DIGITAL MARKETING

Concept

Digital Marketing is the use of new media or digital technology to achieve marketing and business
goals. It is defined within the parameters of technologies using digital formats and the internet,
these ranges from computers to mobile technology, and even things like billboards more over digital
marketing encompasses online-shared experiences such as social media or digital marketing
software.

Outbound marketing

Begins with the brand advertiser pushing out a message to a specific target audience, with the
objective being to drive awareness to their products or services. (Visual display banners, or videos
formats multiples times to ensure people remember the product) This is known as drive product
recall and is achieved through audience reach and repetition

Inbound marketing

It involves trying to pull your audience towards your contents brands or services. It is about
attracting those people who are already interested in your product or service, so that they seek you
out and engage. (Blogs, search engine, subscriptions, word of mouth and online reviews
recommendations)

In today’s business world, inbound marketing is the most important aspect to digital marketing. User
intent is the audience that have the internal drive to take action to find your product, these actions
is based on their own needs.

Good inbound marketing, provide efficient and effective routs for your audience to come up to your
brand.

Digital marketing can prices among other things three different media channels:

Owned: is the media that you create and manage. A company’s own content packaging, point-of-
sale, and people. Owned media promote your brand in a very personal way, by exhibit your
company’s values, and highlighting what the product or company does.

Paid: is media or advertising that you have paid for. Paid media can prices any form of media
designed to promote a brand for a fee

Earned: is free publicity generated by consumers, PR, influencers, and so on. Content that people
actively interact with without effort being made to drive traffic.
Direct Marketing: Promoting and selling directly to the end buyer from the manufacturer with no
other media owner involved.

Outdoor/Print: A form of advertising that uses physically printed media to reach consumers,
business customers, and prospects.

Broadcast: TV commercial aired on either television or radio, which are typically called spots. It is
also known as on-air advertising, and it is the primary revenue generator for commercial television
and radio stations.

Referral: Promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of
mouth. Such referrals often happen spontaneously.

3i PRINCIPLES

Initiate: states that the customer is the starting and the finishing point for all digital activities. The
core of this principle can be summed up as let the customer decide. What the customer actually
want, and work backward to your strategy towards your objective.

Who are they? What are they interested in? What resonates with them? What products have they
tested? What actions can you take?

Iterate emphasizes the importance of tweaking a digital marketing campaign in response to user
interaction. In short, the more interactions undertaken the more effective the campaign becomes, as
you seek to adjust and scale based on feedback, customer engagement, and data.

Do they engage with them? How can you make them more engaged? Did you position your product
well? Is your content engaging? Is your audience targeting correct? Are your keywords driving
action?

Integrate: is about taking your efforts across digital channels to drive an outcome that is greater
than the individual channels on their own. This also involves integrating both digital and any
traditional marketing efforts, in a unified way into your overall marketing campaign strategy.
 - Selling your strategy to get approval: in order to achieve this point, you can rely on the data
uncovered during the initiate phase and apply the findings to the broader business goals and
challenges by showcasing how your strategy works for the business.
- Integrating your findings and strategy

To sum up, the digital marketing institute’s three I-principle methodology is a key system for
devising, executing, and reflecting on your digital marketing activity to drive optimal performance.

DIGITAL CHANNELS

Email and automation marketing: are used for conversion and loyalty. This channel helps reaching
out to the customer at the right time, directly and leading them to a conversion destination, such as
a landing page. The main communication need and buyer’s journey stage that is targeted is raising
interest, and converting and retaining customers by providing additional value to the brand and
product.

Pay- per-click advertising: (PPC) this channel will help with getting insight on interested audiences. As
the audience is actively searching for keywords related to their issue, using paid search helps to
bring you to the top of the list, and be actively considered by the audience.

Organic Search: Optimizing for organic search is a key tactic in digital marketing as it leads to
discovery, awareness, interest, and conversion without paid effort. SEO makes your content visible
to the audience, and easily searchable, increasing legitimacy and trust as the user can see that you
naturally come up in their search versus paying for the top ranking of the result page.

Website Optimization: It is important to create an environment where visitors can engage with your
brand content and easily take valuable actions on your site. Optimizing speed, navigation, and
responsiveness, content, and conversion processes will help drive more of those valuable actions
and lead to better performance.

Display advertising: Thanks to the targeting capabilities of online display, companies can target
audience interest, age, gender, community, keywords, and more. Thus the content shown to the
audience is highly relevant, which drives higher awareness and consideration as well as traffic.

Content marketing: is key to the inbound strategy, which in turns is central to a digital marketing
strategy. Well-developed and targeted content increases brand personality and likability. Content is
also key in going viral and creating word of mouth as users will share content that has impact, that is
humorous, or that surprises them.

Social media marketing: social media platforms are primary channels for creating awareness and
interest through content and social engagement. Advertising can be targeted, and re-targeted to
appeal to the conversion objective. Social channels are also important channels as the primary
platform for customer to get information, and updates from the company.
SMART OBJECTIVES

Specific- Measurable- Achievable- Relevant- Time-bound

Specific: A well-defined and clear goal stating exactly what you aim to achieve.

Measurable: an obtainable goal that can be quantifiably described (in numbers).

- Metrics: what are the current key performance indicators (KPI) for the business?
- Milestones: what digital data can you leverage? This includes traffic, cost per click (CPC), lead
generation, social media tracking, and so on.
- Results: what is the current situation and what evolution do you expect to see?
- Budget: how much? How many? How will you know when the objectives has been
accomplished?

Achievable objective: an objective that is achievable with the suitable skills, resources, and
constrains to achieve it.

