged in searching for the information.
This information is pushed through advertising in between two programs.

• Relationship: Traditional marketing relying on traditional media is a mass form of communication. The
greater media such as TV, radio, and press are shared across large groups of people and these people
experience the same content no matter where they are or whoever they are. Two individuals watching the
same channel at the same time in different houses will still see the same message. This is a one (brand) to
many (mass audience) communication.

• Method: Traditional marketing (as a result of the previous definition of being a mass, one-to-many, passive
type of marketing) falls under the outbound method. The audience will not find the content of the brand or
be attracted by the relevance of the product in solving their issue. On the contrary, they will learn about a
product or a brand randomly without the context of their needs.

34
Technology has created the new media options, and media experience is now portable, instantaneous, and
unlimited. The access to the internet has revolutionized marketing. Digital marketing plays with new rules
where the audience has gained greater power over the content they consume.

• Reach: The audience is no longer being served the same message. The audience is broken down in smaller
groups of people who identify with a defined buyer’s persona. We talk about individual media because the
message is no longer addressed to a somewhat undefined mass, but is targeted at specific individuals.

• Engagement: The shift in media technologies has strongly influenced the way audiences engage with the
media and the content. By using two-way communication systems, it allows audiences to interact with the
content; these people are no longer just the at end of the communication process. The sender (brand) sends
a message to a receiver (individual) and this receiver can chose to send another message (engagement/
feedback) to the receiver, or even transfer this message to another receiver. This process is highly active for
the audience as they have the power to engage.

• Relationship: As seen before, the new media playbook means that brands have the choice to target smaller
groups of individuals and craft messages that will resonate with specific groups. This is a one-to-one type of
communication where marketers can personalize messages personal to each individual in their audience.

• Method: Digital marketing has the capacity to develop an inbound communication strategy. Due to the
individualistic, content-heavy, and active audience present and accelerated by new media development,
pulling an audience to your content has become the way. This is only possible thanks to technological
development and has become a priority as the inbound methodology develops better, more qualified
customers.

35
If we look at the reach of media, the way a medium is consumed will impact the definition of this media as mass or individual.

Here are some examples of mass and individual media channels:

• Cinema
• TV
• Radio
• Social media
• Email
• Apps

Looking at cinema, TV, and radio, the experience of the message through these media is of a group experience. The medium is
consumed in a group situation, such as watching TV with the family, listening to the radio in the car with other people, or going to
catch a movie in a full movie theater. These are group experiences where all eyes and ears are receiving the same stimuli.

Looking at social media, email, and apps, while the medium is shared, the content is customized for the individual. Most people
use the same social media, email client, and apps to consume content, but thanks to technology, consumers present at the same
time can see an infinite variation of content based on who is logged in - this is an individual experience.

The content on the page is relevant to the unique individual who is connected. Based on cookie tracking and algorithms developed
by the platform, the information about what people are interested in and what they will most likely see in their timeline or email is
accessible. Additionally, these types of channels are usually consumed alone on a consumer’s smartphone or computer, making
the experience deeply personal.

One note about algorithms. They are at the heart of the individualized experience of new media and digital marketing:
• An algorithm is defined as a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps as well as finding the greatest
common divisor.
• Newsfeed is designed to display content that is relevant to individual viewers. Social media is much more complex than what
we might see on the surface. Each social media channel has its own algorithm, which determines how frequently and
extensively your content gets shared.
• Newsfeed algorithms consider the type of posts with which individual users typically engage and that influences what shows
up.
36
When planning an overall media strategy, depending on the goals, marketers will prioritize more engaging forms
of media that appeal to a more passive audience. Digital and traditional can be active and passive. However, more
active media engagement is shown in digital marketing due to the nature of the formats and channels it involves.

Passive engagement: According to Harvard Business Review, ”passive media” is any form of media where the
consumer can’t physically do anything with it, except consume it (newspaper, television, radio, and so on). For
example, consumers stay in front of the TV not doing anything and not being engaged mentally in solving problems
or researching. And when an ad is showing, they have no means of responding to this message. They are sitting in
front of a monitor and passively consuming content. Because of this, the message will reach them with less impact
as there is a mindless consumption. But this behavior is also true of consumers scrolling through a Facebook
timeline, mindlessly going through the content and scrolling over ads. They are not actively searching but can still
engage with the content, which creates the opportunity for an active media use and marketing experience.

Active engagement: “Active media” is any form of media where the consumer can physically engage with it
(Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so on). Content on digital platforms has been developed to be highly engaging -
consumers can share, comment on, like, tweet, and pin it. When users are searching for information over the
internet, they are actively engaged in an activity and are mentally present to receive relevant messages. This gives
digital marketing an extra active characteristic. But this needs to be nuanced as many users mindlessly scroll down
and are not looking for specific information but looking for a distraction. In that state, even if an ad comes up and
has the potential for active engagement, the consumer may not be ready to receive that message.

Passivity and activity make up the passive or active quality of a media or marketing strategy. Thus two questions
are worth keeping in mind:
1. Is your content promoting activity through engagement opportunities?
2. Who is your target audience?

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In traditional marketing, the message given is singular. Because of the group experience, the
traditional marketers will develop a single message that will reach individuals with the same content.

While the message can be interpreted differently, it is the same for each individual, no matter how
relevant the person is in regards to the actual targeted audience. On TV, you might watch a show
with your family when an ad comes up about sports equipment. This message will only resonate with
members of the family who have an interest in sports. Maybe your sister is into sports and will be
interested and attentive to the message, while you are into literature and will open a book while the
ad is showing.

In digital marketing, marketers can create multiple versions of the same message, and target users
whose profile fits their target audience with certitude. The brand experience aims to individualize,
personalize, and become relevant to the consumer himself.

Thanks to technologies such as cookie tracking, retargeting, traffic, and data stored on the
consumer’s behavior and preferences over social media and websites, marketers have plenty of
information to research their consumers and what triggers their attention and interests.

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We touched on this subject earlier, but it is important to re-asses how an inbound or outbound method integrates
within traditional and digital media.

Outbound methodology: In traditional media, there is little space for interaction as we have seen with the one-way
communication model. Additionally, the targeting capabilities that exist are often broad and do not ensure a 100%
target reach. It accesses a global audience with a single message that will be the same for any individual who receives
it. These are components that make traditional media an outbound strategy in most cases, specifically for mass media
such as TV, radio, and cinema.

The audience is consuming content but the content can be unrelated to the context, problems, and situation that the
audience is in. This is a push strategy or showing content to as many people as possible, hoping that it will resonate
with some based on audience research previously made. For this reason, it is harder to track and more expensive as
the buying system of traditional is not so flexible and usually involves great amounts of money.

This is true for most traditional media but also for the ad exchange model online, where random ads are placed on a
banner of a participating website without contextual or individual relevance. Let’s look at these statistics:
• 44% of direct mail is never opened. That's a waste of time, postage, and paper.
• 86% of people skip through television commercials.
• 84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad”.

Inbound methodology: On the opposite side, inbound strategy as we defined earlier aims to attract interested
consumers to your content, brand, and offer. This marketing model was greatly facilitated with the development of
digital technology, as we talked about earlier. The use of cookie tracking, SEO, topics, blogs, and influencers helps
brands resonate with a specific audience that is easily targetable as all the data is accessible and can be run through
algorithms to show the most relevant message to the relevant individual.

For example, when a user visits a web page as an unknown visitor, the site will add a cookie in their browser that will
stay there if they don’t manually remove it. Through this cookie, we attach the user activity to the cookie. Once the
user converts by subscribing to a newsletter for instance, the cookie is associated with the email address. Then in your
database all the collected information will live under that contact record. Thus in the future if the platform allows it,
you can decide to show specific content to users who qualify for certain behavior or information. For instance,
country-specific content is a good example. You can decide to show ads for concerts that will be in the local area of
the user instead of showing one ad, for one location, to all visitors on the websites. This applies to advertising but also
content on the brand’s assets.

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Now that we have seen the difference between traditional and digital marketing, let’s
think about how these differences can be used to create an overall integrated
marketing strategy.

Traditional and digital marketing both have weaknesses and advantages that can be
used throughout the buyer’s journey in order to achieve the broader marketing goals.
By thinking this way, you can understand the importance of aligning with other
marketing departments, beyond the digital marketing team. Working in collaboration is
key to moving your leads through the funnel and converting. Using the full circle of
marketing tactics is called a 360 or integrated marketing strategy.

The mainstream definition of a 360 marketing strategy is that it is a marketing plan that
is both online and offline, on social media, and more. It's a holistic promotion that truly
covers all the bases. Nike is a great example - its product is the shoes while its wearable
tech, the FuelBand, is an extension of brand values. In short, to be truly 360, a campaign
would need to encompass everything - mobile, digital, television, and social.

40
What are some of the benefits of using an integrated 360 marketing strategy? We have touched on a few
advantages already in the previous slides, but let’s list some precise benefits of an integrated, 360 marketing
campaign.

• Covers the entire buying cycle: Each media channel, offline or online, is good at achieving specific
marketing objectives. Used together, they can cover the full spectrum of the consumer’s journey to move
them through the funnel.
• Taps into each audience’s point of contact: In today’s media landscape, your audience is not attached to
one particular type of media. They will travel across digital television, print, and other media. Being
present across all of them allows your brand to resonate and follow them as they move through their day.
Integrated marketing campaigns allow you to adapt to media consumption seasonality and daily trends.
Optimizes for scale and relevance: Traditional media types are good for scaling as they reach a great
number of people in little time, while digital media are good for relevance and attracting specific
consumers. A 360 campaign can help attract the correct consumers who are most likely to convert while
helping your brand be discovered by potential prospects.
• Provides a complete marketing experience to the audience: For the audience, having a full brand
experience is an extra. If they have experienced the brand online, they might want to experience it offline
through the store experience or see the brand in the street or on TV when they don’t expect it. That for
brands is a great repetitive process and creates familiarity with the audience. Consumers are able to align
with what they have seen on mass media while receiving targeted messages online.
• Enables you to measure results effectively: Because traditional media are harder to report on in terms of
ROI, using digital strategies can bring an additional light on how the audience actually interacts with and
reacts to the content and can also help measure the impact of traditional media. For instance, if a brand
runs an ad on TV at 8pm, and in their website analytics see a trend at a similar time they can daw
conclusion on the effectiveness of the ad.

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In order to help you achieve your marketing goals, the Digital Marketing Institute has developed the principles to
focus on when planning your digital marketing strategy.
The goal is to get you thinking about the end-to-end digital process your organization needs to go through in order
to adopt your strategy:

1. Initiate: The initiation process is about going back to basics, by focusing on what the customer wants from the
digital journey you are setting up. You want to start with what the customer is actually doing and work
backwards towards your strategy. What are the key pillars that you need to think about? What will add value
to your organization and customer experience? This is expressed through the use of customer research; learn
to understand how your customer would like to be talked to. You can use consumer research, past data
collected from your campaigns, and dedicated research ordered specifically for your company. Research the
key roadblock your strategy needs to overcome in order to efficiently reach the audience. By starting with the
customer and translating the customer view and insights into a tangible digital strategy, you increase your
chance of achieving your goals.

2. Iterate: The iteration process is about how to iterate that strategy you created and pilot it in order to confirm
its efficiency. The iteration phase is focused on developing your strategy by proceeding to in-market testing. It
allows you to understand in real time how your customers answer to your strategy, content, and creatives. You
can then take this information to get a real-life understanding on how the audience would respond to the
actual campaigns you are about to push. The benefits of the iteration phase is that, by testing on small groups
of representative individuals, you can interrupt and optimize your strategy based on success and failure. In
addition, after testing, you can reach out to the customer and ask for feedback. This is expressed through beta
testing your new content platforms or A/B testing your campaign’s creatives and content by targeting small
sets of your audience. You can conduct focus groups around your strategy and assets to get real-time feedback
and understand the sentiments towards your message choice. This applies across time, as you can use your
learning throughout and after each campaign to continually get insights from your online engagement with
your customers and acting upon the results.

3. Integrate: The iteration process is focused on involving and integrating other digital channels coherently. Once
you have tested the strength of your message and creatives, it is time to spread it across all your digital assets.
You want to make sure you have the buy-in of your organization to move on with your strategy. The integration
stage is focused on two parts: selling your strategy and getting approval from the organization to move
forward, and then integrate your findings and strategy across the different channels. In order to achieve the
first part, you can rely on the data uncovered during the initiation phase and apply the findings to the broader
business goals and challenges by showcasing how your strategy solves for the business. Additionally, if you plan
on using new channels or testing new digital marketing software, you want to think about how these integrate
into the existing processes and organization of your team. 42
When thinking through your digital marketing strategy, beyond the message and the creative, you need to know
where they will live. Research can help you make informed decisions about what channels should be prioritized.
Especially working within the limit of a budget, marketers need to choose the channels that will cost-effectively
help them to reach the set objectives.

