Project

Digital Marketing Strategy  Level 5 Project

The project is to devise a digital marketing campaign for a business/organisation.  In this project you need to demonstrate an understanding and the application of a digital marketing plan in an organisation.

The SiRONA Clinic is a small multi-disciplinary natural-healthcare clinic in Douglas, Cork City.

The business was established sixteen years ago by the sole owner Karen Bourke. Karen is a Pilates Instructor and a registered Physical Therapist  (with 20 years background in ballet).

The Clinic has five rooms for private patient care, where up to fifteen different qualified healthcare professionals from varied disciplines such as physical therapy and pilates (amongst many others) rent a room at various times to look after their own clients.

These healthcare professionals work together to provide a comprehensive approach to dealing with a wide range of injuries and conditions.  The many services the Clinic provides include:

• Physical Therapy
• Pilates
• Chiropractic Care
• Chiropody
• Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine
• Kinesiology
• Counselling & Psychotherapy
• Neuropsychology
• Play Therapy for Children
• Clinical Psychology
• Reflexology

There are two primary healthcare professionals resident in the clinic on a full time basis. The Business Owner (Karen Bourke) and a Physical Therapist (Gary Ahern).  The other thirteen therapists reserve different rooms from 1 hour per week to up to 8 hours per week.  Each therapist pays a rental of their room (depending on occupancy) to the Business Owner.

The Business Owner approached me to undertake a Digital Marketing Strategy for the Clinic.  Business is ticking over but she is looking toward the future and realises that she needs to embrace the digital age and build up her business more.  She readily admits that she is not “technical” and has little knowledge of websites, social media or online marketing.  However, she is fully aware that this is the space she needs to be, to grow her business and is seeking all the help she can get to achieve this.

The day before our first meeting, the Business Owner read an article: 

“According to Google, 97% of consumers use the web to search for local businesses – and if the vast majority of your potential customers are online, you should be, too.  Having a strong online presence is a crucial component of your marketing strategy, no matter what size your business is or what industry it belongs to.”    

Timing is everything, and this has reinforced the need to drive on with a new Digital Marketing Campaign.

I met with the Business Owner to discuss the Digital Marketing Campaign, outline how I would plan my strategy and seek her approval to go ahead with devising and implementing such a campaign for the  SiRONA CLINIC.

The first meeting on 5th February is well documented (see attached Client Management Appendix) and subsequent meetings were scheduled for at least every fortnight and some weekly, as required (all documented in the Client Management Appendix).

The purpose of a digital marketing plan for this business is to force us through the process of researching and clearly articulating the aims and goals of our digital initiatives, along with clearly targeting digital personas, and methodically choosing which channels to go after them and how.

I have broken the process down into four main areas:

1. Analysis
2. Development
3. Implementation
4. Control

 

 1. Analysis:

Before I agreed to take on the task of producing and implementing a Digital Strategy for SiRona Clinic, I did a quick analysis of what I was facing into.  This is what I established:

There was:

• No strategic approach and no strategy in place
• No evidence of a Performance Improvement Process and No KPI’s
• Strong Management Buy-In to introducing a Digital Marketing Campaign
• No resources available and no structure in place to promote skills for a campaign
• Little or no pro-active communication with existing client-base
• Website in place but not integrated and under utilised
• No Social Media

The Business Owner was aware of all these issues and was fully supportive and committed to address whatever needed to be done to ensure the success of the Digital Marketing Campaign.

So we were off.

1.1.  Identify Target Market Segments:

My first task was to understand who and what the customer of SiRONA Clinic was. Who will the Clinic be selling to and why should they buy a product or service from SiRona Clinic instead of anywhere else.

As an existing established business, the Clinic already has a good customer base. I met with the Business Owner and she gave me a quick overview of the type of regular customers she has. In order to keep up with the clinics’ customers’ wants and needs and expectations, we agreed that we will need to carry out some form of market research.

My first step in identifying the target market for SiRONA Clinic was understanding what products and services the clinic had to offer to a group of people or businesses. To do this, I needed to identify the product or service’s features and benefits. 

The clinic has many services, including:

• Physical Therapy
• Pilates
• Chiropractic Care
• Chiropody
• Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine
• Kinesiology
• Counselling & Psychotherapy
• Neuropsychology
• Play Therapy for Children
• Clinical Psychology
• Reflexology

For the purposes of an effective Digital Marketing Strategy (and this project), it was decided to concentrate on the primary income generator for the business which was Pilates.  The Clinic owner, is also the Pilates Instructor, and up until now the Pilates Classes were conducted off site (in a local girls school).  But costs were/are rising and the Business owner wants to utilise the rooms in the Clinic more (there is a new room built specifically for Pilates Classes) –  so it seemed like a logical decision to concentrate on this service in the first phase of the campaign.

Pilates is a system of exercises using special apparatus, designed to improve physical strength, flexibility, and posture, and enhance mental awareness.  The benefits to the customer is improved physical strength, flexibility, and posture, and enhanced mental awareness.

The clinics customer base covers a broad range of the market, including both sexes and all ages groups.  

1.1.2  Segment the Overall Market:

It was a natural instinct for me to want to target as many people and groups as possible. However, by doing this my promotional strategy will never talk specifically to any one group, and I will most likely turn many potential customers off.  The promotional budget will be much more cost effective if I promote to one type of customer and speak directly to them. This allows the business to create a highly focused campaign that will directly meet the needs and desires of a specific group.

I divided the market into smaller target market segments on the basis of geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioristic characteristics:

Demographic:  During my many meetings with the business owner, we agreed that the target market for the purposes of this campaign would have a demographic of aged between 30-45 yrs and this is further supported by the results of our research (see questionnaire results below).

Geographic: Ideally the primary location would be the location of the clinic, ie greater Douglas area but we would include the surrounding areas and Cork City.

Psychographic: The desire for status, enhanced appearance and more money are examples of psychographic variables. Eg Lifestyle; Fun-Seeking; Trendy; Hobbies; Sports Enthusiasts etc.

Behavioristic:  How many classes will they purchase? Number of times they will purchase? Timetable of purchase, every week, month, quarter, etc.? Amount of classes purchased (ie single class or block of six)? Where customer purchases and/or uses product/service?

I looked at the various types of collecting research and selected:

• Questionnaires and
• Interviews

as my two main methods of information/research.

1.1.3  Questionnaires:

A Google Doc Questionnaire was emailed out to a sample group from the existing client base: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Igp0I3-MkS9bxrqpk8T8JdnNEkmDqz8U8W_iRB6L1M8/prefill

The Feedback from the sample group was poor (the group complained that the form was was not user friendly and it was cumbersome).  This is an email from one of the sample group:

So it was time to re-view my strategy and on to Plan B and Survey Monkey.  This had better feedback and was launched to a group of 50 from the existing clientbase.  This is the Survey:

The following is an extract of the results from the Monkey Survey:

All respondents were interested in new Pilates Classes in the Clinic:

Monday was certainly the most popular choice of day for Pilates with 43% giving Monday as their first choice:

Early morning times 9am to 10am and 10 am to 11am were popular as well as 5pm to 6pm. There is sufficient feedback to organise new classes at these times:

All survey customers were asked if they used Social Media, 48% use FaceBook so that has decided which Social Media we will use for the campaign.  I feel it would be a good idea to incorporate one more Social Media network at the initial stages and review progress over time:

This is the Feedback and stats collected from the Survey:

 

1.1.4  Interviews:

I spoke with a number of customers of the clinic face to face and sought their feedback. The results can be summarised as follows:

 

Results of Interviews with 20 existing Customers of the Clinic:
Preferred Time Slot:	Occupation Type:	Percentage Response:	Social Media Preference:
6am to 8am	Professionals, self employed etc	6%	FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn
8am to 10am	Early morning mums, employed etc	8%	FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram
10am to 12 noon	mums dropping to school (30-45yrs)	25%	FaceBook
Midday (12 – 2pm)	Professionals, self employed etc	12%	FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn
2pm to 5pm	Part-time workers and 50 yrs plus	22%	FaceBook
6pm to 9pm	Full-time workers (30-45yrs)	27%	FaceBook & Twitter
9pm to 10pm	nil	nil

With 74% in the 30-45 yr age bracket and actively using FaceBook, this has reinforced my decision to open a FaceBook page for the business.  As previously stated above, I have also decided to try Twitter and monitor how that goes also.

After defining the different segments within the target market, I needed to further analyse the following questions:

• What budget was going to be allocated to a Digital Marketing Campaign?  A concentrated advertising campaign to reach one market segment is likely to be more effective than a diffuse campaign attempting to reach two.
• What segments are my competitors covering?
  • http://douglaschiropractic.ie/
  • http://neasalongphysio.com/
  • http://www.thephysiocentre.ie/
  • http://elitepilates.ie/
  • http://www.pilatesphysiocork.ie/

Should I concentrate on an service that they do not seem to be tapping into? With the exception of the Pilates Companies, the Physio Clinics in the immediate area do not provide Pilates services.

As the clinic provides so many services, it may be better for the Campaign to concentrate on one segment for now, and expand to others when the initial segment has been successfully penetrated.  Developing new markets takes a greater commitment of time, money and energy.

 

 

1.2   Identify suitable Digital Marketing Channels:

1.2.1.  Static and Interactive Websites:

The Clinic already has a website.  It is basic enough and requires some improvement.  I am not a web designer and the budget will not stretch to a professional web designer in this case, therefore it was necessary to get a crash course in business websites and what was important.

These are the questions that needed to be established, before we could commence.