- Skill, how can I accomplished this goal?

- Resources, what is the allocated budget that I currently have for this?
- Tools, how realistic is the goal based on other constraints?
- Time, how many hours a week can the team work on this?

Relevant objective: an objective that is an added value within the context it is set, aligned with
strategies and higher goals.
Time-Bound objective: an objective that can be achieved within a set timeframe.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH

It is designed to stablish the size, composition, and characteristics of a group of individuals who are
or could be potential customers.

The goal of all audience research is to find consumer insights that can help you deliver on your
campaign or business objectives. Marketers need to connect with the audience by knowing what
they think, how they behave, and how they live their lives.
You should know your audience as well as you know your best friend. One of the key benefits to
conducting audience research is the ability to identify obstacles. Audience research allows you to
understand your customers and ultimately makes you more effective in delivering your digital
marketing strategy by catering to their needs. To focus efforts, it is common practice to create a
buyer-persona. This is a description of your ideal customers, in terms of motivations, demographics,
and channels used to access the internet.

We have three types of data:

- Demographic: are the hard facts about your audience. (male, females, age, income level,
occupation, marital status, location, number of children, education, religion, nationality,
social class, industry, number of computers, and generation)
- Psychographics: are much more detailed and complex. They can uncover anything that your
audience might be interested in, their beliefs, life goals, or opinions. It can include activities,
interests, opinions, attitudes, values, lifestyle, and loyalty. It is about their lifestyle, their
personality.
- Behavioral: this is about how people use your product or even navigate on your website,
and how they use the different media that you want to use as your marketing channels. This
data can tell you a lot about your customer, for example, when are they on your website?
What time are they on Facebook? Maybe it is in the morning, or at night, you do not want to
miss this opportunities to engage with your customer. By observing what people do and how
they behave online using your product or using your competitor’s products, you are able to
understand the limitations of the user experience and perception to improve your message
and overcome obstacles.

AUDIENCE LISTENING

It is the process of monitoring digital media channels, terms, products, and concepts associated
with your brand to devise a strategy that will better influence consumers. There are various
audience listening tools and tips available to a digital marketer, including hootsuite, hashtags,
influencers, and tweetdeck.

Tools for cultural research

Social media conversations: using keywords, Facebook, groups, twitter communities, hashtags,
and influencers are powerful ways to understand how a specific community is talking and
interacting.

Research: audience research firms will develop their own research on specific cultural groups
and make it available for marketers. Examples of such a firm include emarketer and nielson.

Dedicated platforms: Niche websites, influencers accounts, dedicated apps, bloggers, and
forums offer plenty of material about all the previous components we have discussed earlier,
and see what values are most important to the cultural group.

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
Competitive research provides insight into what the competition is doing, in terms of marketing,
what their messages and positioning is, how well they are received, what part of the market they are
targeting, and the success they are achieving online.

Strategy. - Understanding what media and content strategy your competition has adopted can help
reduce friction and prevent overlapping. Questions about a competitor to consider: what are their
past strategies? What are their current strategies?

Target Market.- Understanding their target audience more in-depth can provide insight on your own
target audience and how it should differ, based on how your products solves the problem for them.
Questions about a competitor to consider: what products or services do they sell? What is each
competitor’s market share?

Message.- Understanding their message will allow you to differentiate yourself from them. Brands
with similar messages get less credit and visibility and bring confusion in consumer’s minds.

Questions about a competitor to consider: what type of media is used to market their products or
services? how many hours per week do they purchase to advertise through the media used in this
market?

Social media.- similar to gathering audience insights, social media is an infinite source of insights,
conversations, hashtags, mentions, reviews, and comments.

Search.- is a powerful insight into how people find a product and what they are looking for. By
analyzing searches, you can know what the problem is and how it is solved.

Competitor assets.- by putting yourself in the consumer’s shoes, you can understand how the buyer’s
journey us designed and how your competition goes on converting their audience at each stage.

Content analysis.- beyond social media monitoring, tools exists for you to monitor other forms of
content that your competition is distributing. This can be used to understand your position and
where you have to go, but can also be used to set targets if you are working as a challenger on the
market.

INDUSTRY TREND RESEARCH

Industry trend research is monitoring changes and advancements that are taking place in and
around an industry category in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Industry trend analysis enables a company to develop a competitive strategy that best defends
against the competitive forces or influences them in its favor. The key to developing a competitive
strategy is to understand the sources of the competitive forces.

Porter’s competitive forces

According to porter’s 5 forces, customers, suppliers, substitutes, and potential entrants are
competitors to companies within an industry.

- Industry rivalry
- Threat of substitutes
- Bargaining power of buyers
- Bargaining power of suppliers
- Barriers to entry
Tools to track industry trends.

Social media: TweetDeck, google trends, trending topics. To see what is trending in today’s world.

Market research: Euromonitor, emarketer, Nielsen.

Search analytics: Google ads

Academics: Google scholar, base

THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

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

Awareness: the awareness stage represents the moment when the consumer becomes aware of a
problem they want to solve in their life and perceives your product ad as a potential solution. In this
stage, marketers should focus on creating visibility and recognition.

Interest: the interest stage represent the moment when the consumer is looking for options that will
help solve their problem.

Consideration: the consideration stage represents the moment when the consumer knows about
your brand and thinks it is a good fit for their needs or what they are trying to achieve. They may
have other brands in mind, but your company is in the mix. At this point inbound strategy are highly
effective.