The most common digital channels are the following and will be developed more in-depth in the coming slides:
• Email and marketing automation
• Website optimization
• Social media marketing
• Pay per click (PCP) advertising
• Organic search
• Display advertising
• Content marketing

When considering channels or touchpoints (as they can be called), there are three inputs that you need to consider:
1. Data: Data-driven decisions can be valuable for performance marketing involving precise performance goals
such as conversion, lead generation, or click-through rate (CTR). The more robust and stable the data is (based
on a large panel, past campaigns, and independent research), the more credible the channel will be.
2. Consumer insights: Consumer-driven decisions focus on the actual consumer adoption of specific channels,
receptivity, and general media usage to meet the audience where they actually are and what channels resonate
most with them. A channel might not perform in terms of ROI but can be heavily adopted by the audience,
ensuring visibility as opposed to conversion.
3. Communication needs: This decision model is based on what each channel’s role in the buyer’s journey is.
Choosing channels also means selecting the correct channels that are likely to reach the target audience at a
specific stage of the funnel and move them to the next. Each media can have an impact on the buyer’s journey
and these should be taken in consideration when developing the marketing strategy.

Depending on the need of the campaign, one of these considerations should inform the channel choice by providing
the most relevant impact to the campaign.

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Let’s focus on some of the channels and answer the previous considerations we stated earlier when selecting specific channels. Here is a
sample of data and information. The key here is for you to understand how each channel can help achieve your business objectives:

• Channel: Email and marketing automation

Data: A June 2016 survey of US marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric found that email had
a median ROI of 122% - more than four times higher than other marketing formats examined, including social media, direct mail, and paid
search.
Consumer insights: More than half (52.7%) of those surveyed in the US check their personal email account more than 10 times a day, and it
is by far their favorite way to receive communication from brands.
Communication needs: Marketing emails and automation solve for conversion and loyalty. This channel helps reaching out to the customer
at the right time, directly and leading them to a conversion destination, such as a landing page. The main communication need and buyer’s
journey stage that is targeted is raising interest, and converting and retaining customers by providing additional value to the brand and
product.

• Channel: Website optimization

Data: For US digital retailers that had a mobile-optimized website, commerce accounted for 31% of ecommerce transactions during Q2
2015. In comparison, mobile drove just 22% of ecommerce transactions for retailers that hadn’t optimized - far below the 30% average
overall.
Consumer insights: 70% of consumers using a mobile device to search are within a few hours of making a purchase, whereas 70% of those
using a desktop are roughly a week away - according to a research conducted by the Corporate Executive Board.
Communication needs: Optimizing your website can solve different parts of the buyer’s journey. As your primary brand and product
display, your website is key in taking the consumer in the Interest stage, but also the Conversion stage if you develop an ecommerce
website or drive conversion directly form your website pages. Optimizing speed, navigation, responsiveness, content, and conversion
processes will allow to solve for brand consideration and conversion

• Channel: Social media marketing

Data: As reported by eMarketer, Facebook native videos have the average engagement rate of 6.3%, compared to 3.2% for YouTube videos
and 0.2% for Instagram videos.
Consumer insights: 45% of digital buyers worldwide said that reading reviews, comments, and feedback on social media influenced their
digital shopping behavior, according to a 2015 poll from PWC.
Communication needs: Social media platforms are primary channels for creating awareness and interest through content and social
engagement. Advertising can be targeted and re-targeted to appeal to the conversion objective. They are also important channels in the
Retention stage of the buyer’s journey as the primary platform for customer to get information and updates from the company.

What other insights and data can you find that would influence the selection of any of these channels?

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• Channel: Pay per click (PPC) advertising
Data: The average conversion rate in Google Ads across all industries is 2.7% on the search network and 0.89% on the display
network. (WordStream)
Consumer insights: 64.6% of people click on Google ads when they are looking to buy an item online. (WordStream)
Communication needs: This channel will help with getting insight on interested audience. As the audience is actively searching for
keyword related to their issue, using paid search helps to bring you top of the list and be actively considered, thus solving for the
Awareness and Interest stage of the buyer’s journey that can lead to conversion.

• Channel: SEO
Data: 57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.
Consumer insights: 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.
Communication needs: Optimizing for organic search is a key tactic in digital marketing as it leads to discovery, awareness, interest,
and conversion without paid effort. SEO makes your content visible to the audience and easily searchable, increasing legitimacy and
trust as the user can see that you naturally come up in their search versus paying for the top ranking of the result page.

• Channel: Display advertising

Data: Video ads have an average CTR of 1.84%, the highest of all digital ad formats. (Business Insider)
Consumer insights: 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week. (HubSpot)
Communication needs: Thanks to the targeting capabilities of online display advertising, marketers can move consumers through
the buyer’s journey with precision using sets of data available on users. This allows companies to target precise interest, age,
gender, community, keywords, and more. Thus the content shown to the audience is highly relevant, which drives higher
conversions, clicks, and traffic.

• Channel: Content marketing

Data: Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5 time more traffic than companies that published 0-4
monthly posts. (HubSpot)
Consumer insights: According to HubSpot survey data, 79% of participants claimed that they search for relevant content in search
engine.
Communication needs: Content marketing is key to the inbound strategy, which in turn is central to a digital marketing strategy.
Well-developed and targeted content increases brand personality and likability. Through content, consumers discover your brand
values, experience, world, and can identify with the brand but also learn more about the product and how it solves their problems.
Content strategy impacts all stages of the buyer’s journey as it is central to all points of contact and is the final destination for a lot
of marketing tactics. Content is also key in virility and creating word of mouth as users will share content that is impactful and
humorous, and surprises them.

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None of the previous channels would be relevant in a digital marketing strategy without a strong message delivered to the
audience in a consistent, unique, and resonating manner. Building a brand voice and message for any of the buyer’s journey
stages requires research on your own product or brand and how it solves for the customer. The customer has a problem they
are trying to solve, so how is your product relevant to their need and how is it different from your competitors? This is a
question you can start with to develop what is called a value proposition.

By definition, a value proposition is an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to
customers, giving them a selling point that sets them apart from others within their market/industry.

After audience research, finding your value proposition is the second most important part of planning as it will drive your
entire message, creative, and promise made to the customer.

Forbes defines four steps to building a compelling value proposition:

1. Define the problem: By stating the problem you ensure that it actually exists, what its origin is, and how it can be avoided.
You can also discover how important it is for the consumer to solve it. Defining a precise problem will ensure that the
value proposition will be relevant.
2. Evaluate your uniqueness: Now that you have defined the issue, consider how your product solves it, and why it solves it
in a unique manner. What is the innovation that you bring to the market that makes your product stand out as being
faster, cheaper, or just better quality.
3. Measure potential adoption: Once you have identified the problem and how uniquely your brand can solve it for the
customer, you need to assess the potential market size that will be interested in your solution.
4. Build the value proposition: Lastly you want to write down the value proposition in a way that will answer the following
questions: Who is your product for? What is the current alternative? What is your product? What does it solve for? Why
does it solve better?

A value proposition should read fluidly and be precise, providing as much context as possible and proving the actual value of
your product. It is the core of your competitive advantage.

Here are some examples of value propositions for successful products:

• Apple MacBook: Light. Years ahead.

• Vimeo: Make life worth watching.
• Pinterest: A few (million) of your favorite things.
• Salesforce: Accenture moves faster with Salesforce Lightning.
• HubSpot: Stop interrupting. Start connecting.
• Skype: Skype keeps the world talking, for free. Share, message and call – now with group video on mobile and tablet too.
• Spotify: Soundtrack your life.

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Now that we have seen the basic principles of digital marketing and you have better understanding of the
strategy, buyer’s journey, and how media integrates, let’s see how to get into the first function of digital
marketing: Planning. As we stated, the Planning function sets time-bound actions that will lead to achieving your
marketing objective. In this section we will see how to move through the planning stage and what key
considerations should be taken.

The planning stage is the basis for all future decisions in terms of content creatives, media, and optimization. As
such, you need to spend some time defining the context of your marketing strategy. Why are you putting
together this campaign? Who are we talking to? Where are we talking? What are we promoting? How do you
win?

The main considerations listed below will help you grasp most of the important information needed to take
direction:
• Market trends
• Product value proposition
• Target audience
• Goals
• Touchpoints
• Budget
• Timeframe
• Creative execution

These can be broken down in three parts:

1. What: This encompasses what you are solving, what the product is solving, and what you are trying to
achieve
2. Who: This encompasses the audience who you are talking to, who they are, and how they influence the
touchpoint and creative decisions.
3. How: This encompasses the practical means necessary to achieve the goal and integrate the strategy – in
other words, how you will push your strategy.

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In the ‘What’ stage of your planning, you want to define the context of the problem, the market, and your product position
within this market. You need to consider three elements here:

1. Goals: The marketing strategy should focus on the outcomes, not on the outputs, through clearly articulated, inspiring, and
measurable goals. The role of the goal is to set direction and check every decision against it. When thinking about your
tactical choices, ask yourself: “How do they help me reach the set goals?” We will discuss goal setting in the next few slides,
but globally the marketing goals should be aligned with business goals because the primary marketing function is to help a
business grow and reach the market with a message. It helps to think about your goal in terms of the buyer’s journey. How
does your goal fit in the stage? Is the goal set on moving the audience form one stage to the other? Does it keep them in this
stage and reinforce the quality of the current leads? Goals are key in order to report and communicate with other
departments. They help quantify your actions to legitimize budget spend and choice.

2. Value proposition: We have defined the value proposition earlier as an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a
company or product attractive to customers, giving the company a selling point that sets them apart from others within their
market or industry. This is your selling point and should drive your message across all channels. This is the proposition that
you should use to keep consistency and check your content against. When creating content, pause and ask yourself if it
translates your value proposition. This key differentiator helps set your position on the market and the consumer’s mind, so
the stronger and simpler it is to understand, the more efficient it will be.

3. Market trends: A market trend can be defined as when the trading market responds to the ups and downs of the prices
associated with investments and securities. That is the strict business definition. Applied to marketing, it means that
consumers might be spending more in specific areas of your industry or are starting to demand a different way to consume
the product. There are multiple ways to uncover market trends that we will see in the next section. But generally the
marketing team can position its product base on these trends in two manners: reactively or proactively. One marketer might
be able to spot a trend before it breaks out and position its product as leader on the market under this specific trend. And
another will see that the market is growing under this specific trend and see competitors specializing and then decide to
follow the movement and position the product as a challenger on the market. Studying market trends on a regular basis will
help you develop goals and value propositions, by better defining how your product stands out from a competitive point of
view. It helps get idea on product development or product re-positioning. Using trends is a way for marketers to attract
attention to the product by promoting it under a new light to the market.

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In the ‘Who’ stage of planning, marketers should think about their audience - who they are and how this audience influences
content and media channel choice. Your entire strategy relies on your audience research, as the best way to communicate with
someone is to talk to them, not at them. You have to talk to them in their language, with words that resonate and in the place
where they are already listening and talking.

For this to happen the ‘Who’ stage considers the following elements:

• Target audience: Defining your target audience works hand-in-hand with the previous stage. In order impact on your
market, you need to know who you are addressing your message to. Target audience is defined as a particular group at
which a product such as a film or advertisement is aimed. Marketers need to know what group of consumers they want to
reach in order to set goals and develop content, because reaching everyone is as ineffective as reaching no-one at all. For
successful marketing strategies, understanding the needs, aspirations, lifestyle, and habits of your audience ensures you
know how to talk to them and where. The definition of your target audience will depend on the product’s intended
audience and audience research. You might discover that your product can actually be consumed by a broader audience
than the original intended audience, or simply understand the product target audience better to know what message will
move them through the funnel. Once again, this is something we will explore later in the Research section of this module.

• Creative execution: When marketers start thinking about the creative execution of their campaigns, they need to keep
focusing on the audience. An idea might be brilliant but if it doesn’t appeal to your target audience, then it is not worth
investing in. The creative execution will define the look and feel of your campaign, the language used, the images shown,
the colors, and so on. Creative execution can help you express your differentiation, and attract attention by being
unexpected, skilful, and visually impactful. It should not be under-rated because creativity expresses who your brand is and
how it wishes to express itself. This directly impacts your audience’s perception of your product. Creative choice should be
tested to verify its efficiency, and, while traditionally this was done through focus groups and qualitative research, now with
digital media, it is easy to A/B test your campaign creatives, change them if necessary, and invest more on creative that
perform the best.

• Touchpoints: The touchpoints of your strategy are the channels you desire to use to reach your target audience. Once again,
this choice should be heavily influenced by the audience. Where do they spend time? Where do they make decisions? Who
are they speaking to? You want to be present where they are and be visible on your target audience’s channels. This ties in
with our previous discussion on integrated campaigns and channels and how different factors will influence your choice,
depending on your objective, your audience insights, and the performance of the channel. By thinking about your
touchpoints in the planning stage and analyzing the previous information, you will be able to make informed decisions to
target the most cost-efficient channels that will bring ROI with the least effort.

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Lastly, now that you know what are you want to achieve, for who, with what creatives, and on what channels, now
you need to set the costs and timeframe of the strategy. This last stage is crucial as it will define the marketer’s
capacity to invest money and time into the planned strategy. Working within a budget can be challenging and thus
will impact on the previous planning elements. Smaller budgets will need to focus on high-impact, low-cost channels
and creatives, while larger budgets will be able to scale and invest in high-impact, high-cost channels.

