digital marketing communication lecture notes
digital marketing communication lecture notes
digital marketing communication lecture notes
Before we begin our journey into concepts of digital marketing, we should think about
how we would define digital marketing. The advent of the internet, and the number of
devices and platforms that people use to connect and share content, has given rise to
the digital marketing era. Simply put, this online space is where you will find your
consumers and grow your business.
Digital marketing is the use of new media or digital technology to achieve marketing and
business goals.
If we wish to be more specific, digital marketing can be defined within the parameters of
technologies using digital formats and the internet. This ranges from computers to
mobile technology, and even things like digital billboards. Moreover, digital marketing
encompasses online shared experiences such as social media or digital marketing
software. These, in turn, help marketers create, distribute, and track their campaign on
digital platforms to drive success.
Outbound
Outbound marketing begins with the brand advertiser pushing out a message to a
specified target audience with the objective being to drive awareness of a product or
service. This is done by rapidly spreading word of the campaign product or service to the
target audience using, for example, visual display banner and video formats multiple
times to ensure people remember the product. This is known as ‘drive product recall,’
and is achieved through audience reach and repetition. It is your more traditional way to
do marketing. Essentially, you have a message, you have an audience, and you are
pushing that message to your audience. Your hope is that the message captures your
audience’s attention. This concept applies to digital marketing as much as traditional
marketing.
Inbound
Inbound marketing is the exact opposite; it’s almost like reverse marketing. Inbound
marketing involves trying to pull your audience towards your content, brand, or service. It
is about attracting those people who are already interested in your product or service so
that they seek you out and engage. With inbound marketing, potential customers find
you through channels such as blogs, search engines, email subscriptions, word of
mouth, and online reviews/recommendations. As a marketer, you are attempting to find
ways to create the conditions where people are drawn to your brand via your content,
with the objective of turning them into a customer.
In today’s business world, inbound marketing is the most important aspect to digital
marketing as it allows you to attract customers who consider your content or service
relevant to them. The strength of inbound marketing is ‘user intent’. What do we mean
by user intent? In essence, it is the audience who have the internal drive to take action
to find your product. This action is based on their own needs, and how and when they
want to proceed with a sale or conversion. Good inbound marketing provides efficient
and effective routes for your audience to come to your brand. It stands apart in its
effectiveness at encouraging audience action – particularly when that audience has a
finite attention span from consuming a limitless amount of content on their devices and
platforms.
Types of media
Digital marketing comprises, among other things, three different media channels: owned,
paid, and earned.
• Paid media is media or advertising that you have paid for to drive banner and
video visibility, or clicks and traffic, to your product, website, or service.
• Earned media is free publicity generated by consumers, PR, influencers, and
people who speak about and share content related to your brand or product.
Earned media is generated either in response to content you’ve shared, or via
voluntary mentions; in many cases, these people will be your brand advocates
and will actively promote your brand because they like you!
While it is important to consider each media type independently, you must also consider
how they can work together, and harmoniously, to produce an all-encompassing,
successful digital marketing campaign. For instance, you should explore how paid media
will promote your own content, and, in turn, how your own content will help to influence
earned media?
Owned media
To begin, owned media incorporates a company’s own content, packaging, point-of-sale,
and the people who come into contact with consumers. It’s the stuff a brand creates to
promote itself. Owned media promotes your brand in a very personal way by exhibiting
your company’s values and highlighting what the product or company does.
Some key questions you should ask when considering owned media are:
Think of owned media as a source for developing your brand personality. For example,
when you post on social media, try to avoid posting something dull and boring. Instead,
aim to post something that is true to your values and what you represent.
Some benefits of owned media include the cost efficiency, flexibility, longevity, and
power of developing a go-to platform for your audience. Owned media is important for
creating trust and legitimacy in the market. It acts as a main platform for communicating
all that the company is, sells, and does.
However, there are challenges to driving audience engagement from owned media, as it
can take some time to build a reputation and trust that guarantees high levels of traffic to
your website, blog, or other digital assets.
Paid media
Our second media type, paid media, comprises any form of media designed to promote
your brand or content on the internet for a fee. Examples of this includes social media
advertising, paid search, display adverts, or paid influencers.
