BRANDING STRATEGIES AND

DIGITAL ADVERTISING
Lecturer: Teodora Șaguna
Marketing enthusiast for over 15years.
Traveler.
Lifestyle entrepreneur.
Contact

@teodora saguna

teodora_saguna@yahoo.com
CURICULA
• Introduction. The changing digital environment - digital landscape
• The changing digital environment - digital disruption. A comparison
between communication for digital brands versus brick & mortar brands
• Building a digital strategy-Digital marketing audit. How to conduct it and
why it helps.
• Building a digital strategy - Setting digital objectives. How to write a digital
brief
• Developing the digital strategy.
• Creating a digital plan. Selecting the best digital mix.
• Allocating budgets for a digital plan
• Setting metrics, KPIs and objectives
• Online media mix: Google Ads (Google Search, Google Display Network,
Youtube)
• Online media mix: Social Media, Content Marketing
• . Direct marketing in online: email communication
• Monitoring and Measuring Digital Marketing activities. How to measure
online in offline.
EVALUATION

Evaluation based on individual project: The project topics

will be various, but will rely on creating a digital strategy for
a brand

Presence: 50% required

10 Blogs That You Should Be Reading

1. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/: Seth Godin blogs on marketing

insight found in everyday life
2. http://www.techcrunch.com/: Group edited blog about web 2.0 and
technology
3. http://www.briansolis.com/:Looks at Social Media and PR 2.0
4. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/: Matt Cutts is search expert who
works for Google and blogs about Gadgets, Google, and SEO
5. http://www.seomoz.org/blog: Search and SEO blog
6. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/: Social Media blog written by industry
expert
7. http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/: A comical look at the latest
advertising, main
8. http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/: Looks at Search and Online
Marketing
9. www.smartinsights.com: looks at digital marketing strategies
10. www.econsultancy.com (blog section)
Recommended books

1. Ira Kaufman and Chris Horton, Digital Marketing

Integrating Strategy and Tactics with Values
2. Philip, Kotler and Gary, Armstrong, Principles of
Marketing, 17th edition, Pearson.
3. Dave, Chaffey and Fiona, Ellis-Chadwick, (2015) Digital
Marketing, Strategy, Implementation and Practice
6thedition
DIGITAL STRATEGY & DIGITAL OBJECTIVES
Lecture 4 & 5
What is a digital marketing strategy?
Provides a consistent direction for an organisation’s digital
marketing activities so they integrate with other marketing activities
and support its objectives.

Digital marketing strategy aims to

• Provide future direction to digital marketing activities
• Start from the analysis of the organisation’s external environment
and internal resources to inform strategy
• Articulate objectives
• Select strategic options to achieve digital marketing objectives
• Include strategy formulation – positioning strategy
• Specify what resources will be deployed to achieve the strategy
Mc Donald’s founder story – strategy eg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXM9MHvzE-k&t=311s
Strategy vs. tactics
Strategy vs. tactics
STRATEGY

Strategists sit at the top of the command chain. They

determine overall what needs to be achieved and then
direct teams, who have to make it happen through a series
of actions.

Strategy is a strong overarching vision, intended to fulfill

predetermined goals and objectives. Strategy is the plan
that ensures all your day to day activities (tactics)
contribute to monthly, quarterly and annual business goals.
Strategy vs. tactics
TACTIS

Tactics are used in action; they are in the thick of it. They don’t make
“big” decisions, which take time and knowledge of the bigger picture.

Tactics are highly practical things you will do every day. Writing
blog posts, sending tweets, replying to emails, outreach to bloggers,
changing page titles and appointments you make/attend etc

Strategy is about thinking and planning, tactics are about taking

action to make the plan.
Strategy vs. tactics
Strategic Tactical
Timeframe Long Term Short term
Focus Broad Narrow
Key tasks Defining market and Day-to-day marketing
competitive position activity

Information & Unstructured, external, Structured, internal,

problem solving speculative repetitive

Example Segmentation Price discounting

Communications
campaign
Let’s take an example
Business goal:

• Increase sales revenue by 25% by the end of the year

Marketing Objectives

• Increase Awareness of our website to target audience by 100%

by the end of the year
• Increase traffic on website by 50% compared with last year
• Increase repeat purchases by 10% compared with last year
• Increase average order value from 50 eur to 55 eur this month
Let’s take an example

Example strategy:

1. Engage target audience at key touch points when

they are receptive to brand messages
2. Drive traffic from new unique visitors to the website
3. Encourage repeat purchases from existing
customers
4. Increase average order value within the shopping
cart
 Let’s take an example
Tactics Example

1a. Run TV ads targeted at target audience in the middle of the day
1b. Run Facebook advertising at lunchtimes based around similar interests
1c. Run online banner advertising on XYZ sites targeted at target audience in the evenings
1e. Sponsor local sporting events

