Digital Marketing Textbook Notes PDF

Chapter 1: Digital Marketing Foundations - Technical Terms - Domain name is the name of a website, which you reserve with a domain name registrar (a company that manages the leasing of domain names), and once you register, the name is reserved for you...

Chapter 1: Digital Marketing Foundations - Technical Terms - Domain name is the name of a website, which you reserve with a domain name registrar (a company that manages the leasing of domain names), and once you register, the name is reserved for you - GoDaddy is the largest registrar, but there are dozens - Create your website content, and that will reside on a server which is a computer connected to the internet that fulfills information requests to the website - Users can find your content on a web browser, a software that displays the webpage content to us - An internet protocol (IP) address is a standardized set of procedure for locating computers connected to the internet and for transferring information from one computer to another - The domain name system (DNS) manages the translation of domain names to IP addresses so that requests for a specific domain are routed to the correct server - Setting up a server host is usually outside of someone’s skill set, so you’re going to want to purchase web hosting - A web hosting company provides server space for others to run a website and most offer a variety of additional services, like a security certificate (allows users to access your website without being observed by third parties; might be referred to as an SSL or secure sockets layer) and a content management system (CMS) - Secure connection is indicated by your HTTPS at the beginning of the webpage URL (uniform resource locator) - All security certificates use transport layer security (TLS) which is an encryption method used to prevent eavesdropping from third parties, even if referred to as SSL - HTML and JavaScript are used to instruct web browsers how to display a webpage - eCommerce websites sell products - You’ll need a payment gateway to accept credit cards and a merchant account to collect payments - If you don’t set up an analytics package to provide reports about visitors to your site, then you’ll be in the dark about how well your website is performing - Successful websites - AIDA model - Awareness -> interest -> desire -> action - Successful websites: - Generating traffic/bringing visitors to the website to drive awareness - Driving conversions/facilitating interest and desire so a certain action is taken  - Maximizing revenue per conversion/increasing monetary value of customers’ action - Traffic; you want traffic; greater traffic is greater awareness - Direct traffic - Comes either from offline advertising activities or from a habit (billboard or someone who is into sports visiting espn.com) - Does not necessarily mean the visitor typed the URL - Advantage is that visitors were likely already aware of the website previously, so more likely to take action - Should consider a balance, because generating awareness/interest outside of the internet may be more expensive - Referral traffic - Traffic to a website that is a result of ads hosted on other websites - Two categories: paid vs unpaid - Paid = banner ads, text ads, rich media ads, video ads - Unpaid = coming from links not paid for (ex: citation) - Search traffic - Also unpaid vs paid - Unpaid = site clicks on organic search results, SERP - Paid = ads on SERP that accompany organic search results - Advantage is that searchers may already be in the desire stage - Email traffic - From email that people have signed up for - Conversion: a customer has been converted when they make a purchase from the site - Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who convert, and one of the most important indicators of success - Online retail (eCommerce) - Conversion is straightforward, visitor makes a purchase - The primary form of conversion that all retail sites strive for - Lead generation - A lead generation website’s goal is to generate a lead (inquiry for potential customer into a business’ products or services - Lead is a smaller commitment than a purchase, so person in interest stage may take action to become a lead before advancing to desire stage, so conversion rates on lead generation sites tend to be higher than on retail websites - Search engine - Software that provides the best list of content possible to users so they can find the best content - Media  - Media websites make money by exposing users to ads; can expose users to more ads and thus make more money if they can keep users engaged - Social media - You have to create an account to use, so new account creation is conversion - Affiliate marketing - Affiliate marketing websites typically provide information about variety of products - Makes money when someone visits a link and buys something on the destination site - Marketplace - eBay providing a platform for buyers and sellers to come together for exchanges - Account creation also important - Revenue - Retail - can increase average order value by encouraging customers to purchase higher-priced items or by encouraging add-on purchases - Lead generation - manager can just focus on traffic and conversion and let sales team worry about revenue; should track which traffic sources lead to more lucrative deals - Search engine - placing ads in the best positions, like expedia probably encouraging more lucrative bookings based on search order results - Media - willing to pay more to advertise to targeted audiences - Social media - know a lot about each user because of personal information, so if using info correctly, can earn more from ads - Affiliate marketing - will send traffic to the site that provides the highest commission and/or has the highest conversion rate - Marketplace - ebay charging standard fee to every seller, or charging extra for sellers to upgrade listings for supplemental services Chapter 2: Web Design (Desktop and Mobile) - Principles of good web design - Design for usability; should be easy to use with minimal effort - Follow website conventional; users don’t want to spend time and effort trying to figure out how to use your website - Create effective visual hierarchies; more important things should be larger and higher up - Break pages up to clearly defined areas - Make it obvious what’s clickable - Eliminate distractions - Format content to support scanning Chapter 3: Analytics - How analytics works, must accomplish two objectives - (1) Gather data about traffic on a website or application - Web analytics package can gather data about web traffic, needs to be granted access - Main code of a website or application enables info to be passed between user’s computer and server, analytics code passes traffic information to the analytics package servers - Store data to create summary reports, which webpage was requested when and where - Not useful to webmaster unless organized - Supplemental information - Does not know identity of the user, but needs to know which page came from the same person and same session - Timing of request, timestamps so they know how long each user is spending on each page - Navigation source, how users are arriving at a website - Technical information, safari or chrome, mobile or desktop computer, operating system, browser, screen size, internet connection type - Geography, general, usually level of zip code - (2) Provide summary reports of this data - Can organize in different ways - Total number of sessions, total revenue, total time on site - Behaviors, like percentage of visitors who move from homepage te each category page - Can customize reports it sees on homepage of account - Retail website owner might be more interested in statistics on purchases and revenue while a media site owner is more interested in average number of pages viewed or time spent on website - Metrics - Website analytics package capable of providing dozens og metrics that can be broken down - “Analysis paralysis” where sheer volume of data prevents analyst from taking worthwhile action - Traffic metrics: users, new users, sessions, page views - conversion/engagement metrics: even count, conversions, conversion rate, average engagement time per session - Revenue metrics - Revenue - not reported automatically, analytics user must install additional code  - Revenue per purchase (average order value) - valuable indicator of performance on critical third dimension - Average purchase revenue per user - calculated as total revenue / user; majority of users do not contribute any revenue, but useful to know because it indicates how much money can be spent profitably to generate a new user - Key performance indicators (KPI) - Websites of different types should have different key performance indicators, need to determine which would be the most beneficial - Retail KPI - KPI should reflect the goal of selling products - Sessions, should always be looking to increase the number of sessions to its site - Conversion rate, should constantly strive for ways to increase conversion rate (through A/B testing), sudden drop means you should fix something quickly - Revenue per purchase, can increase bt (1) enticing shoppers to purchase additional items, or (2) entice