The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing PDF

 The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing 00 CHAPTER The perfect resource for beginner to advanced digital marketers looking to learn new skills or hone existing ones. The Ultimate Guide to Dig...

 The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing 00 CHAPTER The perfect resource for beginner to advanced digital marketers looking to learn new skills or hone existing ones. The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing is full of insights and strategy for business owners, marketing professionals, students, and anyone else looking to hone their current skills and get up to speed on the latest in digital marketing. What is Digital Marketing? Digital marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing. If you’re new to digital marketing, it may feel overwhelming. We get that… But in many ways, digital marketing is no different than traditional marketing. In both, smart organizations seek to develop mutually beneficial relationships with prospects, leads, and customers. Now, think about the last important purchase you made. Perhaps you purchased a home, hired someone to fix your roof, or changed paper suppliers at your office. Regardless of what it was, you probably began by searching the Internet to learn more and find your best options. Your ultimate buying decision was then based on the reviews you read, the friends and family you consulted with, and the solutions, features, and pricing you researched. Today, most purchasing decisions begin online. That being the case, an online presence is absolutely necessary—regardless of what you sell. 2  The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing And having a strong digital presence will help you in multiple ways: It will make it easier to create awareness and engagement both before and after the sale. You can convert new buyers into rabid fans who buy more (and more often). You’ll enjoy all the benefits of word-of-mouth and social sharing. Be aware, though, the digital marketing scene is ever changing. Gurus, podcasts, and bloggers declare a tool or tactic hot one week and dead the next. The truth is, today, digital marketing is less about “digital” and more about “marketing,” largely because digital marketing has come of age. Its fundamentals have already been established. At DigitalMarketer, our objective is to clear the confusion about the tactics that work and how to use them to grow your business. We stand against those so-called gurus who promote the next “shiny object” that will reportedly kill email marketing, digital advertising, or search engine optimization. Here, we’re all about the fundamentals. As you’ll see in this guide, these core disciplines of digital marketing will be critical to your business growth today, tomorrow, and for years to come. Each of these disciplines will be covered in a chapter of this Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing as shown below. What You’ll Learn Chapter 1: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template The Customer Value Journey is the strategic foundation of everything we do here at DigitalMarketer. It’s the master template upon which every other digital marketing discipline and tactic is built. Learn all 8 stages and how you’ll use them to create a winning strategy for your business. 3  The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing Chapter 2: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Done right, your content marketing will not only attract prospects, but also move them through a marketing funnel to drive more sales and grow your business. Learn how to plan your content marketing strategy and how to create “perfect” content. Chapter 3: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The secret to powerful digital marketing is traffic. If you can master traffic acquisition, you can easily drive traffic, sales, and ultimately, growth. Here, you’ll learn the secrets to crafting a digital advertising plan that actually works. Chapter 4: Understanding Social Media Marketing “Going social” isn’t simply about being active on Facebook and Twitter. Learn the Social Success Cycle and how you can use it to attract your fans and followers, engage them, and even sell to them. Chapter 5: Following Email Marketing Best Practices Forget any rumors to the contrary. Email is alive and well—and if you know how to use it, it will help you exponentially grow your business. Learn the role of email in a growing business and how you can use it to quickly move prospects and customers through the Customer Value Journey. Chapter 6: Designing Your Search Marketing Strategy Search marketing has radically changed in the last few years. But we see that as good news! Today, it can boost your website’s traffic and visitors’ trust while supporting your other digital marketing disciplines as well. Learn the right way to do search engine optimization here. Chapter 7: Applying Website Analytics to Your Digital Marketing If numbers aren’t your thing, we’ve got you covered. Website analytics are a powerful tool for helping you figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next. Learn the process we use here at DigitalMarketer—an easy-to- understand approach anyone can use. 4  The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing Chapter 8: Leveraging Conversion Rate Optimization to Drive Growth Conversion rate optimization may sound hard, but it doesn’t have to be. And it’s critical to your success as a digital marketer. We’ll show you how to implement a simple framework that will guide everything you do as a digital marketer. In each chapter, we’ll cover 4 key aspects to the strategy being discussed: The Methods: the strategies and processes you’ll use to create your plan and execute it in your own business. This is the bulk of each chapter— because in digital marketing, how you execute a strategy is key. And in this Guide, we share the exact methods we use here at DigitalMarketer. The Metrics: the numbers you’ll watch to measure your success and identify areas that need tweaking (or are worth doubling down on). The Lingo: the terminology used by experts, so you can communicate intelligently (even if you don’t consider yourself a pro). The Roles: the people in your organization who will likely have responsibility for planning and running each tactic. We’ve organized this Guide in a logical progression. Though you can jump around, learning the tactics in whatever order you feel you need them, we recommend that you read through the chapters in order. Take your time. Read and study one chapter at a time. Apply what you learn. And when you feel you’ve got the methods up and running, move on to the next chapter. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can implement these tactics if you focus on them one at a time. Then, when everything is up and running, you can focus on optimizing and improving your processes for maximum growth. Ready to start? 5  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) 01 CHAPTER This is where digital marketing begins and ends… With a Customer Value Journey that strategically builds relationship with new prospects and converts them into loyal, repeat customers. This Journey is the process every prospect goes through to become a new customer. It’s how strangers become buyers and, eventually, raving fans of your business. The hard truth is that marketing is not a one-step process. There are eight stages you must account for on the path to purchase and promotion. But, I have great news. If you understand this digital marketing strategy (a.k.a. the Customer Value Journey), then you can intentionally engineer your business in such a way that it moves people predictably through the stages in this template. In other words, you’ll no longer wonder if you’ll be able to generate leads. You won’t have to cross your fingers and hope for customers. When you understand the Customer Value Journey, even reviews and referrals will become automatic. The Customer Value Journey is the strategic foundation of everything we do here at DigitalMarketer. It’s the master template upon which every other digital marketing discipline and tactic is built. It’s so important, we confidently make this bold statement: The job of marketing is to move prospects and customers seamlessly and subtly through each phase of the Customer Value Journey. 7  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) In this chapter, we’ll start with a high-level map of the Customer Value Journey. Then we’ll dive into each of the 8 steps, talk about the tactics you’ll need to move people along the Journey, and review case studies so you can see it in action. An Overview of the Customer Value Journey So, now that you understand why it’s important... here’s what the Customer Value Journey looks like: Click the image above (or click here) to download your writeable copy of The Customer Value Journey 8  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Now let’s walk through the 8-step process of crafting your digital marketing strategy: Step 1: Awareness Before someone can buy from you, they have to realize you exist—right? Well, that’s Step 1 in the Customer Value Journey. This step is pretty self-explanatory: It’s where the person becomes aware of you. After all, nobody is born knowing who Apple or Amazon are. At some point they have to become aware of these companies if they are to become a customer. The same thing is true of your company. Examples of Marketing that Generates Awareness There are any number of ways a prospect could become aware of your company, products, and services. Here are three possible scenarios: A father of two sees an advertisement for a new children’s summer camp on Facebook. An office manager searches Google to find a new coffee supplier. A college student watches an Instagram video of her friend raving about a new brand of noise canceling headphones. Facebook ads are the perfect vehicle for driving awareness. In this example, browsers are introduced to a home security company: 9  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) If you weren’t aware of Canary, this Facebook ad makes you aware. