Q1 promotional channels are those which help marketers position and promote their

products across customer funnel stages so that they finally purchase products on the
aforementioned channels of purchase. This said, we should actually look at all of the
channels of final purchase shared above as promotional channels since they too contribute
to increasing awareness, generating interest, and managing engagement for a consumer to
fulfil marketing objectives across the funnel.
Promotional channels form the core of digital marketing and the key types of channels and
communication methods would be covered in detail in the next chapter. For the present
section, we will make an introduction to some of the most important online promotion
channels through the use of the key marketing funnel stages (as shared in the REAN
Marketing Engagement Framework in Chapter 1). We would be covering here the key
stages of Reach, Engage, and Activate, which include the most important promotional
channels.
In Fig.5.9, we have divided the key promotional channels across three major marketing
funnel stages of Reach, Engage, and Activate. We will have a quick look at major types of
promotions covered across these channels and will cover key channels in depth later.
(a) Reach—As we have seen before, Reach involves the set of promotional activities to
raise prospects' attention to marketer's brand product or service. Key promotional areas
include:
o Search engine marketing: Part of intent-based marketing channels, it includes

areas like search engine marketing/pay per click, search engine optimisation.
o Display marketing: Classified as a part of brand marketing, it includes banner ads,

sponsorships, rich media ads, video ads, among others.

o E-mail marketing: Forms a part of direct message marketing and includes personal

messages shared via e-mail, sms, newsletters, etc.

o Affiliate marketing: Part of the partner marketing channel, it includes promotions

shared as a part of affiliate sales efforts.

o Social media sites: Part of community-based marketing areas, it includes social

media, collaboration, networking platforms.

(b) Engage: Involves the set of activities needed to engage prospects developed during the
Reach stage. Key areas include:
o Content marketing: Includes all content and information-related areas through

which marketers promote their products and services, as well as, web content
development, blog management, native content, webinars, play-books, etc.
o Public relations: Oriented typically towards media, key areas include newsletters,

online magazines, link-building on sites, etc.

o Special interest marketing: Involves activities related to developing specialised

content and building networks through vertical and special interest sites.
 o Viral marketing: Refers to videos, social messages, articles on buzzing topics

created as sharable content for people to share brand values in an entertaining

manner.
o Gamification: Involves techniques in which brand marketing is done by deploying

gaming in non-game contexts where users are given prizes, discounts, and coupons
for engagement and product trials.
(c) Activate: Includes activities to convert leads and make prospects take other actions
which marketers want them to. Key areas include:
o Interest-based marketing: Involves promotion to customers who have interacted

with a product on any of the online sales channel through personal messaging or
giving them offers/discounts/coupons for real-time conversions.
o Social targeting: Includes sharing targeted messages to leads on social platforms;

for example, Twitter tying up with Amazon to support consumers buy a product on
Amazon using a Twitter message.
o Retargeting: Involves all sets of promotional activities to re-target ads (images and

con-tent) specifically for products which they left abandoned in website carts.
o Response marketing: Covers all activities which help respond to specific consumer

queries while prospects are at the last stage of buying. It includes automated
chats, sending response mails/SMSs to queries, social media responses, etc.
o Custom recommendations: Involves sending direct promotions to consumers on

related products/recommendations associated to what they have already bought.

With an understanding of the classic four Ps, we would now move to understand the set of
extended 4Ps including People, Process, Programs, and Performance in the next section.