shoppers to purchase higher-priced items - Revenue per session, important to know number bc it determines whether new traffic driven through additional advertising is profitable - If retail website has conversion rate of 5% and revenue purchase of $50, revenue per session is $2.50 - Lead generation KPI - cannot complete a purchase transaction, but still looking for conversions - Conversion rate, conversion is a generated lead, lead can be generated in multiple ways (filling out a form, calling company, etc.), good lead generation website should track conversions - Close rate, % of leads that convert into revenue for company, lead that doesn’t become a customer is not valuable - Closed deal value, value is external to website, but can still affect websites decisions - Revenue per session, more difficult to track for a lead generation site, but valuable still yet - Media KPI - make money through advertisements, primary focus is generating traffic and keeping visitors engaged - Sessions, repeat sessions from same user are just as beneficial as sessions from new user - Pages per session, lives and dies by its ability to generate a high level of engagement with users, reliable indicator of user engagement and good content navigation/integration - Average engagement time, particularly media sites with more video content - Conversions, some may want users to sign up for regular emails/create an account/pay for premium membership  - Social media KPI - make more from ads and care primarily about user engagement - New account sign up (conversions), needs large user base - posts/X/pins/etc., any measure that reflects amount of content being created by users - likes/reposts/repins/etc., not only want users to create content, but also consume it - Average time on site, some time might be split throughout the day, so total time per day may be more reflective of user engagement - Search engine KPI - goal to provide best list possible, explicit goal to generate user exit - Searches, wants to generate searches - Conversion rate, google and bing forego this because they don’t often try to generate conversion, but search engines for hotels, flights, etc., receive commission on each conversion, so want to maximize conversion rate - Pages per session, wants to track pages per session, mot to maximize, but minimize; if user needs to navigate to second or third page of search results, search engine is not doing good job ordering search results - Making better decisions with analytics - You will only improve if you can properly connect the data to an optimal decision - Driving traffic or improving conversion - Importance of calculating revenue per session, once doing so, subsequent decision should follow: IF THE PROFIT PER SESSION IS HIGH, BRING IN MORE TRAFFIC; IS THE PROFIT PER SESSION IS LOW, IMPROVE CONVERSION - Channel analysis - Some visitors create great deal of revenue, others have slightest intention of making a purchase - If revenue per session from organic search is higher than revenue per session from display ads, finding would be an indication that an investment is SEO might pay off more than an investment in additional display ads - Organic search, website may find that searchers who entered certain key terms convert at a higher rate - Paid search, should be running multiple ads - Display ads, breaking down site traffic across these display ad varieties will indicate which ads are most effective and which are bringing in the most qualified traffic - Emails, conversion rate likely to be higher than from other sources - Social media posts and ads, usually comes from one of three sources - Content created by the company - Content created or shared by other social media users - Ads on a social media platform - Referrals, obtaining links from external websites  - Affiliate links, if paying referral fees to a partner website for quality traffic, should be optimizing traffic - Segmentation - any method of dividing customers into groups that differ in a meaningful and actionable way - Browser, behavioral and technical reasons; some may not display the site correctly - Screen size, website will appear differently to users with different screen sizes, which may cause divergent behavior from various user segments - Device, have to cater to wide variety of users - Geography, identifying differences could provide recommendations for profitable changes to the website - Timing, business with seasonality may wish to get a more precise picture of how site behavior differed at various points in the season - Conversion funnel - retail site usually needs three steps: out product in cart, check out, confirm order - By looking at checkout procedure step by step, website can determine where biggest fallout points are and proceed w A/B testing to determines if small changes could improve conversion numbers - Attribution - Last-click attribution - full credit for a customer’s action is given to the source that most regularly brought the customer to the site for the purchase - Attribution methods - last-click attribution, linear attribution, time-decay attribution - Attribution tools - Data-driven attribution utilizes algorithms to calculate the ROAS of various advertising channels through counterfactual (what if) comparisons - Google analytics - Most widely-used web analytics software - Universal analytics vs google analytics 4 vs google analytics 360 - 360 is meant for companies with a larger website and app activity level, more advanced than free analytics ($150,000 a year) - User identity tracking - Done through cookies - Setting up google analytics Chapter 4: On-Site SEO - Maximizing relevance - First task is to accurately determine which web pages are relevant to certain keywords, especially when wanting to rank well for financial management software - URL - target keyword phrase should be in URL  - Title Tag - shows up at the top of a browser when navigating to that page, should be short and sweet, typically keyword phrase should be first thing in title tag - Header Tags - surround word/phrase that gives a title/label to sections of webpage in HTML code of a website, makes content more easily browsed and gives search engines stronger clues to topic - Main content - wants to use target keyword phrase at least once in main content, but only when it makes sense to the user - Inserting keyword too much is called keyword stuffing and is ineffective - Image alt text and file name - unless images are properly labeled, it won’t matter - Alternative text is a label or tag that indicates the content of the image - Anchor text - search engine uses the anchor text from backlinks as an objective, third-party description of a web page - Choosing target search phrases - Format the web page to maximize the page’s relevance - Goal is not to rank well for a search, it is to rank well for as many searches as possible - Ranking refers to the position the website shows up in the SERP within the organic search results - Choose a list of search phrases to target for improvement in search rankings, should be based on: - Relevance of search phrases - Most important consideration - Traffic - No benefit to ranking for a search phrase that no one searches - Target phrases with higher level of traffic - Competition - Good way to estimate competition is to search for a keyword phrase and see which websites show up and whether the links to those websites are optimized perfectly for the keyword - Long tail keywords (ex: sterling silver earrings) are multi word phrases that are extended or more specific versions of a core fat head (ex: earrings) term - Current ranking - Mapping keywords to pages - Calculate the relevance of keyword phrase to a web page and not a website, if company has 20 target keywords we want to rank for, we do not want the homepage to show up for each of the 20 keywords, but each keyword to produce the webpage that is most pertinent to the searched phrase - Each keyword phrase should be matched to a page within the website - Helpful to map keywords - Creating high-quality web pages  - Rankings cannot be solely on relevance, or low-quality sites could earn good rankings by creating web-pages with high relevance scores - Search engine must also measure the quality of web pages - Source of information on the quality of a web page is the number of links from other websites directed at that web page - Original content - you want different web pages with different information; duplicate information forces search engine to punish websites that contain duplicate content - Unique content increases the likelihood of a good ranking - Meta description and snippets - short description of web page content; not displayed to visitors, but shown along w the webpage title - Short load times - searchers have short attention spans; search engines measure load times for pages on a website and will provide lower rankings to websites with longer load times - Fresh content - Quantity content - more likely to find valuable information on a website with lots of content than one with limited content - Low bounce rate from landing page - bounce rate is percentage of sessions beginning on that page that consists of only one page view, viewing the page then clicking the “back” button - Quality