1. BODY OF THE COURSE
 COURSE NAME – GETTING STARTED WITH DIGITAL MARKETING
 ONLINE PLATFORM – UPGRADE
 NUMBER OF WEEKS – 5 WEEKS
 ABOUT – 01. INTRODUCTION.
02. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AND MODES.
03. BUILDING MARKETING STATEGY.
04. DIGITAL MARKETING CHANNELS AND METRICS.
05. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.
06. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION.
07. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING.
08. EMAIL MARKETING.
09. WEB ANALYTICS.
10. LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
11. CONCLUSION.

2. LEARNING EXPERIENCE
INTRODUCTION
In general, marketing means creating value for its product or service. Advertising in
business is a part of marketing communication that is used to encourage, or manipulate
and communicate our audience to take or continue to take some action.
Marketing is used to –
 Educate the customers: Inform customers or prospects about a new product or
service launch.
 Establish a connection with the customers: Use marketing to remain in the minds of
consumers.
 Drive sales through promotions: Here, brands inform customers about a promotional
discount to drive higher sales.
Digital marketing is defined as “marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as
personal computers, smart phones, cell phones, tablets and game consoles to engage with
customers. Digital marketing applies technologies or platforms such as websites, e-mail,
apps and social networks”.
The line between traditional marketing and digital marketing is disappearing by the minute.
Digital is no longer a new category - it is everywhere. While digital often enables us to reach
the exact target audience without wasting resources, the number of people we can reach
through the digital medium is still limited. While consumers trust traditional channels more
easily, digital channels, too, are in the process of gaining broader acceptance in society.
Both traditional and digital marketing have their own strengths; integrating them will allow
us to achieve our marketing targets efficiently.
These are some of the advantages of digital marketing
 It can create targeted ads based on age, gender, income level and preferences
ensuring a higher chance of a conversion.
 It can analyse results of the campaigns real-time.
 It can test and tweak the campaigns for better results.
 It can make responsive communication.
 It can get limitless scalability.
Disadvantages
 It requires proper Skills and training.
 It is Time consuming
 There is High competition in Digital Marketing

3.  Security and privacy issues
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AND MODES
A business can communicate with its customers or audience in order to stand out and
create a different image of its products in the minds of customers. Communication
represents the voice of the company, it is the means by which company creates the
dialogue and builds relationships with its target customers, good communications help
brands to stand out from its competition. Marketing communication is crucial for a
company to identify the message it wants to create around its product and then, choose
the right communication channels to do so. This will help create a distinctive space in the
minds of the customers for a product or brand. The key components of a good marketing
communication plan which can be summarised as Identify the core marketing message and
identify the right channels to communicate the message to the customers.
MODES
As businesses enter a market, intending to develop a brand or aiming to increase sales of
particular products, they must choose where and how to spend their marketing budget.
There are different marketing modes the business can focus to market their products to the
customers. There are five major modes of marketing communication that are – Advertising,
Public relations and publicity, Sales promotion, Direct marketing and Personal selling.
BUILDING MARKETING STATEGY
An effective marketing strategy goes through the following steps:
1. Situation analysis
Every digital marketing plan starts with a situational analysis. This is the process of
examining the internal and external factors that impact the business. It helps to understand
the current situation of the business so that the firm can plan ahead. This is crucial, as any
digital marketing activity is undertaken, has to be in line with the business objectives. There
are two sets of factors that is needed to analyse: External factors and Internal factors
The internal factors are factors that have complete control over. They include ‘strengths’
and ‘weaknesses’ such as the resources. The external factors include ‘opportunities’ and
‘threats’ such as the market, competition, and more.
2. Building Buyer Persona for the Target Audience
A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents the target audience.
This is not a real customer, but a fictional person who embodies the characteristics of the
best potential customers. The firm can give his customer persona a name, demographic
details, interests, and behavioural traits. It can help us to understand their goals, pain
points, and buying patterns.