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Awareness To improve awareness of your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Digital Advertising Search Marketing Content Marketing Social Media Marketing 10  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Community Management Copywriting Step 2: Engagement Your prospect is now aware of you—they know who you are—but you’re still in the early stages of a relationship with them. They don’t yet know you, like you, or trust you. So the next step is to start developing relationship with your prospect. Step 2, Engagement, is where you start conversing with your prospects. You engage them through some form of content that provides entertainment, information, or both. Engagement is something that must continue throughout the Customer Journey. It’s not something you do once and move on. Examples of Marketing That Generates Engagement Engagement typically comes in the form of content or community. Here are a few examples to get the ideas flowing for your company: A grandfather of five receives an email newsletter from his financial advisor detailing several ways to save for a child’s college tuition while reducing taxes. The owner of a boutique wine store becomes active in a Facebook community for wineries and other wine retailers. A new mother watches a YouTube video from Johnson & Johnson showing her how to give her baby a bath. 11  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Engagement often occurs through valuable, relevant content. Let’s look at another example of engagement from Modcloth, an etailer selling women’s clothing. This is an entertaining and educational piece of content for one of Modcloth’s most lucrative customer segments—people attending weddings: 12  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) You can boost engagement with content that’s as entertaining as it is useful. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Engagement To improve engagement in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Content Marketing Social Media Marketing Email Marketing 13  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Community Management Step 3: Subscribe At this point, your prospect knows who you are and has engaged with you in some way or another. However, if you failed to get that person’s contact information, odds are high you’ll never hear from them again. Why? Because people today are inundated with marketing and content, creating a scarcity of attention. Just because someone reads one of your blog posts today does NOT mean they’ll remember to revisit your site in the future. Instead, you need to get that person to progress to Step 3 in the Value Journey, which is to subscribe. Here, the person gives you their contact information and, in doing so, grants you permission to contact them again in the future. Most often, this transaction is an exchange, sometimes referred to as an “ethical bribe.” You promote a valuable offer, but instead of asking for money, you ask for the prospect’s contact information. And when they give it to you, not only do you give them access to the content, product, or service you promised, you also add them to your subscriber list. Examples of Marketing That Generates Subscribers The biggest criteria for your free offer is that your target audience finds it valuable. Here are some examples from a variety of industries: A young professional signs up for a webinar presented by a local realtor about the best practices of purchasing a first home. A college girl fills out a form on a blog to receive a free sample of a new face cream. 14  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) The Human Resources manager at a mid-sized accounting firm signs up for a demo of a new application he can use to manage the hiring of new employees. In each case, the prospect fills out a form, provides their contact information, and is sent information about how to access the offer. The young professional is sent the time and URL of the webinar. The college girl is sent a thank-you email telling her the face cream is in the mail. The manager is contacted to schedule his demo. But it always starts with a form. For example, here’s how Salesforce generates leads with a whitepaper offer. Salesforce’s offer is perfect for the Subscription stage of their Customer Journey. 15  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Subscribers To get more subscriptions for your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Content Marketing Email Marketing Digital Advertising Community Management Conversion Rate Optimization Copywriting Step 4: Convert If the subscribers you gain in Step 3 of the journey remain engaged, some of them will be ready to increase their level of commitment. They like the information you share and have begun to trust you, so they’re ready to invest in one of two ways: either with time or money. This is a critical stage in the Customer Journey and one that frustrates many business owners. The key to success in this stage is to employ what we call “entry-point offers.” These offers are designed to give the new prospect tremendous value without forcing them to put too much “skin in the game.” At this stage, to ask for a significant investment in a complex product or service would be asking too much, too soon. You’re still in the early stages of relationship. In fact, it’s too early even to concern yourself with profitability. That’s right: in this stage of the Customer Journey, you might lose money on the prospects you acquire as buyers. This is, perhaps, the most important lesson you must learn so it bears repeating: 16  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) The Convert stage of the Customer Value Journey is about acquiring buyers or ramping up the commitment level of the leads you already have. It is NOT about profitability. The most valuable businesses in the world all understand that the costliest marketing activity your business undertakes is customer acquisition. It’s the reason Sprint is willing to buy you out of your Verizon cell phone contract and give you a free phone. It’s the reason GoDaddy offers domains for $2.95, and it’s the reason VistaPrint will sell you 500 business cards for $9. The goal is to acquire a new customer. Profits come later. Examples of Marketing That Generates Conversions There are two types of entry-point offers: those that require a commitment of time, and those that require a commitment of money. Here are some examples: The VP of Operations at a large company purchases a high-dollar management consultant’s book for $8 on the consultant’s website. A daughter of elderly parents schedules a walk-through visit at the local retirement home. A man takes advantage of a $20 teeth whitening service at his local dentist. Notice the price point of each of these offers: from $8 to $20. Your goal here is not to make a huge profit. It’s to get customers, to shift the relationship between you and your subscribers. Because, as you’ll see, once someone is a customer, it’s much more likely that person will purchase higher- ticket, more complex products and services and do it more frequently. Remember, one of the costliest (in time, money, resources) marketing activities your business will undertake is the acquisition of customers. The good news is that once you’ve acquired them, you don’t need to pay to acquire them again. Here’s an example of an offer from GoDaddy that does a great job of acquiring new customers with extremely low-priced domain registration services: 17  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) By offering a fantastic up-front deal, GoDaddy easily acquires the customer. Getting that initial conversion was the hard part. Now they can build the customer relationship to create profits down the road. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Conversions To improve conversions in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Digital Advertising Content Marketing Copywriting Email Marketing Search Marketing Step 5: Excite At this point, your new customer has had a transaction with you. A small transaction, sure, but a transaction nonetheless. 18  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Your job now is to make sure the transaction is a good one, that the excitement of the purchase develops into good will and trust. The reason for this is simple: if the person doesn’t get value from this transaction, they won’t move on to the next stage and purchase more expensive things from you. So, how do you make sure your customers have a good experience? First, we assume that whatever the prospect purchased or gave up valuable time for is outstanding. Great marketing will only increase the speed at which your business fails if you don’t have outstanding products and services. Second, the prospect must get value from their last transaction with you. The Excite stage of the Customer Value Journey is something you must return to again and again. And every time, it should create excitement. That being the case, whenever a customer or prospect does what you ask them to do (attend this webinar, buy this product, hire me for this service), you should engineer your marketing to maximize the chances they’ll get tangible value from the experience. Examples of Marketing That Creates Excitement Your goal in the Excite stage of the Customer Value Journey is to make sure your customer gets value from their transaction. Here are some examples: A married couple buys a Keurig (coffee maker) and uses the free coffee servings and Quick Start Guide to have an amazing cup of coffee within minutes of opening the box. A new user of the Spotify music streaming app goes through an instructional walkthrough teaching her how to build a playlist of her favorite songs. A young man reads through 3 eye-opening blog posts recommended via email by his newly hired Life Coach in advance of their first coaching session. 19  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) This stage is all about ensuring that your marketing is giving your customer opportunity to get value from doing business with you—and to enjoy that value right away. It could be as simple as an email onboarding campaign, like this one from the productivity app, Evernote: An onboarding campaign is a simple way to add value immediately after a purchase. Evernote is a cloud-based note-taking app that you can use to sync notes between your computer, phone, and tablet. It has a lot of useful features, but Evernote knows that, in order to really hook new users and turn them into long-lasting customers, they have to make sure new users are successful with the app. That’s why Evernote sends you these educational emails when you sign up for a new account. The emails contain tips that help you to get more value out of the application, making you more excited about it and more likely to use it. