Digital marketing is also called ‘Internet marketing', ‘web marketing' or ‘online marketing’.
Digital marketing may be defined as the promotion of brands or products through different forms of electronic media. These forms could be website, blogs, social media, mobile, applications, search, banner ads, etc.
Digital marketing is the process of making your product reach the customers through digital medium. This is a type of digital strategy, which is done through the Internet. Which is also called internet marketing. Through digital marketing, all such customers can be shown their services or products, who use the Internet in their mobile, computer, laptop, etc.
Consumer Decision Journy
Consumers make purchasing decisions based on a variety of factors. Most consumer decision journeys start online, where consumers look at website reviews and social media recommendations. Those looking to purchase an item also consider a brand's values and whether these values aligns with their own. When buying an item or service, consumers follow a series of steps to help them choose which company best fits their needs. The steps of a consumer decision journey include:
1. Trigger: A stimulus or trigger begins the consumer decision journey when an individual notices they have a problem and need a company's product or service to resolve it.
2. Initial consideration set: When considering a purchase, an individual reflects on their initial consideration set, or brands they immediately think of due to brand awareness.
3. Evaluation: Consumers gather information from researching multiple sources and reading reviews to decide which brand has what they want or need.
4. Buying: Once the consumer filters their options from the information they gathered in the evaluation stage, they choose a brand and start the purchase.
5. Ongoing exposure: After purchasing the product or service, the individual creates expectations from their post-purchase experience to help them make their next purchase decision.
6. Loyalty loop: Depending on a customer's satisfaction with the product and company determines whether they become loyal customers and brand advocates.
Buying models
There are mainly four different pricing models for display ads.
The user has to carefully decide which is most appropriate for him/her based on the campaign goals.
Cost per Click (CPC) : Cost per click (CPC) is the amount the users are willing to pay for a click on their ads.
CPC is used sole drive traffic to the advertiser's website.
They are comparatively less risky because, as an advertiser you must pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Cost per Milli (CPM) : Cost per milli, also known as the cost per thousand impressions, is the amount the advertiser must pay for every thousand impressions served.
The CPM model is mainly used for brand building purposes.
It ensures your ad reaches a wide range of audience but does not necessarily drive traffic to your website.
This model is preferred by publishers as they get paid irrespective of clicks and enables better cash flow projections for them.
CPC versus CPM : CTR is an important factor to be considered in order to determine the better of the two: CPC and CPM.
If you have a high CTR, simply displaying your ads on a website might suffice for you because the audiences are clicking on ads.
On the contrary, if people are not clicking on your ads and you have a low CTR even after continuous efforts, then you may consider the CPC model.
CPC versus CPM : You can also calculate effective CPC even if you are bidding on CPM model and then compare.
Let us take an example here. Let us assume that for a publisher the CPM rates are Rs. 80 and CPC is Rs. 8.
The average CTR of display ads is 0.2 per cent. Considering the average CTR, the number of clicks from 1000 impressions will be 2 ( 1000 x 0.2 per cent).
If you buy on CPM then for 1000 impressions you get two clicks. Hence effective CPC (eCPC) is Rs. 40 which is much higher than the CPC of Rs. 8.
Hence, the marketer will be better off buying on CPC in this case than on CPM and the publisher would prefer to sell on CPM.
Cost per Lead (CPL) : CPL is the amount you pay as an advertiser for acquiring a lead.
Lead is an intermediate action before final purchase. It is a micro conversion.
It could be a sign up, download of a brochure, subscription, etc.
The objective of the marketer is to acquire leads and nurture them through continuous engagement for conversions later.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA) : Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is the amount you pay, as an advertiser for acquiring a customer who buys your product or service.
It typically means the cost of customer acquisition. This model is mainly used to drive online transactions and is risk free as you only pay when the user buys.
The bid price is comparatively higher when compared to the other models. Whereas, the CPM and CPC models may have some suggested bids from the network (such as GDN), the challenge for the marketer is to estimate the target CPA.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA) :
eCPA may be calculated when bidding on CPC and that can be used to arrive at target CPA.
