Beginners Guide to Digital Marketing: Book Review
Digital Marketing Guide
What’s Inside
Right from the start this Digital Marketing Guide lays out a game plan for step by step replication of how to build your website with good digital marketing.
It is organized from day 1 to day 30.
If you are a beginner or someone interested in building a website, learning these tips to enhance your digital marketing skills will be a giant leap forward.
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Digital Marketing Guide Template
Assumption Warning
Please note that while free options exist for digital marketing growth and advertisement, the author does stress the importance of investing in your brand growth.
“I assume that you are willing to take a calculated risk with paid media and are not looking only for free solutions.
What I have learned is that even free things cost money because there is the cost of the lost opportunity when you invest your TIME and don’t get the level of results that you expect.”
– Romuald Andrade
Are you still reading this?
Good, now that we are sure you’re focused let’s dive into the highlights of what this Digital Marketing Guide has to offer.
This Guide has both great advice and processes that will teach you how to think like a Digital Marketer and create great content.
About the Author
Andrade started his first website in 2003 and as a freelancer began to help small business owners create websites.
He realized that businesses without a way to measure how successful their marketing efforts were, lacked drive in expanding their performance.
He began to focus on Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media Marketing, and paid media advertising.
Main Lessons
- Each Week review your site for optimal performance.
- Use a mainly quantitative approach to measure your success.
- Get quality traffic to your site, i.e. buyers.
- Know which marketing will have the best results prior to launching campaigns by doing research.
What You’ll Need
- A Logo
- Team Members who can compartmentalize/Specialize
- A Shareable Gmail ID
- A Virtual Team
- A Digital Marketing Budget Plan
Day 1
The Creative Brief
To get the most from your digital marketing efforts it’s important to have a Creative Brief.
This will also keep your team on target.
It’s basically a road map for persuasive marketing.
A great creative brief will contain instructions for work to be done by the marketing team.
By outlining goals, you can then align efforts of copywriters, graphic designers, and advertisers.
Start by visioning what success means in your operation.
Define your goals
Start by answering these questions:
- Who is your target customer?
- What problem are you creating a solution for?
- What’s the benefits of your solution?
- Do you have a value proposition?
- Why should your target believe you?
This book also has some great case studies in each section to show how the strategies can be applied practically.
Also, it’s good to note you should never underestimate word of mouth marketing.
Day 2
The Success Tracker
It’s important to “monitor and measure success for our digital marketing activities”.
First, you’ll need to know your goal, strategy, objective, and tactic.
Then, you’ll want to track Revenue, Branding, Lead Generation, Sales, Web Visitor Conversions, Engagement, and Return on Investment.
Picking one goal out of these will help focus your efforts, and increase success rate.
Day 3
The Keyword List
Now, imagine what your target audience is typing into Google so you can begin to target them.
You can use Keyword Ranking Tools to find out how competitive these keywords may be.
When selecting keywords, strive for a balance between relevance, search volume, and competitiveness.
Then, constantly test, analyze and refine your keywords to achieve optimal results.
Day 4
Your Domain Name
Picking a domain name relevant to your business topic is often a good idea.
You may want to buy a domain name relevant to your search niche as well as one related to your brand.
The Author suggests using a WordPress website as it allows easy editing without knowledge of HTML.
In addition, Andrade explains that the premium WordPress themes are worth the additional money.
Setting up Google Analytics is a priority in tracking your website performance.
Day 5
Call To Action
This section teaches how to make an enticing offer that prompts visitors to click.
The website goal is for people to do something and leave their contact, and using a great form is the perfect way to prompt this action.
Day 6
Content Calendar
Creating a content calendar is a great way to unify your team on the same objective.
Use the provided guideline or a well organized marketing plan, so all members can work together.
Content Calendars can be shared and enable planning ahead.
By using a stock folder of various content and assets your business uses, each person working on your marketing can retain brand continuity.
Day 7
Sources of Traffic
In order to make money online you will need the following criteria.
- People visiting your website.
- A way to build trust with visitors.
- Lasting relationships.
- The ability to convert traffic into sales.
- Tracking for visitors.
Organic Search Traffic comes from many Sources, so taking notice of keywords will help you understand where customers are coming from.
Other areas to bring traffic are Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Paid Search Marketing, Direct Traffic, and Dark Social Traffic.
Day 8
List Building
It’s important to drive traffic to your website and then gather their information using a well constructed lead funnel.
Using a autoresponder will allow you to send an automatic email to anyone who signs up.
Really, constructing your page is all about helping people solve their problems by utilizing your service or product.
Build your funnel as follows:
- Create a Blog with fresh and useful content.
- Create a squeeze page to get names and emails.
