Strategic Digital Marketing with Nottingham Trent University and Impression

http://impression.tips/ntustrategy @impressiontalk #digstrategy
Strategic Digital Marketing
How to use digital marketing to achieve your business goals
http://impression.tips/ntustrategy
@impressiontalk #digstrategy
Prepared for: Prepared by:

lauralhampton impressiontalk
uk.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton
laura.hampton@impression.co.uk

Credentials

Clients

Our team

We help businesses grow online
SOCIAL
PPC
DIGITAL PR EMAIL
CONTENT
DEVELOPMENTSEO
REPORTING

Today’s Agenda
– Introduction to digital marketing
– What is ‘strategy’?
– How to be more strategic in your marketing
– SEO (search engine optimisation)
– Content marketing
– PPC and paid opportunities
– Social media

An introduction to digital marketing
The medium through which we engage our
target audience and show the personality
behind our brand.
A place to showcase all that is great about
our business on a level playing field.

Where it starts

Does your website show off everything
you offer?
Can your target audience easily find the
information they need/want?
Can Google understand what you’re all
about too?

All about setting out your
stall
When your website clearly shows off
what you have to offer…
… and it is easy for people to use…
… it has a much better chance of
ranking highly in the Google search
results. This is on page SEO.

Validation and credibility
Google, like your target
audience, won’t just take
your word for it.
This is why we need to
promote your website and
build your brand’s
credibility around the web.
This is off page SEO.

Promotion Techniques: Social Media
Social media is the term used to describe the
plethora of user-generated-content platforms
that rely on the shared content and updates of
their users.
Most commonly used by businesses are:
● Facebook
● Twitter
● Instagram
● YouTube
● Pinterest
● LinkedIn

Promotion Techniques: Paid advertising
Paid advertising comes in many forms, both
online and offline. In online marketing, we most
commonly use:
● Google AdWords, including search network
ads, display advertising and remarketing
● Facebook boost and sponsored updates
● Twitter sponsored tweets
● LinkedIn promoted content

Promotion Techniques: Content Marketing
Content marketing has become a bit of a
buzzword in recent years, but generally
speaking refers to:
● Creative content in the form of graphics,
infographics, imagery, video or audio
● Created to communicate a message,
display data or generally appeal to the
target audience
● Typically underpinned by a strong
promotional plan, which can include SEO,
paid ads and social media

The role of digital PR
Digital PR is a real growth area in digital
marketing and refers to the promotion of
business stories through traditional PR and
online techniques.
The goal is to secure editorial feature of the
brand in places relevant to the target audience,
in order to increase brand exposure.
This also has a highly beneficial impact on SEO,
which also relies on the placement of a brand
across the web to signify credibility to Google.

Investment in digital marketing
- In 2015 report, highest reported value
channels were SEO and email
marketing
- 28% of roles held in ‘marketing’ are
now ‘digital’ specific
- The more technical areas tend to be
outsourced, including SEO and PPC
- Whilst more content driven campaigns
stay in house, such as social media and
email
- Digital marketing spend increased by
17% in 2015

What does “strategy”
mean to you?

- Insert answers here

Being ‘strategic’ as a marketer...
● Having a clear set of goals
● Making those goals measurable
and SMART
● Having a way to measure those
goals
● Assessing the contribution of
every campaign and marketing
channel

Tip 1: Start gathering data

● Google Analytics
● Google AdWords
● Google Search Console
● Bing Webmaster Tools
● CRM reports
● Salesperson reports

Interpreting the data...
● How well are we currently
achieving our goals?
● Where are we doing particularly
well? Look at best performing
channels, products, pages,
devices, countries, etc
● Where are we not doing well?
● What is the conversion rate for
each of our goals?

Tip 2: Set SMART goals

What are your goals?

Now… make them
SMART.

Tip 3: Align your goals to financial forecasts
● When we know the conversion
rates of our channels…
● … and we know the revenue
figures we need to hit…
● … we can set realistic marketing
targets…
● … and better refine our work.

