This document provides an overview of key concepts in digital marketing strategy and content marketing. It discusses frameworks like the AIDA model for customer journeys and SWOT/PEST analysis. It emphasizes creating customer personas and using a variety of content types and formats. The document also covers channels, branding, creating a content calendar, publishing/managing content, and using blogs/vlogs. The overall message is that an effective digital marketing strategy requires understanding customers, creating the right mix of content, and distributing it across owned, earned, paid, and shared channels.

1. Digital Marketing - the Essentials

2. Marketing Strategy

3. Digital Marketing Strategy
https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/digital-strategy-development/10-
reasons-for-digital-marketing-strategy/ - offer a free download template and info

4. AIDA(R) model – the fours stages of the customer journey
• Awareness: creating brand awareness or affiliation with your product or
service to your customers.
• Interest: generating interest in the benefits of your product or service, and
sufficient interest to encourage the buyer to start to research further.
• Desire: for your product or service through an 'emotional connection',
showing your brand personality. Move the consumer from 'liking' it to
'wanting it'.
• Action: CTA - Move the buyer to interact with your company and taking the
next step i.e.. downloading a brochure, making the phone call, joining your
newsletter, or engaging in live chat, etc.
• Retention: We all know that this is key to upsell, cross-sell, referrals, Advocacy
and the list goes on.. as companies are also focusing on LTV.
https://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/offer-and-
message-development/aida-model/

5. This image shows a more complex consumer journey linking each stage
to different types of marketing

6. Digital Marketing .V. Content Marketing
Digital marketing is focussed more on sales and conversion. It also:
• contains strategies like SEO, running ads on social media and PPC.
• captures conversions
• helps to get customers beyond the search results page.
Content marketing only really focusses on engagement. It also;
• encourages as brand awareness
• encourages customer acquisition and retention, leads on to word of mouth marketing
• can also build strong and trusting relationships between customers and businesses.
Content can be anything from writing a blog post to creating photos, videos and
infographics.
Integrating them together will make your marketing strategy very strong, meaning you
will be boosting engagement and sales at the same time!

7. Set marketing goals that align to business objectives
A marketing plan sets out how you are going to put your marketing strategy into practice.
It ensures that everyone in the business knows what you are trying to do and what they need to do to make
it happen.
Your marketing plan should;
• set clear objectives - helps you towards your longer-term strategic goals.
• sets deadlines and agreeing - helps you focus on your priorities
• sets sales forecasts and targets a key part of your marketing plan
• sets targets for:
• numbers of enquiries
• numbers of new customers
• average transaction value
• web referrals
• positive cash flow.
• help you identify where your marketing is and isn't working

8. SWOT analysis
• Will help you gather the information you need to make a proper
assessment of your business and your market.
• Will give you a clear picture of how well your business is running and
the wider marketing and sales environment you are operating in.

9. PEST Analysis
A good PEST analysis will provide you with a strong foundation for an effective
marketing strategy.
• Political and regulatory - will new laws change the way you have to operate?
• Economic - how is the economy affecting you?
• Social and cultural - how are social trends affecting your customers' needs?
• Technological - are you making best use of available technology? What
developments are on the horizon?

10. Customer Persona
To help you fully realise who your audience is and how you might appeal to their wants and needs by breaking our
persona template down into eight sections:
• Photo – Including a photo humanises your persona and helps your team picture a human being whose problems
need to be solved.
• Backstory – Plug CRM data into your persona to flesh out their interests and hobbies.
• Psychographic Attitudes – Here you list typical buy habits and preferences. Try to find some patterns in your
marketing and web analytics.
• Demographic Identifiers – Competitive audience research and CRM data will help you hone in on your target
market. Demographic identifiers are great for targeted email campaigns.
• Goals & Motivations – List what makes your persona prioritises. List any personal and professional objectives
you’ve uncovered during your research.
• Roadblocks – Draw on quotes from your customers and any FAQs you see frequently to figure out what stops
your audience from achieving their goals.
• Sales Objections – These are your persona’s pain points. Here you list why a sale might fall through.
• Quote – Your quote sums up your persona in one bite-size example. Consult your sales team and revisit sales
emails to figure out what statement best reflects your persona.
https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-psychographics
https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide/
https://blog.alexa.com/10-buyer-persona-examples-help-create/