- Utilize your Facebook Fan Page
- Drive traffic to your lead generation sites using Advertising.
It’s important to note that the right tools for the job can make all the difference. The author suggests using Aweber for your autoresponder.
Day 9
Google Adwords
Google adwords is a paid online ads platform the helps others find your business online.
Using a Pay Per Click ad system can be very beneficial if done correctly.
To get started you’ll need to research your competitors and their keywords.
Then, know who your potential client is, and where they are reviewing similar services or products. Here you can find which needs to meet.
Use an awesome landing page and Exact Match Keywords.
Next, utilize relevant ad copy to describe what users will find on your page.
Run multiple ad versions and then cut all but the best performing version, and double down on that one.
Day 10
Google Webmaster Tools
Help Google’s bot to crawl your site and index it by making a request with Google Webmaster.
This is also a great resource for checking performance and relevant keywords.
Day 11
Google Analytics
Incoming data will begin to compile a way for you to determine what visitors are doing and where they are coming from.
Look at the search terms that visitors are using to find your site.
Test, optimize, and adapt your digital marketing to get the best results.
Day 12
Customer Relationship Management
A CRM helps capture and organize data to optimize customer satisfaction, revenue, and profits.
Then, by understanding your customers better, you can target alike profiles easier and boost sales.
“Any business would want to maximize its marketing leads, customers, and
return on investment. These basic goals are quite attainable provided the
company is able to simplify its communication channel processes, which would
make it possible to derive and measure CRM benefits.” – Romaulde Andrade
It’s a great idea to incorporate an email marketing engine into your CRM to effectively generate referral leads and repeat business.
Day 13
Conversion Rate Optimization
Running conversion rate optimization tests each month can enhance your ability to turn prospects into customers.
Different examples of conversions are:
- getting someone to buy something
- register
- download
- sign a lead form
- click an ad
- subscribe
Your goal is to continually increase the percentage of visitors who turn into customers.
First, determine what your website’s primary goals are.
Then, try to implement a back up objective for visitors to take if they don’t purchase for example.
Next, follow the process of split testing, and provide your team with direction on how to complete tasks to reach your goals.
Lastly, staying scientific with your process on analyzing your prospects and measuring conversions will guide you to success in your marketing.
Day 14
The Buying Cycle
Focusing on your sales funnel is a very important factor in getting customer conversions.
Creating great content that attracts potential customers and outperforms your competitors is the key to operation of a sales funnel.
Consider this, spending time researching your consumer’s journey and what leads them to a sale.
Next, outline the steps a buyer will take as a roadmap through your sales process.
Day 15
Lead Scoring
In plain English, some leads are better than others.
By sales and marketing working together, you can identify which leads are hotter than others and spend more attention on those conversions.
Ultimately, Testing and Tracking will shape your leads scoring and help find the best leads.
Day 16
Autoresponder
Use a pre written sequence to deliver scheduled messages like this:
“Starting with Day 1: First email delivered.
On Day 3: Second email delivered.
Following with Day 5: Third email delivered.
Continuing on Day 8: Fourth email delivered
Immediately after product delivery: Fifth email delivered”
Your immediate goal is to schedule great content for readers to enjoy and subscribe to, creating a fan base for your brand.
Aim to solve one problem per email that your readers may face.
Add any subscribers who signed up past 30 days to a special list for your latest blogs.
Day 17
Email Content
It’s also important to have a strategy for one off emails aside from your scheduled content.
There are 8 helpful content strategies that you can use to elicit reactions from readers.
Content Strategies
1) Personality emails
2) New Content emails
3) Sub-Listing emails
4) Helping Hand emails
5) Agitation emails
6) Product Freebie emails
7) Special Discount emails
8) Sales emails
Overall, email marketing can become a very powerful aspect of your business.
Day 18
Search Engine Optimization
You want to build a genuinely great website that helps answer questions relating to your potential customers inquiries.
Optimizing your webpage to contain the best formatted answers is key.
Trying to scheme your way into ranking in search can get you penalized with Google and severly hurt your search result.
Avoid Black Hat SEO tactics and usher your team to focus on genuine link building.
Day 19
Utilizing Facebook is a great way to build a social following and provide information as well as offers.
Facebook has built in tools to use at minimal knowledge or investment.
Targeting people on Facebook is simple, and building relationships is going to be key.
However, don’t forget that tracking your leads and conversions is the most important part of Facebook advertising.
Day 20
Linkedin is a great way to add business to business interactions.
Creating a Linkedin page serves not only as a mini website, but a powerful tool for connecting a professional audience.
Day 21
Twitter is a great source to build a large email marketing list as well as promote your content to new audiences quickly.