Conversion: the conversion stage represent the moment when the consumer is ready to buy your
product. The consumer has done their research and, based on their needs and motivations, has
decided that the product is providing the best solution for their problem. At this point, the role of the
marketer is to create a point of contact to drive the conversions. This is generally achieved with
targeting and retargeting, promotional offers, and creating a sense of urgency.

INTEGRATING TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL MARKETING

Traditional and digital marketing both have unique strengths that can be used throughout the
buyer’s journey to achieve your broader marketing goals.

360 marketing strategy: is marketing plan that is both online and offline, across all digital channels
on social media, and anywhere that your customer spends time. It is a wholistic promotion that truly
convers all touchpoints. In short, to be truly 360, a campaign would need to include everything that
is used by your consumer. Mobile digital search, and social as well as any relevant traditional
channels like Tv, radio, or print. If your audience is digital native, you may not have an offline or
traditional media element

360 marketing campaign: Advantages

- Covers the entire buying cycle

- Taps into each audience’s point of contact
- Optimizes for scale and relevance
- Provides a complete marketing experience
- Enables you to measure results effectively

ALIGNING THE BUYER’S JOURNEY WITH CHANNELS

Content Marketing. - It is your content that attracts interested consumers to find out, learn, and
research about your product and brand. Content marketing is the number one priority in your
inbound strategy as it will be at the center of all efforts and campaigns.

Display and Video Advertising.- Based on an outbound strategy, marketers and brands can use
engaging banner and audio visual formats displayed to audience who fit a certain profile on channels
across the web. This can be done by targeting interest groups, programmatically or using retargeting
methods to ensure you are targeting the ideal audience at all times.

Social Media Marketing.- Social media advertising, community, management, content sharing, and
competitions are the heart of this marketing component. Social media marketing enables you to
create a real connection with consumers, keep them informed, and make it easy for them to reach
your website, ask for information, and provide feedback.

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

Paid Search.- This components is central for conversions and sales. Knowing that consumers online
will click on the top five to six links presented and rarely look past the first page, it makes paid search
a component of digital marketing worth investing in.

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

Automation.- This is one of the principal components in digital media and analytics. Setting these
workflows up in advance allows automation software to work in the background, while focusing on
optimizing and creating new content.
Analytics.- Analytics are the spine of all your content and platform. They allow you to connect each
campaign, visit, and conversions, and tie it all together to understand the consumer journey through
your marketing and sales funnel.

The awareness and interest stages are driven by discovery when the consumer slowly becomes
aware of their problem and the potential solutions. This stage is driven by your content’s
relationship with the main topic.

Consideration and conversion are stages where the consumer is more focused. They know the
available solutions and are now wondering which one to choose by looking for additional
information, experience, and reviews. The more your product or brand is associated with a specific
topic and keywords, the stronger the association will be shaped in the consumer’s mind.

Retention uses more personal components; such as email marketing automation and analytics, to
provide a consistent customer experience, reaching out, following up a purchase, and using the
correct information to create a sense of intimacy between the costumer and the brand.

TOOLS FOR DIGITAL MARKETING

Website optimization is the art of improving websites to optimize visitor experience.

Social media marketing. - This is a form of outbound digital marketing that most people are very
familiar with, as it utilizes social networking platforms to increase brand or product exposure, and
cultivate relationship with consumers. Social media marketing is about creating visibility and
interactivity with your audience. This is the most important channels you use to speak to your
audience in an outbound manner.

Display and Video advertising are outbound, awareness-generating digital channels.

PPC is an inbound method of advertising on search engines, like google, yahoo, Bing, and paying only
when the searcher clicks your ad. Paid search is key to being discovered when people are actively
looking for products or solutions. The value of paid search is in user intent that is, the searcher is
looking for a product and is likely to take action when they find it.

SEO.- is the process of driving inbound traffic from search results on search engines. SEO is about to
making your website as attractive as possible to search engines like google. The search engine will
then match the websites, which offer the most accurate solution to a user’s search query.

Content Marketing is an effective inbound method that involves the creation, publishing, and sharing
of content to build a brand reputation, awareness, and affinity. You must develop a strong content
strategy to increase your brand personality and likability.

Email Marketing is used to deliver marketing content to a user’s inbox.

Web Analytics is the analysis of web data to understand and optimize web usage
Project Management

Benefits that a project management brings to a project:

- Fluid communication between stakeholders

- On-hand status updates
- Resources planning
- An accountable central point of contact
- Client assurance and confidence
- Predictable deadlines

Role of a project management

Tasks of a project manager:

- First, they guide projects from start to finish

- Manage conflict
- facilitate communication
- Manage time
- Excellent leadership skills
- Develop subject matter expertise

Practical competencies:

- Allocate resources
- Manage tasks
- Plan timelines
- Set realistic deadlines
- Add in contingency time
- Use project management tools

Step framework for managing projects

1. - identify the project or campaign

2. - write the project brief

- A project summary.

- Some basic details.

- The goal.

- A process outline.

- The people involved.

- Required resources.

- Deliverables

- A rough timeline.

3.- Smart Goals

- Specific

- Measurable

- Actionable

- Relevant

- Time-bound

4.- get input from the team

5.- map out timelines and tasks

6.- start the project

7.- finish the project

TIME MANAGEMENT

- Defend your time

You can use a few useful guidelines to help you respond these requests.

- Don’t apologize for saying no

- Use a slow calm voice
- Understand what you are being asked to
- Explain yourself clearly
- Use depersonalize language
- You can change your mind

Managing time effectively involves prioritizing tasks and setting goals. In order to do this, you need
to be able to distinguish between what is important and what is urgent. The 7 habits of highly
effective people.