content - Other SEO considerations - Once a search engine knows a website provides good content, it can expect its rankings to improve for those search phrases - URL inspection tool - enables webmasters to test whether Google is properly crawling and rendering pages; good website can fail to achieve the rankings it observes because of technical issues, so important to prevent that - Insufficient internal linking - if pages within a site have no inbound links from other pages, search engines have no way to find those pages - Punishment for past crimes - websites engaging in black-hat SEO practices will be punished with poor rankings - Dirty sitemaps - an XML sitemap provides a technical map of a website to the search engine crawlers, which helps them index the site properly - Poor mobile optimization - websites that have poor usability on mobile websites will not rank well - Poor security - transport layer security (TLS) is an encryption method that ensures a third party cannot eavesdrop on an exchange between a server and a client - Core web vitals - may 2021 google started incorporating three new metrics that indicate a less-than-ideal user experience - LCP, largest contentful paint - FID, first input delay - CLS, cumulative layout shift - Local search rankings  - When searching “thai restaurant” you are obviously going to want thai restaurants near you to come up - Local search ranking factors - My business - Any company with a local presence should immediately register and verify its business with google’s My Business to ensure validity - Choose accurate categories for the business, inaccurate choices will hinder rankings - Associate my business listing with a well-optimized landing page - Include the business location in the my business title - Periodically add photos to the listing - NAP - name, address, phone number - Structured citations - references and listings from other websites, consistency is important - Reviews - matter for both local and non-local search, but cary greater weight in local search - Search engines past and future - Anytime algorithm changes, a website is vulnerable to losing some of its hard-won rankings - The panda update - Google Panda - after collecting data, ran machine learning algorithms to generalize these characteristics, then incorporated scores into algorithm and gave poor rankings to websites with poor characteristics - The pigeon update - Google's first major overhaul of local rankings - Improved estimation of searcher’s location and incorporated more traditional quality signals (reviews, links, website formatting) - The hummingbird update - More an algorithm replacement, more precise, faster - Increased precision due to improvements in contextual interpretation - Rankbrain - An input into google’s rankings, produced by artificial intelligence - Evolves on its own, continually improving search results without receiving new instructions from Google algorithm team - Mobile-first ranking - emphasis on mobile-friendliness continues to grow - Google's algorithm is based primarily on mobile version of websites - Significant, but logical change - BERT (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers) - Enables computer to better understand the meaning of a string of text - Can more accurately provide relevant results - ChatGPT (generative pre-trained transformer)  - Can generate completely novel responses to a query - Raises questions about SEO and paid search marketing, will search engines continue to send traffic to websites or will searchers receive all their answers within ChatGPT? - Functional changes - Knowledge graph - repository of information about people, places, and topics that google can show directly on SERP instead of directing users to external pages - Featured snippets - includes information snippets at the top of many searches, search engine has to understand the specific piece of information the searcher is looking for then separate that specific information from all the information about that topic - Voice search - typically return the same results as typed searches, but a few actions a website may wish to take to stay ahead of the curve on voice searches - Keep google my business up-to-date - a company hoping to be a good voice search result should be the top local search result in their category - Focus on long tail keywords - people can speak faster than they can type, so voice searches are often longer than typed searches - Use schema mark-up - business is more likely to be the source of information if its information is readily identifiable by search engine - Future changes to google’s algorithm Chapter 5: Off-Site SEO - Links - Links are created using hypertext markup language (HTML) - Natural outbound links - fits naturally into an article - “Nofollow” tells search engines not to count certain links as endorsements, like if someone comments a link on your post - “Dofollow” is the default - Paid links, should not be credited as a natural endorsed link so will have a nofollow attribute attached - Natural internal links - take visitor somewhere else in the site - Popularity metrics - Career SEOs, people whose jobs center on improving the rankings of their client’s websites - Link profile - Search engines determine the popularity of a web page by examining its backlinks (links from external sources pointing to that web page - List of backlinks is what makes up what is known as that page’s link profile  - In general, the more backlinks you have, the more popular your website is - Popularity metrics - total number of backlinks - the more you have the more popular your are - Backlinks from related/relevant websites - not all endorsements have the same value; if a page has backlinks from pages with a similar topic, those will matter more - Anchor text - has decreased in importance over time, but still matters; backlinks use anchor text to indicate the topic of the link, if anchor text uses relevant keywords, the value of endorsement increases - Link freshness - high quality website will continue to receive backlinks, if backlinks stop, search engine will assume the page content is no longer relevant - Link diversity - search engines want to see evidence that a page’s backlinks are the result of various webmasters independent;y endorsing the page - Social sharing - recognize that if people are posting links to a website on their social network profile, it has worthwhile content and deserves to rank well for relevant searches; links on social media usually contain a nofollow attribute but most experts believe the search engines are taking these links into account - Link building - Types of earned links - Backlinks fit into three categories: editorial, manual, manufactured - Editorial links - Given spontaneously by another webmaster because they like the page’s content, pure endorsement - Tough to gain - Long-term strategy for building editorial links - Create high-quality, linkable content - “Grease the wheels” and conduct outreach to increase volume of webmasters linking to that content - Create interesting visual content, provide embedded code for that content - Do some networking and follow up - Investigate competition - Manual links - Earned through direct effort, but still require a third party to check it off - Ex: when submitting a website to a directory (website that catalogs links to other websites), resulting link comes directly from that person’s work in submitting the site, but the directory still has to approve the listing  - not as highly valued, but have positive effect on rankings - Local business profiles should create profiles on certain sites (google my business, yahoo small business, bing places) - Should submit to directories - Social bookmarking sites allow users to save and share links to websites (pinterest) - Asking for links (those who mention but don’t link, those who link to competitors, customers or business partners, attendees of events, organizations of which the business is a member) - Trading links (you link to mine and I’ll link to yours) - Guest blogging - Manufactured links - Manufactured by webmaster without third-party approval - Because of low quality, they are best avoided, because they are sometimes penalized - Blog comments - search engines don’t give too much credit and may penalize sites that use it too much - Forum signatures or message boards allow users to engage in written conversations - Free article directories - because sites have little to no quality control, can lead to all participating sites to be penalized - Creation of secondary site - search engines can easily determine that the second site is not real - Content marketing - Content marketing - creating media content that entices and engages potential customers and has a commercial benefit for the publisher - What makes it different from advertising is the nature of the content itself; content has to have sufficient appeal that users want to read, watch, or listen to independently of its commercial connection - Must be distributed - Creation, distribution, conversion - Overly aggressive attempt at conversion is off putting Chapter 6: Paid Search Marketing - Paid search advertising explained - You pay for each click on your ad in the SERP (search engine results