CONTENTS WHY THIS BOOK? 13 HOW DO YOU DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN IN 100 DAYS? 17
PART I CONTEXT AND STRATEGY 19 1 WEEK 1: DIGITAL MARKETING OR ONLINE COMMUNICATION 21 THE WORLD HAS CHANGED 21 DIGITAL MEDIA ARE EVERYWHERE 24 THREE TYPES of MEDIA 25
2 WEEK 2: SMART QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU BEGIN 29 WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS? 30 WHO DO YOU WANT TO REACH? 31 HOW DOES YOUR CUSTOMER FIND YOUR BUSINESS OR BRAND? 34 FOCUS ON CONVERSION 37 THE MOBILE ACCELERATION 39 WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE? 40 ‘SMART QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU BEGIN’ SUMMARISED 42
ABOUT THE MEDIUM, MESSAGE AND WAY OF WORKING 43
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PART II THE MEDIA OR CHANNELS 45 3 WEEK 3: DO I NEED A WEBSITE? YES! 47 A SIMPLE OR AN EXTENSIVE WEBSITE 48 THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY 48 LATENT OR ACTIVE 49 THE MOBILE WEBSITE 50 DO YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT YOUR SMARTPHONE? 50 HOW DO YOU MAKE A WEBSITE FOR MOBILE DEVICES? 50 KEY ELEMENTS OF A GOOD WEBSITE 52 OBJECTIVES AND MEASURABLE RESULTS 52 A WEB ADDRESS 52 THE DESIGN 54 EASE OF USE - NAVIGATION 56 ACCESSIBILITY 56 SHAREABILITY 57 SECURITY 58 FINDABILITY 58 WHAT SHOULD BE ON A WEBSITE? 58 THE FOUNDATION 59 THE SEEDS 60 THE ROCKS 60 MEASURING 61 MEASURING, BUT WITH WHAT? 62 ‘DO I NEED A WEBSITE?’ SUMMARISED 63
SEARCH ENGINES ARE THERE TO HELP CUSTOMERS 65 IS SEO IMPORTANT FOR MY COMPANY? 67 THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH, LATENT OR ACTIVE? 67 SEO IS A LONG-TERM STORY 69 WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION 70 READABLE FOR GOOGLE 70 GOOD AND WELL STRUCTURED CONTENT 73 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS 75 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 76 LOCAL SEO 76 WHAT SHOULD YOU NOT DO? 77
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THE MARKETING BIBLE FOR A DIGITAL WORLD
MEASURING 78 WHERE CAN YOU FIND THE RIGHT FIGURES? 78 MEASURE THE RIGHT PARAMETERS 78 BEYOND THE CLASSIC SEARCH SCREEN 79 VIDEOSITES 79 MAPS 79 SEARCHING FOR APPS 80 SEARCHING FOR PRODUCTS 80 ‘SEARCH ENGINES ARE THERE TO HELP CONSUMERS’ SUMMARISED 81
4 WEEK 4: DOES MY MARKETING NEED SOCIAL MEDIA? 83 SOCIAL MEDIA: A PART OF OUR lives 83 SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY 85 OBJECTIVES 87 THE IMPORTANCE OF INFLUENCE AND REPUTATION 88 THE RELEVANT CHANNELS 89 FACEBOOK 90 TWITTER 92 INSTAGRAM 94 LINKEDIN 94 OTHER CHANNELS WORTH MENTIONNING 95 YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACTION PLAN 97 LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION 97 MEET YOUR AUDIENCE 98 PLAY ALONG 99 MEASURING 100 HOW TO MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA 100 RELEVANT KPI’S FOR SOCIAL MEDIA 101 ‘DOES MY MARKETING NEED SOCIAL MEDIA?’ SUMMARISED 103
5 WEEK 5: MEASURABLE ADVERTISING 105 NEW MODELS FOR ADVERTISING 106 TARGETED ADVERTISING 106 ONLINE ADVERTISING AND THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY 107 DIFFERENT FORMS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING 109 CLASSIC BANNER ADVERTISEMENTS 110 PROGRAMMATIC 111 AFFILIATE MARKETING 111
CONTENTS
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NATIVE ADVERTISING 112 GOOGLE ADS 114 ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL MEDIA 119 MEASURING AND OPTIMISING 128 PAID ADVERTISING SUMMARY 131
6 WEEK 9: EMAIL IS NOT DEAD 133 EMAIL IS HERE TO STAY 133 WHERE AND WHEN TO USE EMAIL 134 OBJECTIVES 136 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING 137 COLLECT ADDRESSES 137 USE A PROFESSIONAL EMAIL MARKETING SYSTEM 138 A GOOD EMAIL 141 CHECKLIST FOR A GOOD MAIL 143 LANDING PAGE 144 MEASURING 145 ‘EMAIL IS NOT DEAD’ SUMMARY 147
7 WEEK 10: ONLINE, ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE 149 WHY ‘MOBILITY’ IS SO IMPORTANT FOR MARKETING 150 MARKETING ON THE MOST PERSONAL DEVICE EVER 151 BROADEN YOUR REACH IN THE NEED PHASE 151 EXPLORING EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS 152 THE SMARTPHONE AS A FRIEND AT THE PURCHASE DECISION 152 CONNECT WITH YOUR CUSTOMER DURING USE 152 DEALING WITH MOBILE MEDIA 153 MOBILE MARKETING, A TRADE OF ITS OWN 153 DIFFERENT FORMS OF MOBILE MARKETING 158 VOICE FIRST 162 MEASURING MOBILE 163 ‘ONLINE, ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE’ SUMMARISED 164
8 WEEK 11: DIGITAL INNOVATION 165 WHO AM I SPEAKING TO? CHATBOTS 166 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MARKETING 168
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THE MARKETING BIBLE FOR A DIGITAL WORLD
15 years ago
Ping! You’ve got mail!
Now
You have 423 unread mails