Let us take an example here. Assume 100 people click on your ad and land on your website.
Assume that out of 100 people, 10 people fill a lead form and out of them 1 user buys. Assume that CPC is Rs. 20. What will be the target CPL and target CPA?
The total cost in this case is Rs. 2000 (100 x Rs. 20) and eCPL is Rs. 200 and eCPA is Rs. 2000.
Thus marketer can now have a target CPL of less than Rs. 200 and it will be a more cost efficient model than the current CPC of Rs. 20.
Similarly marketer can have a target CPA of less than Rs.2000 and it will be more cost efficient than the current CPC of Rs. 20.
Fixed Cost/Sponsorship : In this model, you pay the fixed cost per day irrespective of number of impressions.
Some premium ad placements such as YouTube home page banner ads are sold on fixed cost model.
A related model is sponsorship. You can sponsor a website or a property, wherein you have logo presence and some ad inventory as a part of the package deal. Figure 2.15 captures the essence of different models.
As a marketer you have to strike a balance between impact, reach and cost effectiveness.
Your plan must have a good mix of sites which will break the clutter and make an impact, sites that will give you reach and sites that will be cost effective.
Figure explains the execution and outcomes for different buying models.
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MODULE 2
1) SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING
● Internet is the zero moment of truth. Consumers first search for products or services online before visiting the store.
● Hence, it is imperative for marketers to be present on search engines.
● Search Engine Marketing has two parts-(i) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and (ii) Search Advertising.
● While SEO is organic, Search Advertising is paid. The results of SEO may come only after few months of following the best practices of SEO.
● But, the marketer still must have a presence on search engines when the
user is searching.
● The answer lies in going for paid Search Advertising.
● The advertisements are shown if they match user query and are shown at the top or bottom of the results page and are labeled as 'ad'.
● Search engines try to ensure that advertisements are highly relevant to
the user's query.
● As can be seen from Figure 3.1, Google has the dominant share of the search engine traffic worldwide.
● User experience is of paramount importance to search engines especially Google.
● This is also evident when one looks at the homepage of Google, one of the
most visited websites in the world.
● Figure shows that Google does not show any ads on its homepage, even though it
'would have led to huge revenues, as it wants to keep the focus on the search query, and hence keeps its page uncluttered.
● It is interesting to contrast it with Yahoo!, as shown in Figure 3.3, which mixes its search bar with content.
● Why do the two search engines have completely different look? The difference is quite stark and is perhaps based on the different business models of the two search engines.
● Whereas Google’s primary business is search, Yahoo! 's focus is on content and hence it displays advertising.
● Therefore, while Google believes in the uncluttered search page, Yahoo! introduces the user to content while they search so that they can engage with it.
2) AdRanks
● AdRank is the position at which the ad appears in the search engine results.
● A study by Chitika (2013) has shown that results that appear in the top three positions combined attract more than 60 per cent of traffic compared to all other results.
● Figure shows the average traffic share for Google Result PageRank.
● The traffic decreases exponentially as we go down the PageRank.
● Do you know that Google is not the first search advertising platform ? Overture
was one of the early players in the market; it launched paid search advertising
service in 1998.
● Google launched its paid advertising do-it yourself platform-AdWords-in the year
2000. In 2003, Yahoo! acquired Overture.
● The initial auction model ranked ads per bid amount placed by an advertiser for
the keywords.
● This auction system was simple to implement. However it was not successful. This is because, firstly, this model leads to bidding wars.
● Suppose one bids Rs. 2 for the keyword ‘grocery shopping’. To outrank this bid,
their competitor raises the bid by Rs.1. This leaves the first bidder with no option
but to increase the bid to exceed that of the competition.
● This will continue until it becomes unaffordable for one of them to bid for that
keyword.
● This practice is unfair for small business that would not be able to compete against large corporations.
● The second problem with this model is that the quality of ads is not considered. A
user might see ads that are not relevant to the current search just because the
advertiser has bid high.
● This would ultimately result in a bad user experience. Google launched Quality
Score measurement system in 2005, which reduced the importance of bid amount in determining AdRank.