page) - Worth the risk; ex: paying 88 cents for a click, but the click got someone to spend $300 on your website - Choosing search targets - Companies advertising on search engines only have to pay for ads going to people who have shown an interest in the product being offered - Advertisers select when to show their ad based on the search phrase entered by the searcher and other characteristics of the search (the searchers location, a device used, time of day, etc.) - Keyword selection - Company’s ads will only show up on SERP when search phrase entered matches one of the keywords on the company’s list, doesn’t have to be letter-for-letter, because it would be impossible to predict misspellings or small variations - If instructing search engine to show ad anytime someone searches for something, then irrelevant things might come up as well (if you’re selling wakeboards, you don’t want your ad to come up when people are searching about wakeboard dangers) - Exact-match implies that the phrase being searched has to be a letter-for-letter match to one of the keywords in the advertiser’s list - in reality, search phrase will still match an exact match keyword is the search is a close variant of the keyword (misspellings, abbreviations, synonyms) - To use exact match, advertiser places brackets around [keyword] - Disadvantage is that advertiser is likely to miss out on valuable ad placements when searcher uses unanticipated variation - Broad-match can be utilized by listing a keyword without any modifying characters - Directs google to show ad to any search that broadly matches that keyword - Advertisers not likely to miss out on valuable advertising opportunities - Disadvantage is that ads are likely to show up for searches where searcher had no intention of purchasing advertiser’s product (ex: someone who searches wakeboard fail video might see an ad for wakeboards if the advertiser used broad search - Phrase match instructs google to show ads on searches that include the keyword, close variants, or other terms with similar meaning - To use, advertiser places quotation marks around “keyword” - Difference between phrase and exact match is that phrase match can also include additional search words that do not match the keyword - Ex: phrase match on “wakeboard sale” would trigger ads on searches for wakeboard half price sale, sale on wakeboards, wakeboards for sale near me, etc. - Negative keywords - instructing the search engine where not to display an ad - Other selection factors - Geography - if your products only ship to the continental US, then you should not be showing ads to Alaska or Hawai’i  - Device type - search and purchase behavior shifts across different devices; if mobile ads are less profitable, then you should be spending less on mobile ads - Timing - searches vary throughout the day; can restrict ads to only show during regular business hours; especially important for ads on mobile devices as those tend to be “now or never” searches (ex: lunch near me) - Language - not everyone within a particular geography always speaks the same language - Keyword research - Search for yourself - Competitive research; gain insights into what keywords popular sites are using to determine if competing on those keywords is possible - Google keyword planner; advertisers with a lower budget will likely have to stick with Google’s keyword planner tool - Four initial things to consider for keywords: - Searcher intent - what do they want and what do you provide - Average monthly searches - can be used to project how many impressions and clicks an ad can acquire in any given month - Level of competition - keywords with high search volume and low competition are ideal for getting the most traffic for the least amount of money (though may convert at a low rate) - Sometimes high CPC is justified because these keywords can convert at higher rates - Suggested bid - uses historical data - Branded keywords - Should a company pay for advertisements on searches that include their own brand name? - Many argue yes, if the brand did not, then competitors may start advertising more aggressively on its brand name and steal its customers; ads on a company’s brand name are inexpensive; company can take up more space on the SERP - Some think it is a waste of money, ineffective - Writing ad copy - The actual ad to show to searchers, generally have five key elements - Final URL - Headlines - Display path - Descriptions - Ad extensions - Do not have the ability to show when and which ad extensions appear, but each advertiser has the ability to opt in to each ad extension individually - Location extensions to display store addresses with a link to Google Maps  - Offer extensions to include printable coupons for offline purchases - Shopping star review ad extensions - Reservation extensions for travel/hospitality - Call extensions to allow - Other types of PPC Ads in SERPS - Shopping ads - display product images and prices instead of text - Using feed of inventory, sizes, colors, prices, product images, landing page URLs, google can show products on keyword searches related to specific products - Google map ads - text can be displayed when someone is searching on google maps - May be especially effective on mobile devices because mobile users are often on-the-move and looking for a location to make a purchase immediately - Call-only ads - make the phone number the main content of the ad - DIFFERENT than call extensions (additional line appended to a usual search ad that allows users to click to place a phone call - Dynamic search ads - allow advertisers to turn over some of their control of their search ads to google - Only recommended to advertisers who have enough budget to experiment - Remarketing lists for search ads - allow advertisers to create ad campaigns specifically for searchers who have previously visited their website - Writing effective copy - Keywords for relevance - Click-through rates improve when keyword being searched is in the ad, if found in the description, will be bolded - Unique value proposition (UVP) - Because a company’s ad will be one of about 7 ads on the SERP. its ad must communicate something to the searcher to indicate what the site has is superior to other sites - Call to action (CTA) - Last nudge needed to push the searcher over the edge and earn the advertiser a click - Buying ad space - Ad rank - winning bid on keyword gets the best ad location for searches on that keyword - Determining rank based on bid amount and quality score ensures that search ads stay relevant to searchers - Quality scores - a measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad; higher quality scores can lead to lower prices and better ad positions; three main criteria:  - Expected CTR - if well written and generating more clicks, google likely to reward with better ad position - Ad relevance - keywords being bid on should be used in ad on landing page (final URL) - Landing page experience - more bounces send a signal that the landing page did not have what the searcher was looking for - Bidding - bid amount for keyword is multiplied by advertiser’s quality score - Advertisers can specify a CPA (cost per action) bid for each keyword, the amount an advertiser is willing to pay for each conversion - Can only submit a CPC or CPA bid if going against google’s recommendation - In general, automated bidding is way more beneficial than manual bidding - Some disadvantages include: learning less about the search market, more likely to “set it and forget it”, selecting wrong bid strategy would improve campaign in a disadvantageous way, promised improvements require large quantities of data - Google has no incentive to be untrustworthy with its automated bidding - Analyzing results - Understanding keyword performance data - Impressions - each appearance of an ad on the SERP counts as an impression even if the searcher doesn’t see it or click on it - Clicks - click is counted when a searcher clicks on the ad in the SERP - CTR - the click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that yield a click - Vary by industry, advertiser, ad position, keyword, ad text, etc. - Low CTR means few website visits, giving advertiser a low quality score, driving up cost per click - CTRs between 1% and 4% are typical - CPC - average cost per click will determine whether search ads are profitable - Cost - can set a daily budget for search campaigns; keywords that lead to the most sales with the best margins deserve the most budget - Conversions - goal is to generate conversions and profit, not just clicks - Profit per sale x total number of conversions = profit per conversion - Profit per conversion should surpass total cost to advertise that keyword - Conversion rate - percentage of visitors who convert - Make sure ad and landing page are relevant to keyword - Make sure the ad and landing have a compelling and competitive offer - Make sure keywords using broad match are not attracting traffic from irrelevant searches, if so, consider using negative keywords  - If the keyword is not producing conversions after the above interventions, pause keyword - Return on advertising spend (ROAS) - (total profit / total ad spend) x 100 = ROAS - Cost per action (CPA) - determines how