Digital Marketing and PR

Branding and Amazon

In marketing, brand management is the analysis and planning on how a brand is perceived in the market. Developing a good relationship with the target market is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; its look, price, and packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the consumers share with the brand, and also the relationships they have with the brand. A brand manager would oversee all aspects of the consumer’s brand association as well as relationships with members of the supply chain.[

Book clubs

https://imaginationlibrary.com/uk/

What you stand for

What you stand against

What you do

Why you do it?

Brand Structure

Brand is why others want to be with you

What your brand stands for

Brand is creating your ideal personality

You can create a list, honest tolerance strength etc

Once you created the core personality – naked brand

Core values can not be contradicted

Brand identity is the wardrobe you dress your brand in.

Good brand – your strongest friend

Branding is quite personal

Simple, uncorporate

You build your brand through text and images on your website, business cards any medium it reflects on.

Brand management aims to create an emotional connection between products, companies and their customers and constituents. Brand managers & Marketing managers may try to control the brand image.

Specialize. You can choose who your potential clients / customers could be.

Amazon brand values https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

Leadership Principles

We use our Leadership Principles every day, whether we’re discussing ideas for new projects or deciding on the best approach to solving a problem. It is just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.

Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”

Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.

Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Storytelling

Ideas to next workshop –

School

Setting up an eCommerce Website

QUESTIONS TO START

Own site, marketplace or both
Own site – how? Shopify
Site assets you will need
Site organisation
Site search
Legalities
Payments
Site security
POS – point of sale

DOMAIN STRUCTURE

Shop.site.com
site.com/shop
Site.com – full ecommerce

PLATFORM CHOICE

Shopify is the best ecommerce platform .
- As an ecommerce consultant I find it is easier to get shopify working
Wix very slow – slow is death in ecommerce
Square space – some of it good some of it very bad – not recommended
Easy as possible but should be able to sell your stuff
Security – do you want to trust 1-2 people for the security of your website or a world class
Shopify and amazon work well
Magento is very good but the problem is it is very technical and you need a developer. It is overkill. It was the best ecommerce platform 10 years ago
How much control do you have over what helps you to sell?
What is the ROI rather than the cost?
Are they a trusted supplier for the long term?

TOOLKIT WEBSITES

https://whatcms.org
- Check what your competitors are using
https://builtwith.com/
https://www.printful.com/
https://www.fullstory.com/
https://www.hotjar.com/

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

You should not mess around too much with the design and page layout in ecommerce
Page layout is fairly standard. Functionality is pretty standard as well.
You want to mess around with branding, colors, logo, feel of it. Look of it.
Especially on mobile, almost most websites look very similar. Except images / visuals

LOGO, BRANDING, BRAND GUIDELINES

Branding mostly about consistency, guidelines
Landscape logos better for layout . don’t push content too much down
What gets seen gets sold
Colors can be a problem for navigation (contrast)
Domain, short, difficult to get wrong, memorable
- Co.uk if you are selling exclusively in the UK
- Com if you want to look bigger

IMAGES FOR ECOMMERCE

Hero at top of page = landscape orientation
Rest = dependent on product, clothes – portrait, housewares – square. Be consistent
Square images work well both on social, mobile and web as well (on desktop you can do 3 column layouts for it)
Design for mobile first – square preferred
Optimise images – speed is very important
Shopify generates other image sizes if you supply it with enough hi-res at first (eg it will generate mobile version for you)
As small as possible in terms of file size – for site speed. Image compression

BURAK Add videos to SSB

BURAK Use mobile banners not landscape

MOBILE NAVIGATION

Use first column in footer for further exploration eg. collection names not about us etc. It is the first thing they see after the product
E Commerce is mobile. ⅔ or ¾ of visitors are from mobile now

BURAK Update SSB footer columns

THEME CHOICE

Avoid commercial themes, go with free and popular themes
Must be responsive – probably no one is selling a theme not working on mobile but good to check
Security , these things maintenance. Especially in wordpress. What you want to be buying into?
Speed – shopify theme test
- http://fastshopifythemes.com/
Functionality – filters
- Shopify supply works with large inventories
Ease and simplicity
- How does image view work on mobile?
- Does it scroll well?
Inventory size – most built for small inventory
Longevity – will it be updated?