Is the website:

• Well Designed? – some improvements are necessary
• Easy to Use? – navigation could be streamlined and made more simple (with the addition of more obvious buttons/drop-downs where user would expect them)
• Well Optimised for Search?– SEO is poor at 16%  
• Optimised for Mobile Visitors? – No
• Incorporating Social Sharing Features? – No
• Business Location clearly designated? – No
• Multiple Options to Contact the Business? – requires updating (some Therapists have left the clinic)
• Clear Calls to Action across the site? – No

 

1.2.2  Blogs:

Blogging for a business is certainly not a new idea, but it is still effective at engaging in and showing the search engines what’s hot in your business. Every company needs a blog or similar as a hub for publishing content and offers.  SiRONA Clinic is no exception.  A Blog will go a long way to engage new and existing customers to the Clinic.

1.2.3  Social Media:

The Clinic has no Social Media presence.  When building our social media strategy for this business, it helps to learn from what other people in this industry are saying and doing. When it comes to the social media marketing plan, there’s no need for me to re-invent the wheel. Instead, I can take advice from businesses that have found success when using social media . Whether it’s gaining more followers or increasing customer engagement, businesses around the world are discovering ways to how social media is contributing to success and growth.

 1.3   Develop the best fit of the digital campaign to integrate with any traditional marketing strategy in the organisation:

 

1.3.1  Social Media Marketing:

I will need a powerful tool for advertising on the appropriate online social network.  We will need to  promote the Pilates Class to the particular targeted audience 30-45yrs (refer to our research above).

These are the most popular options:

• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, & Pinterest

I discussed the many types of Social Media with the Business Owner and while she has had no experience with Social Media, she is aware of the importance and value attaching to an effective Social Media Marketing.  She had recently attended a FaceBook workshop (one day event) together with five other therapists from the clinic.

The most appropriate Social Media presence for this business type would be FaceBook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Having discussed the options with the Business Owner, and following on from our Questionnaire and Interview feedback, we agreed that we would start with a FaceBook and a Twitter presence and see how that goes and review in 3 months with a view to adding more Social Media options.

As a professional therapist, the Business Owner was keen to keep the website very professional and simple with minimum Rich Media attaching.

1.3.2  Email Marketing:

There is no existing pro-active communication with the clientbase of the Clinic (apart from text messages to confirm or alter class time).  As email marketing is an efficient way to stay connected with your clients while also promoting your business.  I looked at the various email marketing providers and we choose the MailChimp for its simplicity and of course its free to use.

The new MailChimp account will be very useful in the future for connecting with the existing customer base and all new customers will be required to give their email address. There will be campaigns run via social media to encourage customers to sign up and give us their email address also.

The completed Questionnaires as discussed above have also given the clinic a new bank of names and emails to use for marketing purposes.

 

1.3.3  Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC):

We will require a Google AdWords account for the Clinic.

Adwords allows us to advertise on the Google search results pages (and the network of partners).

We will require Google AdSense for the Clinic also.

AdSense  is a program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements, that are targeted to site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis

These eTools will assist in delivering highly targeted traffic of potential customers within a short time frame. Google AdSense is a free service.

 

1.3.4  Display Advertising:

Initially we will go with Health Insurers VHI, Laya Healthcare, GloHealth & Aviva to help promote the Brand and enhance the professional fee of the website. The aim of the campaign is to raise our profile and brand with a view to attracting advertising.  This will be reviewed in three months.

1.3.5  Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

The SEO rate of the website at Analysis was 16%.

By using keywords and keyphrases in the business web page, we will help Search Engines find the business more easily.  

 

1.3.6  Content Marketing:

This clinic will benefit hugely from content marketing such as text, graphics and videos. Good, high quality and relevant content in this website will bring more traffic.

The Clinic Owner has agreed to write regular Blogs for the website and these will cover a broad range of topics such as Health & Fitness, Pilates Benefits, Pilates Teacher Tips, Healthy Eating with new Recipes etc.

 

 

1.4.  Establish and justify targets for the campaign, such as pages visited, SEO ranking, volume of online sales:

From my many meetings with the Business Owner, we have established clear business objectives.  These include:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase sales
• Increase customer retention
• Reduce cost per lead
• Reduce cost per acquisition of new customers.

My next step was to deconstruct these business objectives down into digital goals. I keep in mind that there are three key performance indicators (KPIs) that should always be considered when measuring an SEO campaign’s effectiveness:

• Rankings
• Traffic
• Conversions

In some ways, I am fortunate that with no existing digital presence, I can only improve things with the digital goals being set, however, I want to set challenging targets that are also achievable, to make a meaningful difference to the business.

The goals and digital objectives for the campaign have been agreed as follows:

• Increase the Clicks to the business website by 5%
• Increase the conversion rate to the business website by 3%
• Get 5 new Likes per week on the new business FaceBook page
• Get 3 new Followers per week on Twitter
• Increase your Click Through Rate by 1%
• Reduce Bounce Rate by 1%
• Increase Customer Base by 5%
• Improve Brand Awareness
• Increase SEO ranking from 16% to 85%

 

 

 

2. Development:

 2.1.  Working with others in the organisation:

Having met with the Business Owner many times, it quickly became clear to me that the KPI comes from income generated from the Pilates business and also the rental income from one of the Therapists who operates from the Clinic full time.

I have recorded all meetings with the Business Owner and met with one other Physical Therapist on 14th March 2016 – Minutes attached.  This Therapist has a different focus on therapy and for the purposes of this initial launch of the campaign, it was agreed not to include this at the outset.

There is some concern from the other Therapists that we are focusing on just the Pilates side of the business, so we have agreed to be fully inclusive of all the different therapies available, after a period of three months from the launch.  However, it must be noted the enthusiasm displayed by all of the Clinics Therapists will further drive the digital goals when they are established and fully operational.

During the communication process with the people in the business, we discussed the following Process Flow Map and how the integral the Social Media presence was together with Quality Content and a good Website:

2.2. Author, or cause to be authored, the web presence which will deliver the online content, with particular attention to search engine optimisation:

2.2.1   Content:

Content Marketing is all about creating a shared experience—one that’s fun, informative, and/or entertaining to the Followers of the Business.  We have already established our targeted audience and understanding and catering to our audience is a very important second step in the process.

During our discussions, the Business Owner has made it clear that she will be pro-active in writing the content for the websites Blog.  However, she needs direction and I have given her a few pointers and referred her to Jeff Bullas: 20 Things to Remember for Writing the Perfect Blog Post

We discussed how the Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and managing relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. We both know that it is an ongoing process that is best integrated into the overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.

We already have the website in place, with the agreement of the Business Owner, small changes/enhancements have been made.

 

2.2.2  Search Engine Optimisation S.E.O.:

The Website has not been optimised for SEO.  We will need to use keywords and keyphrases in the web pages in order for Search Engines to find this business more easily.

The Business Owner and I met to discuss the reasons why SEO is so important and what we need to achieve and how (refer Client Management attached).

I started with the SEO basics and updated the website to ensure that there was unique, accurate page titles (including page title tags and page title contents).

I ensured that there was a maximum use of the “description” meta tag and that summaries could be defined for each page.

The Site Structure was good and it had a URL that is easy for users and search engines to understand SiRona Clinic

URL: http://www.sironaclinic.ie/

I made some alterations to the website to ensure it was easy to navigate, thereby ensuring that visitors quickly found the content they wanted and I put an HTML site map page on the site.

The Content of the website is in an easy-to-read text that is primarily for the business users and not search engines.  I have improved the anchor text by chosing descriptive text that is more consise.

Heading tags have been used appropriately.

As the majority of users coming to the site are likely to be using a mobile device, it was necessary to Optimise for Mobile.  The website is now optimised for Mobile Phones: 

2.2.3  Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC):

A Google AdWords account  and a Google AdSense account was opened for the Clinic website.  

The difference between Adwords and Adsense is that adwords allows you to advertise on the Google search results pages (and the network of partners) while Adsense is the platform to use as a publisher to display Google Ads on your website.

These two eTools will assist in delivering highly targeted traffic of potential customers within a short time frame. Google AdSense is a free service.

 

2.2.4   Keywords and KeyPhrase Analysis:

Identify Your Keyword Phrases – I researched and identified what keyword phrases my target market uses to search for products or services like SiRONA Clinic:

• natural health care in Cork
• Pilates Classes in Cork City
• Pilates and Physiotherapy in Cork
• Pregnancy Pilates Classes Cork
• Physical Therapy in Douglas Cork
• Physiotherapy in Cork
• Physio Cork Saturday

I analysed Google’s Top Sites for the perfect Keywords and Keyword Phrases for each individual page in the business website.

 

 

 

2.3.  Design the text, graphics, multimedia, aesthetic livery and marketing collateral to be used on the web presence:

2.3.1  Content:

The Business Owner is in dread and fear of the whole process of creating, organizing and managing great or remarkable content for her site. Perhaps she still sees her website as a static brochure rather than as a living 24/7 online sales and marketing business asset.  In tandem with that she has the best of intentions and simply freezes when it’s time to put fingers to keyboard.   As she does not “do” Social Media, she assumes that her customers aren’t consuming content online.

We had some educating to do.  The first thing to help alleviate the overwhelming feeling of panic was to simplify the task and start the process with her own digital properties, ie the business website and blog.  If we concentrate on getting the website set up correctly and the Blog up and running, from there, we can connect to the different social network satellites which the business dosen’t own, but which are similar to real world social hangouts.

 

FaceBook Page Post – SiRONA CLINIC

We discussed how great content tends to be synonymous with high quality, highly relevant content that visitors crave and yearn to encounter in search results.  We agreed that it tells your story with authority and credibility.  It tends to be thorough and not stingy in length. It’s exactly what Google strives to present in search results.