2a. Ensure website URL is featured in TV ads

2b. Add URL to Facebook and instagram Bio
2c. Start 10+ conversations per day with TA on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram
2d. Share video blog posts to people on Facebook (monitoring for people asking Qs and responding)

3a. Email existing customers with referral % deal for new customers
3b. Print vouchers added to all orders sent out this month
3c. Invite a friend to enter mechanism (opt-in email data capture)

4a. Add attractive deals to the cart automatically (worth around 10% of transaction value)
4b. Increase the Free Delivery Threshold from eur 35 to eur45
4c. Add gift wrapping options to the cart (with images of premium gift packaging)
4d. Up-sell services like same day deliver/ 1 h delivery
Setting objectives
In order for strategy to be effective we need to outline goals and know the
audience.
GOALS= OBJECTIVES

OBJECTIVES NEEED TO BE SMART

• Specific (simple, significant) – Can the detail in the information
sufficiently pinpoint problems or opportunities?
• Measurable (expressed in quantifiable terms) – Can a quantitative or
qualitative attribute be applied to create a metric?
• Achievable (agreed, attainable)
• Relevant (realistic) – Can the information be applied to the specific
problem faced by the manager?
• Time bound (time-based, time limited) – Can the information be viewed
through time to identify trends?

Eg: Increase retention levels from 50% to 75% within 18 months. Acquire 15 new
customers every month for 12 months.
How to set SMART objectives
SPECIFIC
Your goal should be clear and specific, otherwise you won't be able to
focus your efforts or feel truly motivated to achieve it. When drafting
your goal, try to answer the five "W" questions:

• What do I want to accomplish?

• Why is this goal important?
• Who is involved?
• Where is it located?
• Which resources or limits are involved?

Example
• Imagine that you are currently a marketing executive, and you'd like
to become head of marketing. A specific goal could be, "I want to gain
the skills and experience necessary to become head of marketing
within my organization, so that I can build my career and lead a
successful team.”
How to set SMART objectives
MEASURABLE

It's important to have measurable goals, so that you can track your
progress. A measurable goal should address questions such as:
• How much?
• How many?
• How will I know when it is accomplished?

Example
You might measure your goal of acquiring the skills to become head of
marketing by determining that you will have completed the necessary
training courses and gained the relevant experience within five years'
time.
How to set SMART objectives
ACHIEVABLE

Your goal also needs to be realistic and attainable to be successful.

An achievable goal will usually answer questions such as:
• How can I accomplish this goal?
• How realistic is the goal, based on other constraints, such as financial
factors?

Example
You might need to ask yourself whether developing the skills required
to become head of marketing is realistic, based on your existing
experience and qualifications. For example, do you have the time to
complete the required training effectively? Are the necessary resources
available to you? Can you afford to do it?
How to set SMART objectives
RELEVANT

Ensure that your goal matters to you, and that it also aligns with other relevant
goals
A relevant goal can answer "yes" to these questions:
• Does this seem worthwhile?
• Is this the right time?
• Does this match our other efforts/needs?
• Am I the right person to reach this goal?
• Is it applicable in the current socio-economic environment?

Example
You might want to gain the skills to become head of marketing within your
organization, but is it the right time to undertake the required training, or work
toward additional qualifications? Are you sure that you're the right person for the
head of marketing role? Have you considered your familly goals? For example, if
you want to start a family, would completing training in your free time make this
more difficult?
How to set SMART objectives
TIME BOUND

Every goal needs a target date, so that you have a deadline to focus on
and something to work toward.
A time-bound goal will usually answer these questions:
• When?
• What can I do six months from now?
• What can I do six weeks from now?
• What can I do today?

Example
Gaining the skills to become head of marketing may require additional
training or experience , as we mentioned earlier. How long will it take you
to acquire these skills? Do you need further training, so that you're
eligible for certain exams or qualifications? It's important to give yourself
a realistic time frame for accomplishing the smaller goals that are
necessary to achieving your final objective.
Setting objectives: acquisition, conversion and
retention

Acquisition Conversion Retention

Generate awareness Converting the traffic Encouraging

of product/service/ into customers customer loyalty,
brand and repeat purchases and
encouraging trial advocacy

Search Engine Marketing Online sales promotions Email / Newsletters

Banner Advertising Emails/ Newsletters Social media
Digital PR Push notifications Sales promotions
Partnerships/Affiliates Social media Loyalty programs
Influencers Reviews Push notifications
Online videos FB / Performance marketing –
Youtube google, fb ads
What shall we consider when developing
a digital strategy
Stages in developing a digital strategy

SEGMENTATION

Identify customer needs and try to segment the market

TARGETING

Evaluate and select target segments

POSITIONING

Identify propositions for each segment

Stages in developing a digital strategy

SEGMENTATION
•Define the segments in the market
• Develop customers persona
• Customer experience

TARGETING
• Select online targeting
• Decide on targeting strategy
• •Decide which and how many segments should be targeted

POSITIONING
• Core value proposition
• Online value proposition
• Online marketing mix
Segmentation Targeting Positioning

The STP model helps marketers craft their messaging and develop and deliver
tailored and relevant messages that engage segmented, target audiences.