12. Branding
• Social media is a great positioning tool to tell the world where you stand and what
you stand for - strive to act like a person and not an entity.
• Ask yourself, what is your brand persona? (if your brand was a person what would
they be like?), tone (what’s the vibe of your brand?), language (what kind of words will
you use when on social media?) and the purpose (why are you on social media in the
first place?).
• A lot of social channels lack a clear personality.
• Personality is a great way to differentiate your brand from your competitors. People
buy from people.
• The blander the industry, the greater the opportunity and need to inject some
personality into it.
https://www.educba.com/branding-vs-marketing/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding

13. Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is when people strongly favour a particular brand over all the others.
It has the power to grow your business and sustain long term growth. It is about meeting your
customer’s needs and creating an experience that keeps them coming back.
Tactics for creating strong brand loyalty:
• Provide excellence in customer service
• Find your brand voice and story
• Use rewards programs
• Using social media strategy to build brand loyalty
• Build a brand community
The long-term impact of brand loyalty can:
• Create long term ambassadors that support your brand.
• Recommend your brand to their friends and family – (word of mouth= priceless!)
• Support future launches and talk about your brand on social media.

14. Content Marketing

15. Content themes
A content theme is a broad topic a series of sequential posts you
publish fall under.
You choose a topic to focus on for a period, such as a week or an entire
month. Nearly every post you publish during that time should focus on
that topic in one way or another.
• Some themes are centered around challenges.
https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/

17. Channel Selection
Content Distribution involves using different channels to promote your content to the audience.
The channels can be categorised into the following groups:
• Owned: Distributing content using properties that you own like your website
• Shared: Using third-party websites to distribute content, including social, professional &
messaging networks.
• Earned: Publishing articles, speaking opportunities, events, and awards are covered under earned
media.
• Paid: Any channel that requires you to pay to reach the audience is covered under the paid
channels. (PPC)
https://digitaluncovered.com/content-marketing-guide/

18. Channels
Reach SEO PPC Social media Display/affiliate
Convert Website design
& content
Landing page
Product page
optimisation
Social media
Retain E-news
Customer
service/support
Personalisation Social media
You need to work out which channel you focus on, which is your
primary and secondary?

19. So, which channels do you use and how well are you doing?
Channels Score out of /10 Comments
Website & SEO
Paid Advertising
Social Media
E-newsletters
Paper based advertising

20. Content types and formats
• What content do you create?
• What do your audience prefer?
• Which do they not respond to?
• What should you do more of?

21. Content formats
• Deciding which content formats to use can be tricky but before deciding the content
format, map it to the customer persona.
• Use long-form content when your aim is to provide more insights into a certain topic.
• Use short-form for digital consumption as viewers have a shorter attention span.
• An ideal content mix should have both short-form and long-form content.
• The split between short-form and long-form content usually is 60% – 40%. As creating
long-form content is more time-consuming compared to short-form content.
• <----------60 % ------------------------------------------ 40% --------->
https://digitaluncovered.com/content-marketing-guide/

22. Content marketing calendar
Best Practice – A content marketing calendar is a tool that will help you
to plan, organise, and execute your content marketing strategy in a
timely manner.
It helps you and your team to be organised and respond to marketing
opportunities better.

23. Publish and manage your content
• 80% of your posts should be quality content (to inform,
educate, or entertain, be interactive, build your brand and
audience)
• 20% can directly promote your brand (discounts, offers, lead
generation, products and services)
• An important part of SEO is not to make your customers feel
like they are being sold to – i.e. the dreaded hard sell
• If you’re simply not sure what types of content to post, try the
80 / 20 rule
• By providing the quality content, you are ‘positioning’ your
customers to buy from you.

