NEW DELHI INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

PAPER CODE: BBA 304: Digital Marketing

Credits: 4 External Marks: 75

Unit 1

Digital Marketing: Meaning, Scope and Importance

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device
or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social
media, email, and their websites to connect with current and prospective
customers.

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place
and at the right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are
already spending time: on the internet.

Enter digital marketing — in other words, any form of marketing that exists online.

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to
connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From the
website itself to a business’s online branding assets — digital advertising, email
marketing, online brochures, and beyond — there’s a spectrum of tactics that fall
under the umbrella of “digital marketing.”

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing
campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their
marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and
paid channels at their disposal.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to
generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created. The company’s
social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and
organic posts on the business’s social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer
creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more
information on the company.
Scope and Importance
Digital Marketing industry is booming not just in India but all parts of the world.
The year 2016 took the industry by surprise with over 1.5 lakh job opportunities in
the Digital Marketing domain. Well, the following was a bigger surprise when only
the first quarter of 2017 marked for 8 lakh job opportunities.

The surveys conducted by several forums have predicted this number to grow with
Digitalisation in the nation. Our Prime Minister has been actively promoting the
idea of Digital India. PM Modi’s digital India campaign gained massive popularity.
The initiative of Government of India is aimed at providing easy services to its
natives.

Now imagine when a nation’s government is promoting the digital interaction,

what do you think will be the Digital Marketing scope in that nation.

1. As a tool for communication

A. Digital marketing gives fair opportunities to all kinds of businesses
B. Digital Spending Up
C. The power of smart phone as game changer
D. Consumer attention and online dominance
E. Data Explosion
F. Bright Future

2. As a career in marketing
A. Digital marketing manager
B. Content writers
C. Content marketing managers
D. Inbound marketing manager
E. Social media marketing expert
F. SEO executive
G. Conversion rate optimizer
H. Copywriter
I. E-mail marketer
J. Web analytics executive
Importance of Digital marketing

1. Provides equal opportunity for all kinds of businesses

2. More cost effective than traditional marketing
3. Delivers better conversion
4. Helps to generate better revenues
5. Facilitates interaction with targeted audiences
6. Caters the mobile consumers
7. Builds brand reputation
8. Influence customers to take favorable action via CTA

Types of Digital marketing

1. SEM(Search engine marketing)
2. SEO(Search engine optimization)
3. PPC(Pay Per click)
4. Content marketing
5. Email-marketing
6. Social media marketing
7. Affiliate marketing

Internet Vs. Traditional Marketing Communications

Basis of difference Traditional Marketing Digital /Internet
Marketing
1.Direction of Uni-directional Bi-directional
communication communication(company communication(business
communicates with its can communicate with
customers about its customers and customers
products or services in on can ask queries or make
direction way). suggestions to business as
well.
2.Medium of
Communication TV ad , bill board , news
paper etc. Social media websites,
chats , apps and e-mail
etc.
3. Campaign
Time consuming for Rapid campaign and can
preparation , designing be launched within no
and launching etc. time

4.Reach Best way to reach local Effective way to reach

audience local audience as well as
international customers
also.

How We Use Both Digital & Traditional Marketing

Our traditional marketing methods support our digital marketing efforts. The two
do not operate in exclusion from each other. But we only use hard copy marketing
materials to further strengthen a relationship with a contact, referral partner or
client. We don’t invest in television or radio ads, for example, but we will give
brochures to someone who is interested in our services.Rather than taking an all or
nothing approach, it appears that a multi-channel approach that leverages the
unique benefits of paper with the convenience and accessibility of digital will
perform best.

Internet Microenvironment
The environment under which organization functions determines how it will
conduct its business. Organizations have to constantly monitor and appraise the
external business environment. Organizations have to make changes in its
operations in accordance to the environment as to be profitable and effective.
Therefore, understanding the business environment is important before developing
any marketing strategy.

Specific forces such as a market place, customers, organization, etc. which directly
affects organization are referred to as micro-environment.

The internet has made a direct impact on the micro-environment of the

organization.
Market Place
The market place for an organization includes interaction between all the elements
of the micro-environment. There are five forces which impact organization in the
marketplace. The impact of internet on the five forces is as follows:

Bargaining Power of Customers: with the advent of the internet, customers have
wider choices of products than before. The increase in competition has reduced the
price level as customer demand more transparency in operations. Thus the
bargaining power of customers has increased.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers: again with wider choice due to the internet. The
bargaining power of the supplier has gone down

Threats of substitute: the internet has enabled quicker introduction of products

and services. The organization must carefully observe the introduction of substitute
in the market as to avoid losing market share.

Barriers to entry: the internet has substantially reduced establishment costs,

especially in the services industry. Therefore, organization has to carefully observe
the movement of the new entrants in the market.

Competition: the internet has started the trend of faster commoditization of

products. Thus companies need to find new ways through which it can differentiate
itself from competition.

Customers
An organization’s success is dependent on strong customer base. Therefore,
customer needs and requirements require a better understanding from the
organization. A qualitative and quantitative analysis needs to be developed by the
company to track consumer behavior and create more consumer insights. These
consumer insights can be used by marketing groups to develop specific strategies.

Companies are using demand analysis to understand and determine the potential of
the new business proposition among customers. Companies also deploy qualitative
analysis to understand perception of a consumer towards new products and
services.

After assessing demand and perception among consumer for the products and
services, companies develop marketing communication to target specific potential
customers and convert them to actual customers. This conversion marketing
technique helps companies improve their customer base.

Online sites track the way consumer navigates to reach particular destination or
buying decision. This helps companies to design better websites. The internet
search engines are the first stop for many consumers to begin searching for a
particular product or service. Hence it is important to understand the phrases or
sentence consumers are using to reach a particular product or service.

Companies divide consumer into a particular group or segment based upon their
demographics and psychographics.

Online Buying Behavior

It is very important for an organization to understand how the internet works in a
multiple channel scenario. Thus, companies develop different models to
understand online buying behavior.

Companies have started creating personas which summarize the customer needs,
requirements and environment based on their internet usage. Based on this persona,
companies develop a customer scenario. This customer scenario is series of task or
path taken to come at a desired buying decision.

This customer scenario is part of the overall buying experience and it involves
multiple channel partners. Therefore multi-channel strategies have to be built in
assessing overall customer online buying behavior.

Competitors
Online business is dynamic in nature. Therefore, it is important for organizations to
monitor usage of the internet by the competition. The internet is the new medium
through which companies undertake the task for customer retention and
acquisition.

This dynamism has introduced new services and innovative marketing mix more
frequently compared to traditional marketing techniques. Benchmarking also has
become dynamic and cannot be considered one of, activity, but has to be
continuous.

The strategies of traditional competitor are well known. However, with the internet
and globalization, new entrants are always posing a constant competition to the
organization.
Companies for benchmarking should analyze competitor’s web site, identify the
current trends and keep an eye on future trends.

Suppliers
Total customer satisfaction is the key in developing long and fruitful relationship
with consumers. Therefore, it becomes important for the organization to monitor
supplier, as they do affect quality or experience for customers.

Intermediaries
Marketing intermediaries are companies which help the organization sell, promote
and distribute products and services in the market. For internet marketing, there are
online intermediary websites. These intermediary websites work as a platform
between consumers and business suppliers. The online social networks also act as
an intermediary. They provide a platform which facilitates collaboration and
exchange between various individuals.

The companies need to maintain constant watch on the internet environment. This
will help organization respond to ever changing and evolving internet micro
environment.

CUSTOMERS EMPLOYEES COMPETITORS

COMPANY

SUPPLIERS MEDIA
SHAREHOLDERS
Use of B2C and B2B internet Marketing
While business-to-business and business-to-consumer Internet marketing strategies
are two different animals, in that one model targets businesses and the other
consumers, the benefits that B2B and B2C provide to marketers are about the
same. In short, both models help businesses increase sales in an increasingly
competitive marketplace. In 2012, in the United States the number of potential
Internet buyers in this increasingly competitive marketplace reached a new peak:
245 million potential buyers online.

Increased Awareness
With over six billion Internet users across the world, it’s obvious why B2B and
B2C Internet marketing increases awareness of businesses and their products or
services. More than that, with more B2B and B2C companies marketing
themselves on the Internet, marketers are in a better position to pick up details
about their competition. Additionally, with the advent of the social networking
explosion, more business and consumer patrons are voicing their opinions about
various products and services. This gives marketers even more empowering info
about what the market is thinking – knowledge they wouldn’t have if they
themselves weren’t using the Internet.

Better Interaction
The social network explosion, in addition to email and website marketing, also
gives marketers the ability to interact more directly with their customers, whether
businesses or consumers. An important part of this interaction is educating
customers, either as a group or as individuals. Marketing strategists at the firm
Customer Paradigm cite business authors Margaret Clark and Carol Pearson, who
say that educated customers will buy more than confused ones. So whether it’s
marketing via email, podcasts, a website or social networks, marketers who are
interactive on the Web increase their authority in the marketplace – another
advantage from using the Internet.

Better Service
Better education relates to better service. In the days of mom-and-pop stores,
customer service usually meant the interaction you got once you walked in the
store, when what you ordered was delivered to your doorstep or when you called
via telephone. Now that more B2B and B2C companies are using the Internet,
though, they’re providing marketing websites on which customers can make
contact when they have questions or concerns, and they’re sending informative
emails that don’t merely advertise but also inform their customers with practical
information. This means that customers, ideally, are getting much more robust
service.

Refined Messaging
The Internet has also provided marketers with more specific information about
their customers, such as when they’re more receptive to receiving an advertising
message. Armed with this knowledge, some B2B and B2C companies use a
marketing method called “right-time marketing.” According to business analyst
firm Garner, Inc., the statistics are too compelling to ignore: strategically timing
email marketing messages will help marketers see as much as a 600 percent rise in
performance over more lax messaging methods, such as email blasts and cold
calling.

Internet Marketing Strategy

The internet is considered as a channel partner. Hence online marketing is to be
considered as a channel marketing strategy. An Organization needs to define
specific objective from internet marketing and building communications as well as
scheme around it.

Internet marketing is one form customer touch point where companies directly
interact with existing as well as potential customers.

Integrated Strategy
The biggest challenge for the companies is to integrate internet marketing strategy
with overall marketing strategy. The prime reason for this challenge is the thought
process that has considered internet as an independent entity. Many organizations
have not made an effort to make internet as any function of the organization.

The internet is a new channel partner for many organizations. Therefore, it is

essential that companies create separate the internet marketing plan. As companies
begin to understand the full potential of internet marketing, a separate internet
marketing plan may not be required. The overall marketing plan now will be
developed considering the strategic advantage of internet marketing.

Strategy Building
Every company needs to develop a logical framework for its operations as to meet
its business objectives. The overall business objectives need to be broken to
milestones, the company has to achieve within a certain time frame. To achieve
these milestones, companies need to develop strategies around the key activities.

One of the key activities is in strategy development is marketing. The strategy

developed to achieve business objectives through marketing is called as a
marketing plan.

An internet marketing strategy building begins with understanding the current

market scenario. After analyzing market scenario, companies develop marketing
plan and specific internet related objectives. To achieve internet channel
objectives, companies develop the internet marketing plan. After developing and
defining internet marketing plan, the next step is to analyze the online presence of
the company. The company can start working towards implementation of
marketing strategy, if it already has an online presence.

A strategy would be considered incomplete, if there is no continuous monitoring of

the same. A strategy modified and re-worked based on positive or negative
feedback.

Strategy Review
An organization functions in a dynamic environment. It needs to ascertain whether
the current marketing strategies are effective or they require some modification.
This internal marketing audit looks to resolve following key activities:

 A complete review of the internal capabilities of the company, process and

resources.
 A complete review of the present market and the competition, including the micro
and the macro environment.
 A complete review of current internet contribution in the marketing plan.