At the heart of learning how to create great content for the website and blog are words. Words, though, become stronger with images and videos.  Images catch the eye and draw it in to consume words.  Images help to make a point.

I have included images on all the web pages and content offers. It is important to ensure that no blog article is published without an image.  It is important to include <alt> text to help describe the image also.

The new Business Blog:

Starting with our website, the Business Owner gave me an outline of the Content for the Blog and I adjusted/updated same to ensure it was high quality and relevant and interesting.

We already know that People want to buy from People. So we have offered them content written by the Therapists that the customer will ultimately buy from. This is more believable; it’s simpler and it alleviates frustration. We have used photographic images where the existing customers are in a Pilates Class environment. They are the stars!

We will use our content to communicate how alive our company is and how much it cares about delighting customers.

This business blog is our chance to show the slightly more casual and personable side of our brand.

First Website Blog:

Please refer to the website for more examples of the many Blogs published:

SiRONA CLINIC

 

The extended 7 P’s Marketing Mix:

While the Clinic has not had any formal marketing strategy to date, the business has a strong focus on the The extended 7 P’s Marketing Mix:

• Product  –  multi-disciplinary natural-healthcare clinic
• Place – great location
• Price – good value
• Promotion – needs more focus
• People – highly trained professional therapists
• Processes – professional and efficient
• Physical Evidence – great feedback

The presence of all 7 P’s is very much evident in the caliber of the Therapists within the Clinic and the professional ethos and strapline of the Clinic:

“Building your pathway to better Health and Fitness”

The most obvious P to focus on in the new Campaign is Promotion.

We discussed the physical building of the clinic and the requirement for new branding for the outside.  It is not evident from the outside door name plate what exactly is going on inside.  The Business Owner has now ordered new signage to rectify this.

 

2.3.2  Aesthetic livery and marketing collateral to be used on the web presence:

I am not a web designer but the following updates this much I knew from analysing the website:

This is what I have decided to work on from the early analysis:

• Well Designed – aesthetically pleasing website will woo visitors to the site and a well designed website will be more likely to appeal to search engines  
• Easy to Use – navigation should be simple with obvious buttons/drop-downs where user would expect them
• Well Optimised for Search – SEO is essential to earn traffic to your website and I have covered this in more detail below
• Optimised for Mobile Visitors – over the past year mobile browsing has surpassed desktop browsing – every website needs to be optimised for mobile
• Incorporates Social Sharing Features – readers should be able to share your content with their networks – particularly if you have Blogs
• Business Location clearly designated – always have a Contact page with the business address on it and a map if possible
• Multiple Options to Contact the Business – this should include telephone, email and a form and should be easy for the customer to find
• Clear Calls to Action across the site – eg “book your Pilates class now”

With the information to hand, I set about making a few alterations to the existing website:

1. I simplified the Home Page and made the business logo stand out more – taking away most of the busy writing around it.  I re-arranged some of the material in a more aesthetically pleasing way.
2. I introduced simple menus which would ensure navigation was more streamlined.
3. The website was not optimised for search and had a score of SEO 16%, With the help of the SEO Booster Dashboard on the VistaPrint website, I was able to increase the SEO instantly to 80%
4. The website was not optimised for Mobile. This has now been corrected.
5. The business had no Blogging or Social Media Accounts. We have added a Blog to the Website and a link to the new Business FaceBook Page.
6. The Business location has now been added to the home page together with google maps for ease of finding.  There is also a separate Contact page with the location and map
7. A form has been included on the website with multiple references to Mobile Contact Numbers and an email address for the business.
8. There is now a clear call to action “book your Pilates class now”

 

 

2.4.  Organise third party testing of the web presence to ensure that it is generating its intended effect, and incorporate any agreed amendments:

 

Before the launch of the Digital Marketing Campaign, I asked six independent observers to investigate and deliver constructive feedback on the web presence so far.  They were each requested to look at the website and the facebook page with a view to establishing how it fulfilled the requirements under the following headings:

• Accessibility – is it easy to navigate?   Feedback – Yes
• Content – is it interesting and relevant?   Feedback – Social Media & Blog require more Content
• Colour – is the colour scheme and images interest and pleasing?   Feedback – Yes
• Layout – clean and consise layout?   Feedback – Yes

 

3.  Implementation:

 

 3.1. Produce the text, graphics, multimedia, aesthetic livery and marketing collateral to be used on the web presence:

I produced the marketing material that was to be used on the web presence:

Content:

The website has been updated and the content on each page is relevant and interesting. The Blog and Social Media posts are generating much interest:

Text:

The blog is now live and there is a variety of new posts bringing plenty of traffic to the website:

Graphics:

There is a large variety of graphics on the website, and social media:

FaceBook

Twitter

Logo:

Our Branding is now sharp, with a logo that is consistant across all our web presence, ie website, blog, FaceBook and Twitter.  This Logo includes our strapline “building your pathway to better Health and Fitness:

3.2.  Commission the web presence in line with any launch schedule:

Launch Date was April 11th – I ensured that there was enough material across all mediums to keep the interest of any visitors to the website, blog, facebook and twitter:

 

FaceBook Page for SiRONA CLINIC:

 

Twitter Page for SiRONA CLINIC

 

SiRONA CLINIC Website Blog:

 

 

4. Control:

4.1. Monitor the technical behaviour and user experience of the web presence, using webhost control panel tools:

I monitored the behaviour and user experience of the web presence using the eTool on the Vista Print Business Website.

There were 139 Pageviews in the last 30 days:

This compares with 82 PageViews for a similar period in December:

With 82 Pageviews on the new BLOG launched on the website only two weeks ago.

Under the Traffic Sources, I can see that there were a total of 159 Referrals.  38% from Links, 37% from Directs and 16% through a Search

The bulk of the links are from Google Search Engine:

The Search can be further broken down as follows:

A total of 13 referrals via Social Media, 85% from FaceBook and 15% via Twitter.  We will need to grow this area.

Social Media:

The new Business FaceBook page has been very successful.  With 64 Post Reach and 40 Post Engagement.

The challenge here is to continue to hold the interest of the Follower and keep engaging with the Clinics Customer base – while enticing new customers to visit the site and read more about the business.

From the Facebook Analytics I can see that our traffic are mostly Women aged 35-44 who access their FaceBook page from their mobile device.  We will utilise this information to focus our future Facebook posts to this gender and age profile who are busy and on the go:

The new Twitter Account is slow to take off, but I expected this.  We will continue to monitor progress and review again in 3 months:

 

4.2. Monitor the web presence traffic and user interactions with different elements to determine which elements are performing to expectations:

I have set up Google Analytics on the business website to track the SEO and how we are performing against our Objectives, Goals and KPI’s:

I can see that in the last month, there was 74 Users, with 281 PageViews with a Bounce rate of 56%.  I am very pleased with these figures and particularly the Bounce Rate.  That shows me that customers are happy with their landing pages and are likely to return:

The analytics further show me that 45% of the 101 sessions were accessed via an organic search.  This shows me that the SEO is working and my Keywords and Keyphrases must be doing their job:

The FaceBook Page is generating good traffic to the website – 16 sessions:

The Behaviour Overview shows me the Landing Pages tell me where the visitors first enter the site and I have pleased to note that the new Blog is generating a good level of interest.  Also I can see from the Unique Pageviews—The number of individual people who have viewed a specific page at least once during a visit. For example, if a single user views a page more than once during the same visit, only the original view is counted (whereas general Pageviews count each visit). The Unique Pageviews metric counts each page URL + Page Title combination:

 

The Behaviour Flow Chart lets me see the path visitors commonly take to the website—from the first page they view to the last page they visit before leaving your site.I am interested to note the Blog is still generating interest but so is Physical Therapy and also Chiropody!

 

The goals and digital objectives for the campaign were agreed as follows:  Are we meeting our goals?

Increase the Clicks to the business website by 5%:   Visitors to the website have increased from 82 (Dec 2015)

to 149 (April 2016):

 

Increase the conversion rate to the business website by 3% – Still a work in progress, but heading in the right direction:

Get 5 new Likes per week on the new business FaceBook page – definitely achieved – 42 likes this week!  

Get 3 new Followers per week on Twitter – Achieved 6 Followers to date:

 

Increase your Click Through Rate by 1% – no success yet. More work needed on this.

Reduce Bounce Rate by 1% – I have no baseline to compare and will review this monthly with a new baseline of 59%:

Increase Customer Base by 5% – to early to tell yet – monitor weekly and monthly and review

Improve Brand Awareness:

This has certainly been achieved through the updated Website, the new Website Blog, the new Business FaceBook page and the new Twitter Account:

Increase SEO ranking from 16% to 85%:  target not yet achieved, but some tweaking yet to do on the website which will increase the SEO even further:

The above are our KPI’s and I am happy that we are heading in the right direction.  There are a number of Goals/Objectives that I would like to amend/update:

• Followers on Twitter – not realistic to expect 3 new Followers per week as our customer base does not appear to be using this Social Media.  Reduce this goal/objective to 1 per week.
• Likes on FaceBook – great activity here as alot of our target market appear to be on this Social Media forum.  Increase this goal/objective to 10 per week.  Monitor regularly and adjust where/when necessary.
• Click Through Rate – more focus on getting this increased is now required as a matter of urgency.  Speak with Business Owner and involve others in the Clinic. Re-visit AdWords, Keywords and Keyphrases.

 

 

4.3.   Monitor the competitive ranking of the web presence across a range of search engines and search terms:

I cleared the Browser History and the Clinic is ranking on Page 2 of Google Search Engine under the search “pilates in Douglas”.  This shows me the SEO has been effective.