product or service in the area. But even in that kind of situation, it is like walking on eggshells because you do not want to give the customer the feeling that you are violating their privacy. Email is extremely suitable to keep existing customers or relations warm for your company or brand and to stimulate the use of your products or services. You want to take care of people who have consciously entered into a relationship with you by giving you their email address. This can lead to long-term customer loyalty as well as direct conversion to sales, depending on the type of product or service you are selling. A car manufacturer builds a bond with customers via email so that they make the exploration phase smaller on their next purchase. If you sell online, you can build a case around the decision moment. For example, you can persuade a customer who put something in their shopping basket, but ultimately did not buy it, by sending a reminder email a few days later. This technique is comparable to the remarketing we saw earlier in the chapter on online advertising.
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OBJECTIVES So with email marketing, you will either build up a long-term relationship by regularly providing relevant information, or use the extensive tracking options to win over doubting customers. If you want to build a relationship, then your objectives are more qualitative. The great thing about email marketing is that you can then measure very precisely how the recipient interacts with your email, so well that you get an accurate picture of how loyal and satisfied your customers are. We can measure and evaluate the following key figures: 1. The number of email addresses in your database: Anyone who voluntarily submits an email address clearly shows that there is interest in your product or brand.
2. The number of unsubscriptions (or unsubscribe rate): Every email must offer the possibility to unsubscribe from a list. You also re-
ally want people who are no longer interested in your offer to unsubscribe. That only benefits the quality of your database. But many cancellations are of course also a signal that your email or even your offer is no longer tailored to the needs of your customer. TIP: Turn your unsubscribe page into something fun. Who knows, maybe a few people change their minds, but more importantly: you end with a positive note.
3. Open emails (or open rate): The email technique allows you to measure how many people have viewed your email. At least for those people who have also loaded the images in your email (more on this later). Deliberately opening an email is a clear action that points towards interest in your offer.
4. Bounce rate: There is also a bounce rate in email marketing. This figure refers to the percentage of addresses in your database that did not receive the email. This can have various causes: the email address no longer exists, the recipient’s mailbox is full, etc. Depending on the cause, this is referred to as a soft bounce (eg: the mailbox is full) or a hard bounce (eg: invalid email address).
5. Clicks (or click-through rate): A good email offers a multitude of ways to click through to the website of your company or brand. By analysing which topics were clicked on, you learn a lot about the relationship that people have to your message.
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6. Conversion: Just like when clicking on online advertisements, you can also measure the results of your campaign on your own website by email. That way you can check, for example, whether readers of your emails have also looked up information or products on your website. With the same parameters, you can also get a very precise picture of how your emails score if the goal of your campaign is to pursue conversion in the form of sales. In that case, the attention will shift to the last two parameters: clicks and conversion.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING COLLECT ADDRESSES You cannot email without email addresses, so you have to get them from somewhere. The best way to do that, is with a form on your own website. Do not limit yourself to a discreet link in a hidden corner of the site, but provide a clear button or even a small form for a place where visitors cannot ignore it. Also reward those visitors who leave their details; give them something of value. Telling that you will keep them informed of new features – and then not doing so – is not done. You can also indicate the frequency with which you will email the subscriber. Also consider giving an immediate discount, after all, those addresses are worth something to you. But know that there is a risk that you will mainly collect discount hunters in your database.