Another aspect of the strategic review is to assess the current contribution of

internet marketing plan with other marketing activities. This can be done by
understanding the current internet marketing capability. The first step is to check
whether company has its own website. The next step is to check whether the
website is registered with any online business directory. The next step is to create
the website with a basic company and product information. The next step is
making the site interactive where a potential customer is able to place further
enquires. The next step is to develop the website which is capable of e-commerce
activities as well as customer service desk. The final step is to develop a full
functional website which can help the company in marketing as well as
relationship building.

Goal Setting
Any marketing strategy or plan should be constructed to support the overall
business objective of the company. Companies have a general tendency of
developing the internet marketing plan away from the overall marketing plan.
Companies have resorted to experimentation in internet marketing plan rather than
a focused approach.

This lack of clarity in the internet marketing plan has led to many failures with
companies suffering from financial loss.

Integration of the internet can be done through scenario based analysis. In the
scenario based analysis various market simulations are created to explore different
possibilities. The internet marketing role in all scenarios needs to be explored to
take the full advantage.

The financial benefits of internet marketing would be through increased sales and
better topline growth. The internet marketing would also help in customer service,
by development easy self-help guides, thus reducing overhead cost.

The intangible benefits of internet marketing would be a better corporate image,

enhanced visibility, customer relationships, better customer service etc.

Strategy Formulation
The internet is considered as a channel partner for the company and therefore it
should be part channel marketing strategy. It is important for the internet marketing
strategy considers the following:

 The strategy developed should outline objectives which generate leads and sales
from this channel.
 The strategy should target the customers which are users of the internet.
 The strategy supports the customer in making the buying decision as well as
delivering the product.
 The strategy should highlight differentiation from competition.
 The strategy should encourage consumers to use the internet along with channels.
 The strategy should help in customer acquisition as well as retention.
Implementation
The company needs to ascertain various pros and cons of internet marketing
strategies before implementation of one particular strategy. With finite resources
companies look for solutions which are implementable.

To implement an online marketing strategy, companies have various marketing

applications. Companies need to maintain portfolio of these applications and make
a careful selection depending upon risk and reward.

Post implementation it is important to maintain tracker of the strategy. These

trackers are frequently centered on, visitor tracking, lead generation, online sales
and finally customer retention.

Development of internet marketing strategy should follow the same path as that of
any marketing strategy, without forgetting uniqueness that the internet brings to the
company.

Types

 Display Advertising: The use of banner ads and other graphical advertisements to
market products online.
 Search Engine Marketing: Using search engines to help connect users with the
products and services they are most interested in. Companies can pay to receive
preferential ranking in a list of search results.
 Search Engine Optimization: A free and organic way for companies to improve
their visibility on search engines.
 Social Media Marketing: Using sites like Facebook and Twitter to connect with
customers.
 Email Marketing: Communicating with customers through the use of carefully
designed emails.
 Referral Marketing: Using internet channels to encourage consumers to
recommend products to their friends and families.
 Affiliate Marketing: Working with other businesses to make it easier for
consumers to shop for products online.
 Inbound Marketing: Boosting the value of a company’s web presence by adding
unique content like blogs, games, and tutorial videos.
 Video Marketing: Using web videos for promotional purposes.
Unit 2

The Marketing Mix. (7 P’s) in online context

The 4Ps were designed at a time where businesses were more likely to sell
products, rather than services and the role of customer service in helping brand
development wasn’t so well know. Over time, Booms and Pitner added three
extended ‘service mix P’s’: Participants, Physical evidence and Processes, and
later Participants was renamed People. Today, it’s recommended that the full
7Ps of the marketing mix are considered when reviewing competitive strategies.

The 7Ps helps companies to review and define key issues that affect the marketing
of its products and services and is often now referred to as the 7Ps framework for
the digital marketing mix.
Although it’s sometimes viewed as dated, we believe the 4Ps are an essential
strategy tool to select their scope and is particularly useful for small businesses.
For startups reviewing price and revenue models today, using the Business Model
Canvas for marketing strategy is a great alternative since it gives you a good
structure to follow.

Companies can also use the 7Ps model to set objectives, conduct a SWOT
analysis and undertake competitive analysis. It’s a practical framework to
evaluate an existing business and work through appropriate approaches whilst
evaluating the mix element as shown below and ask yourself the following
questions:

 Products/Services: How can you develop your products or services?

 Prices/Fees: How can we change our pricing model?
 Place/Access: What new distribution options are there for customers to experience
our product, e.g. online, in-store, mobile etc.
 Promotion: How can we add to or substitute the combination within paid, owned
and earned media channels?
 Physical Evidence: How we reassure our customers, e.g. impressive buildings,
well-trained staff, great website?
 People: Who are our people and are there skills gaps?
 Partners: Are we seeking new partners and managing existing partners well?.

An example of a company using the 7Ps strategy

Take a look at HubSpot as an example, which was founded in 2006; Hubspot has
8,000+ customers in 56 countries and sells software. What does their marketing
mix look like?
This is a top level overview; you would take this into greater detail and ask the
following questions:

8. Products/Services: Integrated toolset for SEO, blogging, social media, website,

email and lead intelligence tools.
9. Prices/Fees: Subscription-based monthly, Software-As-Service model based on
number of contacts in database and number of users of the service.
10. Place/Access: Online! Network of Partners, Country User Groups.
11. Promotion: Directors speak at events, webinars, useful guides that are amplified
by SEO and effective with SEO. PPC Social media advertising, e.g. LinkedIn.
12. Physical Evidence: Consistent branding across communications.
13. Processes: More sales staff are now involved in conversion.
14. People: Investment in online services.
15. Partners: Hubspot looks to form partnerships with major media companies such
as Facebook and Google plus local partners including Smart Insights who it is
collaborating with on research in Europe.

Managing the online customer experience

1. Create a clear customer experience vision
The first step in your customer experience strategy is to have a clear customer-
focused vision that you can communicate with your organization. The easiest way
to define this vision is to create a set of statements that act as guiding principles.

For example, Zappos use their Zappos core family values and these values are
embedded into their culture; which includes delivering wow through service, be
humble and embracing change.

Once these principles are in place, they will drive the behavior of your
organization. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart
and they should be embedded into all areas of training and development.

2. Understand who your customers are

The next step in building upon these customer experience principles is to bring to
life the different type of customers who deal with your customer support teams. If
your organization is going to really understand customer needs and wants, then
they need to be able to connect and empathize with the situations that your
customers face.
One way to do this is to create customer personas and give each persona a name
and personality. For example, Anne is 35 years old; she likes new technology and
is tech savvy enough to follow a video tutorial on her own, whereas John (42 years
old) needs to be able to follow clear instructions on a web page.

By creating personas, your customer support team can recognize who they are and
understand them better. It’s also an important step in becoming truly customer
centric.

3. Create an emotional connection with your customers

You’ve heard the phrase “it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”?

Well, the best customer experiences are achieved when a member of your team
creates an emotional connection with a customer.

One of the best examples of creating an emotional connection comes from Zappos,
when a customer was late on returning a pair of shoes due to her mother passing
away. When Zappos found out what happened, they took care of the return
shipping and had a courier pick up the shoes without cost. But, Zappos didn’t stop
there. The next day, the customer arrived home to a bouquet of flowers with a note
from the Zappos customer service team who sent their condolences.

Research by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that more than 50% of
an experience is based on an emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive
decisions.

Customers become loyal because they are emotionally attached and they remember
how they feel when they use a product or service. A business that optimizes for an
emotional connection outperforms competitors by 85% in sales growth.

And, according to a recent Harvard Business Review study titled “The New
Science of Customer Emotions“, emotionally engaged customers are:

 At least three times more likely to recommend your product or service

 Three times more likely to re-purchase
 Less likely to shop around (44% said they rarely or never shop around)
 Much less price sensitive (33% said they would need a discount of over 20%
before they would defect).

4. Capture customer feedback in real time

How can you tell if you are delivering a wow customer experience?

You need to ask – And ideally you do this by capturing feedback in real time. Post-
interaction surveys and similar customer experience tools can be delivered using a
variety of automated tools through email and calls.

And of course, it’s even possible to make outbound calls to customers in order to
gain more insightful feedback.

It’s important to tie customer feedback to a specific customer support agent, which
shows every team member the difference they are making to the business.

5. Use a quality framework for development of your team

By following the steps above, you now know what customers think about the
quality of your service compared to the customer experience principles you have
defined. The next step is to identify the training needs for each individual member
of your customer support team.

Many organizations assess the quality of phone and email communication,

however, a quality framework takes this assessment one step further by scheduling
and tracking your teams development through coaching, eLearning and group
training.

6. Act upon regular employee feedback

Most organizations have an annual survey process where they capture the overall
feedback of your team; how engaged they are and the businesses ability to deliver
an exceptional service.

But, what happens in the 11 months between these survey periods?

Usually, nothing happens. And this is where continuous employee feedback can
play a role using tools that allow staff to share ideas on how to improve the
customer experience and for managers to see how staff is feeling towards the
business.

For example, using project management software or social media tools, you can
create a closed environment where your organization can leave continuous
feedback.

7. Measure the ROI from delivering great customer experience

And finally, how do you know if all this investment in your teams, process and
technology are working and paying off?

Planning website design

1. Point of sale
Is this your only point of sale or is it to compliment a brick and mortar shop?

This question is mostly to do with stock and POS systems. If you have a physical
shop with inventory shared between the website and the shop, the systems need to
‘talk’ to each other so inventory on your site is always accurate.

This will affect the platform and systems integrated.

2. Photos
Product photos are an essential part of an online shop. If you only have a few items
to sell, a one off professional photo shoot will be enough but if you update stock
regularly, invest in a good camera and a photo box, so all photos are consistent and
look professional.

Remember – white background photos will work best with most websites.

3. Delivery / Postage:
How will you package and post your goods? can they be posted or must be
delivered door to door?

Are you restricted by delivery locations (state, country)?

How much will it cost you to package / post deliver? will you charge a fee?

These are important questions to ask as this will need to be set up as part of your
online shop. If you are not set up for delivery, you cannot start selling online!

4. Terms
Terms, exchange, refunds – these are issues that you will need to consider before
launching your online shop.

In most cases you will be able to use a template document provided by the
platform (for example Shopify has some excellent examples) but if your terms are
a bit more complex you might want a lawyer to review and draft a document for
you.

5. Payment
Are you set up to receive online payments? There are many options available they
vary in cost. The platform you use will also affect the decision.

For example, Squarespace only works with STRIPE and PayPal & Shopify works
with a wider selection. Do your research and compare benefits and fees.

6. Processing
How do you want to communicate to customers once they purchased?

Most system offer an automated email confirmation and you can change the text /
look of these emails. You can also send a confirmation once package left or send a
customer survey after. There are many options and it will be a good idea to take
note once you come across a shopping experience you like. Everything matters and
effects the overall customer experience.

7. Time
Maintaining an active online shop takes time!

If you are expecting a few orders a day, take into account handling and processing
orders, posting orders, and handling customer enquiries.

Understanding site user Requirement

The first step in developing any eCommerce application is to interview the user
base to generate a list of features to be included in the application. This
comprises the important input for defining the capabilities of the application.