Ranking on Page 6 in Yahoo Search Engine. More work to do on this one:

Ranking on Page 1 in the Bing Search Engine.  I am very pleased with this outcome:

Keywords & Keyphrases Search:

Many searches were carried out with the relevant keywords and keyphrases ie pilates studio in douglas/physical therapy in douglas/cork, etc.  We will continue to work on the Keywords and Keyphrases as our competitors are constantly updating same and we need to keep ahead.

 

4.4.   Implement any changes in the strategy and the web presence which are indicated by an analysis of the data gathered:

The above are our KPI’s and I am happy that we are heading in the right direction.  There are a number of Goals/Objectives that I would like to amend/update:

• Followers on Twitter – not realistic to expect 3 new Followers per week as our customer base does not appear to be using this Social Media.  Reduce this goal/objective to 1 per week.
• Likes on FaceBook – great activity here as alot of our target market appear to be on this Social Media forum.  Increase this goal/objective to 10 per week.  Monitor regularly and adjust where/when necessary.
• Click Through Rate – more focus on getting this increased is now required as a matter of urgency.  Speak with Business Owner and involve others in the Clinic. Re-visit AdWords, Keywords and Keyphrases.

 

 

 

5.   Conclusion:

The digital marketing plan is a cycle that begins and ends with evaluation. The final stage in the digital marketing plan is to measure the outcomes of the digital marketing activities against the original objectives and goals. Continuous evaluation helps the Business Team to focus on modifying or introducing new activities to achieve objectives.

Some of the objectives were met and even exceeded, eg FaceBook Likes!  Some objectives were not met, eg Twitter Followers.  We can either reduce the objective or work harder and focus more in the coming quarter on the areas where we are weak before amending the objectives.

One benefit of the campaign is how energised the Clinic Team now are, the Business Owner can see increased activity, and heightened Brand awareness as a direct result of the web presence (blog, posts and tweets).  This has had a follow on effect on the other Therapists in the Clinic, who now want to buy into the campaign and “get a slice of the pie”. They have agreed to write their own Blogs and submit supporting photos of events and activities relevant to their business.

The Business Owner will co-ordinate this together with a part-time Digital Marketing Consultant.

We will continue to monitor the business and update our strategy as we go along on our journey.  The Business Owner has told me that she now feels part of the digital age.

 

Assignment 4

Assignment Title:  Identify e-Tools and their application to digital marketing campaigns.

An eTool is a computer or web based application intended to make a task easier. There are a wide range of eTools available, each used to fulfil varying tasks within the Digital Marketing Strategy.

We can separate them into the following mediums:

1. Social Media marketing
2. Rich Media
3. eMail marketing
4. SEO
5. OnLine Advertising

1.  Social Media Marketing:

The most famous social media platform is:

Facebook claims to have 1.59 billion monthly active users (@ y/e 12/2015) and a market value of over $300 billion.

Facebook can be an integral part of your Digital Marketing Strategy and can help you stay in touch with your best prospect for new sales ie your existing customers.  Facebook provides new ways to identify new audiences for your services.  It also builds your business Brand & product awareness.

Facebook will position you or your company as the experts in your field and can make it easier for your web pages to be found in Google.  By setting up a Business Page on Facebook, you can get your existing customers to “LIKE” you, share blog posts and images promoting your business, thereby building your Brand.

Twitter has 332 million active users who can post up to 140 character updates at a time. The # symbol, called a hashtag is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet.

How to apply Twitter as a marketing eTool in your Digital Strategy:

Twitter is a great tool for driving traffic to your website and blog. To do this, you create a tweet around a link, writing a message that compels people to click to learn more.

Over time, the quality of what you tweet will help you grow a strong Twitter following. Your Twitter conversations should cover topics designed to draw in potential customers at a time when you are most likely to engage people.LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service, used mainly for professional networking.

With over 400 million people signed up to LinkedIn, the basic function is to create profiles and “connections” to each other on-line, with a view to obtaining introductions, jobs etc.

In business, LinkedIn can be used to build your Brand:

GooglePlus:

Google+ Business pages enhances your discoverability with targeted audiences.  “Google” is probably the most recognised brand in the world next to Coca Cola & Apple. Two thirds of the worlds internet population uses Google search engine.

Google+ also plays a major role in search engine optimization (SEO) by making it easier for marketers to show up in search results—yet another reason to include Google+ in your social media strategy.

Everything you post on Google+ for Business page is immediately indexed by Google.

YouTube is a video sharing website, it allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. 

Lots of companies are now using web videos to reach out to current and potential customers. They’re building more personal relationships with their client base and reaping the benefits of this creative indirect marketing strategy.
This platform is perfect for small businesses. There are no big budgets required – just a video camera, a little creativity, and this handy guide.  Using YouTube to drive your business.

Other ways on how to use YouTube to grow your business:

Snapchat is a mobile messaging application used to share photos, videos, text and drawings. It’s free to download the app and free to send messages using it. It has become hugely popular in a very short space of time, especially with young people.

With Snapchat, you can increase community engagement and brand awareness through innovative marketing campaigns.

How to use Snapchat to market your business:

Ways to use Snapchat to promote your business:

1. Provide Access to Live Events
2. Deliver Private Content
3. Offer Contests, Perks or Promotions
4. Take People Behind the Curtain/behind the scenes.
5. Partner With Influencers

Snapchat’s authentic platform can make an impact with your followers and strengthen your brand’s point of view with real-time marketing.

Instagram is an online mobile photo and video sharing service that enables its users to take pictures and videos and share them publicly or privately:

More information about Instagram:

Instagram can be used in business to great effect to create a brand profile on Instagram to make your Brand visible to a new market by:

1. Balance fun images with images from you business
2. Cultivate a following
3. Launch Debut videos
4. Embed Instagram videos on your blog or website
5. Follow your Followers back
6. Inspire potential customers
7. Leverage photo contests on Instagram with Facebook
8. Market your brand using trends eg #followfriday

Play this short video for more information on how to build an audience for your Brand:

Vine is a short-form video sharing service where users can share six-second-long looping video clips.

You can share these short videos with your Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

Here are some creative uses for Vine for Marketing your business:

1. Engage Your Followers in Conversations
2. Highlight Your Brand Advocates
3. Display Your Work for a Client
4. Offer Up Relevant Historical Trivia
5. Celebrate the Holidays
6. Get People Excited About a New Product
7. Take People Inside Your Office
8. Attract Customers to Your Booth at a Conference
9. Tell your Brands story

Periscope is an app that lets you share and experience live video streams direct from your smartphone or tablet. It can be used to capture the atmosphere among fans at an important match, to broadcast an unfolding news story or to experience what it’s like to walk down the streets of New York or Dubai.

Periscope is used to create live video broadcasts:

If your business is looking for a better, more personal way to connect with customers, Periscope is the answer. The Twitter-owned live-streaming iOS and Android app lets anyone broadcast video for free, giving small businesses an easy, fast and affordable way to communicate with customers in real-time.
How to use Periscope in your Business:

1. Humanize your brand
2. Show behind the scenes
3. Give product demos
4. Tutorials
5. Showcase Offerings
6. Live Events
7. Live Q&A

 

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, and discover new interests by posting (known as ‘pinning’ on Pinterest) images or videos to their own or others’ boards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins,’ usually with a common theme) and browsing what other users have pinned.

Pinterest represents a massive opportunity for both consumer-focused and business-to-business companies:

Other emerging Social Media:

Imgur is an online image sharing community and image host founded by Alan Schaaf. Imgur allows users to create an account and post images of all sorts. The images can be about games, memes, people, places or anything of personal interest.

Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations.

Reddit is an entertainment, social news networking service, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially an online bulletin board system.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media as a marketing eTool:

Too many businesses enter into social media because it’s ‘the done thing‘ – they feel they should have a presence purely because their competitors do. There are a number of real benefits to getting involved with social media, provided it is properly planned and executed.Business advantages of effective social media use include:

• compelling and relevant content will grab the attention of potential customers and increase brand visibility
• you can respond almost instantly to industry developments and become heard in your field
• it can be much cheaper than traditional advertising and promotional activities
• social content can indirectly boost links to website content by appearing in universal search results, improving search traffic and online sales
• you can deliver improved customer service and respond effectively to feedback
• customers can find you through new channels, generating more leads
• increased loyalty and advocacy from the customers you’ve connected with

Disadvantages include:

• you will need to commit resources to managing your social media presence, responding to feedback and producing new content
• it can be difficult to quantify the return on investment and the value of one channel over another
• ineffective use – for example, using the network to push for sales without engaging with customers, or failing to respond to negative feedback – may damage your reputation
• Privacy – some avid social network members feel that marketing and advertising is intrusive to their privacy. According to Web Pro News, eight out of 10 social media users feel ambivalent to uneasy about sharing personal information and place social networks low in security confidence. The practice of shaping ads and campaigns off member information collected from social networking sites has stirred a wave confidentiality controversy, and marketing efforts can be met with bitterness and offensive

 

 

2.  Rich Media:

 

Rich Media is a digital advertising term for an ad that includes advanced features like video, audio and other elements that encourage viewers to interest and engage with the content:

While text ads sell with words, and display ads sell with pictures, rich media ads offer more ways to involve an audience with an ad. The ad can expand, float, peel down, etc. You can access aggregated metrics on your audience’s behaviour, including number of expansions, multiple exits, and video completions to get granular data on the success of your campaign.

Rich Media is used primarily in YouTube, Vine, Periscope, DoubleClick by Google.