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Excitement To improve consumption in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Email Marketing Content Marketing 20  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Copywriting Step 6: Ascend At this stage of the Value Journey, you’ve sunk time, money, and resources into acquiring leads and customers and making sure they get value from doing business with you. It’s entirely possible that, until this stage, you have yet to turn a profit. In fact, if you’re in a competitive market (and who isn’t?) you may be losing money on the front end of this process to acquire customers. That’s perfectly acceptable, and here’s why: You’re investing in your future profits. Always remember that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one. That first sales isn’t about profits. It’s about converting a prospect to a customer, so you can begin a long (and profitable) customer relationship. Buying customers on the front end is just shrewd business, but only if you can monetize those customers on the back end. The Ascend stage of the Value Journey is where your customer will be ready to buy more and more often. If your business has a core offer, this is the place to make that offer. Then once your customer purchases that core offer, it’s time to present them with other relevant offers. You’ll notice that the Value Journey worksheet represents the Ascent stage as a ladder. That’s no accident. This is really a ladder that will hopefully lead to multiple purchases over time. Examples of Marketing That Creates Ascension Examples of ascension might include: A dating couple rent a convertible in San Diego and pay extra for satellite radio and GPS. 21  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) A new dad buys a digital camera for $2,495 and adds a lens kit, camera bag, and tripod to his purchase for a bundle price of $699. A woman with a brand new Mercedes buys an unlimited car wash package for $40 per month instead of paying for each car wash individually. Here’s how Southwest Airlines creates ascension by making an offer that will improve your experience and increase the value of your transaction: Southwest’s ascension offer is an affordable add-on that improves their customer’s experience. When you execute this stage properly, your customers will thank you for these offers. Southwest airlines customers who want to board the plane early are happy to pay an extra $15 to avoid hectic boarding. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Ascension To improve ascension in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include: Email Marketing Copywriting 22  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Digital Advertising Content Marketing Step 7: Advocate You now have a happy customer who has made several profitable purchases from you. The next stage in the Value Journey is to create marketing that encourages your most loyal customers to advocate for your business. An advocate is someone who speaks positively about your brand. An advocate is what you might call a “passive promoter.” They won’t necessarily promote your business in an active way, but when asked about you, they will respond favorably. Examples of Marketing That Generates Advocates These final two stages (Advocate and Promote) are often thought to be outside of the control of marketing, but that simply isn’t true. You can create marketing that intentionally generates more advocates and promoters. Here are a few examples: A woman enters a contest to win a new lip gloss from a beauty company by shooting a video review detailing how much she loves one of their lipsticks. Upon request, the Warehouse Manager at a produce supplier company writes a glowing review of the local courier service she uses to transport fruits and vegetables locally. Designer Shoe Warehouse knows the value of the Advocate stage in the Customer Journey. This email is designed to activate advocates by asking for a review: 23  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) DSW actively encourages customers to become advocates. Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Advocates Getting advocates is important because it helps generate awareness, trust, and credibility with a wider audience—which helps you to get more customers and grow your business. To get more advocates in your company, the marketing efforts you need to work on include: Social Media Marketing Email marketing Search Marketing Step 8: Promote Promoters differ from advocates in that they are actively seeking to spread the word about your brands, products, and services. 24  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) In some cases, the promoter simply had a great experience with your company and wants to share their story with friends and family. In other cases, they promote because you’ve created an incentive for them to do so. This puts your message in front of a new audience, the fans, followers, and friends of the promoter. And because this new audience is hearing about you from a trusted source who they already know, they’re much more likely to become customers themselves. Examples of Marketing That Generates Promoters Intentionally creating more promoters is important because it creates an army of paid or unpaid salespeople spreading the word about what you sell. Here are a few examples: A man who runs a podcast about fishing earns a 20% commission every time one of his listeners buys fishing equipment using his affiliate link. A woman attends a conference for free because she arranged for 5 of her colleagues to go as well. A marketing agency partners with a marketing automation software company to resell their software for a commission. As you can see, promoters help you get more customers at a lower cost. So even when you reward promoters, it’s a win-win. A good example of this is Dropbox. When it was just starting out as a new company in a new industry, they realized discoverability would be key to their success. So they initiated a referral program that gave its users a strong incentive to promote the service to others. 25  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) By generously rewarding users who promoted Dropbox, word spread quickly about the new cloud-storage service. Simply by inviting your contacts to try out Dropbox, you could increase your own online storage space from 2 GB up to 16 GB. This was such an attractive offer, thousands of new users recruited their friends and family, helping turn Dropbox into a software giant (valued at $10 billion in 2014). Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Promoters To get more promoters in your company, the marketing efforts you need to work on include: Email Marketing Copywriting 26  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) How To Move Prospects Through The Customer Value Journey Now that you know what the Customer Value Journey is, the next thing you need to understand is: How do you seamlessly and subtly move customers and prospects through each phase of the Customer Value Journey? The short answer? You build marketing CAMPAIGNS that INTENTIONALLY move people from one stage to the next. And those two words—campaigns and intentionally—are important here. So let’s unpack them one at a time. What Is A Marketing Campaign? First, let’s talk about what a campaign really is. A marketing campaign has two critical components: A call to action A traffic source The call to action is what you want people to do. If the marketing campaign you’re creating is aimed at the Subscribe stage of the Customer Journey, your call to action might be for people to download a whitepaper, checklist, or video resource. If it’s a campaign in the Convert or Ascend stage, your call to action might be to buy a product or service. If the campaign you are creating is for the Awareness stage, the call to action might be as simple as listening to a podcast episode or reading a blog post. The traffic source could be digital clicks from ads, email, social media sites, or search engines like Google. Offline marketing could include direct mail, TV, or radio advertising, print ads, or anything else that gets the call to action in front of your prospects. 27  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Now that you know what a campaign IS, let’s talk about what a campaign is supposed to DO. The purpose of a marketing campaign is to intentionally move people from one stage of the Value Journey to the next. For example: A campaign might have the goal of getting people to sign up for your email list (going from Engaged to Subscribe). Another campaign might have the goal of getting new customers excited about their purchase (going from Convert to Excite). Once again, notice that a campaign is intentionally moving people through the Value Journey. And that word “intentionally” is important. Intentionally Moving Customers Through The Value Journey Anyone who has ever become a customer of a company has moved through the Value Journey, whether that company made it happen intentionally or not. Sometimes, people move through the Value Journey on accident. For example, imagine that you had never heard of Dropbox before. Then, one day, a friend tells you that he uses Dropbox to store all his files online, and he recommends that you check it out. At this point, both you and your friend have progressed along the Value Journey. You have moved to Step 1, Aware, and your friend has moved to Step 8, Promote. However, this progression didn’t happen because of anything Dropbox did intentionally. It resulted from a random comment or a casual conversation between you and your friend. Contrast that with Dropbox’s marketing campaign offering extra space to customers who refer friends and family: 28  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Offer rewards for people taking the action you want them to take. In this example, Dropbox is moving people along the value journey INTENTIONALLY by creating a program that is designed for that specific purpose. This is an important distinction to make. Once you figure out that you can move people intentionally through the Value Journey using marketing campaigns, you realize that you have the ability to grow your business by improving the areas where your customers are getting “stuck.” At this point I’d like to point out that there’s one common mistake that many companies make when trying to move customers and prospects through the Customer Value Journey. 29  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) The #1 Mistake Marketers Make When Creating Campaigns Once a business understands the Customer Journey, they can get so excited about the possibilities that they try to move people all the way from stranger to promoter in one step, in one campaign. This is impossible. You cannot possibly create one campaign that makes people aware of you, engages them, gets them to subscribe and convert, excites them, ascends them, and then turns them into advocates and promoters. Instead, you need to create multiple specific campaigns that are designed to move people from one stage to the next. (Or in some cases, a campaign can probably move people through 2 or maybe 3 steps at once.) The best way to explain this is with a few case studies. Value Journey Campaign Case Studies Case Study: DigitalMarketer Campaign Goal: Aware to Engage Content Needed: Branding Video Traffic Source: Facebook Ads (Video Views campaign) Call to Action: End the war between sales and marketing... watch this video! When we create a new campaign here at DigitalMarketer, we always start by looking at the Value Journey map and identifying any steps where we need help. In this case, we realized that while we were doing a good job of generating awareness through Facebook ads, we didn’t have a good engagement campaign in place. So we decided to create some content (a branding video) whose goal was to get people engaged with DigitalMarketer: 30  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) We call this video the “Valentine’s Day War on Sales & Marketing.” But as you know, just creating a video isn’t enough. We also had to decide how we were going to get people to watch the video. So we chose to run a Facebook ad campaign (with video views as the goal) to generate traffic to the video. This made up the “Traffic” portion of our campaign. Here’s what one of those ads looked like: 31  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Advertising is the best way to get eyeballs on your content—for all stages of the Customer Journey. Because the goal of this campaign is to get people engaged with us, our call to action was very simple: “Watch this video!” 