Paid media helps you to scale up your digital marketing campaign and reach more
people than non-paid formats. In tandem with various reporting tools such as Google
Analytics, you will be able to analyze who is seeing your media and how the audience
engages or interacts with your campaigns. This, in turn, enables you to adjust and
optimize your paid media performance. With paid media you can take ad formats and
brand content and show it to people who you believe will find it relevant, useful, or
engaging. Essentially, this means you have control over where, when, and what is seen.
The drawback is that you have to pay for it!
Outbound paid media is useful for building awareness and generating familiarity, as it
provides the basis for audience reach, ad repetition, and defined audience targeting.
Inbound paid media like paid search and types of remarketing are great ways to drive
sales and conversions. However, with the advent of ad blockers, for example, there are
challenges to the efficacy of paid media, particularly with today’s ad saturation and the
ability to skip or report ads.
Earned media
Finally, earned media is the ultimate goal for brands and digital marketers. It is where
you have created a good piece of content, shared it through various platforms –
including paid promotion – and now people are engaging with it and actively sharing it
with their friends because they view it as important, relevant, interesting, or even funny.
Effectively, earned media is about people interacting with your content without you
having to put in the effort to drive traffic. Furthermore, your brand can borrow the
legitimacy of normal people sharing your content, and this builds trust and credibility far
quicker and far more effectively than paid media ever could.
Earned media comprises shares, reviews, mentions, and reposts; anything that allows
your content to appear on people’s social media timelines, for example. That is why
earned media is so valuable. It has already established a level of trust – it comes
personally recommended – and this is something a paid ad cannot do. People will
question the relevance of a paid ad because of its very nature, because of the fact that it
has been paid for.
Some benefits of earned media include the fact that it creates credibility, is organic, and
tends to live on longer than paid or owned media.
However, as this type of media is at the mercy or discretion of internet users, particularly
in an age where content can ‘go viral’, it can become difficult to control the direction your
earned media moves. In worst-case scenarios, viral content adopts unintended negative
meanings. Also, it can be difficult to understand how effective earned media is in driving
action or resonating with your audience. We should always consider if it is bringing
people to your brand or content for the intended reasons you set out.
• LSI keywords: These are words and phrases that are related to
your main keyword. They can help search engines understand
your content better and improve your rankings. For example,
some LSI keywords for the keyword “shoes” might be
“sneakers,” “boots,” and “athletic shoes.”
5.3) Type of Searches in SEO
5.3.1) Organic Searches
Organic Searches refers to unpaid listing in Search engine result page
(SERP). These results are based on multiple factors such as keyword
relevance, domain authority, page authority, backlinks.
How Do You Discover Organic Keywords?
You can discover organic keywords in a few different methods. Here are a
few tips:
• Use Google Keyword Planner: Google Keyword Planner is a
free tool that helps you find keywords and get insights into their
search volume and competition. You must have a Google Ads
account in order to utilize Google Keyword Planner.
• Use a keyword research tool: Both free and commercial
keyword research tools are widely available. Some popular
keyword research tools include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz
Keyword Explorer.
• Use Google Search Console: A free tool called Google Search
Console offers information on how well your website is doing in
search results. To find out which search terms are bringing
visitors to your website, use Google Search Console.
• Use Google Trends: Google Trends is a public web facility of
Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in
Google Search across various regions and languages. The
website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different
queries over time. It will get multiples organic keywords which
are being searched now ,it can write the article related to them
and boost website seo
• Getting keywords from other popular sites: This is a simple
way, like you can simply search on google the your query, and
you will get search results. Its sure that the one appearing 1st in
results will have used best keywords and seo. You can open that
site look at newly posted articles in it and take some good
keywords from there.
5.3.2) Paid Searches
Paid searches are advertisements. Search engines will show ads close to
organic search results. This is the primary way search engines make a
profit. Advertisements are almost consistently shown at the very top of a
search result, or in a left/right sidebar. Paid search works on a pay-per-
click model.
• Advantages of Paid Searches
o Instant results
o Provides keyword info for SEO
o Impressive Return on Investment (ROI)
o Allures ready-to-buy users
o Some instances of ad campaign data: Keywords,
Time spent on the page,
o Demographics and other information.
• Disadvantages of Paid Searches
o It necessitates ongoing maintenance
o Upfront costs
o Short-term outcomes are provided
o PPC experience and skillset are required.
5.4) What is Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of identifying the specific words and
phrases that people search for to find information, products, or services
on the internet. Keyword Research is an important step in understanding
what the user is searching.
• Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.): Organize your content with clear
and relevant header tags. The H1 tag (main heading) is
particularly important and should include your primary keyword.
• Keyword Placement in Content: Integrate your target keywords
naturally throughout the content, paying attention to the
introduction, headings, and body of the text. Avoid keyword
stuffing, as this can lead to a poor user experience and potential
search engine penalties.
• Quality Content: Create high-quality, valuable, and relevant
content around your chosen keywords. Content should satisfy
user intent and provide a positive user experience.
• URL Structure: Use SEO-friendly URLs that include relevant
keywords. Keep them concise, descriptive, and easy to
understand.
SEO Tools
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools are designed to improve the
ranking of your website in the search engine ranking pages (SERP).
These tools provide valuable SEO insights to your website and help you
identify the best strategies to enhance the website’s ranking. Some
popular SEO tools that you can use for your website are Google
Analytics, SEMrush, Ahref, MOZ, Google Search Console, and SE
Ranking.
Key topics:
• 6.1) Google Analytics
• 6.2) SEMrush
• 6.3) Ahref
• 6.4) MOZ
• 6.5) Google Search Console
6.1) Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most famous and free SEO tool for analyzing and
tracking your website traffic and it gives you access to a wide range of
data that you can use to improve your SEO
Features of Google Analytics:
• To further segment data and explore, include supplementary
dimensions in your reports.
• You can segment data results using advanced filters so that you
can concentrate on what matters to you.
• Pivot view enables you to quickly generate a pivot table from
the data without exporting it to Excel and Google Sheets.
6.2) SEMrush
SEMrush is the best all-in-one SEO tool you need and it is the most
famous SEO tool in the market. It offers us all the tools that we need to
create high-quality content for our website.
Features of SEMrush:
• Analyzing the competitor keywords and ad budgets
• Find the right keywords for SEO and PPC campaigns
• Conduct deep link, bulk analysis
• Analyze the media consumption and behavior of your potential
customers
6.3) Ahref
Ahref is a software tool that helps in link building, keyword research,
competitor analysis, rank tracking and site audits.
Features of Ahref:
• Ahrefs helps you find the best words to use on your website so
that people can easily find you on search engines.
• It shows you who is linking to your website, which is like getting
recommendations from others on the internet.
• Ahrefs checks your website for any issues that might affect how
it appears in search results. It’s like a health check for your site.
• It lets you know where your website stands in search results for
specific keywords. It’s like keeping an eye on your position in the
popularity contest of the internet.
6.4) MOZ
Moz is one of the top SaaS SEO tools that professionals use. Moz is a
full-service, all-around powerhouse tool, whether you are looking for
keyword suggestions or want to crawl the website.
Features of MOZ:
• It helps to track search engine ranking for specific keywords over
time.
• It checks the website for technical SEO problems including
duplicate content, broken links, and slow page loads.
• It provides details on the quantity and quality of backlinks or
links from other websites to the website of the user.
• It identifies the keywords that will rank the website in search
engine results.
6.5) Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a tools used to check indexing status, search
queries, crawling errors and optimize visibility of their websites
Features of Google Search Console:
• Shows how often your site appears in Google search results and
which queries lead people to your site. It’s like seeing how
popular your website is.
• Lets you check how a specific page on your website appears in
Google’s search results. It’s like looking at how your page shows
up when someone searches for it.
• Allows you to submit a sitemap of your website to Google. A
sitemap is like a map that helps Google find and understand all
the pages on your site.
• Highlights any issues Google has in crawling and indexing your
site. It’s like finding and fixing problems that might stop Google
from showing your pages.
• Checks if your website is mobile-friendly. It’s like making sure
your site looks good and works well on phones and tablets.
Page Authority,
Domain Authority
however, looks at how
measures how much
much trust one specific
people trust the whole
page on that website
website. It gives you
has. It focuses on the
an idea of how reliable
trustworthiness of a
the entire site is.
Definition single page.
DA applies to the
On the other hand, PA
entire website,
only cares about one
considering all the
page – like one article or
pages and stuff on that
one part of the website.
Scope website.
Domain Authority
Aspect (DA) Page Authority (PA)
DA is figured out by
search engines or SEO PA is also calculated by
tools, like Moz. They search engines or tools
look at things like how like Moz, but it’s all
many links point to the about the links to that
whole website, how one page and how good
old the website is, and the content on that
how good the content page is.
Calculation method is.
9) Technical SEO