Quadrant I.- crisis deadlines and urgent problems

Quadrant II.- relationships, planning and recreation

Quadrant III.- interruptions, meetings, and simple but urgent activities

Quadrant IV.- activities that are neither urgent nor important, like time wasters, pleasant activities,
and trivia.

Saving and creating time

Pareto 80/20

20 % of your tasks are as valuable as the other 80% combined.

In order to save time:

- you may create a task list.

- plan ahead.
- Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.
- Tick off task as you complete.
- Delegation.
- Batch your tasks.

In order to delegate successfully:

- Select the individual or team.

- Assess ability.
- Make it clear why you are delegating the task.
- Agree on what the person requires.
- State required results.
- Confirm deadlines
- Frequently communicate
- Feedback on results.

Eliminating personal time stealers.

In order to eliminate poor communication you should setting up out of office replay emails, and
setting up call forwarding. Set specific times for viewing email, turn off all non-essential notifications,
and to deal with personal interruptions, close your office door. Do not attend a meeting if your are
not going to contribute or be asked a question.
CONTENT MARKETING

It is the way of promoting your business by creating media, of any kind, that has real value to your
target audience and attracts them to you. It is a type of inbound marketing, unlike advertising, which
is outbound and places your promotional messages in specific channels. It is not promotional; it is
focused on meeting the informational or entertainment needs of your desired customers.

It is an opportunity for organizations to create the type of content that people want. Why should
you use content marketing in your digital strategy?

- Grow awareness of your brand or business.

- Recruit advocates of your brand.
- Increase and improve your search engine rankings. (SEO)
- Generate new business leads, nurture sales prospects and covert customers.
- Enhance understanding of your business proposition.

Content intent

Always make sure that your content has a clear intention consumers can easily spot a lack of
intention, and when they do, they will not react to your content. Let’s take a look at the ways in
which content marketing aligns to the buyer’s journey.

- Awareness.- Let potential customers know why you exist, what you stand for, and your
unique selling points compared to competitors. What you do, how you do it, and how you
can solve a problem for your customers.
- Interest.- Capture the audience’s attention beyond awareness and convince them of your
proposition.
- Consideration.- give further detail on what you do to inform customers about your expertise,
price, and other happy customers. Show why customers should choose you over your
competitors. Demonstrate your experience, customer testimonials, and expert knowledge.
Always ask yourself, “what do customers need to know to help them say yes to choosing
your brand? This is the consideration content you will need to create.
- Conversion.- Foster an enticing and personalized experience between your customers and
your business. This includes lead nurturing, adding value, managing customer expectations,
clear terms of service, requesting feedback, and community management.
- Retention.- Encourage repeat business but also highlight positive customer experiences for
new potential customers. This involves celebrating champion customers and showcasing
user-generated content through your content marketing channels.

Qualities of highly effective content:

- Relevant.- If you cannot see why a customer would engage with a piece of content, or how it
helps drive your business agenda, then it may not be worth creating. It is good to sense
check your content against your business objectives and audience expectations.
- Valuable.- if your content is useful, educational, or entertaining to your audience in some
way, it is valuable to them and will resonate with them and they will be more likely to
convert or even promote your content.
- Includes a CTA.- Effective content always has a call to action. Your customers and potential
audience need to know what action to take when they see your content. Giving people a
clear CTA allows them to understand exactly what you are selling or promoting and brings
them on a journey through the conversion funnel towards purchase or action.
 - Personalized.- It is important to create content that is personalized, content that speaks to
your audience at that moment and time, that is relevant to their personal outlook on life, or
addresses their pain points.
- Addresses needs.- It is also important create content that addresses the buyer’s needs or
interests. They will have questions about why they should go with your offering and those
questions need to be addressed proactively to help them make up their mind.
- Present solutions.- Your content must demonstrate that your business is the solution, and
that you have a unique selling point (USP). Content that presents a solutions to the pain
points of your audience will build your reputation as a brand that is reliable and can be
trusted.

It is important to note that different content performs best when it is aligned to different stages of
the buyer journey.

- Awareness.- images, short-form video, social ads, GIFs, advertorials, templates, banner ads
- Interest.- blogs, long-form video, white papers, podcasts, ebooks, infographic
- Consideration.- carousels, case studies, webinars, FAQs, testimonials, newsletters, facebook
messenger, social display.
- Conversion.- retargeting, imagery, carousels, social display, canvas, cards
- Retention.- retargeting, user-generated content, click to buy, exclusive offers, images,
rewards, reviews, value additions, discounts

Topical and evergreen content

Topical content.- it is newsworthy, time-sensitive content that is liked to a topic and is best suited to
a particular moment in time.

Examples of formats used for topical content include:

- Short written pieces

- Tweets and social media posts
- Memes
- Videos
- Images

Evergreen content.- has a longer lifespan and is generally of high value, allowing you to drive
conversions and brand affinity over a longer period of time as people will always be looking for this
kind of “timeless” content. This also means that evergreen content can be repurposed into different
formats, maximizing your content creation time and efforts.

Examples can include:

- How-to articles
- Video tutorial
- Beginner’s guides
- FAQs
- Case studies
- List articles
- Checklists
Content and marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy is an ever-evolving plan that outlines your content marketing goals and
target audience.

Developing a content marketing strategy will help you create meaningful content for your target
audience.

Content strategy.- it is important for content marketers to work with the wider team around them to
define:

- What content is created

- What purpose it is serving to the overall business goals
- How effective it is in helping achieve those goals

Your content strategy aims to communicate your brand or campaign messaging across different
creative assets and channels, so consistency is important.