There are two sets of users of shopping cart applications: site administrators and
end users who purchase items using their Web browsers. After interviewing end
users and administrators, application requirements such as the following may be
generated.
End User Requirements
End user features that facilitate the enjoyment of Internet shopping might include
the following:

 Users should be able to use the eCommerce application from any Web browser
supporting HTML 3.2 (or later) and cookies.
 Visitors new to the site should be able to register by themselves. Users will be
differentiated by unique user identifiers.
 Transactions should be secure. That is, a basic authentication mechanism must be
built into the application to prevent unauthorized persons from making transactions
on a user’s behalf. Secure socket layers (SSL) or other encryption mechanisms are
typically used to thwart the access of sensitive information (such as credit card
numbers) sent to the server by Web browsers.
 Site visitors should be able to purchase goods or services via the electronic store.
 Users should be able to view a complete list of specified items available through
the site.
 Users should be able to search for items by related attributes. For example, visitors
might search for CDs by artist, album title and/or genre or search for books by
author, title and/or ISBN number.
 Site visitors should be able to search the database using relevant keywords to
identify items of interest.
 Users should be able to select items of interest and add them to their shopping carts
for future purchase.
 Visitors should be able to modify the quantities of items in and/or delete items
from their shopping carts before checkout.
 All selected items should be shipped to the user following purchase.
 Users should be able to view the status of items they have ordered.
 Large numbers of users should be able to use the application simultaneously.
 The performance of the application should not degrade with an increase in the
number of goods or services offered.

Site Design and Structure

A Web page’s structural elements are the basic parts that Internet users often
expect to see when they visit a website. Understanding the location and purpose of
the main structures can help you relay information about your small business and
products or services in ways that attract visitors and retain their interest.

Page Header
The header is the area that runs horizontally across the top of a page and is
commonly the same on most every page in the site. It helps make a website
visually identifiable to visitors. Similar to a letter heading or letterhead at the top of
stationery, the page header displays information about the person or company
controlling the website via title text, logo, background images, tagline or a
combination of these elements. Other elements often placed in the header include a
site-search box, shopping cart link, site-access link and navigation tools.

Navigation Tools
Web-page navigation tools are located in several areas outside of the header
including the right or left sides, center or bottom of the page. They offer page-to-
page navigation or instant jump to the top of the current page. Designs feature text-
or image-based one-click links organized standalone or in tab, drop-down or pop-
up menu and list layouts. Some sites also feature breadcrumb trails — links to
every page you would visit to reach the current page organized left-to-right on a
horizontal line in the header or top center of the page in the order of your
movement through the site, if you were to follow the site’s organizational
hierarchy.

Sidebar Columns
Sidebar columns, also known as sidebars, run vertically along the left or right side
of Web pages. They usually provide primary or secondary site-navigation links and
information you want to emphasize such as contact details or important updates
about the site operator or the topic of the site. Other elements often placed in
sidebars include personal or partner advertising, a site search box and search filter
tools. Sidebars usually display information as an unbroken column or a column
divided into sections or boxes.

Primary Content
The primary content area on a page is traditionally located to the left or right of a
sidebar or between two sidebars. It provides main page information you want a
visitor to focus on. The primary content area features a main title and content
formatted into concise text paragraphs, images, videos or combination elements
divided by spaces or subheadings. It also often features elements previously
mentioned such as a breadcrumb trail and jump navigation links, as well as update
information such as content publication or update dates and links to websites
relevant to the content or that you think would interest visitors.

Page Footer
The footer runs horizontally across the bottom of pages. It provides navigation
links visitors might find useful, as well as details about a page or website such as a
logo, copyright date, website operator’s name, page author name, legal statements
and links to the site terms of use and privacy policies. Other elements often placed
in the footer include links to the site operator’s contact page or email address, job
postings page, feedback-form page, support page and frequently asked questions
page.

Developing and Testing Content

Usability research helps organizations understand user needs, identify potential
issues, and generate ideas for improvement. While usability testing is often used to
evaluate a website’s user interface (UI), this method is also invaluable for
discovering the best way to present information on your website. By paying
attention to how people read, interpret, and access content, you gain a greater
understanding of how to communicate, structure, and format information.

It’s great when sites have good navigation. But too often we see the user
experience fail at the content level: People can navigate to the content but don’t
understand it. Analysis shows that people often use websites to collect, compare,
and choose products or services. Have users evaluate your digital copy so that
articles and information match their needs and expectations. People read online
content differently than printed material.

The usability study methodologies for evaluating UI versus content are fairly
similar. However, there are nuances to the methodologies that are worth
considering when the primary goal of the usability study is evaluating digital copy.

Below are suggestions for how to get the most out of your research.

Tips for Testing Content on Websites

1. Avoid recruiting proxy users: In every usability study, you should always aim to
test your designs with representative users. However, when testing content, your
recruiting criteria should be even more stringent. Take extra care to recruit the
right participants.

Those people evaluating the information on your site should truly be representative
of your user population: they should have the same mindset, situation, AND user
goals. The flexibility you have with recruitment depends on the use case and type
of information on your site. You may have some leeway with general e-commerce
sites, but for content-rich, research-intensive activities or for B2B websites, you
must find people who fit the exact circumstance.

In other words, the scenario that you give people should match the current problem
they need to solve. Unlike regular UI-focused studies, content-focused studies
should not ask test participants to “pretend” or “imagine” to be in a situation. The
risk of invalidating the study is much higher for content because the participants’
motivation is much more important for obtaining accurate insights.

It is impossible for proxy users to instantly acquire knowledge or know the

situation well enough to assess the value of the content. For example, people who
have just been diagnosed with a serious medical condition are more likely to relate
to the content accurately than someone who is asked to pretend to be interested
about a disease.

It’s not good enough to recruit participants who generally fit the demographic
profile, such as by age, gender, income level, and location. Such criteria are too
broad to give you deep insight. General recruitment criteria won’t cut it. You must
find people who are actually in the process of researching the information you are
evaluating.

2. Be aware of the limitations of unmoderated studies: Unmoderated studies are

done without the facilitator present: Participants work on their own. This method
can be useful for getting user feedback on narrow parts of the site such as
workflow or snippets of information. However, when trying to discover how
people conduct research, compare offerings, and make decisions, the best approach
is to conduct a moderated study, where the facilitator is present.

Content studies tend to have long stretches of time when the user is simply
scanning page after page—in silence. When left alone (such as in an online un
moderated situation) users may feel awkward and wonder whether they’re being
helpful. Without proper feedback and reassurance, participants often alter their
behavior by approaching the task in a more superficial manner. Task times are
often shorter for online studies than in traditional test settings. When on their own,
participants assume that the goal is to work quickly, not realistically.

Also, the facilitator can ask the user for clarifications. With un moderated studies,
you miss opportunities to ask personalized, user-tailored follow-up questions. Even
though participants are instructed to think out loud, they often forget to explain
their actions and thoughts.
3. Give tasks that are tailored for each individual: In most traditional usability
studies, researchers follow a prepared script and give study participants prescript
tasks to perform. For content testing minimize your reliance on a script. Spend
time at the beginning of each session to discuss the participant’s situation and
make sure the task scenario matches their exact circumstance. It’s OK to prepare
some more generic tasks prior to the study, but be willing to modify or craft new
ones on the spot as you learn more about the participant’s situation, and as the
session unfolds. You want to give participants the freedom to research a topic as
they please, so you uncover what’s important and what’s not. Don’t rigidly control
the activities or force an unrealistic task. The more pertinent the tasks, the more
vested people are at completing them.

The best results occur when study participants forget about the testing environment
and immerse themselves in the activity rather than merely going through the
motions. Participants can sometimes “fake” their way through simple pass or fail
activities (e.g. Find the contact name for Press Relations), but such is not the case
for exploratory tasks where having a scenario that precisely matches the person’s
current situation and emotional state is critical.

4. Remember, there is no right answer: Unlike well-specified tasks (e.g., “Find the
opening hours for the Fremont public library”), open-ended tasks don’t have a
definitive answer. Open-ended tasks are meant to assess content quality and
relevance. Use this time to learn how people explore and research, what questions
they have, how they expect information to be communicated, and whether your site
meets their needs.

Consider competitive testing: Sometimes you can get insights into your users’
needs by allowing them to search freely on the web or by letting them visit
competitors’ sites rather than restricting them to your own site. Don’t worry that
you’re wasting precious testing time: if users are truly representative, the insights
will often be revelatory. And you can always limit the free exploration to a small
part of your session.

5. Set expectations for time allocations: Open-ended tasks have vague end points,
often leaving participants wondering how to best spend their time. At the
beginning of reach session, tell people to work at their own pace and not to worry
about the time.
6. Get comfortable with silence: Expect long stretches of quiet time while the
participant focuses on processing the information. Don’t appear impatient. Avoid
being interruptive or fidgety. Injecting too many questions while users work breaks
their concentration and alters their behavior. If you need to ask a question mid-
task, keep it neutral, such as “What are you thinking?” or “What are you looking
for?” Once users answer, let them continue. Resist the temptation to blast
questions. Save questions for the end. When user testing is conducted well, users
behave authentically and the study generates realistic findings.

Integrated internet Marketing Communications (IIMC)

As search engines continue to change, so, too, must our strategies for maintaining
powerful online presences. Gone are the days where little one-off marketing
techniques made an impact. Now, the game is all about providing the user with an
all-encompassing experience online. In order to create this experience for your
website’s visitors, you need to combine a lot of digital strategies into an
“integrated digital marketing” campaign.

Integrated digital marketing is, as it sounds, the integration of multiple marketing

strategies to form a cohesive online approach for your business. Here’s what it
typically entails:

 Web development and design

 Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
 Content marketing
 Social media marketing
 Local listings management
 Paid advertising (or pay-per-click advertising) campaigns

The idea behind integrated digital marketing is that, while each individual strategy
doesn’t have a huge impact on its own, when used in conjunction, you can create a
more influential online presence.

And it’s not just some passing fad. It’s pretty much the status quo when it comes to
tackling the digital realm. Of course, there are still one-off campaigns out there,
but most agencies are moving toward integrated solutions, as a well-rounded
marketing strategy provides better visibility and ROI for businesses online.

BUZZWORD OR LEGITIMATE SERVICE?

Make no mistake—integrated digital marketing is a legitimate service provided by

digital marketing agencies. But some agencies tout it as if it’s a unique service that
you can only get from them.
The fact is that most digital marketing agencies have their own form of integrated
marketing because it’s the most effective way to build an online presence. So don’t
let the buzz worthiness of an “integrated digital marketing plan” sway you to
choose one agency over another. Because, chances are, both of them probably offer
that service. Instead, when you’re choosing an agency, focus on what they bring to
the table in terms of resources and proven success. For more help with choosing
the best firm, here’s a quick guideline on how to avoid the wrong SEO firm.

Integrated digital marketing is most certainly the best way to build an online
presence, but don’t get caught up in how cool the term sounds—and don’t fall
under the impression that it’s a special offer at specific firms. Almost all marketing
these days, digital especially has a great deal of integration involved.

Objectives and Measurement of interactive marketing communication

A company’s task is partially achieved after the creation and hosting of the
website. But with effective promotion techniques and creation of visibility, a
company is able to attract visitors to the website. However, attracting visitor is not
enough; the company needs to bring quality customers to the website. For this
internet marketing specialist develop online and offline promotion strategies, to
create differentiation and awareness.

Interactive Marketing Communications

There are several differences between traditional marketing techniques and online
marketing techniques. It is necessary for the company to evaluate these differences
. Some of them are as follows:

 Space: In traditional marketing, outdoor space for promotion is limited and thus
expensive. On the other hand digital media space is unlimited and thus
inexpensive.
 Image: In traditional advertising, company’s perception is very important
compared to the information content. On the other hand, in digital space,
information content of the campaign is of foremost importance.
 Communication: In traditional marketing communication is one way. However, in
digital space, communication is interactive.

Integrated Internet Marketing Communications

The internet becomes more effective if it is integrated with other marketing
communications of the company. The company has many channels through which
it can communicate a clear and distinct message to its target customers. The key
characteristics of integrated communications are as follows:

 Uniformity: All communications channels should be connected with each other.

 Consistency: All communications should be conveying the same message.
 Continuity: All communications over a period of time should be connected and
same.
 Complementary: All communications channels should bring synergy to the whole
marketing campaign

Objective for interactive marketing communications

The interactive marketing communication should be supporting overall marketing

objectives of the company. However, the objectives of interactive marketing
communications should be as below:

 Online and offline promotion techniques should be used to attract visitors to the
website. This process is referred to as traffic building. However, this technique
should be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound.
 The on-site communications should be able to deliver the message that builds a
certain perception of the company. These messages should be relevant to the
company’s product and services.
 All marketing communications should be able to generate pre-determined online
and offline sales.