● Over the years, search engines have refined their auction process to reward
advertisers that show quality ads that are relevant to the user query.
● The algorithm of Google search ads is as follows:
AdRank = Maximum bid x Quality Score
● Although Google does not provide weights of the components of Quality Score,
but some analytics companies have analysed the Quality Score of large scale
number of key words and drawn some inferences about weights, as given in
Figure.
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DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
Awareness
● The consumer is aware of a brand, has heard of its name.
● The goal of the marketer at this stage is to get to the top of the mind recall.
● Awareness is the first step in the buying process and the most important.
● Without awareness, the consumer will not consider the brand for purchase.
● Digital marketing can play an important role in creating awareness and some
channels of digital marketing are more apt for it.
● There is display advertising on websites, social media such as Facebook,
LinkedIn and YouTube.
Interest
● It is not enough for a marketer that a consumer is aware of the brand.
● Consumers must be interested in the brand.
● They must want to know more about the brand, be intrigued by it.
● This is only known as 'consideration stage'.
● Consumers must consider the brand for purchase and it must be
included in their consideration set.
Desire
● New media makes it easy for consumers to evaluate the competing choices using inputs from reviewers, retailers, influencers, specialists, marketer and competitors.
● Smart marketers assist consumers in the evaluation process by providing comparative analysis, economic value calculations, collecting feedback, reviews and ratings and guiding consumers to the channels which can help them in making choices.
● for example, educates consumers about what criteria to look for while selecting diamond.
Action
● In this stage, consumers purchase the product that they desire and
prefer.
● This stage generates revenues for the brand and is the outcome every
marketer desires.
● Having conveniently located retail outlets or online purchase facility will
help the consumers in making the purchase.
● The website should have smooth navigation so that consumers can easily
find products that they are looking for at the right price and at the right
time.
● Consumers may drop off at any stage as they may not like the design of
the site or it may be slow to load or they may not find the right variant of
the product or may be seeking discounts or payment may not go through.
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● Marketer must ensure that all hurdles are removed.
● In the digital marketing. marketers have a plethora of channels to choose
from - search engines, websites, blogs, social networks, mobiles.
applications, forums.
● Depending on the stage of the consumer buying cycle, marketers can
choose the most appropriate channels.
Advocacy
● Consumers experience satisfaction or dissatisfaction after purchase.
● They may share their experience on social media and spread word of
mouth.
● If consumers are highly satisfied, they may develop a bond with the brand
and become loyal and purchase repeatedly or in larger quantities.
● They may purchase again without undergoing all the stages of decision
process.
● Social media is most apt for advocacy and word of mouth post purchase.
P·O·E·M Framework
A good framework that can help you organise your digital hu strategy is
Paid, Owned, and Earned Media.
● Paid media include: sponsored advertisements in different channels of digital marketing such as search engines, websites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
● They' include campaigns run through different platforms such as Google AdWords and Campaign Manager of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
● It also includes campaigns run through ad networks or Demand Side Platforms
(DSPs).
● Owned media is like an asset of the company i.e., the company has the ownership of these media.
It includes company's official website, microsite, and social media pages such as
Facebook page, Linkedln page, YouTube channel and Twitter handle.
● It also includes mobile apps or blogs, and also the original content created by the company such as videos, images, infographics and posts.
● Earned media is organic and unpaid. It includes publicity that is generated through recommendations and word of mouth.
● It also includes social media engagement such as likes, shares, comments, replies, retweets, favourites, etc.
● Earned media is generated by users and hence is more credible and has the power to give exponential reach to the marketer.
● Earned media accrues only when users like the content and engage with it.
● The combination of 'owned. earned, paid media' is regarded as one of the
best practices in digital marketing.
● There should be a balance between all media and it should not be lopsided towards one.
● It means, as a brand, you should not focus only on one media and ignore others.
● For instance, it is not a good strategy to depend largely on paid ads and not focus on earned media.
● Focus is related to budget allocation. A simple thumb rule is to divide the budget
equally between paid and owned/earned media.