Why invest in SEO?
– More website traffic
– Increased rankings in the Google
search results
– More customers
– More sales
– Better brand representation
online

Back to basics: how Google works
Google bots crawl the
web, following links to
find new pages
Uses sitemaps, internal links and
external links in this process.

Google indexes all
pages on the web,
like a huge library
Some sites/pages will be crawled
and indexed faster, some can’t
be found - buried too deep

Google’s index
includes categories,
topics and relevancy
ratings
Based on Google’s algorithms.

When someone
conducts a search,
Google retrieves the
result from its index
Based on Google’s algorithms.

Google’s mission statement
Google is a business too and it’s
service is its search results.
It needs to deliver the best
search results possible in order
to deliver a good experience to
its users.
If it fails to do this, it will lose its
market share.

What is an algorithm?
The set of rules used by
Google to govern the search
results so they deliver the
best quality, most relevant
results for its searchers.

How to keep up with Google updates
– Follow @impressiontalk on Twitter!
– Sign up for the Search Engine Land daily
newsletter
– Read Google’s Webmaster Central blog

How Google understands websites
On page factors
The things we do on our own websites,
including the content, the structure, the
hosting, the loading speed, whether or
not it’s mobile friendly…
Off page factors
The things that are said about our
website outside of our direct control
(though we can influence them) including
external links, editorial mentions and, to
an extent, social engagement.

On Page SEO: Focus
Each page on your site should have a
specific focus.
This means it can be a relevant search
result for a specific search query.
If you have multiple pages on the same
specific topic, they compete with one
another as Google doesn’t know which
is the best/most relevant search result.

Further keyword ideas
● Google Keyword Planner
● Answer the Public
● Customer feedback
● Competitor analysis
● Service/product review

Content Hierarchy
● The closer to the
homepage, the more
important the page is
considered to be
● Think about the hierarchy
of your website and make
a plan for the pages you
need

Tip 4: Optimise your pages for search

On-Page SEO
Title tags
The title of the page as shown in the Google search results. Google
will refer to this early on in its analysis to understand that the page
is about.
Should clearly state the topic of the page. Maximum 60 characters.

On-Page SEO
Page Titles (H1)
The title of the page as seen on the page itself. This should be the
main title of the page and reflect the title tag, though it may be
formatted differently.
Ensure it is ‘H1’ style in the HTML code.

On-Page SEO
Body Copy
The text on your page is an important element of how Google
understands it. Your aim should be to write pages which have their
own specific focus, so you can ensure everything on it is relevant to
the page’s topic.
Google recognises words in bold or italic as being more important
than others, so use these to highlight important words that are
relevant to the page topic.

On-Page SEO
Image Alt Tags
Google can’t (entirely) ‘see’ images like we can, so it struggles to use
your images in its understanding of the page.
Image alt tags are descriptions of the image in text format, usually
applied within the code or, if you have one, content management
system. The image alt tag should be relevant to the page topic.

On-Page SEO
Meta Descriptions
Though no longer directly used by Google to understand your page, the
meta description is an important marketing message which can entice
people to click on your search result over others.
Maximum 140 characters, ensure you include a message and call to action.

On-Page SEO
Internal Linking
Remember that Google follows links to find new pages. The links to
and from your page say a lot about what the page itself is about.
Look at where your page is linked to from within your site, including
the pages that link to it and the text they use to link. Should be
relevant to the page’s topic. Also look at what other pages are
linked to from that page and how well this shows its relevancy for
its focus topic.

Tip 5: Optimise your pages for users

Page Load Speed
How quickly do your pages load?
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Mobile Friendly
How well does your website work on mobile devices?
https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Interactive Content
To what extent does your content go above and beyond that of
your competitors?
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday

Broken Elements
Don’t put off fixing what should be fixed today!

User Journey
How easy is it for users to move through your website and how well
do you guide/inspire them to make their journey as streamlined as
possible?

Engagement Metrics
Time on page, time on site, bounce rate, new vs returning visitors

Tip 6: Don’t Neglect Off Page SEO
Google doesn’t just ‘take your word
for it’.
In order to identify the most
relevant, high quality search results,
it needs to consider what other
people think of your site.
This is off-page SEO, and account
for roughly 70% of Google’s effort in
understanding your site.
So… get the on-page stuff done,
then focus is on building your
brand’s credibility around the web.