Q2 Campaign management at its most basic level involves a set of planned activities
towards achieving desired marketing objectives. As discussed in Chapter 6, in the section
titled, 'Digital Media Planning Stages,' for executing any digital marketing campaign a firm
needs to assess its 6S digital implementation state, specific business objectives, offerings
mix, and present lifestyle stage along with an understanding of the kind of channels, target
audience, and communication it wants to share.
Campaign management activities follow these first three stages of assessment, strategy,
communication, and channel phase mix, to get into an execution mode and decide how
marketing would be run across each of the chosen channels with a specific end-purpose.
The ASCOR digital marketing framework supports creation of a high-level strategy for
digital marketing execution but it is the channel-wise campaigns which are actually
responsible for its tactical execution. In that regard, each campaign has to be thought
through and developed in detail right from developing its objectives to running, monitoring,
and revising it, based on regular campaign performance inputs and the specificities of that
channel.
Sharing below are the seven stages for setting up a marketing campaign for any mix of
channels:
(a) Campaign plan: The first stage of campaign development involves planning
separately for each chosen digital marketing channel. It starts with
developing campaign objectives which include a high-level brief of the
product, target segment types, campaign message, overall flight dates (run-
time), and the desired tangible output in terms of response rates, website
visits/leads, or conversions.
(b) Campaign budget: The second stage includes all activities leading to
development of the budget for each kind of campaign and channel, based
upon specific product needs and overall digital marketing budget.
Discussions should also happen well in advance on the bid/quote strategy
which firms would want to adopt to make sure they win against competitors
and to place their ads on top inventory at prime locations where chances of
viewership and conversions are the highest.
(c) Campaign set-up: This is the stage where actual operations work begins,
first developing a campaign calendar and getting it approved internally
before sharing it with the execution teams for implementation. The next
step involves building and integrating target lists which are a combination of
present leads, existing customers, and third-party lists.
Marketers then need to plan and strategise the type of communication and
messaging/ creative tactics they would deploy for each specific channel
campaign.
Before campaign launch, marketers also need to make sure that all business rules for
campaign placements have been put in place and communicated to the publisher, and
inventory has been booked and confirmed. Finally, marketers need to make sure that all
conversion elements like landing pages and templates have been created and tested, and
necessary authorisations and approvals from various business teams obtained before the
launch.
(d) Campaign launch: refers to all activities towards launching the campaign
across multiple channels and the campaign go-live parameters that need to
be determined like bidding, geography, targeting, networks, devices,
languages, ad extensions, advanced settings, etc., for effective campaign
results. This stage also includes all manual activities related to campaign
management (for example, keyword management and analysis for search
market-ing; trafficking and QA (Quality Assurance) for display marketing,
etc.)
 (e) Campaign monitor: Even before the campaign has been launched and
marketers start receiving daily and weekly data points, extensive metrics
need to be developed and put in place so that all captured data can be
effectively analysed and monitored. In-house or external third-party tools
can be used to build reports and run dashboards which once populated with
campaign data are able to monitor progress and measure Role at regular
intervals (for example, How many leads have been generated? Is it in line
with the weekly targets set? How many conversions have happened? Are we
lagging behind?) Essentially, this stage answers questions on the 'whats'
and the 'wheres' of campaign deviance during campaign run.
(f) Campaign fine-tune: Involves investigating the 'whys' and the 'hows' to make
each campaign successful. Campaign responses are studied, campaign
variances analysed, and accordingly, campaigns are optimised based on
multiple techniques.
(g) Campaign reconciliation: Finally, when each campaign is executed,
marketers conduct post-campaign activities to measure success and check
if various channel managers have been able to deliver impressions, clicks,
and leads, as promised and negotiated earlier.
For discrepancies (where output does not match intended Rol), make-goods
(extending campaign beyond flight-dates or giving free
inventory/placements) need to be delivered or discounts need to be given
against the final payment amount. All these activities form a part of 'billing
and invoicing' for the campaign.

Q3 (A) Once the channels and type of campaigns have been planned, and budget has been
set aside for each of them, activities towards campaign launch need to be set up.
Campaign set-up includes all activities beginning with target list creation and development
of target parameters thereby ensuring that the inventory has been booked, creative
developed and tested, and landing pages created so that the campaign is executed
successfully.