● This is a best practice which means that you must allocate 50 per cent of your
digital marketing budget to create content for your digital assets and gelling
engagement. and remaining 50 per cent on running paid ads.
SKILLS REQUIRED IN DIGITAL MARKETING
● Digital marketing is complex and requires different skill sets.
● It is impossible for one person to possess all the skills needed to
be an effective digital marketer.
● Marketers should hence build a team which has all the requisite competencies.
● Some of them can be in-house (in employees) and some can be
outsourced (digital agencies). We can use the following framework for skill sets:
1. Think
● Digital marketing requires people who can think and conceptualise.
● They should be able to look at metrics and analyse the performance and
optimise.
● They should have analytical skills and should be able to run campaigns
on search, display and social media.
● They should be able to do A/B testing to know what works and what does
not and optimise.
● They should be able to identify some strategic goals of digital marketing
such as testing some product concepts or doing market research for
consumer trends.
2. Feel
● This is one of the most important skills in digital marketing.
● It is the ability to empathise with your customers by stepping into their shoes and understanding their pain points.
● This skill will enable the digital marketer to identify the content strategy that will resonate with their target audiences.
● Members of the team possessing these skills will be actively involved in creating content strategy for websites, blogs, forums and social media.
3. Act
● Digital marketing requires lot of execution.
● You need people who can understand the brand concept and the content
strategy and create creative images and videos.
● These people should be graphic designers or be from institutes or design and know software for editing photos and videos.
● They should not only know how to use tools and software but should also be
artistic and creative.
● They should also understand brand values and should be able to create images and videos that are aligned with the brand values.
DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN
The head of digital marketing will have to prepare a digital marketing plan which outlines the objectives, target audience profile, content strategy, channel strategy, budget and measurement.
Objectives
● The starting point is to identify the objectives of digital marketing.
● This can be split into branding and performance objectives.
● Both the goals can coexist. Some campaigns and activities may have the
objective of increasing brand awareness and brand recall, whereas others
may have the objective of increasing sales or leads or conversions.
● It is advisable to identify metrics for measurement of performance
alongside objective setting.
● If the goal is branding then the metric would be recall.
● This may be measured by hiring a market research agency which may do
an online or offline research for top of mind recall, etc.
● If the objective is performance, then measurement can be done through
metrics such as CTR (click through rate), leads, conversions and CPA
(cost per acquisition).
Buyer Personas
● Next step is to identify multiple buyer personas.
● This should be based on analysis of past data and profile of your best customers
and not based on hunch or assumptions.
● The more scientific it is, the more accurate it will be.
● Another important aspect is that you should develop multiple personas and not
one.
● Rarely customers would be so homogenous that they can be categorised into one persona.
● The information that you need about your best customers can be categorised
into three areas:
● Who You should identify the age, gender, location, job title, responsibility,
education of your customers and make a pen profile.
● What You must deliberate what are the goals of your customers and their
pain points that need to be resolved. What are their areas or interests,
what are their passion points, what media do they consume, what are the
touch points.
● Why Ultimately you must question why will they buy your product, what is
your unique selling proposition, what is your elevator pitch, and how
compelling it is to convince the customers to buy.
● You can get information to fill your buyer personas by examining the
social media profiles of your customers.
● You can also get useful information from audience reports in Google
Analytics that explains the geographic, demographic, device data of your
audience.
Content
● You must prepare content strategy by analysing what worked in the past
and what did not.
● You must analyse the performance of each of the content types such as
video, image, infographics, eBooks, webinars, games, how to, trends and
create more of the variety that performed better.
Channel
● As a part of channel strategy, how much would you invest in creating paid, owned, and earned content?
● In owned, will you have a website or a microsite? Which social media pages or handles will you have and how will you prioritise?
● For earned media, will you participate in bIogs or forum or question answer sites?
● What is your content strategy for getting engagement?
● Will you use contests or promotions or controversy or emotional appeal?
● For paid media, which platforms will you run campaigns on?
● Will you run campaigns on search engines or banner ads on websites or
on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedln?
Timeline
● You must prepare a month-wise calendar to record which activities will be
done in which month.