32  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) It’s important to note that we didn’t try to convince people to sign up or buy anything (at least not right away), because that wasn’t the goal of this campaign. The goal was to generate engagement, and it succeeded very well because it was focused 100% on simply engaging people. Case Study: ModCloth Campaign Goal: Engage to Subscribe Content Needed: Blog Post Traffic Source: Facebook organic traffic Call to action: Sign up for ModCloth’s good news and great offers! Here’s an example of a campaign with a different goal. In this case, the clothing company ModCloth wanted people who were already engaged with their content to subscribe to their email list. The content needed for this campaign was pretty straightforward: it’s a blog post. When you go to the ModCloth blog, you’ll see many helpful blog articles like this one: ModCloth leveraged this blog post to drive subscriptions. 33  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Because ModCloth has a lot of engaged Facebook followers, they were able to use free organic Facebook traffic as their traffic source. (Remember, you don’t always have to pay for traffic.) So we have content and a traffic source. Now, what’s the call to action? Well, you’ll notice that while you’re browsing the blog you’ll be greeted with this popup: Popups have been proven to be an effective tool for a Subscribe call to action. Now you might not think of this as a campaign, but it totally is. It’s a specific call-to-action: Sign Up for ModCloth’s Good News & Great Offers! And anytime someone fills out this form, they move on to the next stage in the Customer Value Journey. Often the best marketing campaigns are the simplest. 34  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Case Study: Honest Company Campaign Goal: Engaged to Subscribe to Convert Content: Email Copy and Creative Traffic Source: Google Adwords Call to action: Exclusive Offer! 25% off your first order Here’s an example of a campaign that moves people through two steps in the Value Journey: from Engage to Subscribe and then to Convert. Let’s go through this campaign from the beginning. The traffic source here is Google Adwords targeting the keyword “buy organic diapers.” Here you can see the AdWords ad: Attention When you click on that ad, you arrive on a landing page that asks you to subscribe. 35  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Subscribe Once you opt in, they’ll send you the following coupon in your email (about 24 hours later, assuming you didn’t already make a purchase): 36  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Convert I want you to pay close attention to that call to action: Exclusive Offer! 25% Off Your First Order. Notice that this discount only applies to your first order. That’s because the goal of this campaign isn’t to generate repeat purchases; it’s to get someone to make their very FIRST purchase. It’s a time-tested and effective tactic for turning someone into a new customer. 37  Chapter 01: Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey) Summing Up The Customer Value Journey is the foundation for all the tactics you’ll learn in this Guide. Whether you’re learning about content marketing, digital advertising, or analytics, or any other topic, keep this concept in mind. Don’t worry, though. We’ll review it several times so it stays fresh on your mind. And by the end of this Guide, it will likely be cemented into your thinking. Now that you understand the Customer Journey, it’s time to talk about the #1 tactic you’ll use to engage people at every stage: Content Marketing. 38  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy 02 CHAPTER It’s a big promise: perfect content marketing. But it is possible if you understand how content fits into your overall digital marketing strategy. And done right, your content marketing will not only attract prospects, but also move them through a marketing funnel to drive more sales and grow your business. In this chapter, we cover the basics of a successful content marketing program, including methods and metrics, the business roles that should own your content marketing, and the lingo you’ll use to talk about it. Methods of Well-Executed Content Marketing Let’s start with a thorough understanding of what we mean when we say content. You see, most businesses miss out on a lot of opportunities because their vision for content marketing is too small. As a result, they’re churning out content but not getting great results. And here’s why: content in and of itself isn’t what drives traffic and sales. Your content needs to be “perfect.” Now, what do we mean by that? Perfect content isn’t about you, your brand, or your objectives. It’s about delivering the right information to your prospects at exactly the right point in the customer journey. 40  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy For instance, for the software company Freshbooks, this web page represents perfect content marketing for a prospect who needs pricing information to make an informed buying decision. Content is any information that helps you keep the funnel full. Yep, a pricing page is content. The big misconception is that content marketing is blogging. While blogs are a major component of content marketing, they’re only a part of the bigger picture. In fact, in most cases, a blog is not the most lucrative form of content marketing. 41  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy But we’ll come back to that. First, let’s get clear on the six characteristics of perfect content marketing and why it’s essential that you get started. (NOTE: At the end of this chapter, you’ll get access to a tool we use to make perfect content planning a breeze.) 1. Perfect Content Marketing is Full Funnel I know this is Marketing 101 stuff, but stick with me for just a second before I get into the more advanced content marketing concepts we’ll be covering. For an ice-cold prospect to become a customer, they will need to travel through three stages: The 3 stages all prospects go through on their way to becoming a customer 42  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy 1. Awareness – The prospect must first become aware that there is a problem and that YOU or your organization have a solution for it. (This is where your blog excels.) 2. Evaluation – Those who move through the Awareness Stage must now evaluate the various choices available to them, including your competitor’s solutions and, of course, taking no action at all to solve the problem. 3. Conversion – Those that move through the Evaluation Stage are now at the moment of truth—purchase. At DigitalMarketer, our goal at this stage is to convert leads into frequent and high-ticket buyers. A cold prospect cannot evaluate your solution until they are first aware of the problem and your solution. And conversion is impossible until the prospect has first evaluated the possible courses of action. To move a prospect through a marketing funnel, you need to give them content specifically designed to satisfy their needs at each of the three stages. In other words… They need content at the top of the funnel (TOFU) that facilitates awareness. They need content in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) that facilitates evaluation. They need content at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) that facilitates conversion. Make sense? Blogs are fantastic facilitators of awareness, but they do a poor job of facilitating evaluation and conversion. And, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, evaluation and conversion are super critical to your business. To move prospects through the middle (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) you’ll need other content types. 43  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy It looks like this… We call this The Content Lifecycle. Let’s look at each stage of the funnel and the content needed at those stages… Top Of The Funnel (TOFU) Content Marketing The prospects entering the top of your funnel are completely unaware of your solution and, often, completely unaware of their problem. 44  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy As a result, you need content with a low barrier to entry—because at this stage, they have little to no motivation to put skin in the game (such as giving your contact information or money). You need freely available content at the top of the funnel (TOFU) that… Entertains Educates or Inspires … and you need to make it readily available using content types like: Blog posts Social Media Updates Infographics Photographs Digital Magazines/Books Audio/Video Podcasts Microsites Print Magazines/Newsletters (You’ll need a bigger budget here.) Primary Research Do you need all of these content types at the top of the funnel? Heck no. 45  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Most businesses will post content to a blog and to social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Once you’ve mastered these two content types, you’ll want to add more top-of-funnel content to the mix, like a podcast or a print newsletter. Remember, the big goal at the top of the funnel is to make prospects “problem aware” and “solution aware.” Notice how Whole Foods, using their Whole Story blog, raises awareness for a sea scallops offer while providing valuable content (recipes and cooking instructions): TOFU content raises awareness of your offers while providing valuable information. 46  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy At DigitalMarketer we do that by providing educational content our prospects are interested in—and using that content to raise awareness of our training products and services. (Shhhhh… don’t tell anyone, but this VERY chapter is educating you about the strategy and tactics taught in our Content Marketing Mastery Certification.) And the good news is it works in any industry for any type of product. Notice how this kitchen remodeling company uses photographs of remodeled kitchens to make prospects “problem aware” and “solution aware”: With TOFU content, you want to create awareness around problems as well as solutions. Unfortunately, the top of the funnel is where most organizations begin and end their content marketing efforts. 