Creative strategy.- your creative strategy sets out your messaging and tone to be applied to all
creative assets and content pieces, for example:

- Website creative
- Email templates
- Promotional videos
- Banner ads for digital display and social media
- Offline creative pieces like Tv, radio or print
CONTENT GOALS

Awareness goals.- this focuses on content such as social media posts, banner ads, videos, and images
that let people know about your brand promotions, products, or services by driving visibility with
your target audience.

Consideration goals.- This involves content such as blogs, demonstrations, videos, or specifications
that outline product benefits and features. Product specifications help your audience to make up
their mind and choose your product when they are looking to buy, engage in a sales conversation, or
take another action.

Conversion goals.- The focus here is on content such as digital advertising, lead magnets, and
purchase landing pages that drive users towards e-commerce or lead generation areas of your
website or business. The purpose of this content is to build on the effectiveness of your awareness
and consideration content, and get the valuable action over the line. In many cases, it is the last
point before potential customer makes an ecommerce purchase or completes a lead generation
form.

Affinity goals.- affinity goal-focused content can include all content types and is associated with
brand building and driving positive affinity and connections to attract new customers, or retain
existing customers.

Advocacy goals.- Advocacy goals are a continuation of affinity goals and affect all content types
associated with retaining existing customers. When people have a positive affinity towards your
brand or company, not only can you retain them as customers, but they may also go on to be your
brand champions or advocates and recommend you to their contacts.

Conversion goals: lead magnet

A lead magnet is when a person enters their contact details into a web form on a website in return
for something from the company. Examples:

- eBooks
- Free trials of a product
- Access to a webinar, podcast, or video content

When a company is giving away valuable content free, people will give their contact details in return
for access to these pieces of content. The details are passed on as a lead, so the company’s sales
team can then follow up with the person and try to sell their product or services to them.

Content goals

Align your content marketing goals to your overall business goals.

Buyer persona

Buyer persona help you understand your customers and prospective customers better. Once you
have decided on your content marketing goals, you need to consider who the people who typically
buy from you are the people you want to market to. For this, you can create a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is an imaginary character based on research and data that represents your ideal
buyer or target audience. You can use audience insight to help develop your buyer personas by
visualizing:

- Who they are

- How you can effectively communicate with them

Monitor audience insights such as:

- Social media platform usage

- Device usage
- Time of day that best suits them for consuming content
- Content needs
- Access to high-speed internet

It makes it easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, and tone – as well as product
development and services- to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of your target audience.

Understanding the purpose of a buyer persona is an important part of content marketing.

Targeting.- helps to position your products as relevant and worthy of consideration.

Formats.- looking at the formats your target audience consumes gives you the information and
perspective you need to make objective decisions about how to craft your brand messages.

Discovery.- discovery the channels your audiences are inhabiting allows you to get a grasp of your
audience’s channel behavior.

Develop a buyer persona using the following key considerations:

- Objectives.- what are they looking to achieve by interacting with your business? How many
competitors will they consider? What information is pertinent to their decision?
- Location.- where are they from? Where are they based? This will include cultural
considerations.
- Demographic.- how old are they? What is their gender?
- Job details.- what is the economic position or job role?
- Platforms.- what are their main sources of info? Which online platforms do they inhabit?
Which resources do they consult when making decisions? How influential are each of these?
- Devices.- what are they using to access the internet? What is their browser speed and are
there any connectivity considerations to take into account?
- Purchase behaviors.- what is their path to purchase? What steps do they take when
considering a purchase?
- Interests.- what issues are they trying to solve? How do these issues impact on their lives?
What are the benefits of solving these challenges?

The following steps are best practices for using buyer personas in your content strategy:

1. Prioritize your personas in terms of:

 - How easy it is to reach them online
- Their value to your business or objective
2. Use your reach/value prioritization to help set budgets for production and allocate
resources.
3. Develop creative messaging and creative assets that align to buyer needs, solve their
problems, and showcase your business in a useful, authentic way.
4. Create content that personas need at key stages of their purchase journey

There are six key steps for creating a content campaign:

Buyer personas.- buyer needs and interest sets offer up important information on how to access
them emotionally, but also illustrate what motivates and frustrates them. This can help you paint a
picture of your ideal customer. It is vital to flesh out these personas based on their content and
information needs to position your brand or business as the solution to their requirements.

The hardest working customer personas are developed with field research, focus group research,
surveys, and interviews with your target audience.

What is rule number one when it comes to creating content? Know your audience.

If you don't know what kinds of people you're talking to then how can you know what to say to
them, and get them to react how you want?

Buyer personas help you understand your customers and your prospective customers. This makes it
easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, and tone – as well as product development and
services – to the specific needs, behaviours, and concerns of different groups.
Using Content Research to Find Opportunities

Social listening

Social listening is the process of conducting research into what people think or feel about a brand,
product, or topic. It often forms the basis of a content strategy, which will respond to those findings.

Social monitoring

Social monitoring on the other hand is the ongoing method of tracking online conversations in real-
time, to pick up mentions and conversations related to your business in a timely manner that gives
you the opportunity to react accordingly.

Benefits of social listening:

- Identify taking points.- enables you to identify what people are talking about in relation to
your organization or brand.
- Spot potential risks.- helps you to spot potential risks in relation to emerging competitors,
threats, and negative customer feedback before they become a serious issue.
- Understand brand sentiment.- helps you to understand your brand sentiment, business
position in the market, and how your brand is perceived.

Competitors monitoring is often just as valuable as social listening for your own brand, some
benefits:

Competitor Analysis

- What is their content development schedule?