Let’s see how budget and timeframe shape your strategy:

• Budget: Developing a solid marketing budget is an important part of creating a plan of action that is realistic and
will help improve revenues. The global marketing budget is usually set at the organization level, based on
previous spending, and current company needs and goals. The marketing department might push a number that
they have planned based on their yearly action plan, but at the end of the day, the budget will depend on the
organization’s disposable income and priorities. Once the budget is set, the marketer’s role is to divide that
budget across all efforts, by prioritizing based on past experiences, objectives, and expected ROI. The budget will
also be a starting point for defining measurable goals by understanding how much is put in and how much
revenue this will generate by new acquired customers.

• Timeframe: Finally, the last consideration that will tie all the previous elements together is the timeframe.
Creating a plan is necessary to spread the marketing strategy across the appropriate period and cover the
buyer’s journey over time. Defining a timeframe can be done in multiple ways. Marketers can work around a
specific date that makes sense, such as a product launch, an event, a bank holiday, or any seasonal event. It can
also be spread across the entire year with main event but focusing on being present for longer periods of time.
The timeframe will depend on the objective and audience, but also on the business reporting period. If the
product team is launching a new product and wants to create awareness, the marketing goal for this period will
be centered around the product and using branding campaign and channels, instead of focusing on increasing
the sales of the previous product. Multiple marketing goals can be addressed in the same period, but this
depends on the available resources, budget, and employees.

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We discussed objectives already as key to your planning in order to set direction and make decisions on your media
strategy, such as what channels to invest in, which audiences to target, how to measure impact and also report on
success.

We mentioned that the objectives set up by marketing should match the business objective, so let’s look at what they
should do so:
• The business will have set goals that marketers should translate into marketing goals. Business goals, such as
increasing sales or market share growth, cannot be evaluated by marketing metrics. How does market share growth
tie into marketing tactics? How does it look in terms of media, creative, and PR, for instance?
• Marketing is not directly about ROI and accountability. It is an industry of influencing decision-making and leading
consumers in a set direction. But how do you measure influence? That is why marketing objectives should tie into the
business objectives but not simply copy them. They should be translatable, enabling marketers to report to the
business organization, but they should be specific to the marketing department.
• The goal must resonate with business qualities by incorporating measurability but also needs to lead the execution of
the strategy for marketing stakeholders by giving relevant directions.
• Some tips to achieve this balance: break down the business goals into specifics; identify how and where the media can
help; quantify what success will look like; and prioritize and socialize the goal.

A widespread convention for writing down efficient objectives that will satisfy business and marketing stakeholders is to
use the SMART model, which we are going to develop over the next few slides. When defining your objectives, they
should have the following qualities:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Before starting work on your goals, it is useful to discuss business objectives with the relevant stakeholders and
understand how and where these are achieved on the business side.

If the business goal is to increase sales by 5%, you want to understand: What do sales look like? Where do they happen?
On what media and channels? What usually closes the sale? What is the average number of sales? (This will help you
pinpoint where marketing is leveraged and what metrics will help report on the marketing strategy success in achieving

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Now let’s focus on the first quality of your marketing objective: specific.

Having a specific objective means having a well-defined and clear goal, stating exactly what you aim to achieve. The objective
needs to be crystal clear, and anyone who reads it, even outside the marketing department, should understand what it is
aiming at.

Some tips to get your objectives specific:

1. Think simple, sensible, and significant.

2. When defining your goals, think about the following questions:
• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why is it important?
• Who is involved?
• Where is it located?
• What resources or limits are involved?
3. Write down a summary of your goal and reshape it to be as specific and clear as possible.
4. The goal should describe an action that involves the customer.
5. Sometimes a unique objective is clearer and more realistic than too many that will dilute your impact and focus.

Here is an example to simplify how a specific goal compares to a non-specific one:

“Get in shape” is a goal. This is too broad and could be actioned in many different ways. A more specific goal would say “Join
a health club and work out three days a week.” It is actionable, specific, and easy to take direction from.

Here are some examples of specific goals set up by marketing departments:

• Increase the annual banquet dinner attendance by emailing out additional invitations to program sponsors and
volunteers, having local businesses sponsor tables, and asking guests to RSVP.
• Increase website traffic using owned content optimization to drive customers to our site organically by increasing our
website authority, delivering new customers each month.

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Once you have specified the aim of your objective, the second step is to make the objective
measurable. This means that you need to have an obtainable goal that can be quantifiably described.
You can identify the quantitative aspect of your objective from the following questions:

• What are the current key performance indicators (KPIs) for the business?
• What digital data can you leverage? This includes traffic, cost per click (CPC), lead generation,
social media tracking, and on son.
• What is the current situation and what evolution do you expect to see?
• How much?
• How many?
• How will you know when it is accomplished?

At the end of the campaign, you should be able to look back and precisely quantify your impact and
be able to translate the numbers in a business target. For instance, if your goal was to generate X
new leads, how much revenue does each lead bring and how does this translate in terms of profit for
the business?

Building on the previous examples, let’s review them with the added measurability factor:
• Increase the annual banquet dinner attendance by 150% by emailing out 300 additional invitations
to program sponsors and volunteers, having ten local businesses sponsor tables, and asking guests
to RSVP.
• Increase website traffic by 21% using owned content optimization to drive customers to our site
organically by increasing our website authority, delivering 13 new customer per month.

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Now you need to think about the execution of this objective. Is it too ambitious? Do you have the resources necessary to
achieve this goal? It’s the reality check. Crafting an achievable objectives means that it is reachable within the current
available skills, budget, and time, and takes into account the potential constraints or limits that exist.

In order to define the achievability of your objective, think about the following points:
• How can I accomplish this goal?
• How realistic is the goal, based on other constraints, such as financial factors?
• What is the allocated budget that I currently have for this?
• How many hours a week can the team work on this? Who will be the point of contact responsible for achieving the
goal?
• What things may stop the team from reaching their goals?

These are some examples that give you an idea of how you need to think about your goal to make sure it achievable. If we
look back at the previous examples, can you think about the potential limits and how the objectives can be achieved?

Let’s expand upon the previous examples:

• Increase the annual banquet dinner attendance by 150% by emailing out 300 additional invitations to program sponsors
and volunteers, having ten local businesses sponsor tables, and asking guests to RSVP
- Limits: potential overlap with other industry events, lack of staff on the day, or low emailing open or clicks.
- Work in collaboration with the event planning and PR team to co-own the project, in view of the percentage of
invitations ignored, send X amount of extra invitations to ensure you’re meeting the target, and appoint a
designer to create an engaging email.
• Increase website traffic by 21% using owned content optimization to drive customers to our site organically by
increasing our website authority, delivering 13 new customer per month
- Limits: content optimization can be influenced by competition and their own SEO strategy. Is there an event
that could drive lots of traffic away? Is it the right period for consumers to spend money on our product?
- Appoint responsibility for measuring traffic on a regular basis. Do we have a process in place to nurture the
potential 13 new customers for retention, taking into account the time necessary for building SEO authority? Is
the timeframe realistic? Do you have the head count to develop the content? Will it be internal or external?

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At this stage, you need to ask yourself whether this objective is relevant in the bigger picture. Remembering
what we said at the beginning of this section, the marketing objectives should tie in nicely with the business
objectives. Even if you started by studying the business objective to develop the marketing one, once it is
crafted, take a step back and look to see if it is still relevant.

Some tips to check your objective against the overall goals and business priority include:
• Does this seem worthwhile?
• Is this the right time?
• Does this match our other efforts or needs?
• Are we the right team? Am I the right person to reach this goal?
• Is it applicable in the current socio-economic environment?

Once again have a look at our examples and think about what could make them relevant in the bigger picture.

• Increase the annual banquet dinner attendance by 150% by emailing out 300 additional invitations to
program sponsors and volunteers, having ten local businesses sponsor tables, and asking guests to RSVP
- Are sponsors and volunteers a good fit for the event attendees?
- Are local business busy at this time of the year?
- How will this event attendance solve for the business goal of increasing sales?
- What value will the event bring in the buyer’s journey?

• Increase website traffic by 21% using owned content optimization to drive customers to our site organically
by increasing our website authority, delivering 13 new customer per month
- Is website traffic usually stable at this period?
- How much profit do 13 customers bring and is that relevant compared to the current sales goals?
- Is the website optimized for higher traffic?
- Is the promoted content aligned with our core brand value proposition?

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Finally, your objective needs to be time-bound in order to set limits to the time spent on this
particular objective and to fit the business timeframe in terms of target, product development, and
other major time bound events.

A time-bound goal can be identified by answering these questions:

• When?
• What can I do today?
• What can I do six weeks from now?
• What can I do six months from now?
• Based on research, what is the appropriate timeframe that should be given to achieve this goal?

Selecting the length of time you think it will take to reach your goal will help you figure out
how aggressive you need to be with your marketing efforts.

Let’s take another look at our example, once completed with the time quality:
• Increase the annual banquet dinner (March 28th) attendance by 150% by emailing out 300
additional invitations to program sponsors and volunteers, having ten local businesses sponsor
tables, and asking guests to RSVP by January 15th.
• By September 21st, 2018, increase website traffic by 21% using owned content optimization to
drive customers to our site organically by increasing our website authority, delivering 13 new
customer per month

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One last time, let’s review these examples and have a look at an additional one. Can
you spot each quality in the objectives and how they are specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and time-bound? Try doing the same exercise on your own and
build multiple objectives that would align with your business objectives.

You can use online tools to help you create your objectives following the SMART model,
such as HubSpot’s free goal-setting template.

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In the previous sections, we have seen how to plan your digital marketing campaign, and how the
main digital marketing features work. We now know how to define objectives and focus on the
target audience to develop relevant messages and take better decisions in terms of channels and
budget.

As we have seen, a lot of the decision-making process requires research. Indeed, research is
central to all decision-making, from channel to audience selection. A marketer should never
assume that their target audience is one thing over the other or behaves a certain way without
insights. These insights are uncovered through research and data analysis. These can be made
from the business’s own data, with the research department studying the existing database
information, or a company can commission external research by a third-party. In this section we
are going to dive into the different types of research that are used throughout the planning stage,
but also what can be used along the execution of the strategy, if necessary.

The section will focus on digital research and the tools available to marketers to do research and
gather data.

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The main research that all marketers use before even thinking about the campaign is the audience research. This and the
objective development work hand-in-hand and influence the rest of the digital strategy. Audience research is designed to
establish the size, composition, and characteristics of a group of individuals who are, or could be, potential customers. It’s
important to note that this research is about the people and individuals who make up your target audience.

The goal of all audience research is to find consumer insights. Because the goal of a digital marketing strategy is to influence the
buyer's journey, marketers need to connect with the audience by knowing what they think, how they behave, and how they live
their lives. You should know your audience as well as you know your best friend. In the inbound marketing methodology, it is
common practice to set up what is called a buyer persona.

The buyer persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. There can be one or multiple personas
depending on your target audience, but this a good way to keep in mind who you are talking to.

Audience research has multiple benefits:

• It helps identify obstacles by knowing what your audience dislike, what they avoid, what stops them from buying your brand,
how they buy, and so on.
• It helps develop appropriate and personalized content. If you know your target audience, you know how to address them, in
what language, which term better resonates, and what visuals, influencers, and colors they are sensitive to. Thus you can
better attract their attention.
• It also helps you identify current and future needs. Because you are selling your product to this audience, you have to
understand what needs your product is answering and what problem it is solving. Moreover, if you know your audience well
enough, you can predict their future needs. For example, if you are selling to middle-aged women, you know that in the near
future they might become grandmothers and that allows you to stay relevant to the evolution of their lives.

Having insights is a real competitive advantage when it is different from the insight your competition is tapping into. In that
perspective, it is interesting to conduct primary research, which is a research that is tailored to the specific business need, as
opposed to secondary research that will be performed and then sold as syndicated research. Within the digital landscape,
research has taken a turn with the development of analytics and we will see how these new tools help research in the next few
slides.

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Audience research, as primary or secondary research, can be broken down into three main different audience data types:

• Demographics: This is a set of information pertaining to the social, geographical, financial attributes of the audience. The
socio-economic data in demographics include: gender, age, income level, occupation, marital status, location, number of
children, education, religion, family size, ethnicity, nationality, social class, industry, number of computers, generation, and
any other relevant socio-economic data. Demographics can be useful to set your target audience. However, it’s just not
specific enough to individual consumers to rely on as the sole data point driving your audience buys.

• Psychographics: This is a set of information pertaining to the lifestyle, ideas, and beliefs of the audience. It is the part of
data that gives you more details about your audience personality, where you start to know them better as individuals and
not solely numbers. Psychographics include: activities, interests, opinions, attitudes, values, lifestyle, and loyalty. This set of
data enables marketers to plan for the audience reaction to and interest in the content presented. When your target
market seems to have radically different demographics, it is a good time to look at breaking them into psychographic
segments. This is a powerful way to market the same product to groups that otherwise seem very heterogeneous.
Psychographic segmentation divides the market into groups based on not-so-visible characteristics, such as personality
traits, lifestyles, attitudes, expectations, and activities of your target market.