DoubleClick is a business owned by Google that makes it money from online advertisers and publishers. This is done by:

• Ad-serving : Online publishers use DoubleClick to display adverts on their websites.
• Ad delivery : DoublClick will let advertisers control how often an ad is shown to a browser, how long it is shown for and how often it will appear.

Behavioural targeting – this comes in two categories:

• Targeting for one website owner: An online publisher can set a DoubleClick cookie to tell them what sections of their sites you are browsing. DoubleClick will then judge the type of adverts you might like to see from what you’re browsing. For example, if you are on a news website and you visit the sports pages, then adverts for match tickets may be more relevant than makeup. This information belongs to the website owner only.
• Targeting in advertising networks: Google runs a service called Adsense, in which lots of different publishers pool the information they get on browsers. This helps them build up a better idea of the type of adverts someone might want to see. This is a third-party advertising cookie.

The Pros and Cons of Rich Media:

Rich media can have the sizzle that many ad executives complain the typical Internet creative lacks. If an agency can marshal its creative forces, it has the potential to create more powerful advertising than currently exists in any other media. But there’s more to this than first meets the eye.

The major pros of rich media are:

• It gets viewers’ attention and is engaging.
• It delivers a more nuanced message.
• It employs emotional appeals difficult to execute in a two-dimensional medium.
• It allows for interactive experiences like games or commerce applications.
• It helps build your business brand

But these benefits come at a great cost:

• Bandwidth requirements are much greater for rich media (by a factor of 10 to 100), preventing many viewers from seeing the ad.
• Rich media formats often require a certain browser or plug-in technology, preventing a good proportion of the audience from getting the rich message.
• Production costs on rich creative can be as high as those for television spots. The range is broad, but with the smaller media buys on the Internet, the relative efficiency can be hard to swallow.
• Some rich media technologies do not yet have fully developed measurement capabilities that yield performance information on a par with other online advertising.
• A rich media campaign involves many parties. Between the site, the agency, the client, the production house, the technology vendor, and, often, a special rich media ad server, there is a lot of room for miscommunication.
• The rich media trafficking process can be very complex.

 

3.  Email marketing:

Email marketing occurs when a company sends a commercial message to a group of people by use of electronic email. Most commonly through advertisements, requests for business, or sales or donation solicitation, any email communication is considered email marketing if it helps to build customer loyalty, trust in a product or company or brand recognition. Email marketing is an efficient way to stay connected with your clients while also promoting your business.

Here are three popular companies involved in Email Marketing:

1. Constant Contact
2. MailChimp
3. Campaign Monitor

Constant Contact is a powerful and user-friendly software with a diverse selection of email templates. The company is an especially good choice for email marketing beginners, who will have access to some of the best educational resources in the industry.Constant Contact offers more than 400 customizable email templates. You also have the option to use a blank template or code directly with HTML and CSS.  They also have a WordPress plug-in as well as a Facebook Fan Page app which gives your Facebook fans a way to sign up for emails directly from your Facebook Fan page.

MailChimp is a simple email marketing software (EMS) which gives you a number of easy options for designing, sending and saving templates of your emails.
MailChimp also has more than 400 templates to choose from. They recently implemented a drag and drop editor for quick, easy and aesthetically pleasing email layouts. Many of their templates are optimised to display on mobile devices. You also have the option of coding your email directly with HTML and inline CSS.
MailChimp uses an open API and encourages other applications to integrate with it. PayPal, Google Analytics, Shopify, FreshBooks, Salesforce, SurveyMonkey and many more.

Campaign Monitor is an online email marketing application that enables designers to create, send, manage and track branded emails for themselves and their clients with ease.Campaign Monitor allows companies to quickly and easily design their own personalized messages for fans and customers. It also enables you to optimize your campaigns with the help of advanced analytics and detailed reports.

Advantages of Email Marketing:

1. Low Cost: Accumulating email addresses and maintaining a mailing list is relatively inexpensive, as well as sending out a newsletter. The cost of sending thousands of pieces of direct mail would be much more expensive to reach the same number of customers.
2. Tracability: Clickthroughs and positive or negative responses to newsletters by customers emails can be easily tracked by many numerous tracking metrics. This allows for a measurement of return on investment as well as the effective of a marketing campaign.
3. Instant Delivery Time: Email is near instant and so provides the benefit of deploying a marketing campaign faster than traditional media. The ‘quickness’ of the internet also encourages immediate responses from potential customers.
4. Personalisation and Campaign Testing. It is easier and cheaper to personalise emails, or a group of emails, than for physical print media and also than for the comapany’s website. This allows a relatively easy and cost effective way to test different email creatives and messaging.
5. Integration. Another level of market targeting allows email marketing combined with other direct media more of a chance to reinforce the marketing campaign message with an audience.
6. Pushing the Message: Website based advertising relies on an individual to visit the website. Direct email communication allows an advertiser to ‘push’ it’s message to the target audience.
7. Numbers: It is far easier to collect email addresses of interested parties who can then opt-in to companies marketing emails and newsletters than it would be to collect physical addresses and send direct mail to the same interested parties.
8. Green: E-mail marketing is paper-free.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing:

1. Undelivered Email: It may be difficult to get email through a spam filter as many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail.
2. Email Overload: Even when an email gets through to the consumer, there is so much email that needs to be looked at sometimes it is difficult for the individual to distinguish between solicited and unsolicited email, as well as have time to read through the email.
3. Renderability:. Difficulty of displaying the creative as intended within the in-box of different email reading systems.
4. Email response decay: Email recipients are most responsive when they first subscribe to an email. It is difficult to keep them engaged. Soon, the opted in for newsletter may be seen as an irritant.
5. Communications preferences: Recipients will have different preferences for email offers, content and frequency which affect engagement and response. These have to be managed through communications preferences.
6. Resources: Additional people and technology resources are required to deliver a sophisticated email newsletter that engages the consumer.

 

 

 

4.  Search Engine Optimisation SEO:

This is using keywords or keyphrases in a web page in order to help Search Engines find you more easily.  The objective of SEO is that when someone is searching for your Goods or Services that you will appear on page 1 of Search Engines.

In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

 

Content:

Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Keywords/Key phrases:

Your SEO keywords are the key words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. A website that is well optimized for search engines “speaks the same language” as its potential visitor base with keywords for SEO that help connect searchers to your site.

A keyword phrase means a set of separate words that build a phrase (a multi-word search term).

Title:

Small businesses who want to optimize their websites need to understand the key elements of every web page. One of these elements is the page title.

A page title, or title tag, is the main text that describes a web page.  It is the second most important on-page SEO element (behind your main body content), it is the easiest SEO element to edit and appears in three key places.

• Browser – the title tag show up in both the top of a browser’s window as well as the applicable tabs.
• Search Results Pages – title tags also show up in the search engine results as the links that potential visitors will click on after conducting a search.
• External Website – often times external websites (especially social media sites) will use the title of a web page as its link anchor text.

Meta Descriptions:Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.

Code Sample

<head>
<meta name="description" content="This is an example of a meta description. This will often show up in search results.">
</head>

Optimal Length for Search Engines is roughly 155 Characters

Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from SERPs. These short paragraphs are a webmaster’s opportunity to advertise content to searchers and to let them know exactly whether the given page contains the information they’re looking for.

The meta description should employ the keywords intelligently, but also create a compelling description that a searcher will want to click. Direct relevance to the page and uniqueness between each page’s meta description is key. The description should optimally be between 150-160 characters.

Headings:Heading tags, as their name suggests, are used to differentiate the headings and sub-headings of a page from the rest of the content. These tags are also known to webmasters as HTML header tags, head tags and SEO header tags. The most important heading tag is the h1 tag and least important is the h6 tag.

Links:Link/Hyperlink building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites. There are many techniques for building links, and while they vary in difficulty, SEOs tend to agree that link building is one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Many SEOs spend the majority of their time trying to do it well. For that reason, if you can master the art of building high-quality links, it can truly put you ahead of both other SEOs and your competition.

Alt Tags:You include images in your articles to get people to read your text. Well-chosen images also strengthen your message. You shouldn’t forget to give those images good alt attributes: alt tags and title tags strengthen the message towards search engine spiders and improve the accessibility of your website.

The alt and title attributes of an image are commonly referred to as alt tag or alt text and title tag even though they’re not technically tags. The alt text describes what’s on the image and the function of the image on the page. So if you have an image that’s used as a button to buy product X, the alt text would say: “button to buy product X”.

The alt tag is used by screen readers, the browsers used by blind and visually impaired people, to tell them what is on the image. The title attribute is shown as a tooltip when you hover over the element, so in case of an image button, the button could contain an extra call-to-action, like “Buy product X now for $19!”.

Each image should have an alt text. Not just for SEO purposes but also because blind and visually impaired people otherwise won’t know what the image is for. A title attribute is not required. It can be useful but in most cases, leaving it out shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Url’s:A URL is human-readable text that was designed to replace the numbers (IP addresses) that computers use to communicate with servers. They also identify the file structure on the given website.

URLs should:

• Use hyphens to separate words when necessary for readability. They should not use underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words. Overuse of hyphens in URLs can be seen as spammy, so it’s best to use caution and limit hyphen use in URLs when possible.
• Never be longer than 2,048 characters; otherwise Internet Explorer won’t be able to load the page.
• Avoid the use of parameters, if possible. If parameters need to be used, they should be limited to two or less.

 

Website Diagnostic Tools:

Major search engines, provide free tools for webmasters.  These tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won’t help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results.