Offline Promotion Techniques

The use of traditional marketing media like TV, Radio, Posters, and Print for
promotion purpose is referred to as offline promotion techniques.

The distinct advantages of offline promotion techniques are as follows:

 Offline tools like TV, Radio, and Newspaper have far more reach, as they are used
by all consumers.
 Offline tools are able to create more visual appeal, hence impact is higher.
 Offline tools are able to create a more emotional connection using sound, visuals
etc.
The disadvantages of offline promotion techniques are as follows:

 The cost of running an offline promotion is higher due to high competition and
limited resources.
 The percentage of wastage, which is the inability to reach correct customers, is
higher in offline promotion.
 The measurability and tracking of offline promotion technique are expensive as the
company needs to have dedicated resource for the same.
 As space and time availability is limited for offline promotion, information has to
be very concise.
 Personalization is difficult to achieve in offline promotion.
 Offline promotion is one way in nature and lacks the interactive element.

Online Promotion Techniques

The use of the internet channel in promotion techniques is referred to as online
promotion. The online promotion is referred to as traffic building exercise. The
objective is to attract the maximum amount of visitors and customers. Some of the
tools used in online promotion techniques are as follows:

Search Engine Marketing: the search engines are the key in directing traffic to
the website. This alone cannot be achieved through registration with the website. A
Search engine optimization technique where by using certain selected phrases and
words, the company’s website is placed higher in the search result, needs to be
utilized. Pay per click is another technique where the company’s website is listed
on typing of certain phrases.

Online PR: the management of company image in the internet world is achieved
through online PR activities. The online PR objective is to increase favorable
perception of the company on the third party website, frequented by the customers.
The online audience is more connected to organizations as well as with each other.
Hence online reputation management becomes critical

Online Partnership: Partnership is very important in the current internet world.

Companies need to develop strategies to manage these online partnerships.
Affiliate marketing, in which e-retailers pay commission to third parties for sales
creation, is a form of online partnership.
Interactive Advertising: The online advertisement takes place when an advertiser
pays to place its content on another’s website. However, each website can be
considered as advertisement in itself, as highlights to the customer about the
company’s product and services. Interactive advertisement should be able to
deliver content for enabling e-commerce activities.

Email Marketing: Email plays an important role in online marketing

communication campaigns. Email marketing is used to reach directly to customers
encouraging them to trial and purchase of new products and services. Email
marketing is also used to receive inquiries from customers for any kind of support.

Viral Marketing: The usages of email to transmit promotional communication to

potential large number customers at one go by leveraging the internet is known as
viral marketing.

On-Site Promotional Techniques: through traffic building exercise, visitors are

attracted to the website; however, it becomes important to convert them into
consumers. This can be done through on-site promotion via incentives, coupon,
schemes etc.

Selecting the optimal communications mix

Companies have limited resources in terms of capital. It needs to develop

communications plan taking into consideration cost benefit analysis. Every
communication techniques have its own pro and cons. Companies needs to
evaluate and chose communications which support its overall marketing
objectives.
Unit 3

Email Marketing

Email has become one of the most popular forms of communication. In 2010, there
were an estimated 90 trillion emails sent out worldwide. That breaks down to 2.8
million emails sent every second. These numbers are gigantic, but not surprising
when you consider how important the mail in all forms has been throughout
history.

But as the cost of postage and printing has risen, the effectiveness of marketing
through the mail has declined. Businesses now have to pay more while seeing
smaller returns. This is exacerbated by the fact that new communication tools
provide many of the same services that standard mail does. Although direct mail
marketing has not disappeared by any means, it has been on the decline for years.

As advertisers have shifted more and more of their efforts online, they have tried to
find ways to use the strategies developed in print advertising in new online
environments. Most of the traffic once handled by the postal service now happens
over email, creating a new method of direct marketing. Today, the average
marketer sends 64 emails to their customers every year.

Email marketing is, quite simply, using the tools of email to deliver advertising
messages. The vast majority of Internet users have email accounts which allow
them to receive an almost unlimited number of messages instantly. According to a
survey conducted by Pew Internet, 82% of U.S. adults use the Internet, and email
is one of the fastest, cheapest and easiest ways for marketers to connect with
customers.

Email is a remarkably flexible tool that can accommodate a wide range of

messages. Ads can be quite simple, or they can be flashy, multimedia packages.
The aesthetic of the ad will depend on the company and the product for sale. Some
ads are only text while others include images, video, and long lists of links.

Email can accommodate almost any message a marketer wants to send. For
instance, UrbanDaddy.com, a nightlife website, ran a highly successful email
marketing campaign by including large, eye catching images in the header of the
email. The images were geared toward a young male demographic and gave the
email context. They encouraged the reader to scroll down and engage with the
sales messages contained in the body of the email.

The email marketing industry has exploded over the last 15 years. In 2011,
companies spent $1.51 billion on email marketing efforts. In order to tap into this
growth, a number of companies have started to provide email marketing services to
businesses large and small. Below are some of the most popular providers.

 iContact
 Benchmark Email
 Constant Contact
 Pinpointe
 GetResponse
 Mailgen

Email Newsletters: These are regular emails that are sent to a list of subscribers
who have chosen to receive updates from a company. Newsletters usually don’t
have explicit sales messages, but try instead to build a relationship between a
customer and a brand. They often have a conversational tone and contain news and
information that will be of interest to the customer. The goal is to keep a customer
connected to a company even when they are not buying anything.

Transactional Emails: These are emails that are sent out after certain actions trigger
them. When a customer buys a product or makes a reservation, emails are sent out
confirming that transaction. They legitimize online commerce by giving customers
a way to prove they have bought something. Transactional emails often also
contain new sales messages. Studies have shown that transactional emails are
opened 51.3% of the time, while newsletters are only opened 36.6% of the time.
Knowing that they have a captive audience, marketers will often try to insert new
sales pitches into emails that are not explicitly for selling. For example, airline
reservation emails often ask if you would like to upgrade your seat for a fee.

Direct Emails: These are used to inform customers about new products, sales and
special offers. They provide customers with direct information about products and
usually provide a link or another easy way for customers to access the product.
They are similar to the coupons, catalogs, and sales fliers that used to be sent
through the post office.

Email marketing is used most often by organizations with strong online presences.
Competition amongst e-commerce sites is fierce, and email marketing is a proven
way to engage with customers and differentiate your company. Online businesses
prefer to use email marketing because it makes it easy for customers to link
directly from an email to a product page.

However, email marketing isn’t used only for selling products online. Nonprofit
organizations and political campaigns make use of email to connect with
supporters and donors. They have as much to benefit from email marketing as
anyone else. It is now standard to ask for an email address when collecting
information from interested parties.

The low cost and relative ease of carrying out an email marketing campaign means
that it is a tool that is accessible to almost any business. A small mechanic’s shop
can put together an email list and then send out coupons for oil changes or brake
jobs. The scope and sophistication of these campaigns may not be as great as larger
businesses, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be effective.

Email marketing is an inexpensive and easy way to connect with customers, but
campaigns must be carried out systematically. A poorly planned email campaign
can quickly lead to annoyed customers and disappointing sales.

The first step is to collect a comprehensive list of email addresses. The only
significant disadvantage of email marketing is that many countries have laws
against sending spam. Companies that send out unsolicited emails can face
significant fines. It is crucial to only send emails to customers who want to receive
them. It is important to make the process easy for customers to sign up for email
updates. They can also offer incentives like one time coupons to encourage higher
subscription rates.

Analyzing the emails of competing businesses can be a great way for companies to
plan their own. This can be done easily by just signing up for their email lists.
Competitor’s emails reveal what kinds of images, messages and specials they are
using to appeal to their customers. Businesses can then tailor their email campaigns
to match or beat the offers of their competitors.

Designing the look and feel of the email is an important but tricky process. The
choice of images and text must reflect the demographic that is being marketed to.
The email needs to grab the reader’s attention and draw them into the details of the
sales pitch as quickly and succinctly as possible. If the email is confusing or
boring, readers are likely to delete it before reading too far into it. All of that effort
is then wasted.
Deciding which customers receive which emails is a way to give marketing
messages relevance. Larger companies will use email to push multiple different
products, updates and offers. Matching the message to the customer leads to higher
sales and greater levels of customer satisfaction. Email marketing software makes
it easy for companies to segment their email delivery based on criteria that they
establish.

After an email campaign is sent out, it will be important to track and evaluate the
success of that campaign. Pre-established metrics should be used to determine
success or failure. If a campaign is not performing well, marketers can change the
design of the ads, the products being emphasized, or the deals being offered. The
flexibility of email makes it easy to implement changes quickly and inexpensively.

Opt-in-email Marketing

Opt-in email is a term used when someone is given the option to receive email.
Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Without
obtaining permission before sending email, the email is unsolicited bulk email,
better known as spam.

There are several common forms of opt-in email:

Unconfirmed opt-in / Single opt-in

Someone first gives an email address to the list software (for instance, on a Web
page), but no steps are taken to make sure that this address belongs to the person
submitting it. This can cause email from the mailing list to be considered spam
because simple typos of the email address can cause the email to be sent to
someone else. Malicious subscriptions are also possible, as are subscriptions that
are due to spammers forging email addresses that are sent to the email address used
to subscribe to the mailing list.

Confirmed opt-in (COI) / Double opt-in (DOI)

A new subscriber asks to be subscribed to the mailing list, but unlike unconfirmed
or single opt-in, a confirmation email is sent to verify it was really them.
Generally, unless the explicit step is taken to verify the end-subscriber’s e-mail
address, such as clicking a special web link or sending back a reply email, it is
difficult to establish that the e-mail address in question indeed belongs to the
person who submitted the request to receive the e-mail. Using a confirmed opt-in
(COI) (also known as a Double opt-in) procedure helps to ensure that a third party
is not able to subscribe someone else accidentally, or out of malice, since if no
action is taken on the part of the e-mail recipient, they will simply no longer
receive any messages from the list operator. Mail system administrators and non-
spam mailing list operators refer to this as confirmed subscription or closed-loop
opt-in. Some marketers call closed-loop opt-in “double opt-in”. This term was
coined by marketers in the late 90s to differentiate it from what they call “single
opt-in”, where a new subscriber to an email list gets a confirmation email telling
them they will begin to receive emails if they take no action. Some marketers
contend that “double opt-in” is like asking for permission twice and that it
constitutes unnecessary interference with someone who has already said they want
to hear from the marketer. However, it does drastically reduce the likelihood of
someone being signed up to an email list by another person.

The US CANSPAM Act of 2003 does not require an opt-in approach, only an easy
opt-out system. But opt-in is required by law in many European countries and
elsewhere. It turns out that confirmed opt-in is the only way that you can prove that
a person actually opted in, if challenged legally.

Opt-out

Instead of giving people the option to be put in the list, they are automatically put
in and then have the option to request to be taken out. This approach is illegal in
the European Union and many other jurisdictions.

Address Authentication

Email address authentication is a technique for validating that a person claiming to

possess a particular email address actually does so. This is normally done by
sending an email containing a token to the address, and requiring that the party
being authenticated supply that token before the authentication proceeds. The
email containing the token is usually worded so as to explain the situation to the
recipient and discourage them from supplying the token (often via visiting a URL)
unless they in fact were attempting to authenticate.