• Behavioral: This is a set of information pertaining to the behavior of your audience toward specific situations. This is the
“what people do” type of data. By observing what people do, and how they behave online, using your product or using the
competition’s products, you are able to understand the limitations of the user experience and perception and improve your
message to overcome obstacles. Behavioral data includes: online activities such as social media use, website visits, product
and content use, where they click, what the usual consumer path is on your site, and other relevant buying habits, brand
preferences, and product usage.

Using these three data types to collect and create the buyer persona allows you to easily grasp a full picture of your audience,
just like you would be able to describe your friend and know what they react to, like, and dislike, and how they make decisions
when it comes to buying or interacting with brands.

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One of the components of audience research is defining your community
density. This is defined as the measurement of how concentrated relationships
and conversations are within a community of interest and is used in narrowing
the right audience to target. Understanding your community density is a tool
that sits between your audience research to your social monitoring.

The information collected through social monitoring, which we will talk about
later on, can help you evaluate the opportunity level of your target audience. Is
there a dense conversation within your audience around the problem your
product is solving or around your very own product? If the target audience you
are planning to market to is not involved in any conversation around the
product category or problem, it might mean that they won’t be responsive to
your solution, or that you can break through an issue that hasn’t been
addressed yet by other products. You might find an opportunity to let your
audience discover a new problem they didn’t know they had so that your offer
can provide a solution.

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Studying your community density can be a great way to understand how the market need is created and
how best your product can be positioned in solving this problem. Multiple factors can influence community
density, leading marketers to understand the true nature of the product need and its validity:

• Uncertainty: This is when users are looking for questions to be answered.

• Isolation: This occurs when the user has a specific issue they cannot resolve on their own and need
validation or want to build shared knowledge.
• Competition: This refers to conversations rising from a conflict in product use and users are debating
the best way to solve the problem.
• High passion: This occurs when users come together to celebrate a product or brand and share extra
knowledge and stories around their personal experiences.
• Shared experiences: These are when users want to validate their experience through the community.
• Close contact: Community density can be built around an existing external community that is close and
carrying out private conversations on social media.
• Unique identities or tastes: Isolation can also come into play here for users who have a niche interest
and look for shared knowledge and get a community experience around a theme they value.
• History: Community density can be increased by a shared history or historical period that they believe is
of importance for them or the environment they live in.
• Time to kill: Additionally some density can come from users who spend time mindlessly by engaging in
conversations they do not actually care about but use them as a distraction.

In order to narrow your target audience, you can use community density to analyze if the overall density is
large or small and how the community needs are shaped (as per the above factors), and understand the
audience experience with your product. This gives you insight into the level of education, information, and
personalization you will need to use in your content and messaging.

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By definition, audience listening is the process of monitoring digital media
channels, terms, products, and concepts associated with your brand to devise a
strategy that will influence consumers. Taking information from places that
consumers participate in online can be invaluable for discovering consumer
insights.

Everyday, countless members of your target audience discuss topics that relate to
your brand, either directly or indirectly. They don't care whether you hear about it
or not, and they're not taking special steps to comment and discuss their topics of
interest on your social media channels. These are precious consumer insights that
you could be missing. By engaging in audience listening, you make these insights
visible to the marketing and business organization.

Audience listening can help marketers assess some of the audience research data
but also assess your community density. Multiple tools exist in order to track,
gather, and analyze conversations that happen online. For example, you can try
creating an account on TweetDeck to monitor conversations on Twitter, but then
you have another platform that will work across all social media such as Hootsuite,
HubSpot, Klout, Social Mention, and many others.

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We have seen how audience research can be used, and what type of data can
be collected. Now let’s have a look at some of the audience research tools
offered in the digital landscape. Each can bring different types of data to the
table but will generally be valid for all three.

The main type of platform that marketers will use in the digital landscape to
conduct audience research will be social media, marketing research
companies, survey providers, and behavior analytics platforms. These cover a
broad scope to provide primary and secondary research and help marketers
focus their attention on the type of information they need to develop the most
relevant strategy. From knowing what media is the best point of contact, to
raising awareness, to understanding the words and images that the audience
will want to engage with, all these tools will give access to direct consumer
insights such as tweets, comments, engagements, or third-party data analysis
such as a report from Nielsen on the media or food consumption of 18 to 30
year olds.

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Social media: You can use your social media analytics and platforms to analyze the existing data on your community of
followers, likes, and friends, and start creating a picture of who your current customers are. You can also research social
media to look at audiences that follow competitors and understand more about their profile. Social media is great for
collecting demographics and psychographics data as users are putting this information out themselves so it is a direct
link to what they like, think, and do.

Similarly, this brings the ability to monitor discussions, needs, and potential obstacles by monitoring conversations
around a specific topic or hashtag. Hashtags can be a great way to understand trends and sentiments around one topic
that you think interests your audience. This goes across all social media platforms that have strong analytic tools
developed, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Social media platforms are all accompanied by social intelligence tools that are at the heart of each social media
analytics tool. The platforms gather knowledge or insights gained from analyzing social media data and these are useful
for removing the manual work by accessing collected and analyzed data directly. Some examples of social intelligence
tools are Hootsuite, HubSpot, Social Intel, Nuvi, and Affinio. Most of these are paid services as they provide extra data
visualization and analysis but allow you to gather the data from several social media platforms in one place and
additionally monitor conversations.

Marketing research: Marketers can tap into secondary research developed by third-party research companies such as
PRIZM from Claritas, eMarketer, Euromonitor, Nielsen, and Spark. These can be given as free reports or might require a
business subscription to the platform providing the research data. Some of them can also conduct new research
specifically designed for your business under primary research demands. Most commonly, as it is less expensive,
marketers will use pre-existing sets of data collected. This is quick way to get strong data. However, because it is a
somewhat public and shared resource, the data will less likely bring novel insights or decisions. Or if it does, the
direction might be chosen by competition who had access to the research as well. At the same time the research might
not be specific enough to provide the right level of granularity about your audience. The more specific the research is,
the better, in order to successfully communicate with the audience. This should be kept in mind when using secondary
data, as it is always better to have a mix.

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Surveys: To collect specific data related to your product or a specific trend you are interested in,
researching within your current audience using online survey platforms is a cheap and convenient
way to carry primary audience research. Platforms such as SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, Zoomerang, or
AYTM surveys are a great source of primary data. They can be very powerful if well designed and if
they ask the right questions. Because you are asking your existing audience, the information
collected is highly relevant and these customers are most likely to drive other similar customers who
can become as loyal as the ones you may have previously surveyed. Surveys, to an extent, can be
conducted live through focus groups or interviews. Online interviews are another way to collect
qualitative primary research, and direct interaction with relevant customers, one-to-one or in focus
groups, without the inconvenience of the location. Tools such as Nebu or Skype are good for this.

Behavior analytics: This category gathers all platforms that are used to understand a user’s online
behavior. A classic example is Google Analytics recording the user’s online behavior. If you are using
tracking codes on your website, you can easily analyze the visitor’s journey on your website and
understand what triggered their interest. This can be done through content, CTR, page visits, length
of page visits, and so on. In these tools, audience sections even provide data collected through
cookie and social media. Google Search data provides insightful sources of consumer behavior. The
keywords data provides a glance into the thinking and association pattern of the consumers. And as
it is based on actual facts and consumer search, it removes the guesswork and is extremely
accurate. A good example of a more modern form of user behavior tracking is Lucky Orange, which
provide heat maps of your website to see where traffic and clicks are concentrated.

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Competitive research provides insight into what the competition is doing in term of marketing, what their message and
positioning are, how well they are received, what part of the market they targeting, the success they are achieving online, and
so on. When researching the competition, there are three insights that you want to look for:

1. Strategy: Understanding what media and content strategy your competition has adopted can help reduce friction and
prevent overlapping.
2. Target market: Understanding their target audience more in-depth can provide insights on your own target audience and
how it should differ, based on how your product solves the problem for them. It also can help understand the challenge
depending on the similarity of your target audience.
3. Message: Understanding their message will allow you to differentiate yourself from them. Brands with similar messages
get less credit and visibility and bring confusion in consumers’ minds. Your brand needs a differentiation element that will
make it stand out at all stages of the buyer’s journey. Ideally your message should be better and resonate with the
audience so it sticks out more than the competition.

This is the benchmark for your competition. Depending on the position of the brand on the market, you want to look at the
leader, the challengers, and the rest of the companies on your market and product category. Then you need to understand
where your company positions itself compared to these other brands. From there, you can start drawing conclusions on what
makes your brand special, preferable, and more attractive to your brand audience, and know where the company is on the
market at the moment and what the goal is. Some questions you can answer:

• Who are your competitors?

• What products or services do they sell?
• What is each competitor's market share?
• What are their past strategies?
• What are their current strategies?
• What type of media is used to market their products or services?
• How many hours per week do they purchase to advertise through the media used in this market?
• What are each competitor's strengths and weaknesses?
• What potential threats do your competitors pose?
• What potential opportunities do they make available for you?

The benefit of competitive research is the identification of the customer needs by looking at how the competition’s product is
solving them. Find opportunities in the market, in terms of target audience and messages, but also a solution because your
product might solve a problem that is not currently fully addressed by the competition. This helps to refine all your strategy
and assets, based on the competition failure, success, and differentiation factors.

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As opposed to traditional marketing, the rise of digital marketing and media has brought many opportunities to conduct
competitive research. In the past you could gather information on the competition’s strategy by seeing their content, contacting
the company, or reading about them in special magazine or leaflets, but the work was decentralized and the information more
scarce.

With digital media today, companies share such an important amount of information with their customer and are bound to more
transparent, as required by the public. This means that more information about competitors is available, from their strategy to
their financial states and the creative they used, and all this is easily collectable through one place, the internet!

Different platforms are involved in the collection of competitive insights:

• Social media: Similar to gathering audience insights, social media is a infinite source of insights, conversations, hashtags,
mentions, reviews, comment, and so on. Using dedicated monitoring tools to centralize your research can help you keep an
eye on what the audience says about your competition (be it positive or negative), where they delighted the customers and
where they lack quality. Additionally, you can see how people compare your business to others, how much more volume their
brand generates in terms of community density, and so on . Some tools to help you with this include Twitter, Feedly, and
Brandwatch – all of which are designed to track conversations.

• Competitor assets: As simple as it sounds, visiting your competition's website, downloading their white papers or quarterly
reports, listening to their webcasts or podcasts, and participating in their online events is a great way to understand their
business, how they position themselves, and how they deliver their message. By putting yourself in the consumer’s shoes,
you can understand how the buyer’s journey is designed and how your competition goes on converting their audience at each
stage. For example, through their blog, you can understand their primary focus and how they position themselves as experts
in the market. You can also understand the traffic on your competition’s assets through software such Alexa and understand
where their traffic is generated and thus refine your media strategy.

• Search: Search is a powerful insight into how people find a product and what they are looking for. By analyzing searches, you
can know what the problem is and how it is solved. You can use search tools such as Google Ads or SpyFu to understand how
your competition ranks for specific keywords. Are they ranked on keywords you are not using? What is their ranking? What is
the advantage on these specific keywords? Additionally, you can search to keep track of new content generated by your
competition by using Google Alerts.

• Content analysis: Beyond social media monitoring, tools exists for you to monitor other forms of content that your
competition is distributing. This can also let you understand their media strategy. You can understand the audience their
advertised content attracts with DoubleClick Ad Planner or Google Display Planner. You can follow their newsletter with
Owletter, use Kompyte to track their website changes, and so on. Many tools exist for you to track changes, traffic, bounce
rate, click rate, reviews, and so on, that are related to your competition. This can be used to understand your position and
where you have to go, but can also be used to set targets if you are working as a challenger on the market.
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Trend research is key to positioning a brand as a leader or innovator on a market. The study
includes trends related to consumer behavior, employment, technological advancements, new
product development, competition, government norms, and other factors that impact the industry.

Industry trend analysis enables a company to develop a competitive strategy that best defends
against the competitive forces or influences them in its favor. The key to developing a competitive
strategy is to understand the sources of the competitive forces. According to Porter's 5 Forces,
customers, suppliers, substitutes and potential entrants - collectively referred to as an extended
rivalry - are competitors to companies within an industry.

• Industry rivalry (degree of competition among existing firms): Intense competition leads to
reduced profit potential for companies in the same industry.
• Threat of substitutes (products or services): Availability of substitute products will limit your
ability to raise prices.
• Bargaining power of buyers: Powerful buyers have a significant impact on prices.
• Bargaining power of suppliers: Powerful suppliers can demand premium prices and limit your
profit.
• Barriers to entry (threat of new entrants): These act as a deterrent against new competitors.

The role of industry trend research is to understand the movement within these forces, to prepare
and ultimately be able to predict their direction in order to adapt a strategy that will strengthen the
company’s presence on the market.