‘Reward visitors who leave their email address.’ If you want to collect more addresses without turning your registration form into a main item on your homepage, you can also work with discrete pop-ups or so-called light boxes. Handy tools such as Padiact23 and Wisepops24 show those visitors who have already visited a number of pages on your website, for example, a form on top of your site. With the help of a campaign configurator, you can determine how intrusive you want to make that form. In general, you want a database that is as good as possible without clutter. Not so much because of the cost of maintenance or delivery, but because mailing people who have not provided their email addresses themselves may damage your reputation. Most professional email marketing systems will also exclude low-quality databases from their systems.
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That’s why it’s best not to buy email addresses. The quality of your database is the cornerstone of your email marketing strategy. Here are some more arguments for not buying lists: • The people in the purchased lists did not ask for your emails. Every message you mail is delivered in a negative context. • You never know how good the quality of the list is. If there are many outdated addresses in it, part of your mailing is not only useless, but you also run the risk of being blacklisted as a spammer. • The lists that you would buy are probably also bought by other marketers. So you end up in a mailbox of people who already receive extra commercial messages. • And perhaps, most importantly: the law says that an opt-in is not transferable, so you cannot legally sell opt-ins. Only the owner of the list is allowed to mail to those addresses. The latter immediately is an opportunity, as you can read below. There is an option to use addresses of a related company or exchange addresses if you do so correctly. Even in that case, you do not want to reach out to the customer without their permission. If you want to work with someone else’s addresses, have that organisation send a mailing themselves with the possibility for the recipients to subscribe to your mailing list in the future. Provided you offer the right incentive, you collect addresses from really interested people this way. Keep the regulations in mind when collecting the addresses. These are some of the basic requirements that are valid throughout most of Europe: • you must always have permission to mail; • let the recipient know for what purpose you are going to use the email address; • will the data be passed on to third parties, if so, how? • make sure there is always an unsubscribe option in your email; • make it clear who the sender is; • give the option to easily adjust your personal data; • refer to the privacy policy on your website.
USE A PROFESSIONAL EMAIL MARKETING SYSTEM For managing your database and sending email marketing campaigns, you should use a professional system. This ensures that every recipient neatly receives an email addressed to them. If you mail to larger databases, the system will divide your batch. This means that it may take a while before all your emails are sent, but this also prevents them from being blocked by receiving mail servers because they suspect that they are spam. And you prevent your own website from being overloaded if the mailing is a huge success.
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What do you want to do with it? Marketing automation is a toolbox, not a strategy in itself. It is up to the online marketer to do something with it. Determine the functionalities you need within your marketing strategy based on your business objectives. What are your business and marketing objectives in the short and long term, and which functionalities can help you with this or which do you need for this? Also look at which marketing experiments have worked well in the past, and where it may be useful to scale them up through automation.
Do you have the necessary skills on board? The rollout of marketing automation software requires the necessary experience, but also time. Call on an external consultant and determine who within your team can free up time for marketing automation. How is your sales team included in that process and what user role do they get, for example? Also try to involve your team from the start in the selection of a platform. That will make the change management easier.
Do you really need a new platform? Before you resort to new software, first check if there are no marketing automation functionalities in the technology that you currently use. For example, if you use MailChimp for your newsletter, you can already do a lot with the landing pages, forms and rule-based emails. In the first phase, you can also experiment with free tools such as Zapier46 or IF47. The first allows two tools to work together, without the need for technical knowledge. With the second, you can set up automatic rules. For example, a tweet can be sent out when a new blog post appears on your website.
What technology are you already using? Make a visualisation of all the tools you use and take a look at how your new marketing automation platform integrates into that picture. How do you bridge the gap between all those tools and how do you make sure that your data comes together and is structured? If you switch to a new platform, consider scalability: can the platform evolve with the expected growth of your company?
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Don’t you automate too much? Automating repetitive tasks makes your marketing a lot more efficient and opens the possibility of a personalised customer journey. However, do not lose sight of the spontaneous and its authenticity: automate in moderation and keep control.
Are you GDPR compliant? With advanced software you can collect the touchpoints of a contact throughout different channels (website, email, social media, ...). Make sure you keep in mind the basic principles of European Union privacy legislation. For example, your contacts must be able to be removed from your database at any time and you may not retain personal data for longer than necessary. It is not because the platform that you use is GDPR compliant, that your company is.
MARKETING AUTOMATION
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