47  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Smart content marketers know that, with a bit more effort, they can move prospects from awareness to evaluation in the middle of the funnel. Here’s how it gets done… Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) Content Marketing The big goal in the middle of the funnel is to convert “problem aware” and “solution aware” prospects into leads. Here, we use free content to incentivize prospects to submit their contact information and opt in to receive future marketing. We call this type of content a Lead Magnet. Lead Magnets can be… Educational Resources (Case Study, White Paper, etc.) Useful Resources (Swipe File, Checklist, etc.) Software Downloads Discount/Coupon Clubs Quizzes/Surveys Webinars/Events This is a Lead Magnet that DigitalMarketer uses to generate leads for our products surrounding Facebook advertising: 48  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Lead magnets are free content that incentivize prospects to opt in to your list, becoming leads. When visitors click on the “Download Now” button, they’re prompted to enter their email address to receive the piece of content. This piece of content (a white paper) from Cloud Margin generates “solution aware” leads… 49  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy A white paper or report creates “solution aware” leads. But you can’t deposit leads in the bank. A third content type is required at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) to convert leads into customers… 50  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) Content Marketing OK, it’s point of sale time. What types of content will your new lead need to make an informed purchase decision? Here are a few… Demos/Free Trials Customer Stories Comparison/Spec Sheets Webinars/Events Mini-Classes Your lead may be reading your blog and downloading lead magnets (and it will help convert her), but you’ll need content that helps her decide between you and your competitor to move her through to purchase. Notice how Salesforce supplies leads in the bottom of the funnel with plenty of customer stories to prove that their product can handle that lead’s circumstances… 51  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Customer success stories are smart BOFU content. Salesforce.com has dozens of these customer stories—one for every major industry, product offering, and size of business. Customer stories are content that converts, and they are the responsibility of the content marketing team. 52  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Consider this piece of content designed to assist prospective Quickbooks customers in choosing the right solution: At the bottom of the funnel, prospects are comparison shopping, so comparison sheets make smart BOFU content. But Quickbooks could earn some points by comparing their tools to their competitors’ tools as well. For instance, a Google search suggests that a comparison sheet between Quickbooks and their competitors (such as Xero) is another piece of content that should be on the radar of the Intuit content marketing team. 53  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Google’s suggestions are a good source for content ideas. And while we’re at it, look at all the bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content Xero’s content marketing team has built: 54  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Brand comparisons are good BOFU content. And… Customer stories are great BOFU content. 55  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy And… The best BOFU content answers last-minute questions and gives prospects a reason to buy. Is creating top of funnel (TOFU) content on a blog important? Absolutely. But failing to build a full-funnel content plan will leave you disappointed in your content marketing results. 2. Perfect Content Marketing Is Intent-Based Some businesses and marketers get hung up on the wrong metrics, particularly when it comes to their blog. Take a look at this video to see what I mean: 56  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy The key to perfect content marketing is understanding existing intent and anticipating future intent, and then, creating the content “assets” needed to address that intent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In our Freshbooks example, a customer who’s deep in the funnel might have the intent to compare Freshbooks to Quickbooks. This content asset addresses that intent: 57  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy To come up with valuable content assets, anticipate current and future needs. And you’ll have to run paid traffic to your content to maximize your results or you risk leaving money on the table as Molly explains: 58  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy The truth is the most lucrative content assets you’ll create (if you have an existing business) are assets that meet intent at the bottom and middle of the funnel. Optimize for this existing bottom and middle of funnel intent before going to work on generating awareness at the top of the funnel with an expensive and time-consuming blog roll out. That’s not to diminish the power of a business blog. Over the last 24 months, we’ve been adding content assets (articles and podcasts) at the top of the funnel and we’ve increased website traffic (think awareness) by 1053%. That said, the quick wins in the content marketing game are in the middle and bottom of the funnel. 3. Perfect Content Marketing Is Ascension Focused Failure to provide an ascension path from every piece of content you create isn’t just bad marketing—it’s a bad user experience. Smart content marketers anticipate the next logical intent and remove as much friction as possible to create a clear path to conversion. For instance, let’s say I’m shopping for supplies to repaint my kitchen… 59  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy In our Freshbooks pricing page example, notice that Freshbooks has created a clear ascension path to a “Risk-Free Trial” of the software. In blog content, prospects can be given the opportunity to opt-in with their email address to get more information about a topic. Check out this ascension offer embedded in a blog post. Clicking on this banner ad will take the prospect to a landing page to enter their email address and ascend to a lead: 60  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Ascension offers can be embedded in your blog posts. They get more information about a topic they are interested in. You get a lead. 4. Perfect Content Marketing is Segmented You can run surveys and polls until you’re blue in the face. But you won’t know what people are truly interested in until they give you their money or time. 61  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy When a prospect visits a piece of content (spends time) they have raised their hand and indicated interest. And, because of the magic of ad retargeting you can follow up with these prospects with a relevant ascension offer without even acquiring their contact information. Retargeting blog visitors can help you create segmented leads. 5. Perfect Content Marketing Is Cross-Channel Perfect content marketers publish content that meets intent in any channel where groups of prospects are searching for and sharing content including: Website/blog Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest YouTube 62  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Chances are a single content asset could be published across numerous channels to maximize exposure. For instance, could that video demo of your product be republished on your YouTube channel like Cuisinart has done here? 63  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy (If you’re wondering, “Who in the hell would watch that boring video?” the answer is anyone who is interested in buying a coffee grinder and, particularly, anyone interested in buying THAT coffee grinder. Anecdotally… I bought that coffee grinder after watching that demo just a few weeks ago. The grinder does a great job grinding coffee and that video does a great job at cross- channel content marketing at the bottom of the funnel.) Can that article on your blog be repurposed as a webinar? Can that podcast become a written article for LinkedIn Pulse? 6. Perfect Content Marketing Is Avatar-Based Last, but certainly not least, perfect content marketing assets are produced to satisfy the intent of your customer avatars. A content asset can satisfy the intent of multiple avatars or it can be published to target a single avatar. At DigitalMarketer, for example, we produced an article to raise awareness (top of the funnel) for our marketing certification programs. This article was specifically targeted to our “Employee” avatar who has the intent of acquiring skills that will land them a better job. 64  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Our goal for this article was to raise awareness for our marketing certification programs, so it was targeted to our “Employee” avatar. Content Marketing Planning: The Content Campaign To execute perfect content marketing, you need a plan. At DigitalMarketer, we make this plan at the offer level using a spreadsheet called a Content Campaign Plan. The planning document includes fields for: Marketing Funnel – Is this asset addressing intent at the top, middle, or bottom of the funnel? Avatar – Which avatar(s) will this asset target? 65  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Vehicle – Will this be a text, image, video, or audio asset? Channel – Where will this asset be published? Ascension Path – What call-to-action will be used in this asset? The Content Campaign Plan is used to align content marketing with business objectives like generating leads and sales. It looks like this (I know that’s hard to read, but you can access the template by clicking here). DigitalMarketer’s Content Campaign Plan Want to create content that converts prospects at all stages of the funnel? Create a Content Campaign Plan and execute on it. It works. 