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Industry trend research is highly beneficial for companies by providing behavioral changes
at every area of the industry. It can, for example, inform a company that users are no
longer reacting to tweets but are now engaging more with videos, that they are no longer
using this platform but another, that they are looking for new ways of solving a similar
problem, and so on.

This information on consumer and competition behavior helps performance based on the
audience communication style and medium, identifying market opportunities with new
needs or values that become important to consumer. They can help plan the next
marketing strategies based on the predictive analysis of market trends.

By predicting needs, you can increase customers’ loyalty by providing them with a solution
to future issue that they may face. Trends can provide differentiation by picking into new
behaviors and providing information into markets that are only at an early stage of
development. A company needs to adapt to the existing trends of its market while looking
for new trends they can position on. If a company doesn’t adapt to the trends, they are
likely to lose their audience by becoming irrelevant to the current conversation, problems,
and needs of the consumers.

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These are examples of some insights that can be uncovered while doing industry trend
research. Imagine you are working for a company that produces frozen meat burgers. You have
seen your sales declining a little bit in the last few years and want to understand how the
market is performing and what trends are arising in order to gain back your market share.

You come across qualitative data about consumers’ new food choices and needs. So the
problem might be: I want to eat when I am hungry. And it used to be solved by: a quick,
premade, cheap dinner. Now consumers seem to be more attentive to the quality of their food,
and want to solve the problem with: buying nourishing, local, and nature-friendly food. Now,
how does the frozen burger company stand on these new values and needs?

This type of data, after closer analysis, might show that investing in the health, vegetarian,
wholefood market through the development of a new range of home-cooked, vegetarian
burgers will increase profit by X percent. By listening to the market demand, and upcoming
trends, your company will be able to understand their current situation but also take decisions
to solve their own challenge and the business objectives. This can impact product
development, business decisions, as well as marketing.

In view of these trends, the digital marketer might decide to run a campaign under a new
concept for the same product by emphasizing a message based on the source of their
ingredients. For example, are the burgers 100% grass-fed beef? In this case they should add
extra information in their tweets or blog posts. Start tweeting about environmental issues to
align with the audience interest and generate traffic and give advice on how to live zero waste
and so on.

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Industry trend research can be accessed through many platforms but each one does not provide the same quality of
data in the same timeframe.

• Social media monitoring: By identifying the density of conversation on social media you can find trends and
insights where consumers are looking and what they want next. Tools such as TweetDeck, Google Trends, and
Twitter trending topics can help you identify the patterns online to see what is trendy at the moment and find this
information directly from the voice of consumers. This is a reliable source of instant trend information. However, it
is a reactive approach, as you might find a trend once it is already out. In addition to this, the conversation might be
influenced by current events, buzz, and high community engagement, and won’t provide information on the quality
of the trend mentioned.

• Market research reports: Most industry trend research studies are conducted by research firms that have the
resources to survey, interview, and analyze trend data and then make actionable reports. Some examples of online
companies that provide regular free insights on industry trends are Euromonitor, eMarketer, Qualtrics, Nielsen,
Crimson Hexagon, and PWC. The advantage of such a method is the availability of the data and the quality of the
data, as these types of research are generally made on a large scale that is statistically more accurate. On the other
hand, as this data is available to almost anyone, free reports might mention trends that will be strongly
competitive. Requesting reports from research firms specifically for your company can be a way to find trends that
are more granular and resonate with your target audience.

• Search analytics: Keywords are fantastic indicators of trends. Much like the stock market, you can
look at the keywords that are on the rise and bet on their evolution and the insights that they can
provide on what your customer is looking for at the moment. If we take our previous example of
frozen burgers, maybe the keyword most used to find that information was ‘frozen meat
burgers’, but now a new keyword might be rising as ‘vegetarian frozen burger’. This can be an
indicator of a new trend or need on the market that the company could position on. The main
tools for analyzing keywords are Google Ads and Google Trends, but other more comprehensive
tools also exist such as the Amazon Keyword Trends tool or Wordtracker.

• Academic research: Individuals who look at the market and think about its potential evolution are great sources of
predictive trend research. Scholars studying specific behavior by using hard data, theory, and testing can develop
insights into what the future of an industry will be like. Therefore, they are a great source of predictive analysis that
can provide insights into the development of the digital marketing strategy. Many websites exist providing scholarly
research. You can find research on any of the greatest universities, such as MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and so on, but
also through scholar databases such as Google Scholar or Base.

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Cultural insights demonstrate where consumer behavior may be changing. These insights point the way toward massive shifts in values, attitudes, and
behaviors that are lurking just underneath the surface of our day-to-day lives. These trends do not show up in quantitative market research because
individuals may not be conscious of these social and cultural tensions.

Marketers need to take into account that individuals are not simply the sum of their own beliefs and actions. They are constantly influenced by their
community, friends, family, and cultural make-up. They will fit under the same demographics but the message addressed might be perceived differently
through each cultural lens. Some components of cultural research include:

• Geographic influences: Each country, city, and neighborhood possesses it own ways of communicating, its own historical influences, and perception
of the world. People might have live in a place their entire life, and others might be new, and this can influence their perception heavily as they are
stimulated by different experiences built over time. Additionally, each country’s history brings different cultures that can be mixed from past
events, colonization, or current event such a immigration. Geographical influences are evolving constantly with the political and economical state of
countries but are built around core values and codes that are appropriate to the location. Think about how differently you would communicate with
Japanese and American people and how this influence comes from their location and cultural history.

• Influential figures and movements: Cultures revolve around icons who are specifically famous within the group. Each country, subculture, or
fashion trend is created and grows around one individual who has actively been involved in the development of the cultural movement, either
historically or currently. They can be political figures, singers, artists, or activists, or just someone who become a “name” in that culture as the ideal
representation of its value. We can think of Beyoncé in the pop culture and female empowerment movement, Martin Luther King in the black
equality movement, Jamie Oliver in the food revolution in the UK, and so on. These influencers can help understand what consumers are aiming for
and what inspires them.

• Language and memes: Language and image reference are at the heart of creating resonating content. You should go beyond the simple language
barriers that you need to overcome to enter new markets and look at how people actually talk, and the words, expressions, and memes they use to
express feeling and ideas. All these can help understand the preferred type of communication, whether it’s formal or informal, and how to leverage
these styles of communication to integrate within a community. A simple example is words used in different industries. If you are not from the
marketing industry and witness a marketing conversation, you would notice these people using acronyms, terms, and jokes that make sense only to
marketing-savvy individuals. The watcher will not be able to relate to the conversation at all. Apply the same idea to marketers trying to
communicate with their audience.

• Historic and current news: Tying in the previous components, history, news, and events will influence the direction taken by a cultural movement,
and will create a richer cultural experience. New cultures carry a smaller set of influencers, experiences, and groups that are seeking shared
experiences to grow visibility. Other cultures are small and never develop as they do not share news or are not part of the visible spectrum of media
attention, and these will be harder to study as their history and news are not central.

• Rules and mores: The cultural aspect of groups, places, religions, and beliefs usually comes with a set of implied rules. An easy example is the
dietary requirement of religious beliefs, such as not eating pork or beef, and so on. Other rules might be more subtle in certain cultural movements
such as not using certain brands because of their values, or avoiding specific colors that carry an unwanted meaning. These rules are important to
be aware of in order to understand the scope of what marketers can say or do to sell to a specific audience with strong cultural influences.

For each point here, ask and answer these questions:

• Where does my audience live and what influences this area both historically and currently?
• Who do they look up to? What influencers do they follow? If they could choose anyone in the world, who would they have dinner with?
• How do they communicate with their peers? What words are specific to their culture and what memes do they share to express themselves?
• What is currently happening in this culture and what shaped it? Can I create a timeline of events that lead to today’s expression of this culture?
• What does being part of this culture imply? What does one need to be accepted and recognized as a member of this cultural community?
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Cultural research brings many benefits for marketers interested in reaching out to multiple target audiences across
class, location, and culture. Some marketers may have a niche audience that share a similar culture and thus will
focus on their code and value, while others might promote products that can be sold across multiple cultures and
get involved in cross-cultural marketing efforts.

The benefits of conducting cultural research are plenty, but here are some of the most known:

• Export a campaign successfully in other cultures: When thinking about expansion, marketers need to rethink
their entire strategy as they enter a new market or cultural community. They need to assess what in the
marketing strategy needs to change, from the content to the messaging, positioning to visuals, and also media
choices. Marketing to US audiences can be very different form marketing to Europeans. A good way to perceive
this is to watch commercials from different countries. You can see that the focus of the message is different,
the visuals are shot differently, and the pace, voices, and length change. This applies to across countries but
also across cultures in the same countries.

• Adapt the positioning and offer to fit in a global context: If a marketer cannot adapt the marketing strategy for
each subculture that they are targeting, then cultural research will help them find a common ground that will
resonate with most of their audience. This doesn’t mean being neutral but rather finding a specificity that
carries across these cultures. Maybe they all like the same celebrity, or they use similar channels. Using cultural
research can be insightful in finding common patterns across audiences.

• Prevent potential misconceptions or offensive content: Cultural research is a go-to for preventing
misconception and offense that could attract negative publicity to the company. A classic example is when
companies market a product in another country without changing its name, only to later realize that the name
has a very different meaning there and ultimately this casts a negative light on the brand. This is also true for
the positioning or message shared. A focus on a specific area of the product or benefits might be something
that is too private in a different culture to be talked about in public. By knowing the cultural background of the
audience, marketers can prevent theses errors and be more successfully accepted in that new culture.

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Marketers in the digital era have an array of tools that can be used to conduct cultural research.
These tools are also useful for classic audience research but make it easier to target specific
cultures. The most common tool used for cultural research include:

• Social media conversations: Using keywords, Facebook groups, Twitter communities, hashtags,
and influencers are powerful ways to understand how a specific community is talking and
interacting, and how involved they are with your brand or product.

• Research: Audience research firms will develop their own research on specific cultural groups
and make it available for marketers. This can be done by firms such as eMarketer, Nielsen, and
so on, but also by specialized firms that will create dedicated reports and case studies on what
made or broke brands when working on cross-cultural campaigns. Scholars’ research is also a
beneficial source of insight, as they can be more in-depth and really targeted to specific sub-
cultures.

• Dedicated platforms: Another way to use digital media to develop your cultural research is to
follow the consumer journey through content. By finding and visiting niche websites,
influencers’ accounts, dedicated apps, bloggers, and forums, you can learn about all the
previous components we have discussed earlier, and see what values are most important to the
cultural group. This can be even prolonged by consuming other form of media such as TV shows
of movies that resonate with the audience.

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Let’s look at an example that shows us the importance of knowing your audience during the planning stage in order to increase overall
performance.

Like all jewellery brands, Cartier wanted to make an impression for Valentine’s day. In order to do so, they decided to use social media
advertising. This was because they knew the power of targeting and relevancy that they have, but also the high conversion rate that Facebook
Ads deliver.

You can see on the slide the tactics and targeting they used in order to reach their perfect audience. Think about it for a second. How do you
gather information so granular to understand what your audience knows, likes, and follows, and where they are buying already? Audience
research is the key to creating powerful campaigns because they reach the users who will be interested in you and who you are interested in. In
order to discover such insights, what tools do you think Cartier might have used?

A set of tools they might have used include:

• Social media and competitive research to know how their competition was positioned and who their audience already follows
• Google Ads and social media monitoring to find related interests
• Demographic research based on their internal database of clients for the demographics targeting age and job

Only a granular analysis of your audience and digital tools can allow such precise targeting. Facebook’s targeting tools are also very powerful at
providing suggestions based on past campaigns and the entire data set of all ads that have run on their platform. Cartier could also have used
retargeting or lookalike audiences to target audiences that were similar to their existing customers.

But research doesn’t stop at targeting. In order to develop the content for their ads and create the video, message, and look and feel, they have
to understand what triggers the audience’s interest. If you follow the link in the resources section, you can have a look at the ad. You can see
how in tune with the audience the ad is. It is young and rebellious, and positions the brand for this 18+, artsy audience they targeted. It became
a full loop around the audience, message, targeting, and product.

This is a very simple example of how audience research is used in everyday campaigns in order to resonate and push well-rounded content. As
a result of their efforts, Cartier saw a 2x return on ad spend, became 40% more relevant to men (as they were targeting couples), and 25%
more relevance to women.

Can you think about other campaigns that you have seen and thought they were well targeted in terms of location, content, and product?
Think about the last ad you saw that really caught your eye and took you to the website and maybe even the product page. How do you think
the marketers have researched and found information about your taste?

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Within the digital marketing industry, many stakeholders are involved in developing, publishing, and planning
the content, as well as measuring campaign success. They can be internal or external stakeholders, depending
on each business, and will have different levels of importance depending on the nature of the general
marketing objectives.

Learning how to work with these different stakeholders can create a smoother experience for your team and
help you get the most out of each relationship. This slide summarizes the key stakeholders when integrating
your digital media strategy. Just note that these stakeholders can vary depending on the industry, product, or
size of your organization. You may have to work with legal firms or organizations to validate your content if
you are working in a sensitive business industry, such as alcohol, banking, or finance.