Building a following and running promotions in combination with advertising is a fast way to grow your twitter leads.
Day 22
Pinterest can build backlinks to your website and increase traffic when done correctly.
By using a unique approach to marketing, you can use entertaining and eye catching pins to promote engagement and clicks from viewers.
Describe your pins, use quotes, and catchy text to increase results.
Also, utilize plenty of hashtags.
Make sure to link your Pinterest boards to your other media sites and cross platform advertise.
Day 23
Google Plus
Google Plus actually doesn’t exist anymore as of the time of this digital marketing book review, but you can constantly search for the newest content and push content and build links.
Day 24
Hootsuite
Using a social media management system is a great tool to save time and post to all of your channels from one location.
Another great benefit is the ability to schedule your posts too.
Day 25
Lead Qualification
One of the most important stages in your sales process is ensuring your prospect is qualified as a customer.
The author suggests using a method called the “BANT method”.
Bant stands for:
- Budget.
- Authority.
- Need.
- Timing.
Using a qualification process will help digital marketers determine which leads to prioritize in the sales process.
Your sales should be focused on problem solving and building trust.
Day 26
Reports
Generating reports can help measure marketing and sales productivity as well as set calendar goals for the future.
Generate reports to find what can be improved in addition to producing motivating data on what’s working.
Alas, reports can generate valuable insights that will save you time otherwise spent on unnecessary tasks.
Day 27
Brand and Non Brand
What’s in a name?
Your business will start to gain traction and you want your name to be familiar with your target audience when they search.
“When it comes to PPC marketing, you want to be as
loud as possible because this form of marketing is really effective.”
It’s important to consider your organic search conversions against your PPC conversions, and also to keep an eye on whether your competition is bidding on your branded search terms.
Competitors bidding on your Brand name could threaten your market share, as you will want them to click on your site and not their ads.
Day 28
Measure
It’s important to measure different website performance factors such as leads to conversions.
In order to better your lead to sale conversion take the following items into consideration:
- Emails
- Automated Workflow
- Lead Scoring
- CRM Integrations
By becoming highly targeted with your advertising criteria, tools for measuring performance help you craft even better campaigns.
Next, try call to action and URL tracking to lead customers into action and track the results.
Day 29
Customer Behavior
Of course, you can infer that studying customer behavior will lead to insights for understanding the buying cycle, and thus creating better conversions in your marketing efforts.
To summarize, the buying cycle is broken down as follows:
“Customer Awareness: Prospective customers identify a need and realize
that your business can fulfill their need.Consideration: The customer weighs the options by checking similar
items offered on other websites.Intent and Preference: Customer behavior indicates they use both logic
and emotion before making a purchase.Purchase: The customer orders goods from your e-commerce site.
Repurchase: Contented purchasers utilize logical and emotional processes
that lead to repurchase.”
Many customers use search engines to find coupons, deals, and reviews to find solutions to their problems.
Now consider this, research your market and craft unique plans on how to implement the buying cycle into your marketing to help match customer behavior.
Day 30
Digital Marketing Review
It’s time to review your work and look at your plans set into motion.
Now you can determine how to maximize your market position and revise or update your business goals.
Here’s a few additional things to consider along with the past 30 days of marketing:
- Your business’s location.
- The facilities that your business is operating out of.
- How you’re handling your information technology.
- The people that you have in place and their skills.
- Your financial position.
When it’s time to conduct an analysis of your business, there are several different popular models to choose from.
SWOT analysis looks at your business’s stengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
STEEPLE analysis helps your business understand the external influences placed on it from social, technological, economical, political, legal, or ethical in nature.
Scenario planning considers various outcomes for planned actions.
Critical success factor analysis can help identify areas in which your business needs to succeed to achieve it’s goals.
Lastly, The Five Forces model utilizes various factors that shape the development of the businesses market performance.
Recap and Digital Marketing
This book is a great head start into the world of digital marketing and provides a useful guide for accomplishing the basics for starting your business online.
Of course, there are many sites and techniques omitted from this guide, so for advanced digital marketers you’ll need to seek continuing education and possibly attend the latest cutting edge tech seminars.
If you’ve enjoyed this review, I wrote a Digital Marketing Book review on a similar guide that went over a few more case studies and unique techniques here.
A more adult review for digital marketers looking for anecdotal case stories here.
One of my favorite Digital Marketing Guide Books is written by Joe Manausa, called The Business of Getting Business.
Manausa’s book looks in depth on his own success and talks about how to calculate Return on Investment (ROI) in your marketing, as well as crafting winning strategies to dominate your sales market.
You can pick up a copy here or at your favorite retailers including, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart to name a few.