66  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Your Content Marketing Success Metrics How do measure the success of your content marketing tactics? Traffic by Channel At the top of the funnel, design your marketing to raise awareness for your business, brands, and products. Measure traffic from channels like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Net New MQL’s Measure the number of leads generated in the middle of the funnel that require further nurturing before they are ready to make a purchase. Conversion Rate When content marketing is done correctly, it generates traffic to lead forms and product pages. Measure the conversion rate (Page Visits/Conversions) on lead forms, product pages, and other calls-to-action. Net New SQL’s Measure the number of leads consuming content at the bottom of the funnel (demos, customer stories, etc.), indicating they’re ready to buy. Relevant Roles in Content Marketing 67  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Who in your organization should be trained in email marketing? Three different departments should be proficient at and understand the role of email marketing. Marketing Content marketing is a foundational discipline affecting your search, social, email, and advertising. Every marketer involved in your digital strategy should be well versed in content marketing. Sales According to Harvard Business Review, the average buyer is 57% of the way through the sales process before they engage with a sales representative. Instead of contacting your sales team your prospects are consuming your content. Sales people who understand content marketing can work in conjunction with your marketing team to create content that closes deals. Public Relations The modern-day PR team must understand how the content they produce fits into the larger content, social, and search marketing strategy. The Lingo You’ll Use as a Content Marketer What are the terms you need to know as a content marketer? Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) Content Content designed to raise awareness for your business, brands and products. This content is delivered through a number of channels including blogs, podcasts and video hosting platforms like YouTube. Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU) Content Content designed to generate leads and move the prospect through the evaluation stage. Content in the middle of the funnel often takes the form of a Lead Magnet. 68  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Lead Magnet An irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. The goal of the Lead Magnet is to maximize the number of targeted leads you are getting for an offer. Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) Content Content designed to convert a prospect into a customer by providing the information needed to make an informed purchase decision. Bottom of funnel content includes webinars, product demonstrations, and customer stories. Summing Up Content marketing isn’t restricted to blogging. You’ll probably create tons of blog posts, but if you’re strategic, you’ll use your blog as just one channel in your content campaigns. Remember, content marketing works with your other digital tactics in a comprehensive marketing plan designed to move people deliberately through your Customer Value Journey. Don’t forget to download the Content Campaign Plan, which is your best resource for planning content for every stage of the funnel: TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. Then, once you’ve got your content assets built, you’re ready to learn how to use digital advertising to drive traffic and conversions. 69  Chapter 02: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Become a Content Marketing Specialist Content marketing is an essential aspect of any modern digital marketing strategy. In this mastery course, you’ll learn to execute a “full funnel” content strategy that transforms ice cold prospects at the top of the funnel (TOFU) into loyal buyers of even your most expensive products and services at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). You’ll learn: How to create your Customer Avatar so you can architect a content strategy that attracts leads and buyers. Choose from 12 goals, 16 metrics, and 21 different types of content to create a content strategy that is laser focused on moving the needle for your organization. (Building this content plan is a snap using our Content Marketing Plan worksheets.) The “GC = A” Content Marketing Formula that connects the dots between content and sales. Click Here to Learn More » 70  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan 03 CHAPTER One of our biggest challenges as digital marketers is traffic. How can we easily and affordably get people’s attention, push them to our websites, and convert them to subscribers and customers? The secret is digital advertising. And if you understand how to make it work, it can give you full control over your traffic flow and help you sell more too. In this chapter, you’ll learn the process for planning, setting up, and optimizing your ads, including the metrics you need to watch, the lingo you’ll use as a media buyer, and the people in your business who should be responsible for digital advertising. But before we start, let’s get clear about why paid traffic is a smarter investment than organic. The Difference Between Paid and Organic Traffic Free traffic is always the goal, right? Which is why most businesses aim for organic traffic first. After all, if you can get a steady flow of free traffic, you’ll pocket the savings. But as with everything else in life, you get what you pay for. The easiest way to explain that is with a simple comparison: the water hose versus the rain. Paid traffic is like a water hose. You have complete control over the direction it’s pointed, the amount of water pouring from it, and how long you let the water flow. You can turn it on and off whenever you want. If you’re getting more traffic than you need, with paid traffic, you can slow the flow. You have control of where it’s going, how fast, and when. 72  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Organic traffic, on the other hand, is more like rain. You aren’t sure when or if it will come, how consistent it will be, nor how long it will last. Listen to the weather channel all you want. You have no control. With organic traffic, you can lose traffic if Google changes their algorithm. If a competitor has a huge launch, you could lose traffic to them. You also have no control over where the traffic goes. Even simple things like changing the URL of your landing page can mess things up. You can enjoy all the control of paid traffic without it actually costing you anything. You do that by building funnels that reimburse your ad spend. So in essence, you can acquire customers for free, and then once your advertising costs have been reimbursed, use simple tactics to build loyalty and optimize your customers’ lifetime value. Better still, it’s not an either/or proposition. The better your paid traffic is, the better your organic traffic will be as well, because good advertising drives traffic—and the pages that get lots of traffic tend to rank higher in search engines. That creates an upward spiral of traffic acquisition. A win-win, if you will. But it’s important to be realistic. You just can’t run one traffic campaign and expect it to magically deposit a million dollars in your bank account. If you want a constant flow of leads and customers for your business, you must look at this as a system. Top 3 Sources for Paid Traffic Some of the best platforms for paid traffic are Facebook, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 73  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan But to know which one is right for you, you need to know where your customers hang out and which ad platforms are suited for the type of marketing you do. In most cases, you’ll probably start with Facebook and Google. According to Business Insider, these two sites drive 80% of referral traffic, more than all the other platforms combined. Facebook and Google are your top sources for paid traffic But again, it depends on what you’re trying to do. Google Is Like the Yellow Pages Because Google is a search engine, people start there when they’re looking for information. So it’s a lot like the Yellow Pages. 74  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan To drive traffic through Google, you’ll bid on keywords that will help people find you and can lead to an ideal sales conversation. Facebook Is Like a Billboard Scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed is a bit like driving down the highway. As you scroll, you see ads, promoted posts, as well as random comments. And if you, as a business, are willing to pay, your message will also appear in the newsfeed of your target audience. With Facebook, you can spend as little as you want and still expand your reach. Because it’s a social platform, and because they collect data on our behavior every day, they know a lot about us. All that data makes them the most powerful ad platform available today. Target your ads precisely enough, and you’re sure to get the right eyeballs on your message. YouTube Is Like Television YouTube’s top metric is the number of minutes watched. Their goal is to keep you on the site consuming videos, so they operate a lot like traditional television, playing ads in the videos, interrupting people’s viewing. Disruptive, yes, but with YouTube, your ads are always relevant. That’s because you can target your ads based on the YouTube channels your audience likes, the types of videos they watch, and what they’re searching for. So what are the top 3 paid traffic sources? What’s the best place to start with your paid traffic campaigns? Facebook, Google, and YouTube: All three will give you quality traffic from people who are interested in your offers. 75  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Okay, that gives you a good background for the strategy we’re about to discuss. Let’s dig into the methods you’ll use to execute a winning ad strategy. Methods of Well-Executed Digital Advertising We’ve established that paid traffic is your best (and most cost effective) way to drive traffic. Now let’s talk about how to create ads that magnetically attract your best customers. NOTE: We’ll focus primarily on Facebook advertising here, but you can apply this same process to whatever platform you’re using. Two Concepts for Evaluating Your Target Audience How do you know the type of ads you should be running and how to precisely target those ads? It comes down to 2 foundational concepts: the customer journey and traffic “temperature.” Concept 1: The Customer Journey The Customer Value Journey, remember, is the path people follow as they build relationship with your business, from first touch to final sale. The three core stages of this Journey are: Awareness. This is the top of the funnel, when new prospects first discover your brand exists and that you can help them solve their problems. Evaluation. This is the middle of the funnel, when prospects are seriously considering making a purchase. Their biggest question is whether you’re the best source. Conversion. The is the bottom of the funnel, where people take action and buy something from you. 76  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The 3 stages of the Customer Journey Concept 2: Traffic Temperature At each stage of the Customer Journey, your audience has a different relationship with you. At the top of the funnel, they barely know you and may not even know what you do. But as they move through the funnel, they learn more about you and become more committed and loyal. You might say, they “warm up to you.” Which is why we refer to this deepening relationship as “traffic temperature.” 