If we look at the realization of a digital marketing strategy, it is defined by two points: the content and the
platform. Each of these revolve around a set of stakeholders. Here is a non-exhaustive list of your primary
points of contact:
• Creative agencies
• Communication department
• CMS
• Media vendors
• Communication departments

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Marketers working on awareness and positioning of a brand frequently work with creative
agencies to develop the creative concept that leads the campaign and the brand. The creative
agency, through the account manager, art director, copy writer and designers, will help develop
visually impactful and relevant catch phrases, visuals, and concepts that could be used or rejected
across all channels.

The marketer will usually work with the creative agency by creating a brief with information about
the objective, target audience, core brand values, branding components, and other information
pertaining to the market. Based on this information, the creative team will research concepts that
will appeal to the target audience, while also remaining adaptable.

Working with an agency can add extra time, but is a more costly process. Creative ads, content,
visuals, and the strength of your brand’s visual impact will attract desired customers. If a company
doesn’t have a strong internal design team or brand concept that carries out creative work,
working with agencies or even freelance art directors is a good choice to ensure the visual quality
of your content, in terms of website development or advertising creatives.

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The Content Management System (CMS) platform is where your content such as blogs, website, landing pages, and so on are hosted and where you go
to edit, track, and optimize content. Examples of CRM platforms include: WordPress, Wix, HubSpot, and Squarespace. However, many of them do not
offer the same level of services - some are free but require premiums to access certain functionalities.

The aim of these platforms is to provide a comprehensive solution to host all your content and analyze its performance. Not all platforms are created
the same way, so you will need to know what you want to use the CMS for, what type of data you want to track, and what actions you might be
interested in carrying out before deciding on a platform. In terms of the individual, working with a CMS can be a hands-off experience. You may be
working with an account manager or the support team to assist you in achieving your content goals.

Now let’s see who may potentially work with the CMS platform and how they would go about using it:

• Sales: Sales usually avoid getting into the detail of creating content but might look at the performance data as a way to understand the buyer’s
journey and quality of the contact they are reaching out to. Sales teams work around a customer relationship management (CRM) system that
receives contact information from the CMS. Some CMSs such as HubSpot integrate a CRM directly, thus sales staff work directly from the platform,
and can access content and track interactions on the website or blog. The other way sales teams are involved in the CMS is by simply using and
pushing the content to their customers, collecting feedback, and providing potential needs for change to the marketing team, based on the
customers’ experience.

• PR: The PR team will use the CMS for releasing all the content such as press releases, blog articles, social media posts, and so on. Next time you are
on a corporate website, take note of the ‘Press’ section which gathers materials for journalists such as pictures, press releases, and assets such as
logos and branding materials. Depending on the organization, the PR team might be in charge of developing and reviewing the content on the blog
or website and will be highly involved in using the CMS to share and host content for the press or public. Think about a press release or press event
where journalists are redirected to the website or sent emails linking to the relevant content a landing page.

• Loyalty teams: The loyalty team will be involved in strategizing the content on the website for existing customers in order to provide extra value to
the brand. This relates to developing specific landing pages that will be sent via marketing emails. They are in charge of gated content on the
website, only accessible to customers, and gathering data on how these customers use the website to improve user experience.

• Social media managers: Similar to how social media strategies rely heavily on content, the social media manager will work with the CMS platform
to optimize content for social media posts, and automate and schedule social media publishing. It will also ensure that the website and content are
optimized for social sharing and following, and that it is providing visibility of social media presence to visitors.

• Activation team: The activation team will use the CMS platform to automate and create the buyer’s journey through the pages and emails that are
being sent. They will be more involved in the structure and mapping of all the content to understand and direct where the consumer arrives, what
call to action (CTA) they can click on, how can they download information, where the form should be, and so on. This is about how to convert or
create awareness online by developing the right content and making it accessible in the right way, as well as optimizing the website for search.

• Designers: Designers here will have an important role in making the content easy to read and appealing. This will be the point of contact for adding
the correct colors, logo, and images to the content, making sure the site is responsive, fast, and modern. They follow trends in website design and
studies that prove certain designs are better for conversion or awareness. This knowledge can be brought in via the designers through early
discussion during the planning stage. If the team doesn’t have a designer, they can go through an agency or buy pre-existing template to save time
and resources.

• Product marketing: The product marketing team will be highly involved in reviewing and developing the content online and also making sure the
product positioning, visuals, and structure are respected. They will also pay extra attention to adding relevant messaging for new product launches
or important product updates.

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As we have seen before, the different stakeholders who will work around the CMS will use the tool for specific goals. Here is a list of
some of the main ways marketers and other teams will use the CMS platform:

• Content marketing: This may sound obvious, but brands should take advantage of owning a platform where it can develop
relevant content that will attract potential customers, applying the inbound methodology. Developing content on website pages,
blogs, and landing pages should all be done under one CMS. This part of the tool is core to the strategy and thus content should
be developed using the CMS platform capacities.

• Website optimization: Alongside the previous point, the CMS platform helps optimize the content and navigation of the website.
Before CMS platforms, marketers would have developers and IT teams create and manage the platform, making it harder to
update and optimize on the go. Nowadays, CMS platforms are very user friendly and it is easy to move things around, and adapt
the navigation content, CTAs, and forms when needed. Testing different placements and layout can help optimize the website for
user experience making it easier and faster to find information.

• SEO: One specific part of website optimization will be optimizing for search engines. After developing the right content, this might
be one of the most important actions you can take on the CMS platform. Optimizing for search engines means making things
easier for Google to understand what your content is about and how relevant it is to internet users. This is done with multiple
steps and techniques that will be covered in-depth in the followings modules.

• Social media marketing: Some CMS platforms allow you to plan and optimize content for social media through scheduling,
publishing, or automated publishing. For example, you could choose to post your blog posts automatically on social media as soon
as they are published on the blog to create instant visibility. CMS platforms also offer pre-created widgets that can be added to
your page to redirect visitors on your social media accounts and also add HTML content on your blog to create better social media
previews or even track your clicks from social media.

• Email marketing: When thinking about an email marketing strategy, marketers need to focus on where the emails are taking the
user. Do they need to create a new landing page? Is there content already on the subject? And then what CTA should be on the
page? Is the page optimized for conversion from the email?

• Automation: CMS platforms allow you to plan and automate content publishing in order to save time. Marketers can plan,
execute, and develop content, add it on the CMS platform, and set the publish date. They can then let the tool run on its own
while focusing on optimizing existing assets or planning the next marketing campaign.

• Sales/Marketing communication: Through the CMS platform, sales and marketing can communicate by developing private pages
and content that are focusing on products. A CMS platform can collect and provide data for the sales team to work from. Thus it is
a crucial point of contact between sales and marketing teams as it is the transformation point in the marketing/sales funnel that
we will focus on later on.

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Internal communication departments help with the development of the content and the creative part of the
digital marketing strategy. The communication department is usually structured with a PR team, content team,
design team, and event team. Working synchronously helps create a holistic experience of the brand and product.

A digital marketer cannot work on their own to achieve their goal. Therefore they need to inform the
communication department at the early stage of the strategy planning in order to align efforts for a greater
impact. It’s not uncommon that the communication and marketing departments are placed under the same
department, MARCOM (Marketing Communications). Marketers usually work on initiating and integrating their
strategy, working closely with the communications department.

That being said, how does a digital marketer work with the communication department? A product launch is an
example of the interactions that exist between the two departments and how they can work together. Marketers
will think of the end customers, how to reach them, create awareness through owner and paid media, and create
earned media with virality and influencers. But raising awareness also goes through generating content in the
press online, in the news, and n specialized media. The product content developed in marketing, the positioning,
the main message, and the creatives created by the digital marketing team will be passed on to the
communication department where they develop the public and press relations strategy. This is added to the
digital marketing strategy to achieve the main marketing objectives of, for example, raising awareness around the
new product.

When marketers want to work with influencers, this would follow under the shared responsibility as influencers
can also be part of the PR strategy. As the two departments may cross paths and decide on the strategy, it is
important to keep communication clear and open to prevent duplication of efforts, developing similar content,
and wasting time. Delivering messages that are misaligned can create confusion for the audience and their
perception of the company.

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Social media that resonates with your audience will be on the list of platforms used on a daily basis to either post,
monitor, or analyze your content performance and audience engagement. Besides the social media giants such as
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Snapchat, there might be a social media platform that are more niche
which could also be used by the stakeholder. That platform will also be your place for developing paid social media
advertising and selecting influencers. Usually the social media platforms offer an intricate variety of ad formats and
services that can deliver based on your objectives. Similar to a CMS platform, depending on your account type you
might be eligible to work with an account manager and have a team of stakeholders to work with.

Social media platforms fit under the core marketing functions of Awareness, Conversion, and Retention by
providing multiple tools to reach users organically or via paid content.

The key assets of social media are:

• Profiles/Accounts: This can be the company or employee profile and can be used to provide extra content and
personalized experiences that are valuable in the awareness and retention phase. This involves creating deeper
conversations and showcasing personal interest on the company or public figure that represents the company.
• Pages: This is a more official window over your company. It is the flagship store of social media on Facebook or
LinkedIn, for instance. This creates awareness of search and also a point of contact for consumers who have
more questions as they consider your company in their search. This is where all branded content lives and is
shared on a regular basis.
• Groups: These are a great way to create awareness and retention by starting or participating in discussions
geared towards a specific community of interests.
• Advertising: The content that is posted and created can be advertised according to an objective. The power of
social media advertising resides in its targeting and formats capabilities. It can be a strong tool for converting
users in customers, but can also increase followers and engagement.

Overall, the social media platform is a central place for content. The marketer will work with the platform regularly
and, depending on the level of investments, work with the social media sales and account teams to develop better
strategies. Agencies that specialize in social media strategies can come into play as a key stakeholders to increase
social media performances. But the main stakeholders in social media are the audience and the followers.

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In the traditional marketing era, marketers relied on media vendors to set up deals, buy media spaces, and
plan on the media side of the strategy. For example, to get display space on a billboard, marketing teams
would work with a media buying agency that gathers all the data and contacts in this industry. They would
discuss planning and pricing with the media company directly, and then come back to the marketers with the
availability and take a form of commission over the final transaction. Today, with digital media this has
changed as media companies are directly accessible and usually gather under one platform without the need
for a third-party. The relationship with media vendors is more direct, but also more complex, as new
stakeholders have risen in the media landscape.

Think of the online media space as a giant industry in a complex network auction room where each company
bids for their ad to be shown all at the same time, from a platform gathering thousands of ad spaces across
millions of pages.

Marketers work with big media vendors who in turn work with ad networks and exchange platforms in order
to get your content out there. These work on a demand and supply system and gather multiple websites
looking to rent their ad space and multiple brands that have content to put out there. That is the demand-side
platform (DSP) and the sell-side platform (SSP) division.

When marketers develop their strategy, they will share the brief (plans for targeting, positioning, and key
objectives) with the media vendors, who will then select specific exchange severs and targets. On the
marketers’ side, the assets developed and provided are content, audience targeting, and budget cap that can
be expressed in cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM). Then the vendor takes that information to
buy the necessary space. This content then gets pushed on publishers’ platforms, social media, and forums.

The complexity of the current model is to understand the media vendor’s role because the exchange platforms
are accessible without core media vendor stakeholders. Marketers can go on social media exchange platforms
and deal with this directly within the digital marketing team. Software now exists for marketers to manage
their own media buying. Working with media vendors is becoming more liberal but also more complex as
marketers can break free from media agencies. Hence, a little research into the software/resources available
can enable the marketer to deal directly with media vendors.

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Now that we have looked at the process, and some of the most common external stakeholders, let’s focus on the internal role of
marketing and how the department works with the broader business organization.

The role of the marketing team in the broader business organization can be defined as “promoting the business and mission of
an organization”. It serves as the face of your company, coordinating and producing all materials that represent the business. It is
the marketing department's job to reach out to prospects, customers, investors, and/or the community, and create an
overarching image that represents your company in a positive light - that is, your brand.

The digital marketing team focusing on an area of technology is key as the knowledge and skills required to achieve success
online differ from traditional marketing skills. It requires more expertise of automation systems, ad exchange markets, and new
methods of consumer and data analysis. Having a dedicated digital marketing team ensures that strong skills and stakeholders
are in place to manage the multiple assets and face of digital media communication.

The quality of this marketing has evolved and changed with the development of technologies, which also made the role of
marketing in the business organization more complex. Today the general structure of a digital marketing department will be
divided by area of specialization, through key roles such as:

• SEO specialist
• Campaign manager
• Community manager
• Ecommerce specialist
• Content marketer
• Digital marketing director
• UX/Brand expert
• Loyalty specialist

Each of these positions can vary depending on the size, focus, and seniority of the organization. Some individuals may undertake
multiple specialities or be in charge of specific channels.