What is link building?
Link building is the practice of
creating valuable stories/content
and sharing valuable expertise to
encourage others to mention and
link to our website.

What is NOT link building?
– Buying links with money or giveaways
– Adding your website to poor quality
directories
– Attempting to ‘play the system’ in any
way

Domain Authority
A metric constructed by Moz which gives an estimation of the perceived
authority of your website.
Domain authority is scored out of 100 and is based on a logarithmic scale,
meaning it increases more quickly at the bottom end and then gets
more difficult to grow. Generally, DA of over 40 is considered good.
Donington’s website has a domain authority of 58/100, which means it is
considered to be quite authoritative and should therefore be able to
compete with other websites on most search queries.

Links and “link equity”
All links are votes, but not
all votes are equal...

What makes a good link?
Of high domain authority itself
Relevant to your brand
Not paid for or otherwise solicited

Why would someone
link to someone else’s
website?

How do you get people to link to your site?
Create great
content
People are much more
likely to link to, and
therefore share,
something which is
of high quality and
relevant to their
target audience
Add something
new
If you create a
resource or piece of
content which adds
to theirs, people will
link to it
Interesting,
entertaining,
unique
Create content which
can’t be found
elsewhere, and
people will link to it

Outreach
Promote your content by
outreaching to people who
might want to link to it.
Create a list of potential ‘linkers’.
Approach them with your content,
explaining what it is, and why
they might want to link to it.

Which websites might
link to yours?

The role of digital PR in SEO
– By generating news stories of interest, you can
encourage others to link to your website.
– Consider what is newsworthy, and how best to
represent it.
– For example, you might have some interesting
stats from a race which you write a press
release about, then link to a page on your site
where you’ve presented those stats in a graph.
– Use of traditional PR and online outreach
techniques combined.
– Always include links in your press releases.

Who can you
approach to link to
you now?

Measure, analyse, refine...
● Links to your website - use Google Alerts,
Google your own brand name -
site:www.mysite.co.uk or tools like AHREFs
and Open Site Explorer
● Look for improved ranking positions
● And more organic search traffic
● Could also be more referral traffic

How to measure SEO impact
Key performance indicators
– Organic traffic to your website
– Organic traffic to the pages you’ve optimised
– Domain authority improvement - check on
https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/
– Improved rankings for the terms you want to search queries
you want to target

● Work out where you currently rank for your
target terms (STAT)
● Look at who ranks above you
● Monitor for improvements, which you should
see within weeks, depending on your industry
● Use Google Analytics to monitor search traffic
● And Google Search Console for rankings too

Conducting an SEO audit
– Use Screaming Frog to run a crawl of your website
– This will show you all of the URLs
– And all of the title tags
– And all of the meta descriptions
– And all of the H1s
– And image tags
– Highlight all of the pages that need to be updated
– Review the on-page copy of each page; does it have a specific purpose and does it meet
that purpose well?
– Use Open Site Explorer to review all of the sites linking to yours and identify types of sites
that have linked in the past, and therefore where new opportunities might be
– Look out for any bad links, e.g. from poor quality directories

Google’s Mission Statement
Google's mission is to organise
the world's information and
make it universally accessible
and useful.

Your Mission
To let Google know that your
website is the most accessible
and useful result for a given
search query.

“Link building” has evolved...
– Requesting links
– Contributing content
– Creating unique content
– Digital PR
– Relationship building
– Offline

What is content marketing?
– Refers to the creative generation of
content which communicates a message,
visualises data or generally appeals to
your target audience.
– Typically involves an investment in the
creation of that content beyond simply
writing a blog post.

http://impression.tips/ntustrategy @impressiontalk #digstrategyhttps://www.harveywatersofteners.co.uk/history-interior-design/

http://impression.tips/ntustrategy @impressiontalk #digstrategyhttp://hub.companycheck.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Business-Census-2016.pdf?pdf=BizCensus2016

http://impression.tips/ntustrategy @impressiontalk #digstrategyhttps://www.impression.co.uk/black-friday/

Promotion of content
Good content marketing has the
power to generate LINKS and
SOCIAL SHARES.
A good content marketing campaign
is underpinned by a strong
outreach strategy; so who do you
plan to promote it to and how?