much it costs, on average, to reach a site’s desired conversion - Total money spent on ads / total number of sales completed (or leads generated) = CPA - If CPA is so high that revenue from a sale is lower than the combined cost of producing and advertising a product, then search ads will not be profitable - Search query reports - Shows some of the searches that resulted in an ad click - Shows where google can show an ad - Useful for understanding variety of searches triggering ads, less useful for identifying searches that were a poor match - Mobile performance - poor mobile optimization, lower conversion rate for mobile users - Low purchase intent - tend to do searches on whatever device is handy at the time they think of doing the search, makes sense to adjust mobile bids to be lower so less money is wasted on mobile searchers who are unlikely to convert - Alternate mobile conversion - if mobile user finds information compelling, may move to different device to complete transaction - Google ads account structure - Account - On account level, advertisers add credit card information to pay for all of their clicks - Must be tied to an email and password - Campaign - managing different campaign settings - Name - name that will help them remember the promotions, keywords, ads, landing pages associated with the campaign - Campaign type - will determine which campaign settings are available - Search network only - allows their text to display on the keywords that target in google SERPs - Display network only - ads never shown in google SERPs, but for running text and banner ads across google’s ads on their site - Search network with display select - allows text ads to display on the keywords a company selects in google SERPs, other search sites using google’s search engine results, websites that display text and banner ads distributed by google - Should not be used in most cases - Shopping - allows an advertiser to separately manage its google shopping ads  - Device, location, language targeting - if you want to include spanish language ads targeted at spanish speakers, you have to create a separate campaign - Bid strategy - advertisers encouraged to adopt the automated bid strategy to maximize conversions - Daily budget - set a daily limit that makes sense for your business - Ad extensions - adjustments made at campaign level, google chooses where and when to show a company’s ad extensions - Ad group - Ads - have option to create multiple responsive search ads within same ad group, good when wanting to test different ads - Keyword - BingAds - running ads on different search engines is very similar to google ads Chapter 7: Display Advertising - Display ads are the video, image, and text ads that appear on websites - Understanding display networks - Display network - Consists of a group of online publishers that agree to a set of ad standards dictated by company managing the network - Dictates ad sizes that can be displayed on publisher websites - Coordinates which ads are displayed on which websites at which time - Collects payments from advertisers and pays publishers their portion of the ad revenue - Reports the ad performance metrics to the advertisers - Publishers - If you wish to join the ad network you must create an account with the display ad network - Website must fit the specifications dictated by the ad network, including correctly sized spaces set aside for ads - Incorporates code provided by ad network that enables network to load ads into the allocated ad space every time a web page loads - Paid a percentage of the revenue the display as network charges advertisers - Advertisers - Create and upload ads that meet specifications - Manage ad budgets on platform provided by display ad network - Set parameters regarding the types of internet users they want to see their ads (and possibly what types of websites they want their ads to run on) - Receive reports on where ads were displayed - Earn traffic to website from display ads - Benefits  - Advertiser makes money from traffic to their website from various other websites, but only has to coordinate ads with one ad network - Display ad network makes money by charging the advertiser to display the ads on the network - Publisher gets paid a percentage of the revenue made each time the display network charges an advertiser, but the publisher also only has to coordinate with the ad network rather than hundreds of advertisers - Paying for ads - To resolve dual problem of (1) who gets to advertise in that space and (2) how much the advertiser should pay to advertise there, ad networks use a bidding system - Bidding for display ad vs bidding for search ad: display advertisers have multiple bidding formats to choose from - Search ads: CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per action) - Display advertisers: CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per mille/cost per thousand impressions), or CPA (cost per action) - CPC, advertiser only pays when display ad is clicked - CPM, payment method for traditional advertising, pay per 1000 viewers - CPA, enables advertisers to pay only when ads result in successful conversion - To know who is bidding the moes, ad networks track click-through-rates (CTR) so they can convert CPC into CPM and vice versa - Targeting the right audience - Ad targeting - When someone sees a display ad and fails to react to it or doesn’t purchase, various causes: - interested in website content and did not notice ad - Did not scroll far enough to see the ad displayed - Not interested in advertiser - Not interested in advertised product - Not interested in advertised product at that time - Not interested in advertised offer - In interest stage, so ad served to move consumer along journey for future purchase, but not immediate one - Clicked on ad, but landing page was poorly designed, so did not convert - Want to show ad to the right people at the right time and in the right context, but in reality, this is impossible - Selecting display targets on google ads - Google will analyze content on landing page and set initial ad targets whose interest seem to align with landing page content and continually update these targets based on the ad performance - If you think you know your target market, you can click on “add targeting” to set own initial ad targets  - Can target based on different targeting methods - Audience segments - Demographics - Keywords - Topics - Placements - Google only provides small fraction of demographics for privacy reasons - Can select target segments based on interests and habits - in-market audiences - internet users who have been judged by google - Life events targeting - targeting users who have just had, are currently having, or will soon have an important event (ex: marriage) - How internet users have interacted with your business, updated frequently - Custom audience segments allows advertisers to create a target segment and save it for future campaigns - Combined audience segments allows advertisers to combine custom segments to expand potential targets, narrow targeting, or exclude certain segments - No matter targeting methods, google will apply optimization algorithms to focus ads on those more likely to purchase - Mobile display ads - Often a high bounce rate because of fat-finger ad clicks - accidental clicks because website navigation is right next to display ad - Banner ad design - Effective display ad must: - Attract attention - Communicate value proposition - Invite action - Optimizing banner ads - Advantage of online display ads is that effectiveness of ads can be directly measured, company can easily calculate how much revenue its ads generate - Also makes A/B testing easier - Consistent messaging - Want landing page to stay consistent with ad display - Three ways to stay consistent - Tout the same value propositions - Use similar calls to actions - Enact the same design elements (color scheme, characters, fonts, imagery, etc.) Chapter 8: Email Marketing - Email list capture  - First step is to capture email addresses w/ ethical techniques, otherwise it might be blacklisted by spam filters - Capturing visitor’s email during first visit to page - Must be purposeful - Typically most cost-effective method - Customers should know that they are signing up for email marketing - Many companies use an email marketing software to help email marketers manage email lists; bigger companies will sometimes use their own software - Single opt-in - immediately adding email address to list upon sign up - Double opt-in - sends confirmation email to address and only adds email to list when user clicks on link in email to confirm desire to be added - Email content - Content types - Online retail - should send discounts and/or promotions on select merchandise, can send emails about new product lines or suggested purchases - Lead generation - typically more difficult to create valuable emails, regular emails can help to maintain long term relationships with customers - Ex: real estate agent sending home suggestions or tips on what to look for in a new home - In general, emails should contain useful information in domain of company’s expertise - Search engines - sending regular emails to customers about great deals - Ex: hotel