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A business organization is an entity that has multiple functions in an industry as a business that provides and sells a good or product to
answer a need or fix a problem, for a given group of individual. The different functions of the business organization have an impact on
the digital marketer, as they provide the pulse for the entire business organization’s planning, budgeting, and future. Let’s review the
different functions of a business organization and how they influence the digital marketer:

• Buying: The role of the buying or purchasing department in a business is to source, negotiate, and buy raw materials that will be
used to put together the product, while respecting legal requirements and keeping track of accounting. The volume, quality, and
length of buying and retrieving these materials will impact on the price and accessibility of the product by setting up production
timelines, as well as the basis for production price. It is not directly linked to the marketers, but this will affect when and how the
product can be sold, how quickly, and at what market price. Additionally, marketers can find value proposition elements in the
materials that are bought. For example, if they are bought from specific communities and help them grow, this could be an
interesting selling point for an audience concerned with fair trade and communities.

• Production: The impact of production also affects planning, pricing, and product availability. It is also a great source of messaging
and content that companies can build upon. An example of this is if a company has a zero waste policy, ensure nothing is left after
the product has been built, has a low carbon impact, and is able to produce on-demand and deliver the next day. This process of
production can impact how the product is sold and creates additional value. The role of the production function is to turn input such
as raw materials into outputs through a series of processes. The raw material comes in, is processed, and comes out with added
value and functions.

• Distribution: The distribution function sets up the where, how much, and how the product will be provided to the market. Is it on a
shelf, online, in a local market, supermarket, independent, or flagship store? The distribution channels that are set up in this
function will dictate where the marketing effort needs to lead in order to complete conversion and turn in new customers. They also
dictate part of the positioning of the product. For example, if the product is sold in a supermarket, the positioning might not be
focused on the premium quality of a certain ingredient but maybe convenience, in comparison to if it were sold in a trendier store.

• Marketing: Digital and traditional marketing teams working towards a common goal should communicate plans and strategy to
increase repetition and provide a single brand experience across all media. Within the marketing department, the digital marketing
team will be in contact with: communication, design, content, public relations, and press relations departments.

• Sales: Sales and marketing work hand-in-hand to create profit by converting leads into customers and advocates. A company that is
client-facing might have two sales teams focused on each branch of audiences. Sales will work with marketing to position the
product and get information assets, such as a key selling point that they can use to close a deal. They will also play a role in providing
feedback on the product from the stakeholders who were met and convinced, or the ones who turned down an offer. This is also
provides great insights for marketing teams in order to position and avoid obstacles in the future.

• Customer sales: After new customers are acquired, the sales team has a mission to follow up and keep these customers in the
pipeline for future sales, renewals, additional products, and so on. Marketing is highly involved in this process and keeping the
customer interested and informed about options and potential needs they can come across in the future.

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The function of digital marketing is to increase the company visibility and drive traffic and leads online. Thus
the internal digital marketing goals should be in direct relationship with the business objectives. Marketers
should be able to evaluate their impact at a business level to legitimize their choice and value within the
organization. Lacking this capacity puts the budget at risk and responsibility given to the team in the long
term.

In order to prove the value of marketing, at this level marketers need to be aligned with other departments
and communicate what they are doing and listen to the needs of other teams to see how they can help.
Working in isolation prevents digital marketers from hearing how they could improve the content, user
experience, or processes that could increase their performance.

For example, if the marketing and product department do not communicate efficiently, product teams could
be working on launching a new product and would remain silent until just a couple of months before launch,
leaving very little time for the digital marketer to prepare the necessary long-term assets and strategy.
Another good example is keeping close to the sales team. Because they are in the front line engaging with
clients, sales teams are rich in insights and details that the customer wants and needs. By listening to this, the
digital marketer can adapt without having to solely conduct research as all the information is there.

These are just a couple of examples of how other functions can influence marketing, but the reverse is also
true. Because marketers have a great understanding of the audience and the market, they are capable of
providing opinions on other business decisions - but only if they understand the goals of each team and can
sell their idea with the right positioning.

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Marketing objectives should be aligned with business objectives to provide business growth. Marketers should understand the
key metrics that define business growth and be able to translate these into marketing goals. This can be done by understanding
the relationship between marketing efforts and profit by looking at previous data sets or secondary research conducted by third-
parties.

Top-level executives in a company will set business goals for the entire organization. These are generally broad and provide
direction to where the business should be going in terms of product development, positioning, market lead, and so on. Some
examples of business goals include:
• Increase revenue by 20%
• Increase market share by 15%
• Reduce cost by 10%

Each department feeds their own objectives from the global objective and will set up key performance indicators (KPIs) to
measure their success against and assess if their final performance contributed to the overall business goals. On the slides we use
sales and marketing as the example of two departments that have objectives which usually work alongside each other.

The sales team will set up contributing objectives. For example, to achieve a 20% increase in revenue and translate this figure
into actual sales figures, the objective might transform and become:
• Increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by 5% each quarter.

After analyzing this goal, looking at previous patterns that led consumers to become customers that impact the MRR, the
marketing team can set up objectives and targets that will likely convert into an MRR. For this, they need to understand the sales
process and how the marketing efforts will impact this figure. At the end of this analysis, the objective might now have
transformed for the digital marketing team to become:
• Generate 15% more leads in the quarter and qualify at least 70% of these leads.
This could be the main objective divided into smaller objectives that would be more specific and truly follow the SMART
objective model.

The definition of the key metrics used will depend on the main goals, departments, and available data sets. More examples of
business KPIs include: profit, cost, cost of good sold, day sales outstanding, sales by region, and number of customers. These are
high level and not always the most specific.

Some sales KPIs might be: customer churn rate, contact volume by channels, customer lifetime value (CLV), customer acquisition
cost, and customer retention.

Some marketing KPIs might be: returning visitors, brand awareness, return on marketing investment, web traffic source, CLV,
cost per acquisition (CPA), CTR, and conversion rate.

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By understanding the value of the lead generated, marketing is capable of tracking the impact of each
marketing effort. Using the different performance tools available online - such as Google Analytics, CMS
performance analytics, page analytics, form submission, clicks, lead generation, and so on - the digital
marketing department can pull out information on how many leads were created by channels, and how
these leads transformed into the marketing and sales funnels.

Tracking metrics that relate directly to sales and profit facilitates the measurement of the impact of
marketing on the overall business. When tracking metrics, you can find out what the ROI of one campaign
was on a specific date, how may leads were generated, how many of them were converted into
customers, how much they brought in revenue, and whether this compares to the original investment
made to put this marketing effort together.

This exercise can be trickier for digital content marketing strategies as the metrics are more distant from
actual sales (involving shares, likes, comments, and so on). The important process is to be able to track the
metrics across visitors, how many were converted, the traffic source, and the amount of the conversion, in
order to be able to attribute this conversion to marketing. CRM and CMS platforms that work together
help marketers track this data to report on this data.

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We have touched on this before by mentioning that marketing and sales were two related
departments, but this slide shows an actual representation of what the marketing and sales
funnel is, and the definition of the lifecycle stage of contacts in the database. The above stages
describe the customer lifecycle used to qualify a consumer’s readiness for sales.

• Customer starts as a subscriber after subscribing to content, such as a newsletter.

• Then they move to a lead as they show more interest in the brand and product by visiting
multiple pages, following on social media, clicking into emails, and so on.
• The lead will then be qualified by marketing and then by sales. This stage is critical as a badly
qualified lead can be lost. The qualification of a lead is about marking the lead as ready for a
more aggressive communication strategy.
• The qualified lead is then marked as an opportunity, defined as a contact who has become a
real sales opportunity in your CRM, and is ready to buy. They need extra attention and are
about to make a purchase.
• A customer is the actual paying customer who has bought the product at least once in the
past.
• An evangelist or advocate is a returning customer who has proven to believe in your product
or business. They are a vocal group who will refer new business to you. Leveraging their
networks often brings in new customers and helps you reach leads you may not have been
able to otherwise. They will refer your product to friends, family, and co-workers and be in
regular communication through social media or direct email.

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The definition of the marketing and sales qualified lead is organization-specific as only they know what criteria a lead shows
when converting. But there is a general definition of each stage:

• Lead: Inquiry, referral, or other information, obtained through advertisements or other means that identifies a potential
customer
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): Lead with shown interest in the product by performing a set of actions such as visiting the
website, interacting with content, and so on
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A lead that has shown strong interest in buying the product by performing a set of actions defined
as qualifying for a sale

To qualify a lead as an MQL, a marketer need to analyze historical data on the channels, actions, and patterns that brought the
contact to convert into a customer. This is a co-owned effort between sales and marketing, because sales being directly involved
with the customer has knowledge of the points that convinced them to convert.

Some companies have lead scoring set up in order to attribute points to leads and set thresholds (scores) that define a lead as
marketing or sales qualified. The key moment of this cycle is the qualification of the lead from marketing to sales. When
marketing teams qualify leads for sales, it means that these contacts have grasped a good enough impression of the brand and
product to enter into a more aggressive sales process. If the lead has been qualified too early, the sales effort will be perceived as
too early or aggressive and the contact might step away.

Think, for example, about an intrusive email that is very targeted and brings you back to the ecommerce site, when you where
simply browsing and searching for nothing in particular. It is usually annoying and doesn’t trigger a good brand experience. Thus
if a lead is not correctly qualified, sales teams might lose time and effort trying to bring them through the funnel to convert and
not get any success due to a premature lead qualification.

Sales and marketing should agree when a lead is ready to be qualified and what sales need in terms of information.

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To be successful in achieving objectives and pushing ideas, marketers need strong skills that will
help them connect, engage, and get buy-in on their projects. As we have seen, marketers work
with many stakeholders, both internal and external, and keeping good relationships with other
team members is one of the keys to success for marketers and for the general business
organization.

Let’s now review some of the skills that can be worth focusing on when trying to improve digital
marketing performances. As Paul McDonald, senior executive director for Robert Half, said:

"The most successful and satisfied employees work well with just about everyone. Building
relationships across departments ensures enhanced collaboration, smoother processes and
greater influence for practitioners.“

Let’s list some of these skills:

• Listening skills
• Analytical skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Sales skills
• Strategic thinking skills

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Everything begins with understanding the broader picture. Marketing goals are directly related to the business and
sales goals. You need to understand the origin and impact of these goals on an entire organizational level.
Understanding this can reduce friction between teams by relating to the goals at hand.

By engaging in conversations with stakeholders from other teams, you can learn about processes, points of contact,
priorities, history, necessity for success, and KPIs. This can help marketers know how to collaborate with other teams
and understand the steps they will need to take in order to work smoothly together.

A classic example can be working with a localization team. If you produce content for multiple languages, localizing is
your top priority as a digital marketer and content developer. But to efficiently translate and localize your content, you
need to know all about the process, what the pain points are, what the localization team need to do to work as fast as
possible, and how they can improve current processes for the long term. If you make a request and 50% of the
information is lacking, the team will not take you seriously and also it will delay your request for action and thus delay
your own planning.

Only by actively listening to the other team’s challenges and successes can you know how to approach them.

Some tips to becoming a better listener and getting the most out of your meetings include:

• Keep eye contact.

• Be relaxed but attentive, and avoid bringing distractions such as a screen, pen, or phone.
• Keep an open mind even for positions you disagree on, listen to the “why”, and try to understand.
• Create a mental picture of what the speaker is saying.
• Avoid interrupting or bringing on your solution straightaway. Wait to be asked and stay humble to keep the other
person relaxed and confident.
• Wait for the speaker to pause to ask questions.
• Only ask questions that will clarify your understanding.
• Be empathic.
• Provide feedback.

These might sound simple and obvious, but they can make a difference in the perception of the speaker. Setting up
meetings with people from other teams can be a good way to start learning more and getting all this valuable
information you need to start successfully working with them. With digital technology, you don’t even need to be in
the same office! You can set up a video conference or phone call, or just chat on your company’s internal tools.

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Knowing and analyzing the relationship between you, your team, and the decisions you make with the
other departments will bring insight about the impact they have on your work. You should define the
challenges and obstacles brought by other teams’ priorities and how you can adapt to them.

Here are some points to keep in mind:

• How does your work impact the other team’s priorities and goals, and vice versa?
• What points of friction can you analyze in working with their process?
• How is your team position in the business, and what reputation does it have?
• What language and communication style should you adopt with them, based on your previous
contact?
• What has been successful in the past and is there any new variable you need to take into account?
• Is your point of contact in each team a decision-maker?
• How can you create awareness about your team to the business and other teams?

At this stage, you should understand where your team and project rank in the company and create a
full picture of the marketing team’s interaction with other teams and how the processes drive them.
Ultimately, you also want to analyze the channels that exist for your teams to communicate and how
visible your team is and how easily it is to approach you.

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In order to improve your chance of success in applying the previous two skills, it is important to focus on your socializing
skills. If you want to make a good impression and make people comfortable in your presence, it is important to cultivate
strong social skills if they don’t come as naturally as you wish. Multiple techniques and tips exist, but here is a small list of
points where you can start:

• Verbal communication: Mind what you say because people will remember it and the impression it gave them. It is
important to stay in the limits of what is acceptable to discuss while going on a more personal path. Small talk is a start but
does tend to die pretty quickly. Try start on a subject that will make them enthusiastic - for example, talking about their
own projects, passions, and shared experiences.