Tip 7: Invest in Strategic Content Marketing
– Think PROMOTION FIRST
– Consider who you want to promote to…
– … and how you’ll do it…
– … then work backwards for best results
– Always think about your target audience
– And your brand

(Content) Marketing Foundations
● Something to say
● Someone to say it to
● A reason for saying it

Something to say (brand stories)

- What differentiates you from
your competitors?
- What is unique about
Donington as an experience?
- What do you offer, in a
nutshell?
- Why do your customers come
to you?
- What need/desire do you fulfil?
- What is your backstory?
Brand stories

What are your brand
stories?

Not just what, but how...

Blogging

Guides

Creative Content

Videos

Audio

Great content...

Someone to say it to (audience)

Knowing your audience
– Who are you trying to speak to
– What are their interests
– What challenges face them/their industry
– How does your service/product help them

Knowing your audience
– Audience segments
– Individuals
– Personas

Key Attributes
Time Poor Time Rich
Answering to
Others
Sole decision
maker
Low propensity to
buy
High propensity
to buy
Technophobe Technophile
Office based On the road
Technology and Web Use Challenges
Time: Matt is investing a lot of time in
getting his business off the ground
and knows every minute is valuable
Admin: Matt feels overwhelmed by
the paperwork involved in starting a
business and wants to make sure he
gets it right.
Focus: Matt started his business
because he loves what he does. He
wants to retain his focus and not get
bogged down in tasks related to
running the business wherever
possible.
Name: Matt Thomson
Age: 31
Position: Owner
Company: Thomson Creative
Matt says: “I’m really excited to be running my own business
and want to ensure I have the best chance of success.
NEW BUSINESS OWNER
Matt is our new business owner, currently operating from
his home. He has extensive experience in his field but has
never run a business.
He is hungry for information and does his best to read as
much as he can to equip him to run his business
successfully, but he is limited in time. He appreciates bite-
size content and quick responses. He is best suited to
graphical content, guides, listicles and social interactions.

Who are you trying to
reach?

http://www.smartinsights.com/content
-management/content-marketing-
planning/tools-for-content-marketing/

What content could you produce
that communicates your brand
stories and appeals to your
audience?

A reason for saying it (goals)

SMART goals

(Content) Marketing Foundations
● Something to say
(stories and content)
● Someone to say it to
(audience)
● A reason for saying it
(goals)

● New links to your website (Moz Open Site
Explorer or AHREFs or Google Alerts)
● Traffic to your content
● New leads via your content
● Organic search rankings
● Paid ad engagement
● Engagement metrics

Tip 8: Invest in PPC
Pay per click marketing refers to the paid
advertising techniques, usually through Google
AdWords.
You pay for each click your advert receives and ads
are placed according to a bidding system like
eBay, in conjunction with quality assessments of
your ads and landing pages.
Paid advertising can also be done through social media such
as Facebook, and through Bing.

Adverts in the Google search results

Google AdWords: Basics
Campaigns
A campaign is a collection of ad groups and ads. A campaign should be focused on a
specific theme; for example, you might create a campaign for ‘Driving Experiences’
Ad Groups
An ad group is a subsection of a campaign which hones in on a more specific theme. You
can have multiple ad groups in a campaign. For example, within the campaign ‘Driving
Experiences’ you might have an ad group for ‘Christmas Gift’
Ads
An ad is the advert(s) you want to present to people. Ads sit within an ad group which is
in a campaign, and much be relevant to the ad group and campaign. For example,
within the Christmas Gift ad group of your Driving Experiences campaign, you would
have an ad which talks about booking a driving experience as a Christmas gift.

