Digital Marketing For Dummies®

Digital

Marketing

Digital

Marketing

by Ryan Deiss and

Russ Henneberry

Digital Marketing For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957570

ISBN: 978-1-119-23559-0

ISBN 978-1-119-23561-3 (ebk); ISBN ePDF 978-1-119-23565-1 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents at a Glance

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part 1: Getting Started with Digital Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

CHAPTER 1: Understanding the Customer Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

CHAPTER 2: Choosing the Right Marketing Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

CHAPTER 3: Crafting Winning Offers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Part 2: Using Content to Generate Fans,

Followers, and Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

CHAPTER 4: Pursuing Content Marketing Perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

CHAPTER 5: Blogging for Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

CHAPTER 6: Taking Stock of 57 Blog Post Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Part 3: Generating Website Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

CHAPTER 7: Building High-Converting Landing Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

CHAPTER 8: Capturing Traffic with Search Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

CHAPTER 9: Leveraging the Social Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

CHAPTER 10: Tapping into Paid Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

CHAPTER 11: Following Up with Email Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Part 4: Measuring, Analyzing, and

Optimizing Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

CHAPTER 12: Crunching Numbers: Running a Data-Driven Business . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

CHAPTER 13: Optimizing Your Campaigns for Maximum ROI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Part 5: The Part of Tens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

CHAPTER 14: The Ten Most Common Digital Marketing Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

CHAPTER 15: Ten Trending Digital Marketing Skills to Add to Your Resume . . . . . . 289

CHAPTER 16: Ten Essential Tools for Digital Marketing Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Table of Contents vii

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

About This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Foolish Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Icons Used in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Beyond the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Where to Go from Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

PART 1: GETTING STARTED WITH DIGITAL MARKETING . . . 5

CHAPTER 1: Understanding the Customer Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Creating a Customer Avatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

What to include in your customer avatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Introducing Agency Eric: A customer avatar example . . . . . . . . . . 10

Getting clear on goals and values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Finding sources of information and entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Honing in on demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Adding challenges and pain points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Preparing for objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Getting Clear on the Value You Provide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Knowing the Stages of the Customer Journey.....................16

Step 1: Generating awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Step 2: Driving engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Step 3: Building subscribers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Step 4: Increasing conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Step 5: Building excitement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Step 6: Making the core offer sale and more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Step 7: Developing brand advocates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Step 8: Growing brand promoters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Preparing Your Customer Journey Road Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

CHAPTER 2: Choosing the Right Marketing Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Establishing Marketing Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Defining a Digital Marketing Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Understanding the Three Major Types of Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Campaigns that generate new leads and customers . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Campaigns that monetize existing leads and customers . . . . . . . 32

Campaigns that build engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Balancing Your Marketing Campaign Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Choosing the Campaign You Need Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Viewing Your Digital Marketing through the Campaign Lens . . . . . . . 36

viii Digital Marketing For Dummies

CHAPTER 3: Crafting Winning Offers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Offering Value in Advance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Designing an Ungated Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Designing a Gated Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Zeroing in on what matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Making a specific promise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Giving a specific example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Offering a specific shortcut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Answering a specific question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Delivering a specific discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Generating leads with educational content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Generating leads with tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Filling out the gated offer checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Designing Deep-Discount Offers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Using physical premiums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Employing a book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Leveraging the webinar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Selling software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Splintering a service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Brainstorming “little victories” to offer your leads . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Filling out the deep-discount offer checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Discovering your deep-discount offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Maximizing Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Making an upsell or cross-sell offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Building bundles and kits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Tacking on a slack adjuster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Recurring billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

PART 2: USING CONTENT TO GENERATE FANS,

FOLLOWERS, AND CUSTOMERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

CHAPTER 4: Pursuing Content Marketing Perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Knowing the Dynamics of Content Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Finding Your Path to Perfect Content Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Understanding the marketing funnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Exploring the prospect’s intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Providing a path to the next step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Segmenting your marketing with content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Appearing everywhere your customer expects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Customizing your content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Executing Perfect Content Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Step 1: Choosing avatars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Step 2: Brainstorming content assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Step 3: Choosing the vehicle and channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Step 4: Planning for ascension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Distributing Content to Attract an Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Table of Contents ix

Marketing through email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Capturing leads through search marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Using social media to drive traffic to your site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Paying for traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

CHAPTER 5: Blogging for Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Establishing a Blog Publishing Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Brainstorming blog post ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Establishing content segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Working with content creators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Editing the first draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Copyediting the post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Applying Blog Headline Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Tapping into self-interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Piquing curiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Employing urgency and scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Issuing a warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Borrowing authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Revealing the new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Auditing a Blog Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Presents an exceptional headline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Includes a strong introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Offers easy-to-consume content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Satisfies your goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Includes quality media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Provides a compelling close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Uses search engine optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Categorizes your topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Completely delivers on the promise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Keeps professional consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

CHAPTER 6: Taking Stock of 57 Blog Post Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Defeating Writer’s Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Writing useful content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Being generous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Entertaining the masses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Capitalizing on the timely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Showing your humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Getting promotional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Stirring the pot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Engaging the audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Multiplying your blog ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Creating Stellar Content without All the Fuss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Curating and aggregating content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Reacting to popular content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Crowdsourcing content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

x Digital Marketing For Dummies

PART 3: GENERATING WEBSITE TRAFFIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