77  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Traffic comes in 3 distinct “temperatures,” and each aligns with a different stage of the Customer Journey. Cold Traffic. Generally, this is new traffic from people who are in the Awareness stage. These people are good prospects for your business but have never heard of you or your brand. Your goal with cold traffic is indoctrination. You want to introduce your business to new audiences and get them coming back for more. Warm Traffic. Warm traffic comes from people who know who you are but haven’t bought anything yet. It aligns with the Evaluation stage. Your goal with warm traffic is acquisition, to convert a site visitor into a lead. 78  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Hot Traffic. Hot traffic comes from people who are at the Conversion stage. These are your buyers, people who are ready to buy or have already bought something from you. Your goal with hot traffic is monetization, to sell a high-dollar product to your best customers. Ultimately, your goal is to move people from cold to hot, transforming new leads into loyal customers, willing to buy from you over and over again. You do that by matching your message to a prospect’s temperature. With cold traffic, you don’t necessarily offer a sale. You’ll spend more time building relationship. Whereas with hot traffic, the relationship is secure. You speak more as a friend, and you make offers based on the topics you know they’re interested in. Believe it or not, these 2 concepts alone will massively improve your ability to create successful traffic campaigns. Simply relating to people based on their temperature, you’ll build trust and engagement. Now let’s move to the 5 elements that make up a winning ad campaign. The 5 Elements of a High-Performing Campaign Every ad campaign is made up of 5 key elements: the offer itself, the ad’s copy and design (which we call the “creative”), the ad scent (the cohesive look and feel of your overall campaign), and the targeting, or who you pitch your offer to. 1. Your Offer Your offer is not the same thing as your product or service. Your business is built around a product; your ad campaign is built around an offer. So what is an offer? It’s the unique combination of your product or service with other bonuses or add-ons, including all the details of your promotion: 79  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The deliverables The price The schedule How it’s being delivered And more So you may only have one product, but you can offer it for sale in a variety of ways, creating hundreds of different offers. This example, for instance, offers a coupon for big savings on your first visit: Coupons make great offers based on saving money. 80  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan This one, from Survival Life, offers a valuable product for just a penny: Another appealing offer: a valuable product at a huge cost savings. Your offer is also the starting point for your ad campaign. Get it right, and everything else will usually fall into place. But the opposite is just as true: put together a bad offer, and your ad won’t convert. 81  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan 2. Your Copy Your ad copy refers to the messaging you use in your ad campaign. It should be clear and compelling, so the benefits stand out—both the benefits of engaging with the ad and of taking whatever action you’re asking for. Good copy has a strong emotional hook. It’s intriguing and persuasive without relying on hype. Generally, you want to start your ad by speaking to a pain point your target is dealing with. Then your offer should be presented as the solution. This Hired promotion leads with the problem: “counting down the hours until you get to leave the office.” If someone resonates with that problem, they’ll be eager to see the solution. 82  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Or take this example from WINC: If going to the store is a pain point, they hook your interest in the very first line. 3. The Creative Creative refers to the graphic elements of your ad: the image, video, or carousel images. Don’t be fooled by the term “creative.” It doesn’t have to be overly imaginative. Good creative communicates your message visually in just a second or two. So it supports and enhances your copy. Here at DigitalMarketer, we like to be literal with our ad creative. Whenever possible, we visually display the offer, so people know at a glance what the deliverable is. 83  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Take this ad as an example. The article we promoted the offer in is on the left, and the resulting ad is on the right. Your creative should communicate your message visually in 1-2 seconds. Or this one where we promoted our 60-Second Blog Plan: “Literal” creative communicates clearly. 84  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan In both cases, the creative is literal, depicting—as closely as possible—the download we’re offering. 4. Ad Scent Ad scent refers to congruency, or “sameness,” throughout your campaign. Why is this important? Because trust is a huge conversion factor. If people feel comfortable that your offer is valid, they’ll seriously consider your offer. Do anything to create doubt or fear, and they’ll exit without taking action. Here’s how ad scent works… Ad scent 85  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Every time we click, we use simple visual cues (or scent) to ensure we’re in the right place. If we lose scent at any point, we begin to feel we’re in the wrong place or that we’re being tricked. As soon as that happens, we exit and go back to where we started. Your visitors should always feel like they’re on the right path. You do this by creating a flow—visually, in your messaging, and in the presentation of your offer—from your ad to your landing page, and every other piece of your campaign. To create congruency, focus on 3 elements: Design: Use similar imagery and colors on each piece of the campaign. Messaging: Use similar phrases and benefits. Offer: Your offer should be the same throughout. Ad scent is low-hanging fruit in digital advertising. Get it right, and you’ll boost your conversion rate and lower costs. See how Whole Foods does it in this ad: Whole Foods maintains good scent. 86  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The ad mentions “FREE Instacart delivery,” and when they click, they land on a page with similar wording in the headline: “Free Delivery Credit.” If the landing page talked about keeping your fruit fresh or any other topic unrelated to free delivery, it would confuse people, and they’d click off without taking action. That’s why it’s important to create a strong scent between the elements of your campaign. 5. Targeting The final element in a high-performing ad campaign is targeting, and it’s important because even a great offer won’t convert if you put it in front of the wrong audience. Follow 2 rules of thumb when planning your targeting. First, be as specific as possible. Specificity has to do with research. When planning your targeting, learn as much as possible about your target audience. You want to know your target audience so well, you can single out specific interests that this group has but no one else would have. Second, get the message right for your target temperature. Temperature, as we talked about earlier, has to do with matching your message to the level of relationship you have with your target audience. Here are some guidelines for getting the temperature right. Cold Traffic. Here, you’re just introducing yourself to new audiences, so you have 3 goals (none of them being to sell): Indoctrination. Aim to build trust and establish credibility by sharing valuable information for free. Pixelling. When they arrive on your content, pixel them so you run more ads to them and warm them up. 87  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Segmentation. If they click on a blog post about email marketing, we know they’re interested in that topic, so we can make them a more relevant offer later. What kind of offers do you make to cold traffic? Blog posts Social media updates Content videos Podcasts Lead magnets Quizzes White papers YouTube ads to content Twitter ads to pillar content Infographics When paying for cold traffic, you’ll pixel people who engage with your ad or click through to free content. You want to give them value so they begin to like your brand. So focus on entertaining, inspiring, and educating everyone who clicks through. Warm Traffic. Think about warm traffic as acquaintances who have shown interest in return. It’s not a developed relationship yet, but there has been a connection. So you’ll target these ads to: Leads that opted into your email list. (You’ll upload that list to a traffic platform.) 88  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan People who have visited your website and been pixeled. Facebook fans, Twitter followers, YouTube channel subscribers, etc. Your goals for warm traffic are to: Generate leads Drive low-dollar sales What kind of offers do you make to warm traffic? Lead magnets Quizzes or surveys Free or paid webinars Flash sales/low-dollar offers Product demos Branding videos Books (free or paid) Free trials Hot Traffic. These are your buyers. They may be people who have opted in and are on the fence about buying from you. They may have added products to the shopping cart but never purchased. They may have purchased something from you in the past but haven’t responded to recent offers. Your goals in running ads to this group are: Activation. If they haven’t purchased in a while, remind them that you’re still there. 