WordTracker is an independent keyword research tool, which digs a little deeper into keyword research, combinations, and stats so that you can build powerful websites, from the best possible keyword phrases. Finding the right keywords is the beginning of every single marketing process that you execute online.SEO MOZ:    enables you to track keywords weekly for Google, Bing, and Yahoo in 200+ countries.  In addition to measuring your backlinks, most valuable pages and anchor text, Moz also proactively looks for unlinked mentions and competitive link opportunities.  With Smart SERP Analysis, Moz provides comprehensive keyword-based data (i.e. which words are ranking, who’s searching, where the traffic is generating, etc).

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a no-charge web service by Google for Webmasters.  It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. In 2015, Google rebranded Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.

Other emerging SEO practices:

If you’ve improved the crawling and indexing of your site using a webmaster tool or other services, you’re probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this.

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google which empowers you to find out exactly what your visitors are doing on your site and how they’re getting there. For example, using Google Analytics you can find out:

• which search phrases your visitors are using to find your site
• the average amount of time your visitors are spending on your site
• the average amount of time each visitor is spending on each page of your site
• which links your visitors clicked while they were on your site
• what geographical area your visitors are coming from
• which sites are referring the most traffic back to your site and much more.

This enables you to track the behaviors of your visitors and tweak or focus your marketing accordingly.

Google Alerts is another free tool provided by Google. With this tool, you can select a word or phrase or even an entire sentence and have automatic emails sent to you whenever that word, phrase or sentence is published anywhere on the internet. This is a powerful tool for keeping track of what content your competitors might be creating and publishing.

Google alerts can also let you know when something is being written about you or your company online.  This can be useful for finding out if someone is duplicating your content or saying something negative which might hurt your company’s online reputation.

Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users.

 

 

 

5.  Online Advertising:

Online advertising is a marketing strategy that involves the use of the Internet as a medium to obtain website traffic and target and deliver marketing messages to the right customers. Online advertising is geared toward defining markets through unique and useful applications.

 

A major advantage of online advertising is the quick promotion of product information without geographical boundary limits. A major challenge is the evolving field of interactive advertising, which poses new challenges for online advertisers.

Online advertisements are purchased through one of the following common vehicles:

• Pay per click (PPC), also called cost per click, is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. Pay–per–click is commonly associated with search engines.
• Google AdWords is Google’s online advertising program that lets you reach new customers and grow your business. With AdWords, you choose where your ad appears, set a budget you’re comfortable with, and measure the impact of your ad.

• Google AdSense is a program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements, that are targeted to site content and audience.

Examples of online advertising include banner ads, search engine results pages, social networking ads, online classified ads, pop-ups and contextual ads.

• Banner Ads are a form of advertising on the internet delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser.

• Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, although display advertising is more widespread.
• Social network advertising, also called social media targeting is a term to describe forms of online advertising that focus on social networking services. One of the major benefits of this type of advertising is that advertisers can take advantage of the users’ demographic information and target their ads appropriately.
• Pop-up ads or pop-ups are often forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to attract web traffic or capture email addresses. Pop-ups are generally new web browser windows to display advertisements.
• Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising for ads appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile browsers. The advertisements themselves are selected and served by automated systems based on the identity of the user and the content displayed.

As already discussed, Online Advertising is available in a number of formats, from banner ads, to rich media ads to social media pages and more. As you get increased traffic to your website, you may wonder which advertising campaigns are providing the best return on investment (ROI) and which are not proving valuable to your business’ goals.  It is important to measure the effectiveness of your web advertising.

Measurement:

There are a number of ways to measure the effectiveness of your online advertising:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.
• An  Impression is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable. Whether or not the ad is clicked is not taken into account. Each time an ad is fetched it is counted as one impression.
• Views – A Web page that has been viewed by one visitor. Page views are often used in online advertising, where advertisers use the number of page views a site receives to determine where and how to advertise.

Advantages of online advertising:

• Measurability
• Increased Revenue
• Trust
• Cost Effective

Disadvantages of online advertising:

• Growing user blindness to online advertising,
• Negative user reaction to distracting online advertising and more use of AdBlockers
• Difficulties in measuring success of online advertising,  
• Need to create different versions of the advertising for different devices, ie Desktop, Tablet, Phone etc.
• Challenge of converting impressions into engagement with the marketing message

 

Conclusion:

Once you begin your outreach to customers using your tool, remember these five keys:

1. Communicate with customers often.  Pick something simple you will do consistently like a marketing newsletter blast or a weekly tips announcement, and stick with that plan. If you’re consistent, your message will begin to stick in the minds of your customers.
2. Utilize the marketing templates in your online tool.  Many online tools have great wizard templates for e-mail campaigns and newsletters.  This saves a ton of time.
3. Make sure your leads are current and your notes updated.  Clean up your database as often as you can.
4. Leverage the benefits of your online tool.  There may be hidden benefits you haven’t tried yet, such an application tie-in to your iPhone or a new module that improves the way you track your customer leads and marketing activity.  Technology changes weekly and new innovations happen daily on these types of online products. Keep up-to-date by checking in often with your online marketing tool’s website.
5. Make sure the pricing structure works for you.  If your online tool doesn’t scale for you as the price increases, examine other online options and make sure you pick a membership structure that will continue to grow with you as you gain new customers.

 

 

 

 

Assignment 1

Outline the unique characteristics of the web as a marketing medium. Based on what we have discussed give examples of the types of medium that can be utilised.   Show examples of good and bad content.    Give examples of cost-effective tools and campaigns.   Show the risks involved and how digital marketing can go wrong.

Write an article in your WordPress blog (minimum 1500 words).

Digital Marketing can be described as the marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers. The key objective is to promote brands to various forms of digital media.

Previously, the differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing were obvious and clear. Digital marketing was once seen as an extra medium but with the evolution of technology these two mediums are beginning to work more together.

The Internet as a Marketing Medium:

The Internet offers a startling set of advantages as a marketing medium. Technology advances, consumer familiarity and vendor innovation will inevitably drive both marketing programs and customer interaction to center on the Internet.

The Internet is already an important, and perhaps transformational, marketing medium for business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets.

The once traditional mediums of TV, newspapers, radio, billboards etc. can still be very effective in reaching a target audience say during a particular TV or radio show or focusing on a certain type of newspaper. However, they lack that instant feedback of digital marketing or the accuracy of a digital campaign.

The Internet, email and mobile devices fill a new media category referred to as digital/interactive. This began with the emergence of the web in the mid-1990s.

Banner ads, streaming audio and video and corporate websites are common web-based media messages.

Email serves as a direct touch point with prospects and existing customers. Companies often send regular newsletter updates. Mobile devices have opened the door for growth in mobile ad messaging.

Range of Mediums:

Multimedia is content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animation, video and interactive content. Multimedia contrasts with media that use only rudimentary computer displays such as text-only or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material.

Multimedia can be recorded and played, displayed, dynamic, interacted with or accessed by information content processing devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can also be part of a live performance.

The term “rich media” is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Hypermedia scales up the amount of media content in multimedia application. Examples are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Periscope, vine, Instagram, Snapchat and many more.

Social media has evolved in the early 21st century, offering a relative low-cost way for your business to get more engagement with customers. You can send out messages to all followers via Twitter, but also respond directly to individual comments and discussions. Facebook allows for company announcements, question-and-answer posts and other ongoing interaction with the customers.

Content:

If you want to attract people to your website you must start by creating quality content. Valuable content includes everything from engaging website copy and useful blog articles to eye catching infographics and insightful videos. Content Marketing:

The most powerful brands ingrain themselves into our lives with great content. Historically, this content has been limited to ads and commercials. Today, brands are creating content for a variety of channels, showing different facets of their personality with articles, videos, music, and microsites (a small auxiliary website designed to function as a supplement to a primary website).

A good example of this is the Coca-Cola Journey 

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has long been a frontrunner when it comes to brand content creation. In recent years, they’re really upped the ante with their online magazine, Coca-Cola Journey.

An example of Bad Content:

In a competition, Malaysia Airlines, who tragically lost two airlines in 2014, asked their audience to answer the question:

“What and where would you like to tick off on your bucket list, and explain why?” 

Malaysia Airlines didn’t take into account the concept of a “bucket list” and its connection with death. With its recent tragic history, Malaysia Airlines showed a crude lack of empathy and sensitivity towards the situation, and people were quick to call them out. The links to the competition were cancelled, and people were asked to describe destinations and activities on their “to-do” list instead.

Content should be relevant, engaging and high quality.

Cost:

The cost of a digital marketing campaign can be relatively inexpensive. It is possible, particularly in a start up situation, where budgets are tight, to launch your digital marketing campaign for very little cost.

There are many online sites offering free business websites with instructions on how to set up your own business website. WordPress is a good example and there are many other free sites available.

If you have a smartphone, with a reasonable camera, you can create great content using a range of mediums (voice, text, multimedia) using YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Periscope and a range of others for little or no cost.

It is difficult to answer the question “How much should I spend on my digital marketing campaign?”  Monthly investments can start for very little (if you can do it yourself) and can go up to €15,000 depending on the size of the business and the  activities you want included in a contract with an agency.

A mix of marketing activities can include Google ads, social media ads, landing pages, blogging, social media, email as well as Google Pay Per Click campaigns, Monthly inbound marketing (content marketing), Facebook ad campaigns and so on.

Risks:

With all the opportunities that come with using digital marketing to promote your business, there are a number of risks attaching:

Generational divide:  

Younger people have grown up on the digital age and adapt much quicker to the constant changes in the digital marketing age.

Impact of Change:

A transformation of marketing is underway as we spend more time on our mobiles, tablets and laptops. The challenge for brands is to connect with customers through all these devices in real time and create campaigns that work across social media, display advertising and e-commerce.