CHAPTER 7: Building High-Converting Landing Pages . . . . . . . . . . 129

Exploring the Types of Landing Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Creating a Lead Capture Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Creating a Sales Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Writing a sales letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Understanding the elements of a product detail page . . . . . . . . 141

Grading a Landing Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

CHAPTER 8: Capturing Traffic with Search Marketing . . . . . . . . . 147

Knowing the Three Key Players in Search Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Understanding searchers’ needs............................148

Knowing what search engines want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Targeting Search Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Defining a search query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Choosing the right queries to target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Satisfying searchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Optimizing Your Assets for Specific Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Optimizing for Google . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Optimizing for YouTube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Optimizing for Pinterest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Optimizing for Amazon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Optimizing for iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Optimizing for review sites.................................166

Optimizing for search engine robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Earning Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Step 1: Cross-link your own content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Step 2: Study your competitors’ links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Step 3: Create generous content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Step 4: Create content worthy of a link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Step 5: Publish primary research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Step 6: Keep up with the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

CHAPTER 9: Leveraging the Social Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

The Social Success Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Listening to the Social Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Choosing a social listening tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Planning to listen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Listening without paid tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Utilizing the feedback loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Handling customer service issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Influencing and Building Brand Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Growing your social following . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Bouncing followers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Table of Contents xi

Keeping your content interesting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Socializing blog content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Networking That Moves the Needle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Tapping into niche media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Reaching niche media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Networking by topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Creating a social media “short list” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Flipping the script on media outreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Staying compliant with the law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Selling on Social Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Leading with value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Designing “value first” offers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Avoiding Social Media Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Knowing When to Automate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

CHAPTER 10: Tapping into Paid Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Visiting the Traffic Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Understanding Traffic Temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Choosing the Right Traffic Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Introducing the Big Six traffic platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Setting up Boomerang Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Defining ad retargeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Setting cookies and pixels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Segmenting with content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Troubleshooting Paid Traffic Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Strengthening your offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Tweaking your targeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Scrutinizing your ad copy and creative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Checking the congruency of your campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

CHAPTER 11: Following Up with Email Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Understanding Marketing Emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Promotional emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Relational emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Transactional emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Sending Broadcast and Triggered Emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Broadcast emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Triggered emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Building a Promotional Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Cataloging your products and services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Creating an annual promotional plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Developing a marketing plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Creating a 30-day calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Creating a 90-day rolling calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Creating Email Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

xii Digital Marketing For Dummies

Indoctrination campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Engagement campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Ascension campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Segmentation campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Reengagement campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Writing and Designing Effective Emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Harvesting proven email copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Answering four questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Knowing why people buy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Writing effective email subject lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Writing body copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Cuing the Click . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Getting More Clicks and Opens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Ensuring Email Deliverability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Monitoring your reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Proving subscriber engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

PART 4: MEASURING, ANALYZING, AND

OPTIMIZING CAMPAIGNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

CHAPTER 12: Crunching Numbers: Running a

Data-Driven Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Leveraging the Five Google Analytics Report Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Understanding Where Your Traffic Is Coming From . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Tracking the Origins of Site Visitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Campaign source (utm_source) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Campaign medium (utm_medium) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Campaign content (utm_content) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Campaign name (utm_campaign) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Dissecting a UTM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Creating UTM parameters for your URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Creating Goals to See Who’s Taking Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Segmenting Your Audience with Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Creating audience segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Honing In on Your Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Drilling into demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Drilling into psychographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

CHAPTER 13: Optimizing Your Campaigns for Maximum ROI . . 267

Understanding Split Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Obtaining the tools you need to run split tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Following the split test guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Selecting Page Elements to Optimize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

Considering qualitative data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Using qualitative tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Table of Contents xiii

Getting Ready to Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Developing an optimization hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Choosing the metrics to track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Calculating your test timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

Preparing to Launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

Defining goals in Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

Checking that your page renders ­correctly in all browsers . . . . . 277

Ensuring that you have no testing conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Checking links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Keeping variation load times similar or identical . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Calling a Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Knowing How a Test Performed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Analyzing the Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

PART 5: THE PART OF TENS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

CHAPTER 14: The Ten Most Common Digital Marketing

Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Focusing on Eyeballs Instead of Offers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

Failing to Talk about Your Customers (and Their Problems) . . . . . . 284

Asking Prospects for Too Much, Too Soon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Being Unwilling to Pay for Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Being Product Centric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Tracking the Wrong Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Building Assets on Other People’s Land.........................287

Focusing on Your Content’s Quantity Instead of Quality . . . . . . . . . . 287

Not Aligning Marketing Goals with Sales Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

Allowing “Shiny Objects” to Distract You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

CHAPTER 15: Ten Trending Digital Marketing Skills

to Add to Your Resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

Content Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Brand journalist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Managing editor..........................................291

Content marketing manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Media Buying and Traffic Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Search Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Social Media Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Community Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Video Marketing and Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Video production specialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Video marketing manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Web Design and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Front-end developer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Back-end developer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Email Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297