24. Blog or Vlog to tell your story
• Your blog/vlog is the digital hub of all your thoughts
• Share your ideas and your value system
• Make sure you keep your blog updated with the latest developments
of the company.
• Connect with your readers/audience
https://vloggerpro.com/vlog
ging-platforms/ https://www.creativebloq.com/web-
design/best-blogging-platforms-121413634

25. • Create and edit videos for free using Adobe Spark Video and Spark
Post.
• With Spark Video, you can edit videos for YouTube, tutorials, and
presentations.
https://spark.adobe.com/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/12/15/best-video-editing-software-for-
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/instagram-video-marketing/
Video

26. • Explain features of products or services
• Compare results or stats
• Daily Infographic
Infographics

27. Develop Podcast content

28. E-books
https://fliphtml5.com/learning-center/top-8-pdf-
ebook-maker-software-for-ebook-editors/

29. Ideas
• Magazine for customers
• Added value content
• Portfolio
• Product Catalogue
• Services catalogue

30. E-newsletters
• Allow you to update your customer group with latest news
• Education, top tips
• Discount codes
• Special events
• Dividing your email list into more targeted groups
• age, gender, location
• Product/service
• State a clear call-to-action - “Find your solution” to “Learn More” , “View Subscription Options”
to “Subscribe & Save” don’t keep your email subscription a secret!
• Don’t just sell or promote, offer immediate value
• Give them a sneaky peek!
• Make sure it works on mobile

31. Free tools for images creation
• Meme Generator
• Imgflip
• Image Chef
• Canva
• Death to the Stock Photo
https://picjumbo.com/
• Pexels
• Unsplash
• Pixabay

32. Website and SEO Improvements

33. Building your website authority
• DA is a score that predicts how well a website will rank on a Google search
The higher the DA of a website the higher rankings it can get. It’s as simple as that.
• The best way to influence the DA metric is to improve your overall SEO
You should focus on your link profile by getting more links from other well-linked-to pages.
• A backlink is a link from some other website to your website
Backlinks help to determine the page’s importance and value (i.e. authority).
• Back link juice is the term used for the value or equity passed from one page or site to another
This value is passed through hyperlinks.
• Search engines see links as votes by other websites that your page is valuable and worth
promoting
(Link juice is a non-technical SEO term used to reference the SEO value of a hyperlink to a particular
website or webpage).
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
https://www.backlinkwatch.com/

34. Three levels of emotional website response
• Visceral – look and feel
• Behavioural – performance and usability
• Reflective – highest level of cognition, conscious, long term effects
How does your website make you feel?

35. Look at the difference!
1998
2020

36. Website success
Ask yourself some questions
• Does your website really work for you?
• Is it inviting, modern, easy to navigate?
• Does it create a great experience for prospects?
• Does it offer the best face for your business?
• Does it answer you customers needs and wants?
You can often be the worst person to critique your
website as you are too close to it and have probably
spent many hours designing and building it.
• Conversion optimisation

37. What makes a good design?
• Simplicity is best
• Consistency of style across pages
• Authentic photography
• Authentic words
• Great communication
• Easy navigation and loading
• Creates desire
• Compelling, singular, call to action
• Emotional impact

38. Professional terminology vs ‘what I wrote’
• Work through your related phrases
• What do the public call your service?
https://answerthepublic.com/

39. Buzz Sumo and Google Trends
To check out which subjects are trending in the world and are they
worthy for you to write about?

40. Keywords and what’s missing?
Break your business into streams and search each stream for relevant keywords and phrases –
make a list of them to use in your future content.
Don’t forget that keywords need to be used across your website and social media platforms, this
gives you a greater chance of being found when someone is searching for your products or
services
https://www.thehoth.com/google-keyword-planner/
https://www.thehoth.com/keyword-gap-analysis/

41. What about local SEO?
• Over 97% of the people use the internet when looking for local products and services.
• With Covid-19 we’ve all reduced our travel and are staying closer to home.
• People are now looking for businesses that are closer to home, nearby destinations and services.
So, you need to make sure your business is using local SEO strategies to optimise your website
for “near me” searches.
• Get the customers in your geographic region to find you easily online, so they turn to you first.
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/10/12/local-seo
https://ahrefs.com/blog/local-seo/

42. Google My Business
Google my Business will literally put a pin on a map to show location of your business in a town
to help people find you.
• It is free through Google, but you need to set up a Gmail account.
• It is essentially a local business listings service and it’s widely used.
• Listings provide key information quickly for searchers which can help them to find a business
and decide on a visit.
• Make sure it is claimed
•To Do
• Get more Reviews
• Update Content
• Check your categories
https://www.innovationvisual.com/insights/importance-of-google-my-business