4. A persona is a generalised representation of the ideal customers. Personas help in the
marketing or sales of the product or service and internalise the ideal customer, the business
is trying to attract, and it helps to relate to the customers as real humans. A deep
understanding of the buyer persona’s is critical to driving the marketing efforts that relate
to customer acquisition and retention.
3. Building a Sustainable Competitive Advantage
It is really important for the business to make the customers switch from their competitors
to them and it can be only possible by identifying and marketing the advantage. The first
factors that help in building and identifying a sustainable competitive advantage is network
effects. The presence of proprietary elements is another important source of competitive
advantage. The patent helps to protect the business ideas and ensure exclusive rights for
offering and market solution. Another important source to consider is business model
differentiation it helps in innovating a value proposition, cost reduction, additional revenue
streams. The other factors like product innovation and customer experience internalised
customer experience in all of its activities and ensured that all the problems faced by users
are solved immediately.
4. Defining Business Objectives
The next step is to convert the outcomes into specific marketing objectives the firm want
to achieve. There are two points that need to keep in mind while setting objectives: Align
business objectives with the marketing objectives and Decide the KPI’s to track the
objectives.
Objectives are essentially the ‘where do we want to be’ goals that guide the marketing
campaigns. To ensure this, the business need to identify their marketing objectives before
advancing to marketing plans. Selecting the right KPI’s and monitoring them on a regular
basis is essential for the business to understand whether they are on the right track to
meeting their marketing objectives.
DIGITAL MARKETING CHANNELS AND METRICS
POEM MODEL
Paid media is the media which the brand has to purchase. These will include banner ads,
pop up ads on websites and social media, using google ad words, etc. It requires the brand
to either buy media space, i.e., on website ad spaces,
promoted/sponsored posts on social media, etc.
Owned media, are media channels that a brand owns, and can leverage freely. These media
channels include from websites, and all social media brand handles from Facebook and
Twitter to Quora and LinkedIn. Owned media includes media space that does not need to
be purchased by the brand, however content has to be created and paid for by the brand.

5. Earned media, includes all other media channels that aren’t owned or paid for by a brand.
This usually involves independent 3rd party media channels adopting and propagating
brand related information. These would involve all mentions through sharing, tagging,
consumer engagement, etc. Earned media doesn’t require the brand buy/rent media space,
nor create the content. Although the content maybe branded content, the brand has no
control over it.
MARKETING FUNNEL
There are three stages an individual goes through before becoming a consumer. These
three stages are together called the ‘consumer purchase funnel’. The three stages are as
follows: awareness: when a user becomes aware of the need. Consideration: when the user
considers various options to buy from. Purchase/decision: the user buys the product.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Out of the total global population of 7.676 billion, over 45%, i.e., 3.484 billion, are on social
media. Out of this, 3.256 billion people access this technology through smartphones. Lot of
brands are attracted to social media, using it as a key medium for marketing. YouTube,
Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are very popular among young and middle-aged adults.
Out of these platforms, Facebook and YouTube are also popular among people aged 50 and
above, considering approximately half of this demographic is present on these two social
media platforms.
Among all social media platforms, Facebook is the stickiest, with 51% adults returning to it
several times a day. Similarly, Snapchat and Instagram are sticky platforms, with 49% and
38% daily active users, respectively.
LinkedIn is a very useful platform for b2b marketing. 97% of b2b marketers currently use
LinkedIn as a content distribution channel. Also, It has 90 million senior-level influencers
and 63 million decision makers worldwide. Thus, LinkedIn is a highly resourceful platform,
leading to nearly 80% of all b2b leads on social media.
FACEBOOK
It is extremely important for brands to be on Facebook since it has a widespread user base.
India constitutes the largest proportion of Facebook users, i.e., 270 million, Users spend an
average of 35 minutes a day on the platform, making it a very sweet proposition for
marketers. Weekday mornings and afternoons show the most consistent engagement.
Sundays are generally not a preferred time to post as people are relatively more disengaged
from social media on weekends. There are certain types of content work well on Facebook.
i.e., Videos, Images, Text posts, User-generated content, Blog posts, Inspirational quotes
etc.
Facebook has oriented these marketing objectives according to the different stages of the
consumer funnel, namely: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion

6. There are three types of audience namely - Saved, Custom and Lookalike audience. The
criteria for targeting Saved audience are those that can be defined using the various
audience-targeting criteria available on Facebook. Saved audience on Facebook can be
categorised into: Demographics, Interests, Behaviour, Connections, Remarketing etc
AD FORMATS
The major ad formats available on Facebook are: Video, Image, Collections, Carousel, Lead
Generation, Canvas etc.
INSTAGRAM
Instagram has a 1 billion monthly active users and they spend an average of 28 mins on
Instagram and 63% of user’s login once daily. The audience falls largely in the 18 – 44 age
brackets. India comes at a third place who have 70 million numbers of users. weekday
mornings and afternoons from Tuesday to Friday show the most consistent engagement,
with Wednesdays being the best for posting content.
The ad manager for Instagram is integrated with the Facebook Ad Manager and therefore
the account structure, marketing objectives, targeting options to select the audience for
the ads are the same for both platforms.
Ad formats available on Instagram are: Video, Image, Carousel, Stories.
LINKEDIN
LinkedIn is responsible for over 80% of the B2B leads today. In addition to this, it is
important for brands to be present on LinkedIn simply because it is a very sticky platform,
with 40% of the users being active daily. The audience falls largely in the 18 – 54 age
brackets. The best time to post content on LinkedIn is between 8 am and 2 pm on
Wednesdays. Sundays are usually not ideal for posting new content on LinkedIn as it has
been shown to attract the least amount of engagement. Content types that do well on
LinkedIn include: Blog Posts, Industry News and Research, In Depth How-To and List-Style
Posts, Quick Tips, Photo Updates etc
The different marketing objectives that can be selected on LinkedIn are grouped according
to the stage of the consumer funnel. Thus, the different marketing objectives are:
Awareness: Brand Awareness.
Consideration: Website Visits, Engagement and Video Views.
Conversion: Website Conversions Job Applicants.
Business can target users on LinkedIn through a variety of demographic, interest and
professional criteria. LinkedIn provides a host of profession-based targeting options for the
ads. For instance - job titles, schools, field of study, company, etc. This makes it a very
lucrative platform for B2B digital marketers.

7. ADs formats that are available on LinkedIn, namely: Sponsored Content, Sponsored Inmail,
Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads etc.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)
SEO is a process of optimising the website to rank higher in a Search Engine Results Page
(SERP). It is a continuous, organic method that is used to achieve long-term objectives. The
need for SEO arises due to three major factors.
First, a search engine is the path for the customers to reach the business website. Second,
many consumers research products online and tend to buy them offline. The online process
may be lengthier and more comprehensive, as it can be done in leisure, but the actual
purchase may be made later at a store. Third, SEO helps to build the brand by creating an
association with the relevant search query.
SEO has two main components: On-page SEO which focus on optimise code, content,
images, etc on the websites and ff-page SEO focus on building links to link back to the
business websites.
HOW A SERCH ENGINE WORKS
SERP refers to search engine results page search engine curates the list of results using a
multi-step process. The first process is called ‘crawling’, wherein the search engine ‘crawls’
the web to discover all the publicly available web pages. Search engines use web crawlers
to pore over webpages and follow the links they contain. This data is collected and sent
back to the search engine database. In Indexing, every time a search query is made, it is
matched with the searchable index of the search engine, and the most appropriate results
are pulled out. ‘Ranking’ is the process of fixing the position of a webpage in a SERP. It
involves Processing which compares the keywords in the search query with the index pages,
next is Relevancy in this case if multiple pages have the searched keywords, relevancy is
calculated and lastly it includes Results which is display in a right order.
Search engines use various criteria to decide the rank of a webpage in a SERP. These would
include how popular the website is, how many people refer to it on their own websites, and
social media tags referring to the website. Other factors will include how fast the page
loads, whether it is a safe browsing experience, or even how up to date the content on the
website is.
SEARCH QUERIES AND KEYWORDS
Search queries are the words entered by a person in a search engine. It may be misspelt or
be in the wrong order. When a marketer uses these search queries in his SEO, the ideal
queries he uses are called keywords. A marketer will use keywords and optimize for them,
so that whenever a relevant search query with those keywords is entered on a search