search engine sending information about deals on hotel or vacation packages - Online media - make money when users spend time on their websites, so sending users a daily email about the site’s top content for the day can encourage regular visits - Online B2B services - sales cycle for B2B services company can be very long, so regular emails to potential customers can help sales process - Known ad “lead nurturing” - Promotional emails wouldn’t be as good because they often negotiate contracts individually with clients - Email timing - Whenever customer response will be highest - B2B services, emails should go out during business hours - Online retailer, response may be higher during the evening when consumers are at home and relaxed and more likely to be considering a deal - Can easily be tested by sending emails during various times of the day - Send emails as often as it can create valuable content - Segmentation  - Once creating a big enough email list, customers will likely differ in wants/needs - Can increase email response and profitability by properly segmenting customer list - Could send email to only certain groups on list or could send an email to the entire list and change certain parts of the content of the email - Segmentation can be based on any information provided by customer - Past purchases - most reliable source of information - Past email response - some respond to discounts while others respond more readily to free shipping or other incentives - Customer preferences - some may request content when companies request an email sign up or near unsubscribe button - Demographics - B2B settings, work role of email holder could provide important clues regarding likelihood of gaining business with potential customers - Location - clothing retailer marketing winter clothes to Alaska vs Hawai’i - Device - layout of email may need to differ based on device, about half of emails are opened on mobile devices - Other email types - Transactional emails - when a customer makes a purchase from an online retailer but doesn’t sign up for the email list, the retailer can send emails about the transaction - Ex: purchase confirmation, shipping confirmation, etc. and then promotional deals at the bottom of the email - Broadcast emails (main type) - emails that go out at timed intervals to all or part of company’s email list - Triggered emails - emails outside of regularly scheduled broadcast emails based on consumer’s actions - Ex: abandoned cart email - Onboarding emails - new subscribers are more likely to open emails, sending new subscribers a welcome email with special promotion likely to produce a good response - Welcome offer - Invitation to connect on social media - Invitation to download mobile app - Invitation to refer friends (often for additional reward) - Reminder about welcome offer - Explanation of website features - Subject lines - Determines if they will open it, ignore it, or delete it - Accurate and informative - A/B testing on subject line - Landing pages  - Each section of an email should lead to a dedicated landing page (corresponds perfectly in terms of look, feel, and content to whatever was clicked - Measuring success - Open rate = emails opened / emails delivered - Crucial for avoiding spam filters and for overall profitability - Open rate of 20% is average - Click through rate = emails clicked / emails delivered - Can be improved by using strong calls to action and good images that entice readers to visit a website - Average CTR is 3.5% - Conversion rate = transactions / sessions generated via email - Generating a visit to the site is not helpful if none of those visits converts to a purchase (for online retailer) - Good retail site has conversion rate of 3-5%, but conversion rate of email traffic can be higher - Average order value - By combining all four metrics, email marketer can easily track success of email campaign or of an individual email blast - List churn - Company needs to be aware of how frequently its emails are causing people to unsubscribe - Losing subscribers faster than gaining them is easy way to tell - Even of content is good, every email is going to provide a percentage of unsubscribers, so good process for generating new email subscribers is needed - Avoiding spam filters - CAN-SPAM (controlling the assault of non-solicited pornography and marketing) Act passed in 2003, caused increasing success of spam filters (use methods to discover which companies are using elicit practices in any part of their email marketing then blocking these senders - Should abode by highest standards to avoid spam filters - Clean the email list - Pay attention to action from members of email list - Pay attention to bounces (emails sent out by company but do not reach destination in-box - Hard bounces - indicates email address is fake, should be removed immediately - Soft bounces - indicate email in-box is full, should be removed after several soft bounces in a row (4+) - Non-opening - not opened in over a month, remove - Spam filters take over defunct email addresses and find which companies continue to send emails to inactive email  addresses, so sending emails to these addresses will result in emails being blocked - Use double opt-in - First line of defense against spam filters is a clean list of email addresses pertaining to (1) real people who (2) do not mark a company’s emails as spam or junk and (3) regularly open those emails - Single opt-in lists can sometimes lead to fake email addresses being added to a company’s email list - Provide an unsubscribe in every email - Should be clear that they can easily unsubscribe or it will be marked as junk - Some may ask why unsubscribing, or provide additional subscription options like only signing up for emails on specific topics or lower frequency - Comply immediately with unsubscribe requests - Customer relationship management - Customer relationship management (CRM) - refers to company’s efforts to manage its interactions with current and potential customers; especially important and common in B2B sector - Marketing -> Sales -> Customer Support - Email marketing is important part of CRM because majority of leads are not passed onto sales team, but kept within the marketing team - If lead never opens email, it should not be passed off to sales team - Marketing automation - refers to software that allows company to automate and optimize digital marketing efforts across multiple channels - Could automatically cater email content toward lead’s interests, but only if manager for system is able to program good guidelines for system Chapter 9: Social Media Strategy - Social media activities - Posting on social media profiles - Create a first-time customer - Many factors preventing, including social media sites handicapping business entities, and user incentives not being compatible with facilitating customer creation - Facilitate additional purchasing by previous/current customers - Posting on social media is most successful when followers are already customers to build loyalty because posts directly spur additional purchases - Acquisition > engagement > loyalty - Must post things that encourage interactions from followers - Likeability is determined by level of interaction; videos are good because a view is seen as interaction  - Supplement SEO efforts - Small effect on SEO - Only recommended for SEO purposes when company is already doing everything they can or if company depends on local search results - Should strive for high level of earned media - Paid media - content that companies pay to have featured on another website (ads) - Owned media - company-controlled properties - Earned media - any publicity a company receives from unpaid promotional efforts - Paid advertising on social media - Ad targeting can be done more precisely because you have more information on users - Engagement rate is highers - More ad engagement options - More effective at generating new customers - Reputation management via social media - Social media monitoring, responding to positive and negative comments - Social listening - Using social media data to measure strength of brand associations - To measure customer sentiment for brands - Typically, though, scraping all public mentions of a company from social media, coding those mentions as positive, negative, or neutral, and summarizing the average sentiment being expressed about a company - Can be difficult to find all company-relevant mentions on social media - Social Media Plan - Five steps - Determine the objective - Choose the social media platforms - Plan the content - Distribute and promote content - Measure success - Choosing social media platforms - Population characteristics - Population density among a company’s likely customers - Nature of social media interactions - Posting to create first-time customers - Will likely require some form of paid-for distribution to supplement the “free” posting - Facebook, youtube, instagram  - Posting to increase loyalty - Pinterest, snapchat, instagram - For B2B, LinkedIn is particularly well suited - Posting for SEO value - Facebook, X - Advertising - Facebook, youtube - Reputation management - Should be review websites, like yelp or trip advisor - X is good too; quick and easy communication - B2B would be Linkedin - Platform synergies - The more platforms, the more resources a company must devote - Can create content on one platform and then reuse it for another, but synergies are never perfect - Facebook and instagram - images/videos - Facebook and youtube - videos - Pinterest and instagram - pictures - Social media content - Content types - Original content - Original to the company, not limited by outside entities, complete control over messaging - Majority of social media content is original - User-generated content - Any content created by platform users - Ex: choosing best submissions to be reposted by the company, encouraging customers to use a particular hashtag so that users’ content will automatically be linked via the hashtag - Explands amount of potential content to be used - Humanizes the company and makes the company-customer connection more personal - Customer will not generate content unless they have an intrinsic motivation - Co-created content - Collaboration between multiple content creators - Both brands get exposure to other brand’s followers - Curated content - Posting content created entirely by another entity - Ex: retweeting - Media types - Depend on platform - Facebook: live videos, GIFs, images, plain text - Video is the richest form  - Creating a social media guide - Tone - word choice is important to how brand is perceived - Legal - be aware of legal restrictions - Response guidelines - be appropriate - Formatting guidelines - caption length, image size, emojis, grammar, etc. - Other guidelines - visual guidelines, terminology preferences, user-generated content practices - Creating value and engagement - Utilitarian value - enables customer to gain something they want - Discount on social media post - Posts are usually product-focused - deals/discounts, contests/drawings, useful ideas/practices, product updates, training/education - Entertainment value - amusement - Humor, insider knowledge (tidbits of information about inner workings of company), news from a company icon (posts from an iconic company founder or other company executive) - Community value - connecting with friends AND brands - Scheduling content - Should post when followers are most active - Can use scheduling software - Distribute and promote content - Owned media - Liking, following, subscribing - Alignment of incentives is most important - “Strike while the iron is hot” - Attracting engaged followers is pointless if followers do not stay engaged, keeping followers engaged requires posting not just engaging content, but observably engaging content - Earned media - Content shared or reshared by social media users - Free publicity - Creating content with the expectation that it will go viral is unlikely to be successful. - Social currency (tend to share what makes us look good to others), triggers (talk about things associated with things in our environment), emotion (feeling deepens connection making us likely to share feelings), public (more likely to talk about things that are observable), practical value (if it is useful or solves a problem then it is worth talking about), stories (human nature to like stories, so create a story that makes the company a protagonist) - Paid media - Company pays for distribution of its advertising content - Ability to distribute ad content only to those who are good targets  - Measuring success - Measuring reach - Total number of likes/subscribers/followers - Follower growth - percentage growth or decline in a follower list is a useful metric for tracking efforts at list growth - impressions/views - even when company has very engaged followers, content is not likely to be seen by even half of its followers (not on platform enough to see everything, most platforms only show subset of potential content to users) - Measuring engagement - reposts/repins - likes/comments (like on particular piece of content on companies social media platform - Engagement rate - percentage of users that have engaged with any piece of content within a given time period - Measuring loyalty - Conversion rate - Purchase frequency/likelihood - Social listening measures - Volume - total number of social media mentions - Sentiment - social listening software provides automatic sentiment coding; positive and negative mentions noted - Changes in volume and sentiment - Topic - what is being said (customer service, product quality, brand image, etc.?) Chapter 10: Social Media Platform - Facebook - Large user base, high engagement - Facebook features - Users: large size, many types of users, user base grown to fill virtually every customer niche possible - Content consumption: news feed (posts from friends, advertisements) - Does not display all content, predicts what user wants to see the most - Past engagement with the posting entity - frequent likes/comments - Recency - more recent posts given priority over older posts - Content type - video gets priority over images which get priority over text; original posts get priority over re-shared content - Content popularity - piece of content with high engagement rate - Type of account posting the content - more likely to see posts from friends than companies  - Company profiles: can have multiple pages, but each should have a unique purpose, cannot send friend requests, but can send requests to like page - Advertising on facebook - Ad types - Image ad - contains image, caption, call-to-action - Carousel ad - Video ad - Slideshow ads - Collection ads - Instant experience - allows advertisers to take users to a landing page within the Facebook app - Ad placements: vast majority shows up in users’ news feeds, or, facebook marketplace, facebook stories - Ad platform can be used to purchase ad placements on other applications including instagram, facebook messenger, and other apps that use facebook’s audience network - Paying for ads: Facebook advertisers pay CPM, CPC, or CPA - Advertiser can specify actions other than an online conversion as desired action (app install, video view, page like) - Formula to determine winner of bid for advertising space - (Bid amount x estimated action rate) + relevance/quality - First part of formula = monetary value - Ad placement optimized by facebook's algorithms - Ad targeting: algorithms can help find right audience for ads; three methods for selecting ad targets: core audiences, custom audiences, lookalike audience - Core audiences: created by selecting demographics, interests, behaviors - Custom audiences: created by uploading a list of email addresses, typically past and current customers - Lookalike audiences: constructed from company’s custom audience - Content best practices - Post from business shown only to small amount of followers - Can pay facebook to make its content reach more fans - Content hierarchy: live video, recorded video, images, text-only - Posts can be created for only a segment of its followers - Facebook earns high rankings on search engine results, so should spend time formatting profile page - X (twitter) - X features - Users: smaller, but highly active, users expect rapid responses - Content consumption: users only see posts from people they follow  - Character limit on posts - Users can create lists to group the accounts they follow - Chronological order - Mechanics for business and professional profiles are the same - Hashtags - groups of posts more easily searchable - Company profiles: character limit forces a company to be selective - Advertising on X - Ad types and placements - Similar to facebook - Can choose from image ads, video ads, carousel ads, text ads (though typically less engagement) - Can pay for promoted accounts and promoted trends - Paying for ads - select an objective (awareness, post engagements, website clicks, conversions) - Quick promote: only requires advertiser to specify the post to be promoted and the budget - Ad targeting: can target by geography, gender, interests, or device - Custom audiences, retargeting ads - Content best practices - Character limit can make certain types of content difficult or impossible to share, companies frequently share a shortened link - Should ensure content provides value, achieve additional exposures via resharing - Reposting more important and beneficial on X - Because X moves so fast, companies can afford to post more often than usual - Pinterest - Pinterest features - Users: overwhelmingly female, higher income levels - Content consumption: home screen shows pins most likely to interest user - Pin: image with a short caption - Includes URL of the source of the pin, can gain lots of traffic to website - Advertising on pinterest - Ad types and placement: four different kinds of “pin” ads - promoted pins (advertiser paying for distribution of the pin) - promoted video pins (plays video silently in feed until user taps on it to see it) - promoted carousel pins (allows user to scroll through up to five images on a pin) - promoted app pins (allow user to download advertised app without leaving pinterest)  - Advertisers must decide whether to make promoted pins available for search results, on pinterest feeds, or both - Can create shopping ads to promote products - Paying for ads - CPM, CPC, or CPE (cost per engagement) - CPC charged when user clicks