Campaign Set-up
Key activities for campaign set-up include:
(a) Target list creation: involves all the activities and planning behind identifying,
capturing, and qualifying prospects and leads which the firm would want to nurture and
develop through multiple campaigns. These include:
 o List of pre-qualified leads integrated from firm's previous campaigns, offline sales

activities, events, forms, purchased contacts, etc.

o Present customers if campaigns are also targeted towards them

o New prospect type which the firm would like to develop

1. Channel specific research: Firms then need to plan for internal research to identify
the best practices for different kinds of campaigns and channels. For example, in
case of search marketing, firms need to do extensive research on top keywords for
similar domain areas and in the case of display marketing they need to identify and
analyse tools which best target and reach out to the specific audience that the firm
is planning to target.
2. Develop targeting parameters: Involves setting up the targeting parameters and
business rules for the specific channel on which the campaign is being run. For
example, typical targeting parameters include bid, budget, geography, networks,
devices, languages, ad extensions, scheduling, etc. We would cover these
terminologies for different channel types in detail in the following sections.
3. Designing communication and landing pages: Once campaign parameters have
been decided, firms need to plan for communication which includes developing the
message, suitable creative and related tags for multiple channels, depending upon
the type of communication each of them supports. Firms also need to develop
specific landing pages, create templates, call-to-actions, etc., to ensure appropriate
conversions.
4. Request and confirm placements: Involves putting a request for specific keywords
(in case of search marketing) or inventory (in the case of display marketing) and
confirming it. It also includes review of pending placements to ensure that firms do
not miss out on running campaigns on the most suited keywords/inventory.
(t) Pre-launch testing: Once inventory has been confirmed, immediately prior to the
campaign launch, firms need to review and test all campaign elements including creative
specifications, file sizes, landing pages, etc., as mentioned in the submission guidelines for
each specific channel.
Developing campaign calendar: With all campaign elements in place and tested, firms
should develop a campaign calendar which includes details on campaign start/end,
creative deadlines, budgets allocated, number of units/type of keywords bought, deal type
(CPM/CPC numbers), intended reach, etc.
(h) Launch approval: Before the actual launch of campaign, all necessary approvals are
obtained and campaigns are authorised to be launched as per decided calendar dates.

(B) Once the campaign has been initiated in the chosen platform/tool, from the first hour
itself (depending upon type and automation), it needs to be continuously monitored to
make sure that all the campaign elements are in place and are run to achieve the set
objectives in a controlled manner. All the activities towards ensuring this effective and
efficient running of the campaign include what we call as the campaign monitoring stage.
In this section, we have divided campaign monitoring into three sub-stages to help
segregate and understand the concept better. These include campaign monitor, fine-tune,
and reconciliation (which can also be termed as post-campaign activities).
Campaign Monitor
Key activities of campaign monitoring include:
(a) Campaign tracking: Once the campaign has begun, the campaign support team needs to
start monitoring various elements of the campaign like-
o Campaign delivery: Has the campaign started delivering what it was supposed to

achieve?
o Ad unit accuracy: Are the ad units visible to client and showing the correct

message they were intended to?

o Creative size, format, and functionality: Is the creative unit showing up with the

right size, in the desired format, and with the specific functionality it was designed
to deliver?
o Targeting QA: Are all targeting parameters like geography, networks, devices, lan-

guages, etc., being executed as pre-decided and configured?

(b) Data monitoring: involves making sure that necessary tracking data to
measure the campaign is being obtained from all third party tools.
(c) Managing metrics: Once data has been captured, pre-set metrics can be
measured against available numbers to understand if the campaign is
measuring up well to the intended output or is lagging behind, and needs to
be fine-tuned.
(d) Building reports/dashboards: Regular reports and dashboards on campaign
tracking activities and reported metrics are provided by campaign teams to
help the marketing team assess the health of the campaign at any stage.
(e) Performance measurement: Finally, after obtaining all the available data and
metrics, the campaign team and client need to decide campaign
performance parameters like conversion analysis, channel effectiveness,
closed leads, win-loss ratio, etc., to make sure whether they need to keep
running the campaign as-is or make specific changes through campaign fine-
tune activities, as discussed in the next stage.