This approach is helpful in developing a digital strategy.

You can use STP to apply marketing personas and archetypes that help
develop relevant and targeted digital communications.

STP focuses on identifying the most valuable segments and then creating the
right marketing mix and product positioning strategy for those segments.
 SEGMENTATION
To create a correct digital marketing strategy, market
segments should be reviewed to assess:
• current market size of value
• organisation's current and future market share within the industry
• needs of each segments (and unmet needs)
• competitor market shares within the industry
• organisation and competitor offers and propositions
• usage of the site and conversion to action through web analytics.

Chaffey, and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012

 Creating CUSTOMER PERSONAS
• A persona is a “thumbnail summary of the characteristics, needs
motivations and environment of typical website users” (Chaffey & Ellis-
Chadwick, 2012)
• Using personas enables the company to design the best user experience
for its customers at all touchpoints, which is a key success factor in today’s
business environment.
• Profiling can be based on numerous factors:
• Demographics – ages, gender, education, occupation, company size
(B2B), position in buying unit (B2B)
• Psychographics – goals, tasks, motivations
• Webographics – how they use the online channel: experience, usage
location, usage form, frequency, how they interact online.
 Creating CUSTOMER PERSONAS

• A marketing persona is more like a character in a book. They have passions,

strengths, and flaws.
• How to create a marketing persona. There are two ways to create marketing
personas.
1. you can perform a series of interviews with your customers and piece together
common characteristics into one persona for each demographic.
2. you can imagine what your target person would look like. If you are planning on
launching something and you don’t have customers to talk to yet, you will have to
take this route.
Creating CUSTOMER PERSONAS
Creating CUSTOMER PERSONAS
 Creating a positioning strategy
The next stage in the marketing strategy development is the creation of a
positioning strategy.

An effective positioning strategy considers the strengths and weaknesses

of the organization, the needs of the customers and market and
the position of competitors.

In an online context, organisations can position their products/services

relative to the competition according to four main variables:
• Product quality: focuses upon the characteristics of the product or
customer benefits.
• Price
• Service quality
• Fulfilment time
Creating a positioning strategy
• Identify how you want to position your product to target the
most valuable customer segments. Then, you can select
the marketing mix that will be most effective for each of them.
• First, consider why customers should purchase your product
rather than those of your competitors. Do this by identifying
your unique selling proposition , and draw a positioning
map to understand how each segment perceives your product,
brand or service. This will help you determine how best to
position your offering.
• Next, look at the wants and needs of each segment, or the
problem that your product solves for these people. Create
a value proposition that clearly explains how your product/
service will meet this requirement better than any of your
competitors' products, and then develop a marketing campaign
that presents this value proposition.
POSITIONING MAPS – eg.
Creating a Value Proposition

The full positioning of a brand or a product is called the

value proposition. The value proposition refers to the full
mix of benefits on which the product or brand is positioned.

In simple terms, it is the answer to the customer’s question:

Why should I buy this product (or brand)?
The ONLINE value proposition
Online value proposition clarifies the differential advantage and
positioning of an organisation in online.
It involves developing messages which:
• Reinforce core brand proposition and credibility
• Communicate what a visitor can get from an online brand
• That they can’t get from the brand offline
• They can’t get from competitors of intermediaries
• Communicating these messages to all appropriate online and offline
customer touch points in different levels of detail
UBER - SEGMENTATION. TARGETING.
POSITIONING
Uber uses a mix of demographic and geographic segmentation
variables which helped the company pricing its services accordingly. Both
geographic and demographic segmentation is important because
Uber needs to know which areas to target for customers who are ready to
use an “on order transportation service” over public transport services.
You will not find Uber in rural areas but mainly in urban areas only where it
replaces taxis.

Uber is a global brand yet it goes local. Uber tried to capture the pulse of
every city they are launching their service in and then curating the content
which suited the consumers of that city or country.
UBER - SEGMENTATION. TARGETING.
POSITIONING
Because of the very structure of Uber as a company, there is a huge pricing
advantage to the end customer when they compare Uber taxis vs publicly available
models of transport.