8. engine, his website may appear at a top position in the results There are four types of
keywords- Short-tail, Middle-tail, Long-tail and Brand keywords. Different techniques can
be used to short list the keywords from the search volume. The marketer can take a help
from different websites to select suitable keywords based on the type of the business.
SEO AUDIT
SEO audit is basically benchmarking the business web presence to industry best practices. It
is a process of analysing how well the represent relates the best practices as it identifies
many foundational issues affecting organic search performance for both On-page and Off-
page SEO. There are many reasons why SEO audit is required, for example:
 Declining traffic: It might be due to lack of adherence to SEO best practices, which
should be analysed by SEO audit.
 Weaker conversions on the website: SEO audit could point out user experience
challenges, navigation issues, content relevancy issues, etc., which need to be
audited.
 Competition gaining ranks on relevant keywords: This should make consider auditing
the website, and comparing the results with competing websites and filling in the
performance gaps.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)
SEM is also called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, wherein the business will only pay when a
searcher clicks on their ad. SEM will target the right users and show them the
advertisements at a point when they are most likely to respond to them. SEM is the process
of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
SEM vs. SEO
SEO is a longer, organic process of climbing up the SERP rankings, whereas SEM is the
faster, but paid, method of achieving the same results. Some of the advantages of SEM over
SEO are - Audience targeting, Faster and efficient way of rising up the rankings, Greater
scope for content testing and optimisation.
AUDIENCE TARGETING
There are five main criteria to target the audience.
1. Location – It has the option to choose the country, city, town, region, multiple regions, or
a distance radius.
2. Demographic – It include grouping based on age, sex, income and marital status.
3. Affinity - Affinity-based audiences are decided by their search history on Google.
Searchers are grouped into buckets based on their likes and interests, the topics they
search for, the websites and apps they frequent, etc.

9. 4. Re-marketing - Remarketing audience consists of a set of consumers who have already
interacted with the brand in some way.
5. In-market Audience - It is an audience segment consisting of consumers who have been
categorised as having a very high intent to purchase, based on their online activity.
Consumers who visit websites or click ads of products similar to the products, have
previously purchased products similar to the business products, etc. are categorised as in-
market audience.
AD EXTENSIONS
Business can use seven ad extensions to present extra information to the consumers and
make their ad more consumer-friendly, namely: Sitelinks, Callouts, Location, App, Price,
Structured Snippets etc. In order to draft an effective ad, copy it should be - specific,
relevant, actionable etc. Finally, customising the ads is done according to the product
offering and reach consumers at all stages of the consumer funnel.
AUCTIONS
Impression share is the number of times the ad was visible among all the searches that it
could have been shown for. For example, if out of 100 searches if the ad was actually
shown only 12 times, the impression share of the firm is 12%. It is determined by two
components, the Ad Rank or the daily budget of the firm. Ad rank is the product of CPC
(cost per click) bid and quality score. There are two ways which can decide the daily budget,
it is based on the marketing objectives, or based on the monthly marketing budget.
THE BIDDING
Bidding can be either manual or automated. While manual bidding gives more control over
the bids placed, automated bidding set targets and automate the bid adjustments
accordingly. There are Parameters on which bid modifiers work namely - device, location,
ad scheduling, remarketing audience, and audience demographics. There are three types of
bidding strategies in automated bidding namely- maximising impressions, maximising clicks
and maximising conversions.
ATTRIBUTION
It is important for businesses to accurately attribute credits to their different marketing
channels. This is so that they can plan their marketing budgets accordingly and ensure that
they invest in the right marketing channels. There are different attribution models: Last
click model: the conversion is attributed to the last marketing channel before conversion.
First click model: the conversion is attributed to the first marketing channel that leads to an
ultimate conversion. Linear attribution model: each marketing channel gets equal
attribution for the conversions. Data-driven attribution models: this model uses machine
learning algorithms to calculate the attribution for each marketing channel.
EMAIL MARKETING