The inventor of the electric lightbulb could hardly have imagined that one day his creation would be used not only to illuminate homes around the world, but also to transmit data that would enable people to download information from satellites in space to small hand-held devices. However, with the introduction of Li-Fi, household lighting could soon double as a form of data transmission that’s up to 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

For more information of Li-Fi, click on the YouTube video:

How can it all go wrong?

Sometimes having a large soapbox to stand on is enough to sink you professionally. Donald Trump doesn’t care much for President Obama. In fact, he got so fired up via Twitter that he started calling for marches on Washington D.C. and for patriots to “stop this travesty.” The ordeal he was facing? The re-election of the president.

Social Media is a great way to build up a Business or a Political Campaign, but it can tear it down again just as quickly.  Once a thread or conversation starts on Social Media, it never seems to die, you will be battling it or handling it forever.

On-line Privacy Concerns:

Increased consumer concerns about online information privacy is likely to affect all Internet based activities that could result in the collection and subsequent use of personal data.

When consumers perceive that negative consequences could result from submitting personal data online, they are less likely to do so. At the minimal level, consumers who are concerned about their online privacy will be unwilling to disclose personal information to web sites.

Assignment 2

Module: Digital Marketing 5N1364

Assessment Title: Clear identification of digital marketing strategies, with full discussion of the differences from traditional marketing practice and good explanation of their integration.

14th February 2016

 

The differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing are obvious: one focuses on the web and the other focuses on media like print, television, radio, and direct mail.

Both share similar goals. Digital marketing and traditional marketing are used to attract qualified customers and build brand awareness in your market, and they work together to power successful marketing results.

Defining Traditional Marketing:

There are many facets of traditional marketing and examples might include tangible items such as business cards, print ads in newspapers or magazines. It can also include posters, commercials on TV and radio, billboards and brochures. Traditional marketing is anything except digital means to brand your product or logo. 

Defining Digital Marketing:

The marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers. The key objective is to promote brands through various forms of digital media. Digital marketing extends beyond internet marketing to include channels that do not require the use of the internet.Examples of digital marketing include things like websites, social media mentions, YouTube videos, and banner ads. Specifically, digital marketing is similar to traditional advertising, but using digital devices. Businesses put content (or ads) out for individuals to find. People may conduct an organic online search, a paid search, find your business on a social network or by reading content that has been published online such as a blog or an article.

The more they see you or your content, the more familiar they will become with your brand and they will eventually develop a trust and a rapport with you through this online presence.

Traditional Marketing’s Advantages and Disadvantages:

Traditional marketing is around a long time and people are accustomed to it. Finding ads in magazines and newspapers, or reading billboards are still familiar activities and people still do them all the time. 

Usually, traditional marketing is only reaching a local audience even though it is not limited to one. One of the main disadvantages of traditional marketing is that the results are not easily measured, and in many cases cannot be measured at all. In most cases, traditional marketing is also more costly than digital marketing.  Perhaps the biggest disadvantage today is that traditional marketing is static which means there is no way to interact with the audience. It’s more like you are throwing information in front of people and hoping that they decide to take action.

Digital Marketing’s Advantages and Disadvantages:
 

One benefit to using digital marketing is that the results are much easier to measure; and another is that a digital campaign can reach an infinite audience. It is also possible to tailor a digital campaign to reach a local audience but it can also be used on the web and reach the entire globe when appropriate. Digital marketing is also a very interactive means of reaching an audience since it makes use of social outlets. There can be plenty of direct contact between the audience and the business which means that the business can get some very valuable consumer feedback. One of the disadvantages to using digital media marketing strategies is that it can take some time to realize measurable success.

Is there a realistic balance between the two?

 The world has transitioned into a very digital environment. Not only are magazines going digital, we perform many of our daily tasks such as banking online and much of our reading is done on e-readers. Because of the rise of the digital age, it just seems like common sense to invest in a digital campaign. Even though traditional marketing still has a place, it is diminishing in our digitally based world. For today’s businesses, it is imperative to have a website and use the web as a means to interact with their consumer base. There are some successful traditional marketing strategies, particularly if you are reaching a largely local audience, but it is important to take advantage of digital marketing so as to keep up in today’s world.

 The Marketing Mix:

Simply put the Marketing Mix is a tool used by businesses and Marketers to help determine a product or brands offering. The 4 P’s have been associated with the Marketing Mix since their creation by E Jerome McCarthy in 1960

Product:

The Product should fit the task consumers want it for, it should work and it should be what the consumers are expecting to get.

Place:

The product should be available from where your target consumer finds it easiest to shop. This may be High Street, Mail Order or the more current option via e-commerce or an online shop.

Price:

The Product should always be seen as representing good value for money. This does not necessarily mean it should be the cheapest available; one of the main tenets of the marketing concept is that customers are usually happy to pay a little more for something that works really well for them.

Promotion: 

Advertising, PR, Sales Promotion, Personal Selling and, in more recent times, Social Media are all key communication tools for an organisation. These tools should be used to put across the organisation’s message to the correct audiences in the manner they would most like to hear, whether it be informative or appealing to their emotions.

In the late 70’s it was widely acknowledged by Marketers that the Marketing Mix should be updated. This led to the creation of the Extended Marketing Mix in 1981 by Booms & Bitner which added 3 new elements to the 4 P’s Principle. This now allowed the extended Marketing Mix to include products that are services and not just physical things.

The extended 7 P’s

People:

All companies are reliant on the people who run them from front line Sales staff to the Managing Director. Having the right people is essential because they are as much a part of your business offering as the products/services you are offering.

Processes:

                            

The delivery of your service is usually done with the customer present so how the service is delivered is once again part of what the consumer is paying for.

Physical Evidence:

Almost all services include some physical elements even if the bulk of what the consumer is paying for is intangible. For example a hair salon would provide their client with a completed hairdo and an insurance company would give their customers some form of printed material. Even if the material is not physically printed (in the case of PDF’s) they are still receiving a “physical product” by this definition.
 Though in place since the 1980’s the 7 P’s are still widely taught due to their fundamental logic being sound in the marketing environment and marketers abilities to adapt the Marketing Mix to include changes in communications such as social media, updates in the places which you can sell a product/service or customers expectations in a constantly changing commercial environment.

  

Assignment 5

Module: Digital Marketing 5N1364

Assignment Title: Outline the stages of analysis, development, implementation and control of digital marketing campaigns 

25th of January 2016

 

 

Companies and business are beginning to realise that while up until now they did not require a strong digital marketing strategy to survive, going forward they now need a specific and tailored digital marketing plan to continue to retain market share and to increase revenue.

With more and more consumers purchasing online, if the business has no digital marketing plan, then they will inevitably lose customers to businesses that have a strong digital marketing strategy in place.

The main aims of the company should be to:

• 1) Outperform their competitors and
• 2) Increase sales/turnover
• 3) Increase profits

So what exactly is a digital marketing campaign?

It can be defined as a coordinated series of steps to promote or increase awareness of a product, service or brand through different mediums using a variety of different types of adverts.

The strategy for building the marketing campaign should be put together under four main headings :

• 1) Analysis
• 2) Development
• 3) Implementation and 
• 4) Control

 

We will look at these four stages in greater detail below:

ANALYSIS:

Here we need to identify your target market, define your campaign objectives, target your audience, understand their requirements, and finally focus on your content.


1. Identify your target market

Whatever you are selling, you must understand who and what your customer is if you want to maximise sales. Who will you be selling to and why should they buy your product.

If you are an existing established business, you will already have a customer base.  Imagine a vegetable grower planting crops that there was no demand for. He will obviously do research to establish what type of veg his customers will want (and ultimately buy) from him. In order to keep up with his customers wants and needs and expectations, he will need to carry out some form of market research.

There are many different types of Market Research and it will depend on varying factors which is most effective, such as the business, market and budget available.  

Collecting research can include:

1. Surveys – refer https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/market-research-surveys/
2. Questionnaires- refer https://docs.google.com/forms/
3. Interviews
4. Focus groups

The types of questions that can be asked are:

• What factors are important to you when you buy this product?
• What feature of this product do you like the best?
• What would you like to see improved?
• What is a fair price for this product?

Ensure there is some form of pressure and incentive for people to return the completed Survey/Questionnaire promptly ie “50% reduction off next purchase for first 50 customers who complete survey by Friday”.

Other Tools to help:

• Google Adplanner will tell you where people go online, traffic to websites these people go to and other websites that your potential audience go to.
• Google Alerts allows you to run searches and get results back by email when you are mentioned online.

 

It will also be necessary and important to check out the competition.  Establish who the company’s main competitor is and research their customer profile and also their best product sellers. Google Alerts can also be used to track your competitors online.

Know and understand the features and the benefits of your product or service.  A feature is a characteristic of a product/service that automatically comes with it, for example if washing powder has a special stain removing formula that’s a feature. The benefit to the customer is cleaner clothes.

When you know and understand the benefits of your product you can promote this more effectively to your target market.

         www.leadspeak.wordpress.com

Once all the data is collected, it should be carefully analysed and the results will form the basis of your marketing strategy.

2.  Identify suitable Digital Marketing Channels:

According to “www.forbes.com” “for a business to succeed in today’s world, it is important to have a strong digital footprint within the Internet”.

The starting point is your website. A good website has great content, regularly updated, easy to use and has a good conversion rate. There are many marketing companies that will develop a specific website for your particular needs. If budgets are tight, a website can be set up relatively easily and free using WordPress https://en.support.wordpress.com/five-step-website-setup/ or other similar websites. There are also a large number of tutorials on YouTube – refer to Tyler Moores “How to Make a WordPress website” with over 3M views http://youtu.be/sd0grLQ4voU.