● You must further break down content strategy, channel strategy, target
audience week-wise so that there is a starting point to refer to.
Budget
● How much budget will you allocate to digital marketing?
● It depends upon what per cent of the marketing objectives will be met through
digital.
● It also depends upon the industry and the role of marketing
communications in marketing mix and the role of digital in marketing communications mix.
● For certain industries such as e commerce, financial services, automobile and education, digital is very important and hence higher per cent may be allocated to it.
● How much budget will you allocate for paid campaigns across different medium?
● Hence, how much budget will you allocate as media cost?
● How much budget will you assign for content creation?
● How much budget will you allot for technology development cost such
as developing website or a game?
Measurement
● The measurement metrics (Figure 1.12) will be dependent upon the objective.
● If the objective is branding then measurement will involve recall, attitude
and association studies.
● You may wish to hire a market research agency to do it either online or offline.
● If the campaign objective is performance then measurement is through CTR, leads, and conversions.
DISPLAY (ADVERTISING)
● Display advertising refers to the act of communicating the advertising message using visually rich media.
● The main objective of display advertising is to build brand image.
● The first step in building brand image is to create awareness.
● Display advertising is very powerful in creating awareness as it is a push
medium, and hence can be shown on websites with huge traffic to reach maximum users.
● The mode of communication may be through traditional media or digital
media, Traditional media includes print (newspapers, magazines, pamphlets,
journals etc.) and television.
● Do you know that ads on TV and print are also a form of display advertising?
● The most important objective of display advertising is awareness and brand building.
● For awareness, the most important requirement is 'Reach‘.
● The metrics for measuring the reach is different in different mediums of display advertising (Figure).
● Each of these modes has its own set of pros and cons.
TYPES OF DISPLAY ADS
Format
Based on format, display ads can be grouped into three categories as
follows:
● Image Ads : Image ads contain static images related to your product or
service. They have no effects and are the most standard format of
advertising.
● Rich Media Ads : Rich media ads include other interactive media
elements such as animations, GIFs or other dynamic aspects which
change upon user interaction, For example, ads which you can interact
with as you hover on them or scroll down.
● A classic example of a rich media ad is a page peel ad, where in, when
you click on the slightly peeled off part on the top right, the ad appears as
the page peels off completely.
● Video Ads : Video ads are those in which a video is embedded in the ad.
● This format of advertising is extensively used in YouTube, It is highly
effective and is gaining immense popularity in the advertising world.
Display Ad Size
Display ads are put up in various sizes based on the availability of space
on the website.
The most popular, top performing and standardised ad sizes are described
in this section.
● Medium Rectangle : Available both in the desktop and mobile platform, the medium rectangle ad is the most popular display ad.
● The content could include text, images or other animations.
● The ad size is 300 (width) x 250 (height) pixels. Figure shows the position of the ad.
● Large Rectangle : Large rectangle has more ad space when compared to
the medium rectangle and thus can be used to communicate better.
● This ad is only available in the desktop mode.
● The standard size of large rectangle is 336 x 280 pixels (Figure).
● Leaderboard : This ad is generally placed above the main content at the
top of the page.
● It is available only on the desktop mode and is generally found in portals,
news sites, forums.
● The standard size for this ad is 728 x 90 pixels (Figure).
● Half Page : This is the biggest of all and covers most part of the webpage.
● It provides ample space to the advertisers to communicate their message and provide rich engagement.
● Available only in the desktop mode, the half-page ad is increasingly
gaining traction and has a size of 300 x 600 pixel (Figure).
● Large Mobile Banner : As the name suggests, this ad is only available
on mobile, and is larger than the standard mobile ad which is 320 x 50
pixels.
● The standard size for this ad is 320 x 100 pixels (Figure ).
● Large Format Ads : These ads cover a large part of the screen.
● They may expand on hovering. They are also called 'expandables‘ (Figure).
● Skinning/ Takeover : In these ads, one advertiser takes all the ad
spaces on a page. Figure shows four ads and all four are of Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
● It is also called Roadblock which is popular in newspaper advertising too.
● The objective is to ensure that users do not miss the ad and get exposed
to the brand.
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