• Non-verbal communication: This is as important as verbal communication. Your body language can tell a different story if
you are uncomfortable, in a rush, anxious, or embarrassed. Looking at recordings of you talking is helpful in pointing out
little gestures or movements that distract your audience. Playing with your hair, moving your head around, crossing your
arms, and moving from one foot to the other can distract your audience from what you are saying and send mixed signals.
Stay natural but try to eliminate any conflicting, non-verbal communication (such as saying you are excited about the
project while standing with a bored slouch).

• Self-confidence: People will believe in you if you believe in yourself. It might be simple to say but it is a recurrent theme in
business success. If people feel that they can trust you, they will be more likely to share with, involve, and reach out to
you, but also they will feel more comfortable around you.

• Positive attitude: Everyone wants to be happy and grow in a positive environment. Think about how much you would
trust people who are negative or talk badly about other people. They are not the people you might want to get close to or
work on a project with. Staying positive and enthusiastic can uplift other people and rise their trust level in you and your
projects.

• Smile and stand straight: Adopting a good posture and smiling does have a positive effect on your audience as it makes
you appear more relaxed, comfortable, and confident. If you don’t feel any of these, your non-verbal positivity will change
perception and help you feel confident. (If you make an effort to stand with a confident posture, it will help to boost your
self-confidence, for example.)

These few tips can help with developing your social network and create deeper connections with members of other teams.
Ultimately, these tips can help you create stronger bonds and trust with colleagues and even make new friends. We tend to
stay within our own department but trying to mix and get known can be a very rich experience personally and professionally.

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Just like you have to think about your digital marketing strategy, you have to think about your internal audience - who they
are, what their problem is, and how they want to solve it. Then market your team and project accordingly.

Working strategically across a team requires use of critical thinking in order to make the right decisions and facilitate
collaboration, helping bring success to an organization. Critical thinking pushes marketers to set up processes for decision-
making. Research conducted by Pearson takes all this one step further by showing that people who score well on critical
thinking assessments are also rated by their supervisors as having a good overall job performance, job knowledge, and the
potential to move up within the organization.

Critical thinking makes marketers more adaptable and able to solve problems quickly. Some of the skills involved in critical
thinking are:

• Problem-solving: Taking a mass of data and combining seemingly unrelated information to make creative, workable
solutions
• Analysis: Breaking arguments down into bite-sized chunks and establishing how well the pieces of an argument fit
together
• Creative thinking: Assessing key problems, hazards, and potential answers, and then creating coherent new solutions
• Interpretation: Decoding the meaning and significance of evidence and experiences
• Evaluation: Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of an argument (including those of others) and dealing with
disagreements fairly
• Reasoning: Spotting gaps in evidence or flaws in logic

This relates to working with the business organization and the sales department to understand their goals, how to
integrate them, and to assess success within a digital marketing strategy. Critical thinking requires employees to stop, look
at a situation, turn it around, and come up with innovative solutions that can help build smarter relationships across teams
by:

• Understanding team bias and goals and removing any clustered information.
• Understanding the digital marketing team’s impact on other teams.
• Delivering creative ways for working together.

This skill is used across the board and is key in creating and selling an idea the right way to the right audience by knowing
and evaluating situations.

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Finally, one part of being able to efficiently work together is to get the buy in on your idea, process,
campaign and choices by other departments or colleagues you report to/depend on. If you need the help of
the PR team to develop content for a blog post, but it is not on their roadmap, selling the idea in a way that
will talk to their priorities and objectives can help get the cross-departmental project going.

That is where critical thinking will really pay off; it will help you to help others and create a better consumer
experience of the product as a business organization and not as singular entities. Selling an idea internally is
about proving value by answering the questions such as:
• Why should the organization/team/individual invest resources like time and money in this project?
• What benefits will it bring?

To be able to answer those questions, you need to do your homework, know your product and market,
have back up data, and be concise and precise when presenting. Answer these three key questions:
• What problem does this solve?
• Why do we need it?
• What is the likely outcome or result if we proceed?

Focusing on the obstacles will prepare you to appreciate other perspectives that you might not see the
value in. A good idea can get rejected on the basis that it wasn’t sold the correct way to internal
stakeholders. The skills we developed earlier will help you focus your idea, create a solid reputation, and
understand your business case when the time comes to get the business or team on something different
you want to get started with.

This is an non-exhaustive list of other skills that sales demonstrate:

• Product knowledge
• Strategic prospecting
• Active listening
• Communication
• Time management
• Buyer-seller agreement
• Negotiation 104
Google’s success is based on a good product and a strong diversification strategy. With that said, a company is
nothing without a team that can work and solve problems together. Let’s talk about some of the findings and
strategies that Google is using to make their teams better. Not only does Google think about increasing their
team performances, but they do research and implement their findings in order to enhance their employees’
experience and workflow.

In this case study, the company’s executives worked hard on finding the perfect mix of individuals necessary to
form a stellar team. They believed that building good teams meant combining the best people. In 2012, Google
ran a project known as Project Aristotle. It took several years and included interviews with hundreds of
employees. They analyzed data about the people on more than 100 active teams at the company.

Google examined their findings and confirmed what seems like common sense, but can be easily overlooked in
teams - and even more across departments.
People want to feel like they can be listened to. Imagine when you are having a conversation with someone and
they keep looking at their phone and not paying attention. What is happening to your will and trust to speak
freely? You become self-conscious and will be less likely to provide valuable insights or information as you don’t
seem to interest the person in front of you. Google describes psychological safety as the most important factor
in building a successful team.

This highlights the importance of integrating processes in your team and organization that promote open
communication, but also monitor your colleagues’ opinion on communication and in general feeling good at
work. Regular meetings with managers and having open conversations across hierarchy and teams can set a
good environment for great collaboration.

To conclude, creating a safe environment and providing channels for communication is key to making sure
teams share and understand each other. It also ensures your message is heard by creating a policy of listening
and respect. In the link below, you can find many more examples of companies that have used communication
to improve their workflow output and overall experience for employees and customers.

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Our last section focuses on the PROPEL model, a model to help you put together all the content we
have reviewed in this section to create a digital marketing strategy. PROPEL stands for: Plan, Research,
Objective, Prepare, Execute, and Learn.

We have seen some of these in detail already, but keeping in mind the order in which these are
presented can be helpful when getting started. As you can see, this is a closed cycle because the
PROPEL model works with the idea of perpetual optimization allowed by the digital era. Additionally, it
is important to respect that order because each stage feeds into the next and sets up the base for
critically thinking about the strategy. This model brings you from the initial thinking point to the end
point of evaluating performance and defining potential learnings.

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The first phase of the PROPEL model is Plan.

We have already talked extensively about planning, but here you can see how it speaks to the rest of your
strategy. The planning phase of the PROPEL model is an analysis of the current situation, even before
making any decisions about the potential direction of the strategy.

The planning phase’s purpose is to create your foundation. This is the stage where you can map your
resources and how much of the existing resources you can allocate to this strategy. Before even thinking
about the strategy and the goals, do you have the resources to put a new strategy together? Once you
have mapped the resources such as budget and employees, you can then think in-depth about why you
want to put this strategy together.

If you are planning, most likely there is something to be accomplished. With the resources that you have
in mind, now you need to set your product and value proposition. You know you have the resources to
create a new campaign, but what actually can you bring to the market? Is investing in this new strategy
worth it at this point in time? Is your competitive advantage strong enough? Is the market ready for your
product?

Now, you know you have the resources and you know your product is valuable to the market, but what
will the ideal timeframe for this strategy be? You need to know if the employee who owns the project will
have the time and bandwidth. Is the budget already in or do you need to wait? Is there another priority
that will come first and that the budget allocated to this strategy will depend on?

This stage can and should be influenced by your past experiences. If the last campaigns you ran you were
short on time or budget, maybe you can adapt the current planning to overcome these obstacles and
prevent failure.

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The second stage of the PROPEL model is the Research stage.

The research stage should help marketers narrow down their audience and segment them into different
groups, making them as specific as possible, ensuring their strategy resonates with each segment. Defining
the audience will inform the digital marketer on the best way to position the product, where to advertise, the
type of content to develop, the correct keywords to target, and the imagery and words to use that will appeal
to different audience segments.

During the research phase, the digital marketer has multiple marketing tools to map and visualize the
findings. A good example is using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis
so the marketer can add elements under each of the columns of the model and pinpoint the obstacles and
limitations the product will face in the market from an external perceptive. In a similar manner, they can list
the selling point of the product and what market trends or usage are in the product’s favor.

Another good example for defining the positioning and analyzing the differentiation factor of the current
position is using perceptual mappings. It consists of making a chart with two axes, X and Y, each
corresponding to traits that your brand and competition carry. Then position yourself and the competition on
the map to get a visual appreciation of the part of the market you are covering. The mapping is usually used
with price and quality (but can be used with whatever variations you like). You can find an example of this in
the link below.

At the end of the research stage, you should be able to answer all questions about your audience, market,
and trends, and how your product is using or tacking potential obstacles. It should be clear in the marketer’s
mind where they stand and eventually, where they want to go according to the current audience and market
study.

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The next stage is the Objective stage of the PROPEL model.

Once the digital marketing team identifies the resources needed for setting up a new strategy, who
they need to talk to, how to talk to them, and how to position their product in the market, they can
define precise objectives.

With this information, the marketer knows how they want to evolve within the market. They can
start crafting objectives based on this external information and internal business objectives. The key
in creating objectives is to make them clear enough to be shared, measured, and reported on, and
make sure that they measure the correct data that will resonate with the broader business
organization goals and demand.

The main purpose of this stage is to establish clear objectives for a digital marketing strategy and
establish clear KPIs that can be reported on.

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The fourth stage in the PROPEL model is the Prepare phase.

With objectives set, resources available, and research to back up decisions, you are
ready to start shaping the strategy!

In this phase, marketers focus on the tactical part of the strategy, such as content,
concepts, media, duration, and so on. The purpose of this stage is to gather together
all assets, resources, and material to actually put the strategy into action. It is during
this stage that the team will mostly work with external stakeholders such as media
vendors, creative agencies, and social media to set the price and timeframe for the
planned effort.

All the material that will be created and media that will be booked should be
validated against the objectives. Do they actually solve this objective and how?
Keeping the objective in mind will prevent losing time and money on actions that do
not deliver. During the preparation stage, digital marketers should plan by the day,
divide up ownership of activities, and agree on a performance review frequency.

This stage can additionally be the time for internal communication and making other
teams aware of what is being launched and how they can participate, use the
material, help, and test or review content if necessary.

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The Execute stage of the PROPEL model is focused on implementing the strategy.

Once all the assets are ready, it’s time to kickstart the strategy! Each stakeholder owning the project will
implement, publish, distribute, and send the content developed in the Prepare phase.

They will monitor the success and failure of the different assets and media, and adapt the strategy as it
evolves by switching creatives, sharing content, and tweaking the targeting of the advertising campaign on
social, search, and so on. In order for this stage of the model to be efficient, the assets need to be ready to
ship at the end of the Prepare stage and have been tested, preventing back and forth between the two
stages if some assets do not properly fit their intended use.

For example, an agency develops some visuals to accompany a social media campaigns. They are all ready at
the end of the Prepare stage, but once in the Execute stage the marketer realizes that the format is too big
and thus the image doesn’t show on the social media posts. This means that the digital marketing team will
have to go back to the agency to change it, which will delay the campaign for a few days and may have cost
implications.

It is important to test before executing, but also while executing. Some execution will naturally require
testing such as A/B testing or simply developing multiple assets that will be switched based on performance.
Testing allows the digital marketer to reach the highest success rate in order to achieve their goals. The
digital marketing industry gives this flexibility as media and content is changeable by a simple click.

While in the execution phase, the different stakeholders can benefit from regular meetings to assess the
success of each tactic and decide changes together but also to simply keep informed. During this stage, the
digital marketing team could work closely with sales to ensure that all generated and qualified leads get
proper attention. Also ensure leads are properly nurtured and picked up by the correct team to be moved
through the buyer’s journey.
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The Learn stage evaluates the success and failure of the strategy as a whole.

The aim is to consistently develop content, improve performance, and gain insights for the benefit of
future strategies.

During this stage, each stakeholder will gather the appropriate data, analyze it, and pin down what was
successful - according to the initial set objectives and target. You should also be able to point out why it
was successful and identify other parts of the execution that didn’t deliver as expected. This stage is
about analyzing reasons behind successes and assessing the actual gain based on the point of
departure.

A report should be put together to present the general results and performances of the strategy.
Compare it against the marketing objectives and see how they align with the business objectives. This
will help show the value of the strategy at an organizational level. It can be helpful for future reference
and buying to capitalize on former success and collect appropriate data on how segments of the
audience responded differently to the campaign set.

At the end of this stage, the strategy is over until the next one, but all the learnings and reports will be
used on the next digital marketing effort as a starting point and a reference throughout the next
campaign or project.

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