89  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan High-dollar sales. Upsell buyers of lower-priced products. What kind of offers do you make to hot traffic? Events Paid webinars High-dollar offers Done-for-you services Cold, warm, or hot, getting the temperature right allows you to put your campaign in front of the right people. And the more precisely you can target your ads, the better they’ll perform. Now let’s talk about… Creating an Ad Campaign How do you put all these concepts and elements together to create a successful ad campaign? The secret is to create everything in advance—all the copy, creative, and targeting—before trying to set up your campaigns. The idea is to create precisely targeted ads that speak directed to your target audience. And for that, we use the Ad Grid. Ad Grid: From Strategy to Scale The ad grid is a strategic approach to creating campaigns that perfectly align with the temperature and interests of the people you’re targeting. The idea is to identify in advance the types of people you’re targeting and the hooks that are most likely to grab their attention, so you can be sure you’re creating a good marketing/message fit. You’ll create your ad grid in Excel or a Google Sheet, but it will look something like this: 90  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The Ad Grid helps you create highly targeted ads. Create a different ad grid for every campaign you put together. Now, with your spreadsheet ready, here are the 7 steps you’ll go through to plan, implement, and scale your campaign. Step 1: Identify your avatars An avatar is a profile for one type of person who’d be interested in your offer (example: entrepreneur, stay-at-home mom, consultant). The avatars for your campaign may be different from the avatars for your business, and that’s okay. For each traffic campaign, you’ll have 2-4 different avatars. You can have more, of course, but the more avatars you have, the more work it will take to plan your campaign. To figure out who your best avatars are, look at your offer (e.g., the lead magnet, blog post, or webinar you’re promoting) and brainstorm several different types of people who’d want it and benefit from it. 91  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Each of these will be an avatar for your campaign. Plug them into the top row of your grid. Step 2: Identify the hooks What’s most appealing about your offer? Each benefit or outcome of your offer can be turned into a hook to grab the attention of your audience. Generally, you’ll create hooks based on these 6 outcomes. Have. What will they have if they download and consume your offer? How do their lives look before & after? Feel. How will they feel better, smarter, or more successful for accepting your offer? Average day. How did you change or improve their average day? Status. How do people elevate in status or become a better person after consuming your offer? Proof/results. What social proof, case studies, or testimonials validate your offer? How can you promote the sense of belonging that people will get from joining other people who’ve responded? Speed and automation. Speak to the time savings or quickness of learning or applying the information in your offer. Don’t feel like you need to create a hook for all these outcomes. But do be creative and come up with several benefits or outcomes that will grab the attention of your avatars. Okay, now that you have your hooks, enter them in the first column of your grid. Step 3: Create your ad copy You need segmented messaging for every cell in your spreadsheet, each targeting one hook and avatar. 92  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan You can write the ad copy yourself or, because the ad grid clearly communicates the avatars and hooks you’re targeting, you can outsource it to a copywriter. Regardless of who does the writing, though, you want unique ad copy for every segment: Avatar1/Hook1, Avatar 2/Hook1, etc. And for each segment, you want the copy for the entire ad: text, headline, description and ad type. So let’s say you have 4 avatars and 5 hooks, you’ll need to write 20 ads. Your Ad Grid tells you how much copy you need to write. This level of segmentation gives you the best chance of success in your campaign. Instead of creating generic ads for a few avatars or hooks, you’ll create highly targeted ads aimed at specific types of people (avatars) with specific interests (hooks). With this approach, your odds of getting a good return on your ad spend are incrementally higher! 93  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan A completed ad grid with unique ad copy for every avatar and every hook Step 4: Avatar Research Once your copy is written, it’s time to research your avatars to identify the interest groups you’ll use in your ads. For this, research each avatar separately, finding the answers to each of these questions: Who are the authority figures, thought leaders, or big brands in your niche? What books/magazines/newspapers does your ideal customer read? What events do they attend? 94  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan What websites do they frequent? Where do they live? What tools do they use? What’s specifically unique about this group? To find the answers, do a Google search and ask people in your target audience. It may take time to find the answers, but these answers will help you get your ads in front of the people who need to see them. So take the time to do it right! You should also use this little-known technique… We call it the “But No One Else Would” trick, and here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re targeting an ad to golfers. You want to find interests that only avid golfers would know about, so no one will click on your ad except qualified prospects. 95  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Even casual golfers would likely know who Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are, but only avid golf enthusiasts would know Bubba Watson. So when setting up your ad, you’d want to target people interested in Bubba Watson. This is what you’re looking for in your avatar research: the interests that only die-hard fans would know about, so you can get the right eyeballs on your ads. Step 5: Create or Outsource Ad Creatives Your creative is the visual element you’ll use in each ad. At a minimum, you need one creative for each hook. What should your creatives look like? Do a Google image search of each hook’s keywords, and see what comes up. Images for the Google search “golf tips” 96  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan The top-ranking images show you what people think about when they hear your keyword. Use that as inspiration. But don’t copy. Design original images or videos that include the imagery people associate with your keyword—but that also have your brand’s unique look and feel. Step 6: Set up your ads and compile your results At this point, you have all the assets you need for your ad campaigns. It’s time to set up your ads. Use the ad grid to help you build each ad: Use the avatar for your targeting. Use the copy and creative you’ve developed to build the ads. Use your avatar interests to build an audience size in the range of half a million to 1.5 million each. Then turn your ads on and run them about a week. Once you start getting results, you can begin gathering your metrics. Your best success metric depends on the purpose of your campaign and the temperature you’re targeting. It might be: cost per click cost per 1,000 impressions cost per acquisition ROI Or some other metric that reflects your success Record that metric in your ad grid below the ad copy for each avatar/hook. Ideally, you’ll collect the metrics at 7 days, 14 days, 21 days, and at the end of the campaign. 97  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Step 7: Scale Scaling is about figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and how you can get bigger, better results. There are 2 ways to scale a campaign: Horizontally: If your results for an avatar are better than average, buy traffic in on other ad platforms to boost your visibility to that group of people. Vertically: If a specific hook or avatar is working especially well, create more ad sets to that group on the same platform. Find your winning avatar and hooks, and scale those. But also refine your process so you get better results in less time with a smaller investment of time or money. Optimizing Your Process In digital advertising, your goal is to attract cold traffic, then warm it up over time, so you can effectively attract new people to your website, get them to opt in, and persuade them to buy. To do that, you’ll build campaigns that include ads for all temperatures of your target audience. The challenge is to stay within your budget while targeting different segments. Here’s how to optimize your ad spend. Your formula for success is 6:3:1 Let’s assume your budget allows you to spend $10 a day. Your daily spend will look like this: $6/day on cold traffic, driving cold traffic to your site with pure content $3/day turning warm traffic into leads or buyers 98  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan $1/day retargeting and selling a higher-dollar product That ratio may change periodically depending on your needs, but this is a good balance, allowing you to target all temperatures while maintaining control of your spending. Optimizing your Ads When targeting different temperatures, you need to adapt your ads to the level of relationship. These templates will give you a good head start. Cold Traffic Ad 99  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Warm Traffic Ad Hot Traffic Ad Optimizing a Weak Campaign If a campaign isn’t performing well, go back to your offer. If you have a powerful offer, your other elements can be weak and the ads will still work. But if your offer isn’t right, nothing else matters. In some cases, your ads will start out strong, but results will wane over time. 100  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan When this happens, it usually means ad fatigue has set in. People have seen the ad too many times and aren’t responding to it anymore. You can fix ad fatigue in 2 ways: 1. Retarget to another audience. 2. Change out the campaign. The Lingo: The Language of Digital Advertising What are the terms you need to know as a digital advertiser? Traffic Temperature The classification of the audiences you target with your digital advertising campaigns as cold, warm, or hot. Cold Traffic Audiences targeted with ads that have no prior experience with your brands, products, or people. Ads targeted at cold audiences introduce the business to the prospect and establish trust and authority in an effort to build awareness. Warm Traffic Audiences targeted with ads that are aware of your brands, products, or people but have not yet converted to a customer or haven’t purchased in a long period of time. Ads targeted at warm audiences should be designed to convince a prospect that you have the superior solution. Hot Traffic Audiences targeted with ads that have previously purchased. These audiences know your reputation and have used your product or service. Ads targeted at hot audiences should convert a customer into a high-ticket or repeat buyer. Most ad campaigns to hot audiences will be conducted through retargeting. 101  Chapter 03: Crafting a Digital Advertising Plan Retargeting Campaign An ad campaign designed to reach customers and prospects with a message and offer that is based on their previous behavior. That behavior might be an opt-in to a lead form, a purchase, or a visit to a page on your website. Ad retargeting is available from ad platforms such as Facebook and Google. Frequency How many times has an ad been shown to the people you’re targeting. Ideally, you want to keep the frequency below 10. If people to see the same ad too many times, it becomes annoying and can lead to ad fatigue. Relevance The Facebook metric calculating how relevant your ad is to your target audience. In Google Adwords, it’s called “quality score.” It measures people’s engagement level and how much they like your ad. The Metrics You’ll Use to Measure Success What are the metrics you need to watch as a digital advertiser? Click-