43. Measuring success
Before measuring success you have to start with a goal in mind (using SMART!)

44. Metrics for success
A marketing measurement template might include things like:
• Your initial goal(s).
• An overview of what happened during the campaign (your marketing metrics will go here).
• Things that worked the best, and what you learned from them.
• Things that didn’t work so well, and what you learned from them.
The metrics you would then follow would be:
• Overall site traffic
• New vs. returning traffic
• Mobile traffic
• Traffic sources
• Average time spent per visit
https://blog.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/blog/bid/148614/five-metrics-to-
measure-the-success-of-your-digital-marketing-efforts

45. Analytics
Check and test widely – get into the habit of testing and checking your results
through analytics.
Need help with understanding Google analytics?
• https://support.google.com/analytics/?hl=en#topic=3544906
• https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/course/6
• https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/9328240?ref_topic=9143232
Need help with understanding social media analytics?
• https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/social-media-analytics-the-complete-guide
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-analytics-tools

46. Social Media

47. Social media engagement ladder
Less time
More time

48. Listening with social media
Listening for your brand and reputation
Listen to hashtags for mention of needs #
Check social media search terms
Check out your reputation – Google alerts
Check SERPs of your phrases
Check review sites
Ready crisis management plan

49. Follower strategy
#list - what to follow business hours on Twitter
https://www.thesmartbear.co.uk/find-a-twitter-hour-to-suit-your-business/
Who to follow - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram?
What phrases will your customers be looking for?
Who are you linked with already
Who can introduce you to others on LinkedIn?
Follow your followers
Look at other people’s follow lis
Mon- Fri 12 -1pm #UKBizLunch
Mon – Fri 2-3pm #BizHour
Mon 2-3pm #SouthWestHour
Mon 8-9pm #CreativeBizHour
Tues 9-10pm #SmallBizHour
Wed 8-9pm #DevonHour
Thurs 8-9pm #SomersetHour
Thurs 8-9pm #ExeterHour

50. Hashtag – ideas - create a list to use
Geographic specific
▪ #Honiton
▪ #Barnstaple
▪ #Devon
▪ #Somerset
Sector Specific
•#familylaw
•#lawfirm
•#familycourt
•#mediation
Media specific
▪ #journorequest
▪ #prrequest
▪ #pressrelease
▪ Subject specific
▪ #timemanagement
▪ #femaleentrpreneurs
▪ #careerchange
▪ #artandcraft
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/hashtag-holidays/
Which hashtags to follow and to use?
Hashtagify.me measures tag popularity
Hashtags.org trending tags
TrendsMap.com hashtag trends by region
Be warned of banned hashtags!!!!!
There are 70, 378!!!!
https://bannedhashtags.com/
https://bulldogdigitalmedia.co.uk/blog/soci
al-media-holidays-calendar-2020/

51. Social Media Management Tools
• Buffer - for straightforward social media scheduling
• Hootsuite - for all-in-one social media scheduling, monitoring, and
analytics
• Sprout Social - for team-based social media management
• Iconosquare - for managing Instagram business accounts
• Sendible - for lead generation
• Tailwind - for managing Pinterest accounts
• Post Planner - for curating content
• MeetEdgar - for automating your posts
• MavSocial - for adding images to social media posts
• Creator Studio - for Instagram and Facebook
Some of these may be free and some you may have to pay to use.

52. Share
Sharing content helps you to ‘be part of a community’
• Amplifying content
• Fuel and support the networking eco-system
• Helping the person who created the content – they will reciprocate
• If you can maintain an independent point of view – you can be seen as a
content ‘curator’ it’s not all about you
• ‘Here’s something someone else says – what do you think?’ Helping
stimulate conversation

53. Community/tribe building
• Make sure your business is easy to find
• Know your audience
• Solve the problems of your followers,
• Be generous – with content, promotions, shares, recommendations
• Listen to your audience – produce content your audience wants to consume
• Be honest – people like to trust so be open to mistakes and show personality.
• Don’t be a ‘Meformer’ instead of an Informer -researchers at Rutgers University found that
only 20% of us are informers on social media, while the other 80% are ‘meformers’.
Informers had more 2x followers of meformers.
• Sharing information is better for your follower count than sharing about yourself.
https://digiday.com/retail/retailers-facebook-groups-can-data-goldmines/