- How is their customer feedback?
- How do their search engine ranking look?
 - Is their website optimized?
- How is their social following?
- What is their tone of voice?
- What new formats and channels are they using?

Some tools to help you in your social listening and competitor analysis:

- TweetDeck
- TweetReach
- Buzzsumo
- Sparktoro
- Google alerts
- Fanpage Karma

Content Topics

Keyword research helps guide your content development. Content marketers can look at the things
that people are searching for and the questions that they ask google. You can then create the
content for your website that people are actively looking for, so when they search, your website
shows up. Keyword research allows content marketers to get the right kind of visitors to your site by
creating the content people are actually searching for, identifying keywords that have high search
volume, helping you to create content that pulls more visitors and potential customers to your
website. Identify content gaps on your website by comparing new keyword topics to your existing
content topics. Provide unbiased statistical rationale for creating your content themes. Identify new
opportunities and stay fresh by using emerging themes and trends based on what people are
searching for.

- Start off by picking a topic.

- Brainstorm ideas about this topic.
- Enter your keyword ideas into an SEO keyword tool
- Prioritize keywords in the list.
- Focus on writing topics and creating content around your list of priority keywords

Benefits of a creative brief:

- Developing a better understanding of your audience, goals, and campaign ideas.

- Teasing out the nuances of the campaign.
- Developing consistent engaging messaging across all channels and formats.
- Using time with writers and designers more efficiently.
- Using your budget more efficiently by minimizing the number of amendments and rebriefs.

Steps when creating a creative brief:

- What is the campaign idea and what are you hoping to achieve with your campaign?
- What do you want the audience to do, or feel, when they see your campaign?
- Describe your audience (buyer personas).
- What is your brand personality and story?
- What channels will be used in the campaign?
- What are the formats and sizes required?
- What is the budget?
 - When is the deadline?
-

Content creation

Content creation is the process of generating varying formats of collateral that serve the needs of
your content strategy objectives. Audience, competitor, and keyword research should guide content
development.

Content creation steps

- Think about and absorb the research and information you have gained
- Brainstorm some ideas and identify themes
- Take a break and do something else – leave the idea along for a period
- Return your idea and critique or validate it in terms of your objectives, audience and
strategy
- Create prototypes to explore and test your content
- Create your content

Content types

- White papers are a great knowledge-sharing resource that can help you build thought
leadership and credibility within your industry. They are a strong lead-generation tool and
can also be a great awareness tool. In depth report on a specific topic.
- E-books are often shorter and a lot more interactive that white papers. They generally focus
on multimedia content and “how-to” guides, rather that thought leadership pieces. E-book
formats are more likely to be read as they contain functional benefits that businesses can
implement immediately.
- Infographics allow you to take large sets of data and turn them into an interesting visual
story. Look towards user research, customer data, or information from a historical context in
terms of the impact your business has had to create really interesting infographics. A
creative way to show large volumes of data or statistics.
- Blogs is an effective tool that allows businesses to journal their activity through the forms of
text and imagery. A blog usually sits on a company website and allows you to create a great
structure that drives search engine ranking. These are evergreen pieces of content but they
can also develop thought leadership and credibility with your potential customers.
Combinations of text and images providing updates on business and related activities.
- Interactive content encourages users to take an action and interact with your page within a
social space. Interactive content delivers over 500% more engagement that static post in the
newsfeed. It includes images, video, and polls.
- Videos content is the number one content format on the web, with the majority of video
being viewed on mobile. Audience attention rates are short and there is a lot of competition
online, so make sure that you are creating short, sharable, bite-size videos that will capture
the attention of your audience.
- Articles are long-form social posts that work to build thought leadership and demonstrate
expertise in a particular area. You can post articles to a blog or to certain social media sites.
Articles focus on a specific topic or theme to drive conversation and engagement.
- Templates and checklist can be useful content formats for seeding content to your potential
customers. These allow you to build credibility, help solve a paint point, and add real true
effort to help your audience.
- Webinars are web-based seminars that provide you with an opportunity to connect to your
audience in a human way by putting a face or voice to your offering. Platform for
presentation and Q&A.
- Podcast are audio recording that users can listen to on smartphones apps or through audio-
streaming services. types of podcast includes interviews, conversations, reviews, storytelling,
show recording, and Q&A. Audio recording based on a specific topic.

Examples

White paper – linkeIn

Instagram – Images
Website – Blog
Facebook – 360 video

What question should be asked when critiquing content?

Is it fit for the platform it will be published on?

Can its effectiveness be measured?

Does it provide utility to the audience?

Best practices to consider when creating image content

- Use clear and simple images

- Use text that develops the story or helps drive action
- Consider the rule of thirds

Best practices to consider when creating video content

- Understand the importance of location

- Quickly inform the viewer of the video subject
- Consider the tone and accent of the voicer used

Best practices to consider when creating written content, according to George Orwell’s guide to
writing

- Never use a commonly used metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech

- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

Steps to consider when developing a blog that drives traffic

- Use SEO keyword research as a guide to identify topics

- Write and publish on your blog regularly and consistently

Content curation

Content curation is using or sharing other people’s or third-party content as part of your content
strategy.
 There are four main types of curated content:

- Aggregation means curating the most relevant content about a topic into a single piece or
viewpoint. This is the most common form of curation, and the basis of most content-
curation services available for use or purchase.
- Distillation takes the overall noise about a topic and reduces it to its core concept. The best
cases of social content curation can be catalogued into this definition.
- Mashups merge different content about a topic to create a new original point of view.
- Chronology is historiographical content curation. Typically, this method consists of
presenting a timeline of curated information to show the evolution of a specific topic.