through to advertisers website, not click on the pin - CPE charged when pinterest user clicks/taps on a pin to expand it or when pinning pin to own board - Must use keyword targeting - Interest targeting - targeting based off of what they are interested in - Audience targeting - advertising to specific list of customers - Content best practices - Two routes to participate organically: pertinent pins (pinning some of company’s content), or provide a Pin it button on the company website next to visually appealing content - Shop the look pins - allows businesses to tag products visible in a pin so that users can investigate the product, investigate similar products, and purchase directly on Pinterest app - Youtube - Youtube features - Users: comes close to facebook in terms of user population, international - Content consumption: just video; recommended videos, search engine, similar videos (to the one you just watched), video playlists by creators - Company profiles: personal and brand (only difference is that multiple people can log into the account - Advertising on youtube - Ad types and placements - Creator of video controls ads - Six different types: display ads (next to vid), overlay ads (small portion of bottom of vid), skippable video ads, non-skippable video ads, bumper ads (non skippable up to 6 seconds), sponsored cards (content that may be relevant to your vid) - Paying for ads - CPV (cost per view) - Skippable: view counted when user interacts or watches for more than thirty seconds - Ad targeting: can be purchased on google ads platform ,so same targeting available for display ads is available for youtube ads - Content best practices - Create videos that entertain and advertise - Pay to advertise vid to maximize reach - Don't create viral video, but create many engaging videos  - Best way to generate a lot of views is to create a large volume of videos for them to view - Linkedin - Linkedin features - Content consumption: work related topics, paid ads, posts from connections - Company profiles: trend to rank well on search engines, so should ensure “about us” section is well written - Employees encouraged to connect with own linkedin profiles - Advertising on Linkedin - Ad types and placements - Dynamic ads - retargeting ads that allow advertisers to change the content of the ads to match different ad targets - Text ads show up to the right of the linkedin feed for desktop users - Sponsored InMail - basically email marketing, but to paid ad targets rather than through compilation of email list - Ability to capture leads through lead gen form - Paying for ads - Cost-per-send; CPC, CPM, CPV - Advertising rates tend to be higher than other apps - Ad targeting - B2B companies - Could create ads just for the CEOs of companies - Content best practices - Being perceived as thought leader is important - companY should have unique knowledge about industry can use employees to amplify posts - Linkedin groups a good way for companies to engage with members of his community - Instagram - Instagram features - Users: top social platform for 18-30 year olds, younger demographic - Content consumption - pictures/videos - Hashtags; can use to find interesting images/users with similar interests - Can post on other platforms - Reels - direct copy of tiktok - Shops - users can browse products and can purchase directly on the app - Company profiles: business differs from personal profiles, but handicap is not as severe - Advertising on instagram - Ad types and placements  - Most effective is to do it from facebook ads platform (image, carousel, video, collections; exception of slideshow ads) - Users who click on ad are taken to full-screen landing page within the app - Also stories ads which is a full screen feature, call to action activate by swiping up - Paying for ads - done through facebook so same as facebook - Ad targeting - same as facebook - Content best practices - Does not penalize corporate profiles as much as facebook - More followers means more exposure - Instagram feed built for user’s through algorithm that calculates “prominence” - Influencer marketing - Company targets key influencers in hopes that gaining loyalty will increase demand from others - Most widespread on instagram - Usually will pay influencer to post with product - Hard to measure ROI for influencer marketing, but if brands continue to do it, then it must be proven to work - Steps - Identify influencer - should have sizeable following and influence over following, sometime influence is more important than size - Engage influencers to assess brand fit - influencers following must fit the brand, influencers liking of the brand should be believable, brand must be able to give influencer something of sufficient value to establish partnership, both parties must agree on policies - Help influencer stay FTC compliant - any material connection between parties must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed - Creator marketplace, where influencers can connect with brands they’d like to endorse for payment - Snapchat - Snapchat features - Users: base is youth, 15-25 year olds - Content consumption: fast interactions, quick content consumption - snaps that expire, videos and images can be edited to include text, hand-drawn doodles, digital stickers, filters, etc. - Stories that disappear after 24 hours - Stories from friends, below they see stories from channels they subscribe to, below stories from major content creators - Map tab - based on geography, explore stories, local businesses - Advertising on snapchat - Ad types - Snap ad - full screen vertical video that appears betweens stories  - Users can skip, can last up to 10 seconds - Advertiser needs to provide compelling content within a few seconds to entice user to keep watching and explore further - Collection ads, story ads, AR lenses, filters, commercials - Ad placements - Collection ads appear between stories like snap adfs - Story ads appear on discover screen as one of the stories users can explore - AR lenses and filters can be advertised to users while they are creating snaps and looking for filters or lenses to add to their snap - Paying for ads - CPM basis, can specify CPC or CPA, but will still pay CPM - Ad targeting: Similar to other platforms, baked on interests/behaviors, demographics, location, custom audiences, lookalike audiences - Content best practices - Can create snapchat content in hopes of being featured on the Discover screen and then earning a subscription or can pay for story ads - Should use portrait mode only - Tiktok - Tiktok features - Users: over 1 billion monthly users, 85 million in the US, tend to be young (younger people faster to adopt to new social media platforms, most content appeals to younger people - Content consumption - At most 10 minute long videos, usually less than a minute, fast-paced consumption experience - “For you” - Vertical videos - Company profiles - treated the same as personal profiles - Unlikely to show video if it doesn't get likes/comments - Advertising on tiktok - In-feed ad, shows up on feed as regular content but “sponsored” icon; can be skipped at any time, must be compelling - Top view ad, shows up when you first open the app - Content best practices: good ROI if compelling ads, can use influencer marketing - Influencer marketing - Tiktok shop - Orange shopping cart icon appears in video promoting and takes users to product landing page in the app - Can create content to drive users to tiktok shop, getting paid for creating traffic - Main difference from instagram is that sellers can only look for influencers on tiktok, whereas instagram influencers can also approach sellers Chapter 11: Online Reputation Management - Online reputation management - practice of promoting a positive brand image by increasing the visibility of positive information and managing negative information - Monitoring brands - Software tools that have been created to monitor what is being said about brand in real time to alert company - Some only follow social media sites while others are all over the internet - Users enter words they want to monitor; the more words, the more content you have to sift through - Can prioritize alerts (“fraud” “scam”) - Google alerts - default setting tracks all publicly available online sources, can specify that you only want content from certain sites/blogs/discussions/etc. - Can set language alert, region/geography, frequency alerts are delivered, number of results, how to receive (email/feed reader) - Monitor the SERPs - Should monitor search results - Manage brands to manage reputations online - ORM is traditional public relations but for the internet - Responding to negative content - Check locations - Online review sites (yelp.com, zagat.com) - Often published on site the product is sold, including own company - Positive reviews boost credibility and conversion rates, negative reviews can deter customers - Easiest way to manage reputation is providing superior products - Sometimes you can respond to negative reviews, don’t be defensive but take responsibility and be understanding to resolve the problem - Scam reporting sites (scam.com, ripoffreport.com) - Good at SEO and rank well for brand names that have been mentioned on thei