Differentiating targeting and positioning strategy is used by Uber in order to the share
of wallet customer brings in and how to increase wallet size by upselling.
If we want to define the type of positioning is Price related positioning
- “Cost based differentiation”. -> POSITIONING BASED ON PRICE

User benefit based and pricing positioning strategy is used by Uber to attract
customers from different strata of the society. Because day to day travel is a huge
cost to customers, positioning on the basis of economy makes a huge difference in
the mindset of the customers.
NETFLIX -SEGMENTATION. TARGETING.
POSITIONING
Since 2016 Netflix has stopped segmenting its members by geography and
has started treating its 93 million global members as a single, cohesive
audience or a community of members with similar movie and TV show
preferences.
Netflix has always used such clusters of people across boundaries having a
similar taste for TV show genres.
Netflix uses differentiating targeting strategy in order to increase its loyal/
repeat customers through its subscription-based model.

Positioned as a subscription-based video on demand platform which is

easily accessible from anywhere anytime on the go on mobile/Tablets or on
TV, it has rich in experience and broadcast quality video ultimately meant to
fulfill the digital consumption desire of the audiences. -> POSITIONING ON
QUALITY OF SERVICE
Creating a digital brief - structure eg.
1. CONTEXT -> set up the market context for your brand
• Overall industry environment
• Market share
• Competition
• Brand context: products, services it offers; Main benefits for the
customer
2. TARGET ->clearly describe the profiles and segments you plan to
target. Include customers personas if you have them defined
• Demographics
• Psihographics
• Webographics
3. BRAND POSITIONING -> clearly define your brand values, mission ,
vision and positioning on the market
4. STRATEGY and Value Proposition -> include the strategy you
have defined for this brief and the online value proposition
Creating a digital brief - structure eg.
5. OBJECTIVES -> clearly define what are your objectives
with this strategy
6. AENCY TASK – what you require the agency to do :
Create a creative campaign etc
+ Deadline
Bibliography
• Chaffey, D and Ellis-Chadwick, F (2012) “Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice”,
Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall.
• Chaffey, D (2007) Online Value Proposition. Davechaffey.com
• www.smartinsights.com
DEVELOPING A DIGITAL MARKETING MIX
Lecture 6
What is our goal with digital media?
• Traffic building
Use online media and offline promotion to drive traffic to a
website which convert to sales, leads etc.
• Conversion and engagement
Use on-site communications to deliver an effective, relevant
message to the visitor
• Third-party site reach goals
Reach, influence and engage with prospective customers on
third-party media sites
• Multichannel marketing goals
Integrate all communications channels to help achieve a
multichannel marketing approach
• Longer-term brand engagement goals
Sustain long term interactions leading to additional sales
 Online media types
Advertising
Paid search
Display ads
Affiliate marketing
Paid media

Owned media Earned media Partners & PR

Publishers editorials
Digital assets Influencers
Website Social networks
Blog Word of mouth
Mobile app
Social media channels

Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2015

 Key digital media channels
1. Search marketing
Search engine optimisation
(SEO)
Paid search (PPC): Google
& Facebook
2. Digital PR 3. Online Partnership
Publisher outreach Affiliate marketing
Community participation Sponsorship
Links in articles Co-branding
Brand protection Link building

Offline communications Offline communications

Advertising Direct mail
PR Website & Exhibitions
Sales Promotion Merchandising
Sponsorship Social presence Packaging
Events Word-of-mouth

6. Social media marketing

5. Email
4. Display ads Influencers
Internal data bases email
Site-specific media buys Bloggers / vloggers
Cold (rented lists)
Ad networks Managing own social
Co-branded
Sponsorship channels
Ads in 3rd party newsletters
Viral campaigns
Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2015
How we select the best online media mix?
• Quality
• Attention-grabbing capability
• Stimulating emotions
• Information content and detail
• Clutter
• Time
• Short lead time
• Long exposure time
• Coverage
• Frequency
• Reach
• Cost
• Development/production cost
• Media cost
How we integrate online with offline?
In order to integrate digital media and offline media, an
organization should consider some factors
• Coherence – communications are connected
• Consistency – both media reinforce same messages,
and are not contradictory.
• Continuity – communications are connected and
consistent through time.
• Complementary – synergistic
Example - Always - #LikeAGirl campaign

Watch the campaign video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIxA3o84syY

Coherence:
• Campaign film launched on YouTube
• Campaign hashtag #LikeAGirl used across social media
• 60 second ad on TV
• ‘Confidence’ summit partnership
Consistency
• Clear central message
• Advertising referenced the hashtag
• Traffic driven to campaign landing/hub page
Example - Always - #LikeAGirl campaign

Continuity:
• Campaign continued for over two years but all subsequent
campaigns tie back to the ‘LikeAGirl’ message. -> created
a campaign umbrella
Complementary
• The media together had a viral effect and enabled
momentum to grow, meaning the campaign and message
reached a wider audience.
Bibliography
• Chaffey, D and Ellis-Chadwick, F (2012) “Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice”,
Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall.
• Fishkin, R (2013). The T-Shaped Web Marketer
• www.smartinsights.com