SITE STRUCTURE

Think about your main or sub categories
Collections are handier than categories
Consider SEO as well

VARIANTS

Variant = a variation of a single product
Variants are normally listed on a single page
Size colour
Style finish
It’s up to you to decide whats a separate product and what’s a variant
Crucial event is what works for the user?

Don’t use search as a sticking plaster for poor content architecture
It is a primary channel for people to find products
Google custom search – includes ads, potentially from competitors
CMS’s basic search usually not enough
Autocomplete search.
Algolia, instantsearch by fast simon, klevu, freefind
It isn’t easy and it can be expensive

PAYMENTS

Consumers like a choice
Paypal, amazon payments, stripe, sage pay, world pay
Consumers like a name they recognise
Has to work with your platform and market
Account based- paypal, amazon payments
Payment processors – stripe, worldpay, sagepay
Some require merchant account, others are all in one
Your responsibility for security varies

SECURITY

Your responsibility depends on your payment solution
Don’t keep handle any customer data you don’t need
Strong passwords
Avoid plugins as much as possible
Change default settings. No username like admin
Keep it up to date as much as possible
Customer fraud: claimed that they haven’t received etc. always track postages.
3d secure to switch responsibility

LEGALITIES

Selling over the web – normal legalities (sale of goods, consumer protection, data protection)
E Commerce regulations 2002 info you have to provide during the sales process
Consumer contracts regulations 2014 cooling off period of 14 days
Info that must be on your site: company name, address, email, registration, VAT number
Payment card Industry data security

GDPR

Became law on 25 May 2018
More affirmative consent – end of pre-ticket boxes
Customer can ask for their data or to have it deleted
Need to include GDPR in terms and conditions
Service providers need to be gDPR compliant. If you are sharing info with them.
Refer to Paypal’s GDPR, mailchimp GDPR policies etc
Shopify GDPR compliance .
- https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/GDPR

POS INTEGRATION

Physical sales, sell offline
Some platforms also include it Shopify – It only works on IOS
POS often involves ipad
Integrated POS means a single inventory control for online and offline

COMMON ISSUES

Store is too slow

BURAK SSB on mobile

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fststephensbooks.com%2F&tab=mobile

Store is confusing to the new visitor – what is it?
Products are difficult to find
- Do user test, do it on mobile, don’t help testers
Tangibility not achieved. Products don’t feel real enough

BURAK videos?

“Build it and they will come”
Locked into a platform / theme that is a problem
Seriously underestimating the competition
Failing to convert visitors to buyers

Strategic Planning

The Explainer: Porter’s Five Forces

The competitive forces that shape strategy — in under two minutes. For more, read “Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy.”

People make it happen

People watch it happen

People who wonder what happened

Strategic planning is an organization’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management. It is executed by strategic planners or strategists, who involve many parties and research sources in their analysis of the organization and its relationship to the environment in which it competes

Owners mindset

-prepared to trust others

Michael Porter wrote in 1980 that formulation of competitive strategy includes consideration of four key elements:

Company strengths and weaknesses;
Personal values of the key implementers (i.e., management and the board);
Industry opportunities and threats; and
Broader societal expectations.

You can not do strategic planning on your own, unless you are the only person in the business.

TOOLS

A variety of analytical tools and techniques are used in strategic planning.[1] These were developed by companies and management consulting firms to help provide a framework for strategic planning. Such tools include:

PEST analysis, which covers the remote external environment elements such as political, economic, social and technological (PESTLE adds legal/regulatory and ecological/environmental);
Scenario planning, which was originally used in the military and recently used by large corporations to analyze future scenarios. The flowchart to the right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics tradition.[6]
Porter five forces analysis, which addresses industry attractiveness and rivalry through the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers and the threat of substitute products and new market entrants;
SWOT analysis, which addresses internal strengths and weaknesses relative to the external opportunities and threats;
Growth-share matrix, which involves portfolio decisions about which businesses to retain or divest; and
Balanced Scorecards and strategy maps, which creates a systematic framework for measuring and controlling strategy.
Responsive Evaluation, which uses a constructivist evaluation approach to identify the outcomes of objectives, which then supports future strategic planning exercises.