54. IGTV and Reels
Instagram IGTV
• Share videos up to 10 minutes long, or up to an hour-long if you’re a verified user.
• Supports both vertical and horizontal videos
• Need to be well planned and edited as opposed to the spontaneous nature of Instagram
• Creators use their smartphone’s camera and a simple video editing app to create engaging videos.
Reels
• 2020’s new way to record 15 to 30-second clips set to music on Instagram.
• Competes with TikTok, which is also short-form video creation and is popular with Gen Z.
• Add to videos with audio, text, special effects, and stickers, then share them with your followers.
For businesses you can use Reels to:
• Share educational content
• Showcase products
• Share behind the scenes content
• Announce your sales

55. Facebook Live
• Facebook Live videos are watched 3x’s longer than videos that are not live
• Facebook users comment 10x’s more on live videos than other videos.
• Facebook Live’s daily watch time has grown by more than 4x’s since its launch.
• Facebook Live beats the algorithm as it leads to the engagement your small
business needs to reach potential customers naturally.
• Facebook Live gives your retail outlet the opportunity to share their brand
philosophy with your customers.
• When customers see you talking live about your company and your products, it
gives them the personal connection they need to develop brand loyalty. These
emotional connections create brand loyalty in 82% of consumers.
• Bottom line—Facebook Live extends your organic reach to create brand loyal
customers. So, your small business needs to invest in its potential.
https://blog.be.live/how-to-sell-products-on-facebook-live-ba84cd87644c/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/07/31/facebook-live-guide

56. Stories
Stories are most often used to:
• focus on building brand awareness
• increase engagement,
• promote events,
• act as a notification of going Live
• drive views to in-feed posts
• attract audiences of 500 million users every day.
• Stories aren’t impacted negatively by the algorithm for organic reach like in-feed
posts are
• Bottom Line - People like watching Stories content, which means that you have
basically got a new mini platform in order to reach your audience on.
• Don’t forget to save your stories into Highlights – they live permanently on your
profile, read this great blog:
• https://later.com/blog/instagram-stories-highlights/

57. Social Commerce
• Social commerce is the use of social media to facilitate ecommerce transactions.
• The biggest benefit to adopting a social commerce strategy is that it simplifies the
buying process. Your customer no longer has to leave the social commerce website
they were on, and they can checkout easily and seamlessly, and then carry on
scrolling.
• As an example, a customer who clicks on an ad for your product on Instagram no
longer needs to leave the app to purchase from your website, they can literally
checkout on Instagram.
• 48% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 34 have purchased through social
media in the past.
• There’s been a 24% increase in shoppable Facebook pages, and a huge 43%
increase in adoption of shoppable Instagram pages.

58. The best platforms to use
• Instagram – ‘Instagram shops’ accessed through the profile page, the feed
and through their stories.
• How to set up a shop https://blog.hootsuite.com/insta-shopping-tips/
• Facebook – with the success of marketplace Facebook to has developed
‘Facebook Shops’. 18% of social media users have bought a product after
seeing it on Facebook in the past year.
• How to set up a FB shop
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/268860861184453?id=10776200
02609475
• Pinterest - it’s easy to over look Pinterest in favour of Insta and FB
however 83% of Pinterest users have purchased a product based on
something they saw from a brand on the platform.
• If you’ve already got an ecommerce store set up, then creating a shop on
Pinterest is easy.
• https://help.pinterest.com/en-gb/business/article/create-a-shop

59. IGTV Shopping
•
•
• IGTV Shopping is a great way to sell products directly within Instagram in a more
dynamic way
• Instagram Shopping is already available for feed posts, Stories, and IGTV Live, and Reels .
• Businesses and creators will be able to tag shoppable products directly in their IGTV
videos. Previously, the only way to share product links was in the video description, which
viewers had tap to open.
• Adding Instagram Shopping features to IGTV is a no-brainer for brands and creators
looking to drive sales.
• Instagram Checkout is now available to all eligible business accounts, making it easier for
users to go from inspiration to purchase without ever leaving the app.
https://later.com/blog/igtv-shopping/#:~:text=What%20is%20IGTV%20Shopping%3F,can%20shop%20right%20on%20IGTV.
https://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/igtv

60. Thank you
Please complete the feedback form for this course using
the QR code or this link.
https://forms.office.com/r/6G0cgGKLA1