Google AdWords: Basics
Keywords
Keywords in AdWords are the terms for which you want your advert to appear when people
search for them. You’ll have lots of keywords for every ad, which sits in an ad group, which
sits in a campaign. The keywords should be relevant to all of the above.
For example, for your Driving Experiences campaign, Christmas Gift ad group you might want
to appear for keywords like:
‘driving experience christmas gift’, ‘driving day gift christmas’, ‘christmas driving experience’,
‘christmas driving day’, ‘driving day gift’
Note the specificity of these keywords to the ad group. If you wanted to target driving
experiences for birthdays, you’d create a different ad group. You can use the Keyword
Planner to look for more ideas.

Budgets and bidding
You set the budget for your campaign at a campaign level. So you might decide you
want to spend £30 per day on your Driving Experiences campaign.
You can then set a bid at a keyword level. So you might say you are willing to pay
70p for every click on your Christmas advert.
It then works like eBay, to an extent. If you’re the highest bidder, you’ll probably
appear in position 1.
However, it also looks at quality score; so your keywords must be relevant to your
ads which must be relevant to your ad groups which must be relevant to your
campaign and the landing page you’re sending people to must be relevant to all
of that.

Landing Pages
A key element of PPC,
landing pages are the
pages you send people to
from your ads.
In order to get as many
conversions as possible,
they should be built to
focus on that conversion
and nothing else.

Remarketing through AdWords

Tip 9: Try Social Media Advertising

59% of the UK population
have ACTIVE social
media accounts

Social media is
NOT a
broadcasting
tool

Social media
IS a
conversation

What could social
media do for your
business?

What could social media do for you?
– Reach more prospective customers
– Convert more prospects into customers
– Keep existing customers loyal
– Gain market intelligence

How Twitter works
– Followers
– Following
– Tweeting, replying, retweeting

Who could you follow?

Who could you follow?
– Local press: www.twitter.com/nottscc/lists
– Trade press
– Existing customers
– Suppliers
– Business press

What to say?

Setting up Hootsuite
– Claim free account
– Set up mentions stream
– Set up custom search streams

Facebook Business Basics
– Built on ‘likes’; when someone ‘likes’ your page, they can see its content
appearing in their news feed
– Not all content posted on a page appears in everyone’s news feed - algorithm
– Range of native apps available, so you can post events and even take booking
through FB
– Photos work really well on FB
– As do links to longer content pieces
– Like all social media, it’s about starting and contributing to conversations

Facebook Analytics
– Use to learn what works and what
doesn’t
– Identify seasonal/daily trends
– What types of content get most
engagement? Usually photos
– Demographic information; how can
you better appeal?
– Location information; again, what
messages work best?

Facebook Advertising

Who owns YouTube?

Tip 10: Structure your social media campaign
1. Have a clear set of goals
a. who?
b. what?
c. why?
2. Select the appropriate channel
3. Create a content plan

Structuring your social media campaign
4. Start posting, give it a couple of weeks
5. Review
6. Refine

Configuring your Analytics: Goals
Destination goals
A destination goal tracks visits to a specific page
URL. You might use a destination goal to track
visits to a ‘thank you’ page that results from a
new subscription or a booking to track how
many people complete that action.
Event goals
Where a new URL is not generated by an
interaction, such as watching a video within the
page or clicking a button, you can add code to
the site to track that interaction as an event
goal.
Ecommerce goals
Google Analytics allows for ecommerce tracking
integration for sites which take online
purchases.

What goals will you
set up?

Google Analytics Custom Dashboards

Google Analytics

Sales
Enquiries
Sales team
CRM

Today’s Top Tips
1. Start gathering and analysing data
2. Create SMART goals
3. Align goals to financial forecasts
4. Optimise your pages for search
5. Optimise your website for users
6. Don’t neglect off page promotion
7. Invest in strategic content marketing
8. Invest in PPC
9. Try social media ads
10.Structure your social campaigns
Bonus: Measure everything!

HELLO@IMPRESSION.CO.UKHELLO@IMPRESSION.CO.UK
THANK YOU
laura.hampton@impression.co.uk
uk.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton/
@lauralhampton
www.impression.co.uk

Strategic Digital Marketing with Nottingham Trent University and Impression

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