Currently there are 4 people in employment for 1 unemployed now

There will be 2 people in employment for 1 unemployed by 2050

What will be work life balance, pension age etc then?

Unless we build a different society now

COMMON ISSUES IN STARTUPS

Cash flow
Regular custom
Limited resources
Time constraints
Single skillset
Time management
Consistent processes

COMMON ISSUES – SCALE UPS

Financial management
Restrictive structure
Time constraints
Single skillset
Time management
Consistent processes and systems
Plan (medium-long)
Resource planning
Targets
Identify help needed

COMMON ISSUES – MATURE BUSINESS

Scalability
Branding
Competition
Structure
Control
Skills

Avg size of business in the UK 8-9 people

Backbone of the economy

ISSUES – EXITING

Hand-overs
MBOs
- A management buyout (MBO) is a transaction where a company’s management team purchases the assets and operations of the business they manage. A management buyout is appealing to professional managers because of the greater potential rewards and control from being owners of the business rather than employees.
3rd party sale
Consultancy – succession
Future income stream
Maximize sale value

ISSUES – WHEN IT GOES WRONG

Look in the mirror
People
Communication
Processes
Money
Markets
Brand
Infrastructure
Product / service

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING

Where are we now?
- Thorough assessment
- You can do a workaround at times. Then this workaround becomes a formal process. Then it is in the blind spot.
Where do we want to get to?
- 5-10 years time scale
How do we get there?
- Actions and timescales
How do we know if we’re on track
- Monitoring
- On going process

Strategic plan is your conveyor belt, taking you to strategic objectives

Business plans are shorter term plans

Importance of staff knowing your strategic plan

APPROACH TO STRATEGIC PLANNING

Planned environment
Resource led
Competitive advantage
Organic (learning/adaptive)
Pick the right things to monitor

WHY DO I NEED A STRATEGIC PLAN

Clear direction
Route-map to get there
Clear investment plans
Customers and employees know
- What the business will provide
- How the business will provide it
Build emotional attachment
Involvement

WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE ONE

Static business
Always firefighting, everything short notice and short term
Drifting away from core customers, more special offers
Managers and employees have different aims and expectations
Employees and customers feel no affection for the business
No development programme, employees keen to move on
No risk assessment
Cash flow
Customer service
Not prepared for anything

HOW DO WE CREATE OUR STRATEGIC PLAN

Strategic analysis
- Internal strengths, weaknesses, structure, scale, ambition, resources
- External opportunities, threats, competition, markets, environment
Strategy choice
- Produce half a dozen strategies and select the one best fits
- Aims, identify options, evaluate, select (suitable, feasible, acceptable)
Strategy Implementation
- Changes, resources, culture, funding, timescales
Performance & Delivery Management
- Responsibility, monitoring, reviews

If you are stuck in the middle, you won’t go anywhere

Value proposition canvas

Product Photography Tips

Who is the buyer?

Target them. Even the photo does not have to be pretty. It needs to be interesting to the audience first.

Eg. Linkedin – it needs to be relevant to your audience

Build your audience according to who you could sell to.

You can use typography in your visuals given that it is consistent –

Use same text, same font, same color, same layout.

You might need to give credit for photographers.

Put in contract that you can use the photos anywhere, anyway you like.

On Instagram, your images need to be beautiful / pretty.

Typography on images is not welcome in Instagram.

People should feel better when you look to your content / images. Be positive all the time.

Emails – you need offer people something.

Just plain information is never interesting.

Images on your website should not be named IMG-5232 .

It should be named like someone put that keyword on Google.

Pinterest is used about how to stuff.

Aperture

In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.

Shutter Speed

In photography, shutter speed or exposure time is the length of time when the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light, also when a camera’s shutter is open when taking a photograph.[1] The amount of light that reaches the film or image sensor is proportional to the exposure time. 1⁄500 of a second will let half as much light in as 1⁄250.

ISO

White Balance

A white paper should look white in a correct white balance settings.

Camera Presets

Use 300 dpi for print images, this is dots per inch

72 dpi – dots per inch for web

Websites images needs to be the size that they need to be. No need for uploading massive hires images.

Work with RAW formats. You can downsize a RAW format but you can not upsize a lower quality.