For example, suppose that one party, Alice, operates a website on which visitors
can make accounts to participate or gain access to content. Another party, Bob,
comes to that website and creates an account. Bob supplies an email address at
which he can be contacted, but Alice does not yet know that Bob is being truthful
(consciously or not) about the address. Alice sends a token to Bob’s email address
for an authentication request, asking Bob to click on a particular URL if and only if
the recipient of the mail was making an account on Alice’s website. Bob receives
the mail and clicks the URL, demonstrating to Alice that he controls the email
address he claimed to have. If instead a hostile party, Chuck, were to visit Alice’s
website attempting to masquerade as Bob, he would be unable to complete the
account registration process because the confirmation would be sent to Bob’s email
address, to which Chuck does not have access. Wikipedia uses this mechanism too.

Online PR
Public relation in an online world means the way the things are promoted through
internet throughout the world. Public relation is a kind of a bridge between the
organization and customer and when it is connected to online world it means that
the public relation person is telling the policies of company or organization online
using internet on some particular website and promoting the products throughout
the worldwide. Thus PR is an integral part of company’s marketing strategy.

Public relation practitioner is the person or department which promotes the positive
image of their respective company or organization. Public relation department
deals with the people in such a way that they have to build the positive image of
their product that it’s the best one and they will not be able to find the better
product in society.

Social media has revolutionized everything and has evolved new thinking patterns
and awareness among the general public and because of this new trends to market
products and to sale them have emerged. In terms of public relations social media
has heralded a new and golden age of communication management. Also the act of
public communication has also become easier and now they can communicate
about a brand more easily also the concept of ratings of a brand and public views
on their sites can be posted enabling direct feedback and if the feedback is positive
then only more people will buy products of that certain company.

The two way nature of online communication has spawned a reality in which
brands negotiate their public image with daily consumers.
Nowadays public relation departments have come to the online world as people are
getting more concerned about the things that are on internet. Online world requires
the interactive communication so that the customer are satisfied and persuaded by
the image set by of Public relation department.

The use of Internet is getting common and the social networking sites are getting
more popular. So the organizations or companies and even brands have created
their websites and made pages on social networking sites like Facebook and twitter
so that they remain in the race of getting popular in online world or social media.

Public relation person or department makes the company’s websites interactive and
promote their products in such a way that the audience finds all the benefits and
advantages of the product or organization and think that this is the best
organization or brand to grab the product or do work.
The examples of public relation in online world can be clearly of the facebook
pages that how the brands and organizations are promoting their name and once the
people like their page they get the updates of the respective company or product on
their newsfeed on daily basis that helps the brand or organization in increasing
their business. The role of Public relation department in such type of online world
can be judged when any person comment or ask something about their product or
organization the public relation person has to answer that in such a convincing way
that the other person gets satisfied.

All the advantages of the organization, company or the product are on their
websites and nowadays people have started rating companies and if a company
does not have an active website or the Facebook page of that company has less
‘likes’ then people are less likely to buy products of that company. Further
advantages of online PR are:

Immediacy: The response in social media is measured in minutes so a PR person

has to be actively engaged to the online profile of his company before other
companies grab the narrative.

Direct engagement: Social media demands an online engagement where the PR

person has to be answerable to the public in an honest and open manner.

Transparency: This means that everything is open on social media so the PR

person has to be very careful in building a positive image of the company in the
online world as there is no room for falsification.

Reach: This is the greatest benefit of the online world as it allows promoting and
managing the brand on a global scale with minimum expenditure. Secondly
through this the company can easily target the most discrete audience.

Another example can be of online shopping. The concept of online shopping is

increasing nowadays and in the promotion of that the public relation department is
putting up the great role as it is difficult to satisfy the customer especially when he
is exposed to the pictures of the products offered by that company and details
about it. Online shopping websites require the strong public relation department so
that they are able to persuade the customer to buy the product online and make
them believe that the product they will be buying will be up to the mark and will
stand on their expectations. This is also done by giving a yearly warranty or
exchange offer of that product so that it satisfies the customer.

The public relation person gives the general and controlled opinion to build the
positive image of that specific firm in front of the public and among the people in
that organization. Public relation department only tells the advantages and benefits
of the products but they should also keep in mind that the things should not be
exaggerated that much because it will portray a negative image of that
organization.

Online PR has created a number of opportunities by grouping like-minded people.

But it has also given the option to its large audience to criticize a specific media
company on its own media platform. Now the content on the site of a company
lasts longer so creative and compelling content should be written on the site. The
content quality should be high that it buys a credible audience. Online presence in
terms of social media is challenging so the online PR manager should keep an eye
to negative feedback. As online PR activities are mostly geared to influencing
media and audiences these include forums, search engines, blogs and other
communication tools.

SEO/PR is an innovative approach used in online PR as it combines public

relations with search engine optimization generating more publicity through
crafting online press releases. Through this there will be an increase in the online
rating of a company’s site and this will eventually lead to increased sales.

Principles of PR in an online world

The following are some principles of public relations in an online world

Face up to crisis

The companies who indulge in crisis should accept their faults , write a sorry note
for customers in their online profile and should also promise their customers that
that mistake would never be repeated by the company in future.

Think creatively:
Thinking creatively is very crucial for online PR. The online site of a company
should consist of videos, pictures , games , discount offers to make it more
engaging and intriguing so that more people are likely to buy products of that
company.

A tactful PR strategy:

In order to create a positive online image of a company a very planned and

systematic PR strategy should be used which includes pacing up with the internet ,
sensitively answering the questions of clients and creative interactions with the
customers.

Identify customers

In an online world the PR person has to identify real clients of the company and
influence them.

Monitoring

While managing PR of a company in a virtual world the PR department has to

monitor online conversations, glean insights etc.

Build a web strategy

Tools should be utilized to make an effective online strategy.

Track results

Some of essential online PR tools are

1. Social media platforms

2. Search marketing
3. Social media release
4. Online surveys
5. Email

As online PR is associated with improving results from digital marketing

communication techniques in particular social media so it is a very cost ineffective
technique for making people aware but it requires a lot of hard work.

Tactics for online PR are:

Influencer marketing
Online PR analytics
Online PR outreach
Online PR strategy
Real time marketing
Reputation management

Some ways of reviewing online PR options is through 4 types of strategy.

1. Attracting visitors through search

2. Engagement and dialogue
3. Building campaign buzz
4. Defensive crisis

Importance of online PR:

Internet has a great influence on the public opinion, especially when they are not
certain. For instance a boy gets acne on his face and he doesn’t know which cream
to use . He will take into consideration a lot of factors e.g price, other people’s
opinion and most of all his decision will be greatly influenced by the information
of the product available on the internet.

Challenges of online PR:

Internet has dramatically changed the process of communication. Internet has

opened up a number of opportunities and challenged, specifically for the PR sector
which masters communication through traditional means. While PR specialists
virtually had no competition in the era of the traditional media, the democracy of
the Internet has forced them to compete with the entire world.

Interactive Advertising
Interactive advertising refers to promotional techniques that include an element of
feedback from those to whom the advertisements are directed. This feedback gives
the advertiser analytical data that can be used to improve the advertising methods
being employed. Interactive advertising is usually used to refer to online
advertising, but can also be applied to offline advertising methods such as
consumer surveys.

Although interactive advertising in now generally considered common sence, it

was a groundbreaking idea when Internet analytics first started being used with any
rigor. By tweaking ad approaches, colors and content, and soliciting feedback from
the target segments, advertisers have given potential customers the opportunity to
interact with companies and their advertising, rather than simply being pitched to.
Of course, this overt feedback is usually given less weight than the analytical data
that tracks how changes in an ad affect its performance.

Interactive advertising goes beyond simple banners and clickthroughs, using social
media, branded polls and games, and many other approaches to engage the target
audience.

Online Partnerships
If you build a Web site and no one visits, does it still exist?

Much like trees falling in the forest, unvisited Web sites may or may not be
making noise — but it doesn’t much matter, because no one’s there to hear them.

Once you recognize this, you’ll see that online marketing is just as important to the
success of a Web site as the site’s design, technical features, and server speed.

It’s not enough to bring your store online and then just wait for the customers to
come rolling in. You’ve got to take an active — and ongoing — role in acquiring
those potential customers, by making sure they know about your site and by
encouraging them to visit. One of the best ways to do that is to build partnerships
with other, related sites on the Web.

Content Partnerships
Content-sharing partnerships can increase your visibility and get your content in
front of more people. And, you may be able to augment the content on your own
site, providing a richer experience for your own visitors and customers.

For example, if you’re selling bicycles online, why not form a partnership with an
online retailer of bike clothing? You could sell their bike shorts along with your
mountain bikes, or vice versa. An online travel agent specializing in bike tours
would be another good choice for a content/product partnership, as would a site
offering books and magazines on biking. If you want to add interesting, current
content on biking to your own site, find an online biking magazine and partner
with them: Their content can augment your site, and you can sell bikes through
their site, sharing a percentage of the revenue with them.

One advantage of a content partnership, in addition to increased exposure, is that

your site will look bigger to visitors. Providing a rich online experience is an
important part of Internet retailing, and if you can’t immediately fill up your store
with thousands of items and thousands of pages of content, one way to provide that
experience is by “borrowing” products and content from your partners.

Done properly, partnerships like this will increase traffic on both sites. It’s sort of
like buying banner ads, except that costs are minimal, and content partnerships are
generally bi-directional: each site points to the other. Also, you get to share space
in the desirable “content” portion of your partner’s site, rather than the oft-ignored
banner ad spaces at the tops and bottoms of their pages.

Link exchanges and search engines

Of course, you don’t have to go as far as sharing content and catalog listings with
your partner sites. Simple link exchanges and “webrings” have long been used
among related sites to mutually boost their Web traffic. Link exchanges between
related sites help attract customers who are simply browsing, following one
interesting link after another. They also help snag those who are searching for
something in particular. A potential customer may find one of your partner sites
through a search engine, then follow a link to your own site.

A webring is simply a more organized form of link exchange, where a group of

related sites band together and organize the links among themselves so that visitors
can click from one to the next, eventually (if they’re patient enough) following an
unbroken chain of links that encompasses the whole set of sites.

Of course, registering your site with the big search engines is an essential
component of an online marketing strategy. Most savvy Internet users first turn to
search engines when they’re looking for something. It’s important that your site
show up near the top of the list when someone enters a relevant query.

A more sophisticated kind of partnership is possible with search engines, as well.

For instance, if you enter a search for a book or author on Yahoo, you’ll see — in
addition to the usual list of search results — a small box promising a list of related
books at Amazon.com. Similarly, if you enter a search for a musical group, a box
appears offering to sell you albums at CDNow.

Excite has partnerships with various retailers, who get top billing in Excite’s
Shopping channel. If you’re a big enough site, similar partnerships are possible
with Yahoo, Excite, and other search engines — and it may be well worth your
while to pursue these kinds of relationships, given how critical search engines are
to Web surfers.
Online marketing opportunities abound, and it’s essential that you take advantage
of them with a strategic marketing plan. Otherwise, no matter how beautiful or
technically advanced it is, your site will be playing to an empty house.

Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is any marketing technique that induces websites or users to pass
on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential
growth in the message’s visibility and effect. A popular example of successful viral
marketing is Hotmail, a company now owned by Microsoft, that promoted its
services and its own advertisers’ messages in every user’s email notes.

Types of viral marketing techniques

There are three criteria for basic viral marketing; the messenger, the message and
the environment. All three must be effectively executed in order for a viral
message to be successful.

Some techniques for effective marketing include targeting the appropriate audience
and channels, creating videos, offering a valuable service or product for free,
creating an emotional appeal, social outreach and enabling easy sharing and
downloading.

Who uses it

Viral marketing can be effective as a stand-alone tool or as part of a larger

marketing campaign. It can be used by both large and small companies, but can be
especially attractive to smaller business, as it can be more cost-effective than
traditional marketing efforts.

Viral marketing has been used by energy drink companies, movies and even
political campaigns to generate marketing buzz.