10. Any communication related to the products or services that is sent to a prospect or existing
customer via email is Email Marketing. The first step in becoming a proficient email
marketer, i.e., understanding how the competitors are using email marketing to create
awareness about their brands and reaching their consumers. By subscribing to the emails of
the competitor brands to understand how they make their emails engaging and relevant to
their target audience.
EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDERS
Email service providers are applications that help marketers run their email campaigns. This
means that ESPs allow marketers to do one or more of the following: Email Builders,
Automation, Customer Management, Analytics.
BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST
An email list is a list of the email addresses of the customers who have subscribed to the
emails. As an email marketer, it is important to try to hone the email list the firm have
created and build on it by adding only the most relevant email addresses. The firm can try
to do so by removing unnecessary, irrelevant and faulty email addresses. This will ensure
that the email/subscriber list is: Relevant to the brand, Responding to the content of the
emails.
BUILDING AN EMAIL CAMPAIGN
In order to make the email campaigns more effective, the firm need to segment the users in
the subscriber list and send out emails that are relevant to them.
 Action-based segmentation: Users can be segmented based on their actions related
to the emails. These actions can be of two types: a) On the email, which are actions
including opening the email, clicking on the links, ignoring the email, replying to
emails or even deleting the email. b) Off the email, which are actions perform off the
email such as the date a user subscribed to the mailing list, campaigns that a user
has been a part of, etc.
 Demographic-based segmentation: Users can also be segmented according to their
demographics such as age, sex, location, language, etc. However, it is important to
note that this information has to be divulged by the user in the email list. If the
mailing list only contains email addresses, this type of segmentation will not work.
 Remarketing: Users can also be targeted through remarketing. This means that users
can be segmented based on their interaction with the brand. This includes users who
abandoned a cart on an e-commerce website, users who have commented on a
brand’s blog post, etc.
TYPES OF EMAILS

11.  Welcome email - Brands generally use these emails after the first interaction with a
subscriber, including opting in to a mailing list. These tend to be more casual and less
technical.
 Onboarding - Onboarding emails are similar to welcome emails but they are reserved
for brands that require a sign in by the user. For example, onboarding emails are sent
by brands such as Amazon or Gaana.com when a new user signs up for their service
using their email id. These emails tend to be technical, providing the customer
information about the product or service, including directions and how-to guides.
 Abandoned cart emails - These are emails designed to nudge a customer who has
abandoned a cart into completing their transaction.
 Recommendations - Recommendation emails are sent to consumers who are in the
consideration phase, where a brand recommends products or services that
the subscriber might be interested in.
 Renewals - Renewal emails are sent to the consumers who are nearing the end of
their subscription plan. For example, Netflix sends renewal mails as a reminder to
consumers whose subscription cycle is about to end.
 Confirmations - Confirmation emails are sent to consumers who have made a
transaction, including purchasing a product or service. These are generally meant to
confirm the purchase by email, as well as to send bills and receipts to the consumers.
 Engagement - Engagement emails are casual in nature in order to attract
subscribers. They may contain games, informal/casual content, information, listicles,
etc., which the subscriber might find relatable.
ANALYSING AN EMAIL CAMPAIGN AND EMAIL REPORT
Key metrics that email marketers use to measure their campaigns are as follows: The
number of subscribers in email marketing list, The total number of emails sent to the
subscribers, The total number of emails delivered to subscribers inbox, The total number of
emails opened by subscribers, The number of times a link in the email was clicked on by
unique users, Number of subscribers who performed the action mentioned in the email,
i.e., followed the CTA, The total number of leads generated through the campaign etc.
Using the different types of key metrics, the effective report can be made, which different
types of flow happening in the websites and also helps to identify which metrics to improve
in order to optimise the campaigns.
WEB ANALYTICS
Web analytics is the collection, reporting and analysis of website data, which helps in
making informed decisions based on the business goals. Data needs to be analysed and
understand because analysing data helps in making better business decisions. since every
business has a diverse set of customers, it would be easier to decode their behaviour by
dividing them into segments. Understanding the consumer group that is interested in the
product or business can lead to a higher rate of conversions.

12. MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORKS
Measurements are done in order to improve the decision-making process. Before stepping
into web analytics, it is important that the business objectives are effectively translated into
measurable actions. Building a measurement framework for analysing the success of
business objectives and improving the overall decision-making process of the organisation,
using the various metrics/KPIs such as conversions, bounce rates, visitors per media
channel, etc.
DATA ANALYTICS TOOLS
Heat maps and scroll tracking can help businesses understand how their users are
interacting with their websites. They provide important data on drop-off rates and bounce
rates, and how engaging the website is.
There are various tools that can be used to run experimentation and testing, but we have
largely focused on Google Optimise, which included the following three tests:
 A/B testing: This is a type of experimentation test that lets the firm change one
variable of the content.
 Multivariate Testing: Multivariate testing is similar to A/B testing, but instead of
changing a single variable multiple elements are changed together.
 Redirection Testing: Redirection testing can test which of the two different landing
pages results in better performance. The URLs for two different pages are targeted to
similar audiences.
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
Qualitative tools help to understand the customers better. They capture the voices and
opinions of the customers. Some of the qualitative tools are - Net promoter score is an
index ranging from -100 to 100, measuring the customers’ willingness to recommend a
company's products or services to others. An online survey is a questionnaire that the
target audience can complete over the Internet. Market survey is the survey research and
analysis of the market for a particular product or service, which includes understanding
customer inclinations.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports
website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. It is
used to track website activity such as session duration, pages per session, bounce rate etc.
of individuals using the site, along with the information on the source of the traffic.
Google Analytics groups interactions into the following three categories: First
interaction refers to the user’s first interaction, which ultimately leads to conversion. Assist
interaction refers to any interaction that the user has after the first interaction and before

13. the last interaction. Last interaction is the final touchpoint for the user, before a
conversion.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
 Digital marketing is about generating sales and capturing lead from the customers
who are searching on the internet for the products and services.
 It mainly helps the firm to reach the right audiences at the right time.
 It keeps engage and motivate the audience to take the action by appearing through
advertisement.
 Digital marketing can easily track and monitor the campaigns. When the firm invest
time and money into their campaigns, they want to know that they are
working. Digital marketing makes it easy to track the campaigns, which allows the
firm to adapt and drive better results.
 It is very cost-effective to use online marketing methods. This leaves room for a great
ROI because the firm don’t have to spend much money to run a campaign. It doesn’t
cost much to run a social media ad campaign, compared to some traditional
methods, which allows their business to have an opportunity to grow.
 Any modern brand that wants to get ahead in the current business climate will need
to adopt digital marketing tactics as part of their overall strategy.
 Digital marketing also involves the web analysis of the firm which shows the ups and
downs of the firm and the wants of the customers.
 Social media marketing is a popular digital marketing tactic that allows the company
to be part of the online conversation about the brand.
 Retargeting is also apt for Business-to-Business companies to ensure that the ads
automatically follow up with prospects even when they are not on their laptop, on
vacation or sleeping.
CONCLUSION
 This course is an opportunity for me to understand about the Digital Marketing.
 It gave me understanding about the process of the digital marketing.
 It is good platform for the business to understand about the customers and market
their brand among the target audiences.
 This course helps us to know what skills and knowledge we have to improve in
coming time.

14.  This course gave demonstration of the firm and showed the importance of keywords
and the points to consider while marketing the brand online.
- Lastly, I would like to thank all the respected teachers and commerce department for
giving me this opportunity, it was great learning experience to me while learning this
course.
THANK YOU