Differences between content curation and content creation

Content curation

- Involves using third-party content

- You can add your own commentary to the curated content
- Lower resource investment it takes less time and money because the content already exists
- Limited ownership you need to credit the original source
- Community input: there is great potential to engage your community with the content

Content creation

- Original content unique to your brand or product

- Higher resource investment it takes more money and time to produce
- 100% ownership you have full control of the content
- Credibility: as it is original and controlled there is greater credibility with online audiences.

Content repurposing

You can repurpose content into different formats to maximize its use. It means you adapt it or break
it up to use for another purpose, such as taking an infographic and turning it into a number of
individuals images, each of which could be used in single social media posts or added to an email, or
for example using the audio from a video recording as a podcast. There are many benefits:

- Saves time
- Low cost
- Efficient
- Reinforces the message

In short if you have a good evergreen content, always look for opportunities to maximize and reuse
it and to save yourself some time.

Points to take into consideration when repurposing content:

- Be aware of video aspects ratios and length requirements

- Understand what works best on different platforms
- Aim to keep the content reasonably on-brand
- Stagger content publishing for different times and days
- Be aware of how text descriptions vary cross platforms
- People use hashtag differently and have different usernames across different social apps

Content personalization

Content personalization is a powerful process of using different content at different stages of the
buying process to be fully relevant to the right user at the right time. Benefits of personalization are:

- Targeting the right people

- Increasing your conversion rates
- Improving brand affinity across platforms

To give the content a personal touch you have to:

- Do your research around your audience segments and understand their consumer journey
- Make sure you are leveraging as much consumer data as possible
- Target your messaging
- Make sure to measure and analyze what you do

Content calendar

Content calendar are essential tool for all content marketers. A content calendar is a centralized
document that is used to plan content across multiple platforms and themes. Benefits includes:

- Helps you to plan your content efficiently

- Keeps your team focused and organized
- Helps to prevent delays caused by writer’s block
- Allows key dates for functional messaging and topical personality content
- Keeps social content on track across multiple platforms and realigns aim or strategy

A complete content calendar will contain:

- Copy: the text or narrative that goes with your post

- Creative: the images, video, gif, poll, or format that accompanies your copy
- Theme: who this content is for- the purpose, pain point, or audience interest the content is
serving
 - Date and time: when the post will be published and the length of time it will be promoted
for
- Platform: how the content will be published and where

Key points to consider when creating a content calendar:

- Theming your content around the time of year

- Business priorities, timelines, and product launches
- Other marketing activities
- Sponsorship activity
- In-store promotions

Content platforms

Think carefully about how content will appear on different platforms and social media channels in
terms of formats and messaging. Audiences can vary across platforms and people react to and
engage with content in different ways. Think about the formats and tone you use – a long blog post
with video snippets might not work well in an email newsletter.

Content Ideation Template

Content marketing is a creative discipline that runs on ideas. But, where can you find those ideas?
This two-part content ideation guide might help you out.

Part one

Sources of content inspiration

Competitors: by exploring your competitor’s different content marketing efforts, you can gain ample
fuel for the creative fire by building on existing ideas or identifying gaps that you can fill with
relevant concepts, messaging or approaches to common pain points.

- Do a little mystery shopping

- Sign up for a newsletter
 - Indulge in a spot of social listening
- Subscribe to their blog

Your customers: as you look to create content ideas for your customers, why not use them for
inspiration?.

- Gathering direct customer feedback from your customer service efforts

- Analyzing your brand’s FAQ page and consumer data
- Holding polls or surveys on particular subjects
- Looking at what resonates with your audience on social media

Internal departments: everyone can be creative! Brainstorming or ideation should not just be left to
creative or marketing teams. Hold collaborative sessions across departments and really encourage
others in your company to send you concepts as they think of them, no matter how odd or random
they might be.

Industry publication: follow relevant blogs and publications, and your are bound to become more
authoritative on particular subjects. You will also increase your chances of having a lightbulb
moment! The more you absorb, the more inspired you are likely to be.

Experience: the best way to really know something is to try it. If you are struggling to find ideas, get
away from the office or your screen and go do something relevant in real life. The hand-on
experience coupled with the invigoration of trying something new is likely to give you a fresh
perspective and a host of new ideas.

Think outside the box:

Content ideation tools

BuzzSumo: this content idea generator lets you search by general subject of keyword and return the
best-performing content based on your query. It is an excellent tool for taking vague topics and
narrowing them down into actionable ideas.

Google trends: google trends lets you search for a particular subject or term and see what topics and
content are most popular in different parts of the world.

Alltop: keep your finger on the pulse with this digestible news aggregator. It gives you a curated
rundown of the latest trending information, happenings, and topics from around the globe.

Portent’s content idea generator: portent’s content ideation tool is very effective for generating
click-worthy titles that you can use to flesh out and develop your content ideas.

Mind-mup: a cloud-based mind mapping tool. It is excellent for brainstorming sessions as it allows
you to create, edit, and develop your own customizable ideation diagrams that you can store, share,
and use to develop ideas for a particular launch, campaign or mini-series.

Content checklist

Use this handy list to check off important quality elements before, during, and after you finish
writing any kind of blog, email, or article.