Viral marketing is the goal of many companies looking to leverage the social
media space to promote their products. Defined as piece of content generated by a
person or business that inspires consumers to eagerly share it with their expanded
social circle, viral marketing can help build brand recognition instantly — but is
easier said than done.
Instant Awareness

Viral marketing can be important in launching a new product by getting your brand
in front of a large potential market quickly. A YouTube video costs a fraction as
much as a TV commercial, but if it inspires people to share your message it can
have a major impact on brand recognition. Kraft, for example, used viral marketing
to successfully launch its MiO brand of liquid water enhancer. Twitter and
Facebook are among the other social media tools that allow users to share content,
and are useful in attracting attention.

Make It Easy

A viral campaign isn’t the place to tell your audience every single detail of your
product or service, even if it’s their first exposure to what you’re selling. Instead, it
should generate a reaction quickly and easily, such as laughter, surprise or shock.
If you already have a strong online presence, seed it with your biggest fans first to
get them to spread the word for you. It’s not an ideal marketing strategy to just post
your product’s viral marketing video on YouTube and hope for the best. Consider
placing ads linking to the video on search engines, with the ads appearing when
users search terms relating to your product, such as “stain removal” for a dry-
cleaning service.

Get Their Attention

Companies can be tempted to make the new product’s attributes the centerpiece of
a viral marketing effort, but if that’s the star of the show it usually falls flat. Before
you design your campaign, assess what causes you to click on a video or forward a
link, and ask those in your company or social circle with experience in social
media for their thoughts. Would you click on a video because it promised to be the
best tongue cleaner on the market? Probably not. But Orabrush found success with
viral marketing by making the star of the show a giant human tongue that did
things like compete against little league football players on YouTube.

Measuring Effectiveness

It’s important to build in metrics to let you know if your campaign is going viral,
and if it’s having the desired effect on brand awareness. Views, likes, re-tweets and
other basic measures are a start, but find ways to expand that to something more
meaningful to your campaign goals. Perhaps offer a free sample of your product as
part of the campaign, and measure how many fill out the form to request the free
sample. Or have the clicks take users to a landing page on your own site and
measure how many engage there as well.

Control Factor

The biggest risk isn’t the possibility that a campaign will fall flat, but the loss of
control that a viral marketing campaign necessitates. When customers pass along
your viral marketing efforts, they do so on their terms, not yours. You might turn
off customers as well as win them — but you also may find your users see selling
points that you never thought of.

Blogs Promotion Tool

Blog marketing is the process of reaching your home business’ target market
through the use of a blog. Initially, business owners had a blog separate from their
websites, but today, you can easily integrate the two to make it easier for you to
manage, as well as easier for visitors to access. Many business owners use a
blogging platform, such as WordPress, for both their site and blog. Further, as
blogging has grown in ease and popularity, many people have created businesses
from blogging all on its own (as opposed to having a business first and then
blogging).

The Pros of Blog Marketing

The very nature of blogging makes them ideal for marketing since they provide
new content to draw people back, and offer a way for consumers and businesses to
interact. Here are a few other benefits:

1. Inexpensive to Start and Run. While there are free blogging platforms, such as
Blogger and WordPress.com, to maintain a professional appearance that allows for
your unique brand to shine through, use a self-hosted option, such as
WordPress.org. For the cost of a domain and web hosting, you can have a
customized blog marketing for you.
2. Easy to Use. Most blogging platforms are simple to use. If you can copy, paste,
type, drag & drop and upload, you can have a professional looking blog.
3. An Effective Way to have Bi-directional Traffic Come to Your Site. Offering tips,
updates, and other new contents give people a reason to come and/or return to
your business website, which gives them the opportunity to buy.
4. Improves Search Engine Ranking. Google, in particular, likes to find and rank new
content, and many entrepreneurs use blogging specifically for search engine
optimization (SEO)
5. Allows You to Show Your Expertise to Gain Trust and Credibility with Your
Market. People like to know who they’re doing business with. With a blog, you
can prove you’re an expert, provide helpful tips and other valuable information, all
of which help consumers feel good about spending money on your product or
service.
6. Connect with Your Market. While most businesses now use Twitter and other
social platforms more than blogs for engagement, blogs can allow you to have a
conversation with your market. This gives you the opportunity to build trust and
rapport, as well as get feedback and provide customer service.
7. It Can Make Money Beyond Your Product or Service. You can accept
advertising, promote affiliate products and get sponsors, adding additional sources
of revenue to your business.

The Cons of Blog Marketing

Like just everything else in life, there is a downside to blogging, including:

1. Time-Consuming. Creating new content and updating your blog can take a
significant amount of time. Hiring freelance writers and a virtual assistant, or
using private label right content can help.
2. Needs a Constant Stream of Ideas. Along with time, having something new blog
about is one of the biggest challenges bloggers face.
3. It Can Take Time to See Results. The Internet is overloaded with information, so
getting people to your blog takes time.
4. It Needs to Be Marketed Too. You’re using the blog to market your business, but
for it to work, people need to know about it, which means you have to find your
target market and entice them to your blog.

How to Do Blog Marketing

Starting a blog and using it to promote your business can be set up within minutes.
It’s the ongoing management and marketing that will take time.

1. Make a Blog Marketing Plan. What are you going to share on your blog? News,
tips, resources, etc? Further, how often will you update your blog? Daily, weekly,
etc?
2. Create Your Blog. Decide on your blogging platform, and set it up, including
customization that fits your business. Be sure to use the same logo on your blog as
on your website (if you have a separate website) to retain consistency. If you use a
free blog platform (not recommended for business blogging), have a domain name
pointing to the blog to make it easier for consumers to get to your site.
3. Fill Your Blog with Several Posts ASAP. Readers don’t like to visit a blog with
only one or two posts. Add ten or more posts quickly, and then go to your regular
post schedule.
4. Market Your Blog. It’s very easy to integrate social media into your blogs so that
your blog posts go out to your followers. Include your blog on your marketing
materials as well.
5. Reply to Comments. Remember, blogs are social, so people will ask questions,
provide feedback, or share their opinion. Delete spam posts.
6. Use Your Blog to Encourage Email Signups. Signups is another great way to keep
people who are interested in your business coming back to your blog, which again,
gives them more opportunity to spend money with you.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the process of gaining market online by
purchasing Ads on search engines, say Google, Yahoo, or Bing. SEM involves the
promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in Search Engine Result Page
(SERP).

Search Engines
The search engines use algorithms to provide the most relevant results to every
user. For producing best suggestions to the users’ queries, they consider not only
the search keywords entered by users but also users’ location, type of device and
operating system they are working on, users’ preferences, and their identities.

The better the search algorithm is, the happier the user is with its results.

Search Marketing Approaches

Search marketing works with two approaches −

 Earning traffic through unpaid or free search listings (SEO Methods)

 Buying traffic through paid search listings (PPC Ads)

In the first type of search marketing where advertisers earn traffic through unpaid
listings, there are two popular methods − organic and non-organicsearch.
Organic SEO Non-organic SEO

It takes more time to create as more

concentrated towards content creation,
It is speedy.
building hyperlinks, meta-tag
optimization, keyword enhancement, etc.

It brings immediate
It yields late effect.
effect.

It focuses on short
It focuses on long term results.
term results.

It is very
It is inexpensive.
expensive.

They can get

They cannot be affected financially.
affected
financially.
Once the design of the website and its It required high
content is good, it requires less
degree of
management. management.

Inorganic search is
Organic SEO is called White Hat search
Black Hat search
tactic.
tactic.

How to Get Organic Results

Organic results can be achieved by Search Engine Optimization. You need to
invest time and expertise in creating an appealing yet efficient website that can
work to build long lasting trust in your business.
You need to build your business website according to SEO techniques which
use White Hat Tactics for rank improvement. The SEO techniques are described in
chapter SEO Friendly Website.

How to Get Inorganic Results

They can be improved in two ways:

 Improving your quality score

 your bids for keywords and Ads

Inorganic results are instantly reflected. Here is a checklist for inorganic search
optimization:

 Mine keywords properly. Group them into relevant themes.

 Use correct match types. Estimate bid on all match types. Choose the benefiting
one.
 Keep testing your Ad copies and landing pages.
 Strive constantly to improve CTR.
 Aim for higher quality score.
 Target relevant locations. Only look for the places that seem to give you business.
 Run search query report. Filter prominent keywords. Bid higher on most searched
keyword.
 Bid your keywords accordingly. Calculate and strategize methods to achieve ROI.

Organic versus Inorganic Search – Which is Better?

It is better and safer to start with Organic SEO in case of small business because it
requires low-cost investment. In addition, it builds your internet presence gradually
and creates a solid foundation for your business. It is found that the organic search
results are very much likely to get attention of the viewers.

Inorganic SEO is good for customer targeting. For example, PPC advertising.
While opting for this, you need to make sure you are investing in the appropriate
advertise. You need huge funds to hire a management or your own dedicated
expertise, which can take care of your paid searches.

Though organic and inorganic results are independent of each other’s performance,
yet you need to perform well in both to boost up your business. Paid Ads boost
your business and website ranking. Organic results marks trust on your business.

Steps Involved in Search Engine Marketing

These are the general steps involved in search engine marketing −

Step 1 − Define Effective Strategy

 Define your target audience.

 Identify their needs and motivations.
 Highlight how your product is best to serve their needs.
 Review your business position in the marketplace.
 Identify your competitors.
 Identify your specific goals and benchmarks, such as search ranking, sales, website
traffic, and other ROI metrics.

Step 2 − Choose Right Keywords

 Select most important phrases relevant to your business.

 Also select the phrases that are frequently searched by your target customers.
 Conduct brainstorm sessions for potential terms your customers use when thinking
about your products and capabilities.
 Interact with your sales and customer service teams, and best customers to know
the frequently used phrases.
 Employ a keyword research tools to compile a list of highly searched terms.

Step 3 − Optimize Your Website Content

 Focus on your website structure. Keep it simple.

 The search engines looks for the underlying code of your website when they visit
your website.
 Create crisp, clear, and correct content that can retain users’ attention.
 Use your keyword phrases relevantly in pages title tags, heading tags, directory
names, file names, alt tags and meta tags.
 Pay attention to meta description. It is shown in the search results below your link,
providing a great opportunity for you to bring visitors to your Website.

Step 4 − Submit Your Website for Indexing

To be visible online to the customers, ensure that all the pages of your website are
completely indexed by the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

For speedy process of getting indexed by the other engines, submit your website to
the DMOZ.org, an Open Directory Project. Once DMOZ accepts your website,
Yahoo and other search engines have no problem indexing your website.
Step 5 − Add Quality Links to Your Website

 Build links to your website from valued links of other websites that are frequented
by your targeted visitors.
 The more quality inbound links you have, the more popular your website is with
Google and other engines.
 Make your website content is link-worthy. Create interesting and informative
content on your website such as a library of best practices articles, blog trends in
your industry, etc.
 You can also garner links from vendors, customers, business partners, and trade
associations.
 Distribute press releases and articles online.

Step 6 − Manage Paid Search Advertise

 Bid on the most relevant keywords. Do not pick them based on only popularity.
 Make sure your product offer is interesting to the potential customer.
 Tie the bidding strategy to business results. In many cases a lower Ad position will
produce a higher ROI.
 Finally, include a compelling ‘call to action’ in the Ad and send traffic to a
relevant landing page tied to the Ad.

Step 7 − Measure Success of Advertise

 Check how well you performed in the past.

 Measure CPC, CPR, Clicks, Bounce rate, Impressions, ROI, etc.
 Employ Web Analytics to monitor progress and problems.
 Monitor your position regularly in the search results.
 Identify problems and plan strategies to improve your results in the future.