If you are using it in only social media etc you don’t have to work with RAW

16:9 vs 4:3

For Instagram you might want to use 4:3, a more square feel

16:9 is more suitable for desktop / TV type of screens.

CMYK vs RGB

Get a proof of paint in the post

Printed material shows colors differently

Exposure

Look for texture.

Parts of the photo should not be all white (over exposed) or all black (under exposed)

You can correct some shooting errors to a degree in Photoshop

Rule of Thirds

Professionals do not take flat photos

Amateurs take flat photos

Pros want something to be in focus and rest out of focus

Depth of Field

Be Consistent

Use same background, colors, layout etc for branding

Uniform the styles

Close up

You automatically have copyright of the material / documents / photos that you created.

You can search with usage rights on Google Images

https://pixabay.com/

Pixabay License

Free for commercial use

No attribution required

https://www.pexels.com/

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted “work”.[note 1] A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that he or she (that author) has created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, he or she might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author’s work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

Royalty free does not mean free

It means you don’t have to pay commission every time the photo / video is used

Advertising standards

https://www.asa.org.uk/

Shooting photos of people

They need to sign if they wanted their photo taken

To edit

To be shared on eg website

To be shared on social media

Separately

If you are shooting in a crowded place, make sure other people are out of focus and non-recognizable

Talent Release Form

https://www.google.com/search?q=talent+release+form&oq=talent+release+form&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4113j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

If under 18, no one can sign for them. So you need parents signatures.

Editing Software

GIMP https://www.gimp.org/

Video Marketing

A visual could be worth 1000 words. Video can be 1 million. It is a moving picture.

Within the next 4 years Facebook could be “All video”

Nicola, VP for FB EMEA

YOUTUBE

YouTube is ranked as the UK’s second most popular social media channel with almost as many users as Facebook.

Last year, it was reported by Flint that 37.1 million adults are using the platform in the UK. Although there are no up to date statistics, we can see that YouTube and Facebook regularly battle it out for the most visited social media platform every month.

Globally, the average viewing session is 40 minutes, up 50% from last year according to Omicore. Many brands are now using YouTube as it’s a great place to host longer form content. Unlike other social networks, where users scroll passively through newsfeeds, Youtube users are intentionally searching on the platform for videos to watch.

https://www.avocadosocial.com/latest-social-media-statistics-and-demographics-for-the-uk-in-2019/

Types of Youtube videos

Talking head

indoors, lightning to be considered

Zoella

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWRV5AVOlKJR1Flvgt310Cw

On screen demonstration

People don’t have access to good teachers can still access

people don’t appear on videos

https://www.khanacademy.org

How to use website videos

Shopping cart, show people how to use it

Might not have use on youtube, but you can include it on your website

Hand video

FunToys Collector Disney Toys Review

https://www.youtube.com/user/DisneyCollectorBR/about

Ryan ToysReview
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChGJGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w/about

Eye contact is important in videos

Youtube quality content about 10 mins

Longer videos live in Youtube, shorter videos are more suitable for Facebook

Attention span

of about 7 seconds

You need to cut / edit

Can get multiple shots that can be used together

Get ahead and schedule on your video production

Preferably post 1 video every week

Largest Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie/about

Things to watch out for video quality

Sound is vital. You need external mic

Shot framing is key.

If talking head, center, or side, bring something (graphics etc) to the side

Half a million Royalty free music that you can use on your Youtube videos

But not anywhere else

Avoid music license issues

Sunlight is very good if you have it

Youtube Business Benefits

Free video hosting platform, very fast
You need to use it as a Social Media, eg. comment on other videos etc
Powerful advertising tools
Second largest search engine

People looking for reviews, tend to be ready to buy those products

Product showcase

Will it blend

Actor is their CEO

https://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec/about

Don’t wait to be forget, then you will never be able to start

Brand sponsored channel

Mum’s eye view

https://www.youtube.com/user/MumsEyeView/about

Finding Youtubbers

https://famebit.com/

Influencer Marketing Made Easy

Have Control Over The Content Your Customers See

With FameBit you can launch a campaign for free, receive proposals from interested influencers and easily track the metrics that matter all in one place.