- Understand what metrics match your goals.- one of the reasons why content marketing can
feel overwhelming is that content can essentially “do” a lot. But in order for it to truly be
 effective, you will want to bear in mind that some metrics will be more meaningful than
others. Here are some examples:
 If your goal is brand awareness, keep track of page and video views
 If your goal is engagement, look at things like comments and shares
 If your goal is upselling, focus on sales
 If your goal is lead gen, focus on form completion and email open rates

- Build your funnel carefully.- content strategists should always be thinking about four key
stages of the funnel:
 Engagement and education to attract fresh traffic
 Creating offers that lead them to a buy-in
 Closing the sale
 Retention re-engagement establishing brand loyalty and returning customers

- Create quality content.- Content must not only be engaging but also be constantly revealing
your brand story. There are a number of things that you can do to ensure that your
customers can access your content and that it stands out amongst the clutter. Here are few
suggestions:
 Know how to incorporate tags and keywords
 Use readable fonts
 Offer a clear, value-based call-to-action

- Keep a database of key content topics.- some business may be sustained well by time-
related content, and when you hit on a topic that’s trending, you can improve your chances
of shares and overall virility with social and blog content. However, it is important to always
keep a stock of engaging content handy so that you can reuse, repurpose, and repost. To
help determine some topics you can:
 Survey your audience
 Use google analytics to track key pages articles, and social metrics.
 Use social engagement to guide your topics

- Hire an expert.- what can a content manager do? These people not only have to understand
how to create great written content that’s high quality and of value, they will also need to
have a good understanding of how to optimize your content for SEO. Few examples:
 Content taxonomy
 Editorial calendar planning
 Workflow management
 Content team coordination
 Content repurposing
 Measuring a testing

- Test, test and try again.-

Publishing and distributing content

Content seeding.- it is a strategy approach to publishing your content across the entire web so that it
is seen by an audience who will positively engage with it. This can be achieved by publishing your
content on key platforms where it will be picked up and distributed by social influencers, content,
producers, or publications.

Content seeding:

It is valuable to marketers and organizations in many ways.

Reach.- it allows you to reach a much wider audience with your message

Relevancy.- by leveraging third-parties you can ensure your content and brand messaging is seen by
the right audience.

Credibility.- you can build your brand credibility through influencer distribution of your content
positioning your brand as a key player in your industry.

Steeps for seeing content to be picked up by influencers

Social listening.- use social listening to engage with your audience and become familiar with the
content and influencers that resonate with them most.

Identify influencers.- identify influencers to target based on their following and expertise. Use
software like klear or BuzzSumo.

Connect.- connect with influencers using: hashtags, introduction through shared connections or
colleagues, reach out via email or contact them directly on social media

Content scheduling

It is the method by which content is uploaded for future publishing. There are two main ways you
can schedule your content for publishing:

Native scheduling.- this is a method of publishing content that uses a social platform’s own upload
function. For example, twitter studio or facebook publishing tools.

Third party applications.- tools like buffer, hootsuite, and sprout are used by validating logins for
your platforms and scheduling or spreading content across multiple platform through the single hub.

Content promotion

It is defined as the strategic approach to getting your content seen by a wider audience than your
immediate own channels. This applies to both the earned and paid space.

Paid method

- Paid media and advertising.- these are paid content promotion campaigns, such as LinkedIn,
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
- Influencer marketing.-
- Affiliate marketing.- this includes paid third-party blogs or publications that produce content
that drives engagement with your brand and traffic to your website with the intention of
converting this traffic into leads or sales for a fee.
 - Unpaid methods.- owned media channels such as your website and your blog. Hashtags and
tagging allow you to join conversations or categorize your content relevant to your audience
and theme. Guess blogging and takeovers. Interviews or Q&A

Community management

It is the stage that comes after content has been published. It involves engaging with and handling
complaints or feedback on your content, brand, and organization to drive better customer
relationship. In order for your content marketing strategy to succeed, community management is
key.

- Manage negative experiences and turn it into positive solutions.

- Respond to business queries and help drive sales, leads, and conversions.
- Gain insights about your business
- Find opportunities to network

Metrics and content marketing

Content marketing KPI measurement

- Justify spend and resource allocation

- Provide learnings for future campaigns
- Unearth unexpected insights
- Create a valuable roadmap on how to produce a content strategy
- Clarify topics and themes that resonate with an audience

Engagement metrics.- They include higher average time on site, reduced bounce rates, increased
number of returning visitors, more pages viewed per session, scroll depth, growth in discovery
through organic search or social visitors, increased number of people searching for your brand,
higher channel engagement metrics
Conversion metrics.- higher number of goals achieved, increased conversion rate, shorter path to
purchase, reduced cost per sale or lead

Analysing content performance

- Choose the metrics you want to measure

- Group the metrics for your themes and formats together
- Was there a particular theme or format that performed above or below the campaign
average for those metrics
- When you have identified the best performing themes and formats, dig deeper to see what
were the best performing channels for distribution
- Look into your data to see if any content elements like images or headlines were particularly
effective
- Note the best performing times and days which can help you out with future content
scheduling

How can you determine ROI

- Look at the weeks prior to your campaign and set these as benchmark metrics
- Subtract these benchmark metrics from your campaign metrics
- Divide the campaign spend by the increase metrics
- Create your own metrics to show the value of your activity
- Use simple language

Elements should be included in your content marketing report

- All content that was produced and the cost and campaign metrics associated with these
costs
- Overall performance vs KPI or objective
- What worked: headlines, channels times of the day. Show metrics and anything else that is
relevant
- What was less effective: for example, formats, messaging, and so on.
- A summary of the insights you have derived from the data
- What would you recommend for the next campaign based on the data?
Enhancing your creativity

To eliminate barriers to creativity:

- Challenge your biases and preconceptions

- Use different thought processes
- Avoid ‘functional fixity’
- Change your daily routine
- Change the order you tackle work
o