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 SEO is short for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is a
methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the
amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the
search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing,
Yahoo and other search engines.
 Optimizing Visibility in Search Engines
 It is common practice for Internet search users to not click through pages
and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search results page is
essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The higher a website
naturally ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that that
site will be visited by a user.
 SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves
the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. SEO is typically
a set of “white hat” best practices that webmasters and Web content
producers follow to help them achieve a better ranking in search engine
results.
 Optimizing Organic Search CTR
 SEO is also about making your search engine result relevant to the user’s
search query so more people click the result when it is shown in search. In
this process, snippets of text and meta data are optimized to ensure your
snippet of information is appealing in the context of the search query to
obtain a high CTR (click through rate) from search results.
 SEO may also be called search engine optimizer when using automated tools
to assist with the optimization process.

Website Optimization
Also called search engine optimization (SEO), website optimization is a phrase
that describes the procedures used to optimize – or to design from scratch – a
website to rank well in search engines. Website optimization includes processes
such as adding relevant keyword and phrases on the website, editing meta tags,
image tags, and optimizing other components of your website to ensure that it is
accessible to a search engine and improve the overall chances that the website will
be indexed by search engines.

A phrase used to describe the procedures to optimize the speed at which your
website loads in a Web browser. This type of optimization generally involves
editing your website to optimize scripts, HTML or CSS code for faster loading.
It’s also reduces the number of components such as images, scripts, or video
components that are needed to render the webpage.

Content Marketing
Advertising uses the content to describe the business, brand, and business
reputation. The content can be in various forms such as news, webpages, videos,
white papers, infographics, podcasts, blogs, case studies, and photographs.
Content is what is sold or accessed on the Internet. Content developers create the
content to provide the information to the viewers. It can be in the form of text,
graphics, and animation.

Content marketing refers to the approach of creating and sharing of informative,

relevant, valuable, and consistent content to convert a group of audience into
customers and retain them. Content marketing is non-interruptive way of
marketing.

Good content helps customers become more knowledgeable about the product or
service and make better buying judgment.

Goals of Content Marketing

The goals of content marketing are as follows:

 Brand Awareness: It marks the presence of your brand.

 Sale: It boosts lead generation at quicker pace.
 Customer-Vendor Relationship Building: It helps in creating engagement between
buyer and the company.
 Customer Retention: Pleasing content attracts customers and helps one in retaining
him.

Types Of Content
Let us see what each type of content gives −

News
They contain news about new product release, updates on products, etc. For
example, news of releasing new mobile handset on website of NDTV gadgets.

Webpages
SEO webpages can hold the content in the best possible way and sell the content.

Videos
They say, video is the second best thing to pursue a viewer in person. Creating
crisp and compact videos can bring good market at doorstep. Promote your
business videos across multiple channels, and ensure that your videos are
optimized for mobile viewing, as an increasing number of users view them from
their mobile devices.
Infographics
These are long, vertical graphics or columns that include graphs, charts, statistics,
and other information. Infographics makes use of the fact that 90% information
transmitted to human brain is visual, which makes people perceive it faster than
text.

Podcasts
They are digital files available in the form of episodes, which can be downloaded
on the PC. They can come in various formats such as audio, video, e-Pub, and pdf.
It allows people to subscribe and it can prove as a powerful medium to
communicate a range of ideas, products, and information to audience. The
businesses engaged in podcasting are − IBM, Oracle, Yarn Craft, etc.

Blogs
Business blogs deliver excellent content marketing. Blogs are required for a
business to survive in the race of content marketing.

Case Studies
Case studies are detailed studies pertaining to a particular problem, action,
individual, organization, event, or action, existing at a specific place at a given
time. They encourage content marketing to build trust in the product and in turn
business.

Photographs
A picture speaks a thousand words. Pleasant and relevant pictures can stand as a
good content for content marketing and boosts the business.
UNIT 4

Digital Promotion Tools

Social Media Marketing

Social media is the term commonly given to Internet and mobile-based channels
and tools that allow users to interact with each other and share opinions and
content. As the name implies, social media involves the building of communities
or networks and encouraging participation and engagement.

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different
social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share
short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown
social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a
variety of other activities.

How Are Search & Social Media Marketing Related?

Why would a search marketer — or a site about search engines — care about
social media? The two are very closely related.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories,
and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in
turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media
sites to find social media content. Social connections may also impact the
relevancy of some search results, either within a social media network or at a
‘mainstream’ search engine.

Social Media Marketing At Marketing Land

Marketing Land is the sister site to Search Engine Land that covers all facets of
internet marketing, including these popular topics within social media marketing:

 Facebook
 Instagram
 Twitter
 Pinterest
 Linkedin
 YouTube

Social media marketing can help with a number of goals, such as:
 Increasing website traffic
 Building conversions
 Raising brand awareness
 Creating a brand identity and positive brand association
 Improving communication and interaction with key audiences

Designing Content for Social Media Marketing

Social media networks support multiple content formats and there has been rapid
growth in the use of interactive formats, for example, carousel ads on Facebook.
This flexibility of format (text, image, multi-image, video, carousel etc.) gives
marketers the ability to experiment with different types of content to gauge how
best to attract and engage social users.

If people are the heartbeat of social media, content is the blood. It’s your content
that people see and respond to, and that communicates your values and messages.

But what content works? How do you plan what to talk about, on which platforms
and in what formats?

Producing and sharing content is no guarantee of success. Smart content marketers

understand the need to align social with other channels to ensure there is a
consistent style of communication with customers and the stories they are telling,
and that is driven by a clear plan rather than scrabbling each week to find
something to share.

Why is it important to get your content right for social media?

Social media is most often used for personal reasons to connect with friends and
family, or to be part of conversations that align with your personal interests and
passions.

If you serve content to people with this mindset that isn’t appropriate, relevant or
useful, it can have the effect of turning people off and driving them away.
Similarly, if you blast people with a constant stream of content, it can be
overwhelming and come across like a shouting match.

You need to take the time to learn what people want to read/watch and make it
digestible via the formats and channels they find most useful.

For example, you may have a campaign launching a new detailed guide and social
is used to seed snippets from the guide over X weeks with a hook to download the
full content. So the overarching plan guides what is being talked about and when,
then the social media plan decides how to tell the story to a social audience based
on content format, style and execution.

Before you start posting content, you need to answer the following questions:

1. What are we trying to achieve on social media and how does this align with core
business goals/objectives/targets?
2. What stories do we want to tell and how can we make them relevant to our social
audience?
3. What is our social customer profile and what types of content to they respond best
to
4. What’s the current state of the market – how do competitors and comparators
perform socially and what content works for them?
5. Who needs to be involved in content production and marketing?
6. How will we measure the success of social content?
7. How will we optimise and improve what we’re doing?

Competitor analysis for social content

Imitation is flattery.
By this, I don’t mean copy what your competitors are doing, but if you are fighting
for mindshare amongst a similar audience, it pays to know what content that
audience currently consumes and responds to. You can then factor in popular
topics and content formats into your social content plan.

By knowing what competitors are doing, you can also quickly identify content
gaps:

1. What topics aren’t they covering?

2. Which topics are they covering poorly, with low-quality content?
3. Which topics are they covering but not comprehensively, so there’s an opportunity
to establish a niche foothold?

Originality is inspiring.
We decided to create inspiring content through other people. We ran a series of
inspirational events featuring speakers who had a success story to tell, to
demonstrate that success is unique to each of us and what makes each person
successful varies but people who achieve have some things in common e.g. drive
and ambition.
This helped generate unique content that drove social engagement:

 Announcements of new free events at our London base (with Event brite
registration)
 Announcements for new speakers and a profile (amplified by them sharing with
their personal networks)
 Live tweeting to share quotes and insights from the speakers, via the hash tag shed
events
 Post-event write-ups and photos for visual content
 Quotes from the speakers for short social posts
 Post event interviews with some of the speakers around topics related to
inspiration.

Creating a social media content marketing calendar

Keep this simple. Work on a quarterly basis and build out the content plan month-
by-month aligned with your overall content calendar.

You should have a set of stories that need to be told then break down for each
month which story components are the focus and the content formats and social
channels that will be used to distribute the messages.

Optimising content for a social audience

Businesses produce a lot of content; don’t restrict your social channels to content
the social team produces. Think laterally.

For example, customer service teams create a lot of helpful content for users,
answering FAQs and enquiries. They often add to the business knowledge base,
and this information can be really helpful to social customers e.g. care instructions
for a product. However, the content may not always be in a format and style that’s
suitable for a social audience, so you can take the raw content and repurpose for
your social channels.

Let’s use the example of care instructions. You could turn this into ‘Tip of the day’
for Twitter, using short-form, take-away advice that can link to more detailed
content on your website.

Creating regular hooks

Find a content format that can be used to create regular posts that encourage people
to come back for more.
ncreasing content reach
You want the biggest reach possible (amongst relevant audiences) so that you
optimise your investment. This means finding ways to encourage other social users
to share your content with their wider network. Below I look at 3 techniques to
enable this:

Scarcity
You’ve got something but there isn’t much left and people have to hurry to get it.
Scarcity is often a marketing veil but if used well can drive social activity. A good
example is popular events where tickets sell out quickly – publicising the ticket
launch date well in advance drums up interest.

Uniqueness
If you offer something that people can’t get anywhere else, and it’s relevant to
them, you stand a good chance of getting their attention and increasing engagement
with your social content.

Amplification
Find influencers who have their own engaged audience (don’t just think ‘people
with millions of followers’, the followers need to actually listen to what they’re
saying). Come up with a value proposition for them that encourages them to listen
to what you’re posting and then share your content.

Test, measure and learn

How do you know what content works in social media?

Even without web analytics or social media analytics, you can very quickly look at
engagement metrics for individual posts e.g. likes on Facebook, RT on Twitter.

However, to know how content contributes to your digital KPIs and ROI, then you
need to ensure you’re measuring a much wider set of metrics. A few tips:

 Add campaign tracking to all posted links (using a consistent tracking taxonomy)
 Use social reports in web analytics to monitor social sessions and conversions
 Use referral reports to compare social domains to other domains for referral traffic
 Use landing page reports and then apply social segments to gauge social impact for
key content pages
You should also use social network specific analytics to explore the impact of your
content. For example, on Twitter you can compare month-on-month for total
engagement and drill down into tweets with the most impressions and engagement.

Make sure you define the KPIs you will measure success against and then ensure
reports are set-up to provide the data for analysis. Don’t go into the analytics tools
with no idea what you want to measure – you’ll waste a lot of time!

Useful tools
It helps to use a toolkit to coordinate and automate social content marketing. That
doesn’t mean remove the human element and personalization, it simply means use
tools to help you get your messages out there efficiently, for example queuing
Tweets to be sent at times that are most likely to get engagement from your
followers.

There are lots of free and paid tools out there. Below is a small list of ones I find
really useful:

Hootsuite/Tweetdeck
Social media aggregation platforms to help you coordinate your streams, schedule
updates to multiple platforms and monitor keywords/hash tags to see what content
other people are posting/responding to.

Buffer
A great queuing system that helps you plan bulk updates and set a publishing
schedule for each social network, as well as providing URL shortening and
tracking (though you can of course use your own).

Campaign Marketing
Marketing Campaigns promote a product through different media, including
television, radio, print and online platforms. Campaigns don’t have to rely solely
on advertising and can also include demonstrations, word of mouth and other
interactive techniques. Businesses operating in highly competitive markets may
initiate frequent marketing campaigns and devote significant resources to
generating brand awareness and sales.

Marketing campaigns can be designed with different goals in mind, including

building a brand image, introducing a new product, increasing sales of a product
already on the market, or even reducing the impact of negative news. Defining a
campaign’s goal usually dictates how much marketing is needed and what media
are most effective.

Marketing Campaign Activities and Negating Negative Publicity

Marketing is all about reaching customers, and there are many ways to do that,
from a simple postcard to a coordinated social-media blitz. Small companies can
email invitations to a special sale and offer a free product to every customer who
brings in the invitation. Larger companies can use paid advertising and
professional agencies to reach a wider audience.