With a good website planned, you can now concentrate on the most suitable digital tools for the marketing campaign. Here are the leading options:

• Social Media Marketing – powerful tool for advertising if the appropriate online social network is chosen to promote a particular product to a particular targeted audience:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google+
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Vine
  • Pinterest

are currently the most popular tools.

• Email Marketing – used to target and promote products to the existing data base of customers or to potential customers (by collecting their contact information through other marketing strategies)  MailChimp is a free email marketing service.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) – a paid advertising channel delivering highly targeted traffic of potential customers within a short time frame. Google AdSense is a free service.
• Display Advertising – on third party sites such as Blogs and Forums. These ads can be in any format such as video ads, banners, boxes etc
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – by using keywords or keyphrases in a web page in order to help Search Engines find you more easily.
• Content Marketing – such as text, graphics and videos. Good, high quality and relevant content in your website will bring more traffic. These can be in the form of Blogs on your website.

3.   Setting Objectives for the Campaign:

It would be easy to say the main objective for the marketing campaign is to increase sales but is this a true success measure? So what is success?  The first step is to define what success will look like in your business and this should be directly linked to your Business Objectives examples of these would be:

• Sales Figures Forecasting
• Improved Customer Service
• Improved Customer Communication
• Reducing Costs

The key to making sure that we are celebrating the right success is to get SMART objectives

Here is an example of Digital Marketing Objectives taken from The Icehouse company’s Business Objectives at the beginning of 2013:

  Extract from a Blog Post https://www.theicehouse.co.nz/digital-strategy-3

The objectives specifically state how the company would like to increase market share instead of something general like ‘be more profitable’. The objectives are measurable. The objectives are achievable and directly in sync with business objectives. They are relevant and realistic and each one has a timescale.

Other factors to consider when setting targets would be:

• Improve Pay Per Click (PPC)

Sample of Pay Per Click Advertisements.

• Google  AdWords https://www.google.ie/adwords/  is one of many free websites to assist you. You only pay when someone clicks your ad to visit your website.

• Google Alerts https://www.google.com/alerts. In the “Create an alert about” box, enter the words you want to get email notifications for.

• Increase Click Through Rate (CTR)   –  A ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view the page

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/articles/110/1/Raise-Your-Click-Through-Rates-for-Better-Quality-Score

• Improve SEO ranking – by proper keyword research and use of keywords, ensure originality in your website and have great content, use plugins to optimise your site and use title tags where appropriate.

• Length of Engagement – increase the length of time your customers spend on your website by reducing the Bounce rate.  A website that is easy to navigate and has great content.

• Social Media – the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the various social media marketing channels including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ would include:
  • Follower Growth
  • Frequency – how often are you tweeting/posting/blogging
  • Engagement – retweets/sharing/liking/mentions
  • Send more traffic to your website

DEVELOPMENT:

The business objectives have now been defined and there are clear goals and priorities set for the marketing campaign. Ensure that staff input has been sought from all relevant areas of the organisation and feedback provided on ways to improve products and services and ideas on how best to market same.  Ensure there is buy in and commitment from all areas.

Create great Content by knowing your audience and keeping it relevant. Share what works consistently and use real life stories to illustrate the benefits that your business has to offer.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner – https://adwords.google.ie/KeywordPlanner

Google has probably the best keyword tool that every content writer should use. This tool allows you to research keywords that you want to use in your next piece and suggests other keywords. Saves a lot of time and increases your writing’s SEO.

We have already covered off above the importance of SEO and how the use of keywords and keyphrases (a string of keywords that potential customers may type into a search engine) can be an important factor in achieving your goals. Keyword Research is a valuable process in the marketing campaign. By choosing the appropriate Keyword, you can increase the likelihood of the right type of customer reaching your website.  

Click on the link here for more information on how to do keyword research https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

Good website design is not just about how your site looks but how your well thought out SEO can boost your sites performance. The site should be easy to navigate on laptop and optimised for any device (tablet or mobile).  Content should be readily available to view and quick to load. Any multi media being used should not be too complicated, flashy or slow to load – otherwise your readers will Bounce before they even view your site. The Content Management System (CMS) used should not be too complicated and easy to update and always keep a Blog if this is relevant to your business, product or brand.

WordPress is a good example and is free to users to set up their own website:

https://wordpress.com/
Having followed the steps of Analysis above, building a successful Brand should be the natural result. You have already identified the business strengths, customers needs and how best to win market share. With these core areas defined, you can now begin to develop a strong Brand.

Ideally some neutral third party testing with group facilitation should be undertaken (not family and/or friends). Seek constructive feedback and implement any agreed changes.

IMPLEMENTATION:

 

As already discussed, great Content is the key to a successful website. The quality must be sufficiently high and a good balance between educating the customer and instilling the desire to purchase your product. Keeping up to date with changing trends and attracting new customers to your site. Refer to Jeff Bullas 13 Essential Content Marketing Tips to Convert Website Traffic into Sales http://www.jeffbullas.com/2015/01/13/13-essential-content-marketing-tips-to-convert-website-traffic-into-sales/

There are many guides on the Internet to assist with design and text of your website such as Google Fonts API and CSS https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/getting_started?hl=en. There are a few rules to abide by, keep it relatively simple and not too many different fonts – two is sufficient.  Also not too many different colours – two strong colours can be very effective with a consistent theme running across all web presence in the business name.  As your customer moves from your social media to your website (and vice versa) it should be immediately evident that he/she is still in your business site.

Depending on your business and the budget available for your marketing campaign, it may be well worth your while investing in a good Graphic Designer to help with the graphics, multimedia and logo of your website. However, if budgets do not allow this, there are plenty of Internet tools to assist. A good strong Logo will help build a strong Brand.

Most smartphones now have good quality cameras and video recording devices to get your message across to your customers. Use graphics and multimedia where possible.

It is sometimes useful to embed a video on your website or social media (rather than bringing the user into YouTube) – refer to https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=en for an easy guide on how to do this.

Slideshare is a useful tool and quick to load for your user – refer to this Slideshare example “Blogging the Smart Way” by Jeff Bullas https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/jeffbullas/blogging-the-smart-way-how-to-create-and-market-a-killer-blog-with-social-media.

The website is central to your Marketing Campaign and should be fully in place prior to your launch date as well as the social media presence with correct links to/from each site. Reach out to strategic partners who can assist you before your campaign goes live, during the day of the launch and after it goes live.

If traditional methods of advertising have proven to be worthwhile eg adverts in local newspapers, then this should be continued.

 

CONTROL:

Now that your marketing campaign has been successfully launched, it is important to update your plan daily and measure weekly.  At least in the initial stages of your campaign, it will be important to evaluate how your strategy is going on a frequent basis.

There are many tools to assist you. It is important to distinguish between Analytics and Google’s Webmaster Tools. There are some significant differences between the two.

Google Webmaster Tools is another free tool provided to improve and optimize websites by giving a clear picture of exactly what is going on within the site. While this may seem similar to what Analytics does, there are distinct differences between the two. Only using one piece leaves a great deal of important information on the table that could be used to leverage more traffic and more sales from a website.

Google Analytics is meant to give a picture of who is coming to a website, how many hits a site gets, how people are finding the site and what content is popular. Webmaster tools differ in that they are designed to provide a picture on how a website is seen by a search engine.

Google Analytics – https://www.google.ie/analytics/ enables you measure your advertising return on investment (ROI) as well as track your Flash, video and social networking sites.

Webmaster tools will tell you what age groups and genders are being responsive and which are not – this should assist in decision making going forward.

Google also have Search Console https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/.   

When set up, this tool can:

• Analyse clicks from Google Search
• Get alerts for critical errors or issues
• Test whether Google can successfully understand your content.

 

These are the behaviours you should be monitoring and measuring:

• Comments on the blog posts,
• Links to the post.
• Interactions on Facebook using the Insights option.
• Learn about your Twitter followers.
• Views on your YouTube video, links to the video on YouTube.

 

Simply Measured is one of many Analytics Tools available online http://simplymeasured.com/free-social-media-tools/. This is a sample of what their website promises to deliver:

1. Twitter Follower Analysis – learn more about your Twitter follower, from interests to influence
2. Instagram User Analysis – measure your Instagram engagement, content and trends
3. Facebook Fan Page Analysis- how healthy is your Facebook Fan Page? Study trends and timing
4. Facebook Insights Analysis – in depth analysis of your Facebook Fan Page visitors’ demographic and activity.
5. Facebook Competitive Analysis – compare your Facebook Fan Page against your competitors
6. Facebook Content Analysis – analyse the performance of your content on Facebook
7. Google+ Page Analysis – understand your Google+ Page “circlers” engagement and more.
8. Vine Analysis – analyse the performance of your Vine clips on Twitter
9. Twitter Customer Service Analysis – measure your key customer service metrics on Twitter
10. Social Traffic Analysis – find out how social media impacts your website performance
11. Traffic Source Analysis – find out which sources send the most traffic to your website.

 

What will be the actual change in performance? Here’s a nice graph to highlight the engagement difference between different types of Facebook posts:

      Facebook Engagement Graph(Data courtesy of  Tracksocial)

Whatever analytics tool or webmaster tool you choose, to start with you’ll be in prospecting mode, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. From that you’ll become more experienced with this, making it easier to gear up and plan well in advance and having much better knowledge of what will work based on what worked before.

Repeat what works and attack new opportunities that present (try a new social media presence).
The Digital Marketing Objectives outlined about should be constantly revisited, reviewed and updated. Adjust your metrics regularly to ensure they are still SMART.