Whatever the size of the company, it’s important that someone is dedicated to
handling the influx of traffic a marketing campaign generates. If you are prompting
customers to sign up for your email list, you must make sure that the list is
managed well and that new customers receive welcoming messages. If visits to
your website increase, you must continually update your content to convert this
traffic to profitable sales.

Companies that lose sales due to major negative press often use marketing
campaigns to rehabilitate their images. One example is Chipotle Mexican Grill,
which was investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after
dozens of customers became sick in 2015 from food safety issues related to E. coli
and norovirus. Chipotle’s sales dropped 30%, and to get customers back in the
door, Chipotle offered coupons for free food via direct mail and texts. Chipotle
also used online video to announce a $10 million grant to support local farmers.

Examples of Successful Marketing Campaigns

The long-running Aflac duck campaign is one example of a campaign that
significantly raised brand recognition. The company’s brand-recognition rate was
just 12% when it launched the campaign in 2000, and more than a decade of
advertising boosted recognition to 90%.

Lay’s launched its first “Do Us a Flavor” campaign in 2012, asking customers to
suggest new potato-chip flavors through texts, Facebook and Twitter. The
company’s sales increased 12%, and its volume of Facebook followers tripled.

Tracking Social Media Marketing Performance

While it’s true that every large company probably needs some social media
marketing strategy, it isn’t necessarily true for every business.
No matter your company, you should have at least a Facebook page that provides
some information about your business and links to your website. The question you
have to answer is—do I want to consistently commit resources to a social media
marketing strategy?

Just about every business can benefit from social media marketing, but if you’re a
small growing business, you need to worry about resource allocation. That means
conducting a cost/benefit analysis of social media marketing.

There’s no one right way to go about this, but broadly speaking, here are the
benefits of that social media marketing can provide:

 Create a stronger bond with your existing customer base

 Increase your brand awareness
 Boost the performance of other marketing strategies, such as content marketing
 Gain an understanding of what your audience thinks about you
 Create another medium for which you can convert prospects into customers

Think of your social media goals as high level. There will likely be several
different metrics that contribute to one goal. The following are some common
goals:

 Increase conversions
 Build your email list/leads
 Increase your brand awareness
 Boost audience engagement

Tracking Tactics
Since goals are so high level, looking at how you perform relative to a goal isn’t
very helpful. Let’s say you want to increase your conversion rate and at the end of
the quarter you’ve fallen short.

Well, if all you’re doing is tracking your conversion rate, you won’t really gain any
insights into what was working and what wasn’t.

If you want to find out what works and what doesn’t and, ultimately, reach and
surpass goals in the future, you need to track the performance of your individual
tactics.

The first step here is to make a list of all of your tactics. There are countless social
media marketing tactics, but as an example, here are five:
 Content distribution
 Replying to all (appropriate) mentions
 Capitalize on trending topics
 Run contests
 Use Gifs in tweets

You need to understand why you are committing time and resources to each of
your tactics, and then figure out how those tactics contribute to a specific goal. If a
tactic isn’t contributing to a goal, it’s probably time to scrap it. If a tactic isn’t
sufficiently contributing to a specific goal, it might be time to scrap that one too.

So, let’s continue with the example goal of trying to increase your conversion rate.
We’ll assume one of the tactics you’re implementing is distributing more content.
After a month of sharing more content on social media, you are seeing that the
pieces you share on social are not only getting more views, but they’re also
converting at a higher rate.

With this information, you can confidently say that social content distribution is
linked to higher conversion rates. Now that you’re armed with this information,
you can use it to inform your social strategy going forward.

Measure and Refine

So you’ve determined your goals, you know which tactics roll up into which goals,
now all you have to do is measure and refine.

You’re almost certainly going to need a tool to measure the metrics you want to. If
you already have a social media management tool, it will have some measurement
capabilities, but it’s crucial that your tool has the right capabilities.

If your current social media management software doesn’t have what you need
from a performance management standpoint, go find the one that does and make
the swap. Your tool shouldn’t be defining what you measure, you should.

Once that’s squared away create reports that provide all the info you need for all of
your metrics. Remember that this is an ongoing process, not a set it and forget it
situation.

You should be continuously evaluating your performance. If you are far-exceeding

some of your goals, maybe aim higher and vice versa.
You’ll find that when you get into a groove and are effectively measuring your
social performance, you’ll be able to be more calculated in your strategy, and
ultimately get more return on your investment.

Web Analytics-Meaning, Key Metrics and Tools

Web analytics is reporting and analysis of data on website visitor activity. It is not
only a tool to measure web traffic but also can be used as a tool for business and
market research. Techniques used to access and improve the contribution of e-
marketing to a business, such as referrals, clickstreams, online research data,
customer satisfaction surveys, leads and sales. Thus, marketers use web analytics
exploring data and reports to build their knowledge on customers’ preference and
behavior according to types of sites, which areas customers click more often when
they online. It also helps marketer understand their customers better and improve
their business performance. (Dykes, 2012)

These are three stages that they need to concern when setting up a web analytic
tool. The analysis is the ticket for them move from Steupland to Actionland. It is
the isolating of meaningful and actionable insights in data and reports that when
acted upon by your organization can drive business value.

Alignment Stage:
At this early planning stage, it is necessary for marketer to gather their business
objectives and capture stakeholders’ online behavior by their online measurement
strategy. Clearly understand measurement strategy and well analyze visitors is
critical to success. Thus, marketers have to carefully handling relevant and
meaningful data which will directly affect the business in the long-term.

Collection Stage:
At this point of stage, large companies may spend amount of time on technical
implementation such as multiple web domains and online marketing initiatives.
(Dykes, 2012)

Reporting Stage:
This is the last stage for companies move from Setupland to Actionland. This stage
is important where you create report and distribute them to organization using a
manual or preferably automated approach.
TOOLS AND METHODS USED TO HELP MARKETER
There are two types of web analytics, on-site and off-site web analytics.

ON-SITE ANALYTICS
On-site web analytics is used for marketers to measure a visitor’s activity when he
browses on your website. This includes its drivers and conversations, for example
which ads on landing page encourage more people to purchase and which title of
information visitors click most. This data is used to analysis visitors’ online
behavior and can be used to improve website or marketing campaign’s audience
response.

Simply, on-site web analytics tools are used to analysis and measure behaviors of
visitors’ journey and actual visitor traffic arriving on your website. For example,
which landing page encourage visitors to make a purchase, what links visitors
clicked on (from search engine to get to the site or came there directly) to the site,
and time they spent and stayed on given page. Therefore, On-site web analytics
measures of website in a commercial context.

For the business, website became more important than ever before, it handles more
information. Companies also need to know if their marketing campaigns are
working on internet-based, just like John Shumway, the global vice president of
product management at Akamai says “marketing people are increasingly driving
the need for we analytics”. (Dave Chaffey, 2003)

Firms can conduct on-site web-analytics through the following ways:

Analytics Software Produced by Companies

Some companies such as WebTrends and Google Analytics produce web analytics
software that converts data by using combination of tables and graphs. It
automatically monitors your website’s traffic and highlights any significant
changes, thus, managers can easily understand and analysis the effectiveness of
their campaigns. And, where visitors come from and which pages retain visitors
the longest, and also, track visitors progress s they click though the site. It can be
simply shows daily visit on your website, type on traffic and time on site by
country.

Other technologies for data collection

Other technologies companies used for data collection are eye tracking system and
mouse tracking analytics. It is a key method for testing visitors’ behavior and areas
they focus more often when they on a web page, and both eye tracking and e
mouse tracking analytics studies offer businesses accurate and actionable results.
Therefore, the result can be used to improve a web site or marketing campaign’s
audience response.

Eye tracking system is utilized by many top enterprises such as Google. This
tracking system uses specialist software to track internet visitors where the eyes
land on a webpage.

Similar to eye tracking system, Mouse tracking analytics follows the mouse
movements of internet users to simulate eye movement on a webpage. From the
research, it has shown when both methods of testing are conducted simultaneously,
in the result, they find out exactly what the visitors look at on the page which
contains 84%-88% accuracy. In addition, both method of tracking analytics deliver
valuable information to managers about visitors’ involvement and engagement
with your website. This is vital to work out what changes you need to make in
order to benefit your visitors’ experience as well as improve the website.
(ClickTale, 2010)

OFF-SITE ANALYTICS
Off-site analytics data can be obtained for any website-including your competitors
and partners. Which means is analysis the internet as a whole for the websites.
Thus, the key differences of off-site web analytics measures from your potential
audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments).

Unlikely to on-site web analytics only captures what happens when visitors visit
and engage with your website, by using various technologies to help monitor and
analysis website to create meaningful actions and results. However, as social
website becomes more popular and ascendant channel for internet users, and
everything becomes more transparent on social web, organization information are
shared, spread on it, thus, through this platform, marketers are able to measure the
latest buzz about website or organization.it is important for marketers to monitor
not only what happens on the website but also outside of your website. Improving
from what other people are saying about the company and provide products and
services match customers requires. Off-site Web Analytics solutions can help
businesses stay on the leading edge of overall trends. (Monitoring Buzz With Off-
Site Web Analytics, 2010)
Firms can conduct off-site web-analytics through the following available software:

Alexa and Compete

There are numbers of web analytics software provided service to measure your
competitors how much and what type of traffic are garnering to their site.
Alexa and Compete are two free services help marketers to find top-level
information, including the top searches people used to find the site, as well as
traffic comparisons versus other Websites. For more comparison capabilities and a
deeper level of demographic information, marketer can just simply upgrades their
account.

Similar to Alexa and Compete system offerings monitor and aggregate a wide
swath of Web traffic, paid services from Quantcast and Nielsen NetRatings also
provide analytics tools and research related to online audiences, as well as online
ad buying and selling.

As by shown example of how Alexa provide services for marketers by monitoring

and aggregating a wide swath of Web traffic from multiple sources to develop
estimates for overall ranking and other factors.

On the table 1 below, shows top 5 sites on the web. According to off-site web
analytics is measuring about your competitors and monitoring the internet as whole
website, it is obvious for marketers to analysis the market, so that company can
generate more sales, reduce marketing costs, enhance campaign performance,
provide better user experience, and reach specific target segments. As well as on
table, more specific shows competitor daily/monthly search traffic and top queries
from search traffic and more other details. Thus, research on your competitors and
understand their strategy, is the advantages for the company to take step forward
than others in the market.

Co Tweet and HootSuite

There are other tools like CoTweet and HootSuite are relative newcomers to the
market when they looking further out into the social web. Especially for small and
medium-size business that use tools to monitoring and engaging with social web. It
started as management tools Twitter, but they are now expanding their support for
other social channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn. It simply for an organization
tracks the effectiveness of multiple marketing efforts in multiple social channels,
and also from platforms.
Because social web such as Twitter and Facebook, it creates more effective buzz to
a company. Therefore, this platform is critical important for for small and medium-
size business to enhance awareness. CoTweet is a web-based social media
management and analytics tool. With CoTweet you can not only manage clicks on
content you publish within the application, but also integrate any web analytics
platforms with campaign codes and shortened URLs. Just like Bobowski believes
“it provides closed-loop reporting and allows marketers to associate revenue and
other success metrics to social media activity”. (Peters, 2011)

As shown table below, CoTweet also provides updates and follow-up messages to
be assigned to specific social media managers. Different knowledge of social
media managers can responses immediately to appropriate questions and
comments from followers, which shows to followers that there are person behind
responding the questions. Also, from the questions and buzz marketers will know
who he is talking with if question arise for as specific tweet. It helps marketers
collected more accurate data and responded visitor’s needs.

CONCLUSION
This report has shown that Web continues to have growing importance in
marketing efforts, therefore on-site and off-site Web Analytics solutions will likely
become more crucial tools that lead to greater business success. This is supported
by the number of toolset made available to businesses of all sizes to monitor and
analyze web traffic on their sites in order to determine what is happening not only
throughout the rest of the Web ecosystem but also in social media.