Viewability

Youtube is almost viewable everywhere (eg on Twitter, it is embeddable)

Facebook as a video platform

It is not a good idea to post YT video on FB because FB limits the amount of its reach. Because FB is promoting its own video platform

Shareability –

FB video is very unlikely to be seen outside of FB. Walled garden.

If I am on TW, I might not want to leave TW and go to FB to just a video.

Vimeo, 1/10 of the size of YT. Videographers, Web developers

YT includes all kinds of people, low quality comments etc

Vimeo community feels a bit more professional, quality of the videos are much better.

Provides you with a ad-free embed option

Dailymotion – EU equivalent of YT

Stuff with copyright

Wistia – embed your videos on your website

You can consider SEO benefits because your websites are ranking better

I’m not a YouTube partner, so why am I seeing ads next to my videos?

Ads may appear next to your uploaded videos even if you haven’t monetized the videos yourself.

If your video contains content to which you don’t own all necessary rights, the rights holder may have identified his/her content in your video and chosen to place ads on it. Ads may be displayed on your videos if they contain soundtracks from the AudioSwap library or if the content in your video has been identified by Content ID.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2475463?hl=en

Sprout video

Vzaar

Payment gateways –

Youtube channel art

https://www.canva.com/templates/web-banners/youtube-channel-art/

YouTube recommends uploading channel art at 2560 x 1440

Channel Trailer

Playlists

are crucial to enable people to watch more than one video

35% drop in viewership if you start your video with a logo

Start immediately adding value.

After 10-15 seconds in, you can mention branding

Unlisted videos

Does not physically show up on your channel

But still, link is shareable.

You can embed it

No notification goes to your subscribers.

It is good to repeat the title of the video on the first sentence in description. You can change it slightly though.

You can use these in your titles:

Type of video – what it is about – who it is for

Add every single one of your videos into a playlist.

Thumbnail

People see it on search

If you embed it, people will see it before playing

Custom thumbnail – and they don’t have to show in the video

Pick a style you stick to it

You can do it on canva

Keywords on websites are not effective or even spammy in terms of SEO

But keywords on youtube is still relevant (tags)

Editing a video is possible in Youtube (beta)

CTA Cards – Call to action

Watch another video

Promote another channel

Poll

Approved website link

Captions – transcribe the video

Facebook video

You can tag products

Include cost, description, image and link back to website

Promoting your videos

https://answerthepublic.com/

Live streaming

Focus on content

Quality might be lower but that’s the point

You can go live in a Facebook group.

Twitch – screen broadcast not just games

Connection speed

It should not look too staged

Start when you are going live, don’t waste time at the start

Product Demonstration

Product review

Hyperlapse

https://hyperlapse.instagram.com/

Boomerang

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/boomerang-from-instagram/id1041596399?mt=8

Youtube advertising

Trueview watch: 30 sec – TrueView: Views: The number of times your ad has been viewed. For TrueView in-stream, this is the number of times a viewer watches for 30 seconds of your video (or the duration if it’s shorter than 30 seconds) or engages with your video (in-stream), whichever comes first.

https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/6298774?hl=en

You can get YT views for 1-2p per 30 seconds

Intro to Google Analytics

WordPress – MonsterInsights plugin can be used

GA code is better in the head so that more users can be tracked. If at the end, and user closes the tab, it might not track those users. Also GA code loads in the background.

GA Chrome Extension to see what percentage of people click on your links.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page-analytics-by-google/fnbdnhhicmebfgdgglcdacdapkcihcoh?hl=en

Search Console setup – link to Google Analytics

Google Ads data opt-out

https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated

You might need to link to this page if you are using remarketing or ads features of GA

Cross Device Tracking

Google Signals

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7532985?hl=en

Under GDPR you only can keep user information as long as you need it

You need to be able to explain whether if you need it or not

IP Anonymisation

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en

If you don’t have this code in your code, you might be breaking GDPR

Goals – What you want your visitors to do on your website

Without goals, you don’t know how well your website is working

It tells you where the value lies

Google Analytics for Power Users course

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/course/9?utm_source=support.google.com&utm_medium=promo&utm_campaign=aa_summer18_hc_promo&utm_content=button

Excluding your own visits

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034840?hl=en

Keep in mind of seasonality

User details

Demographics overview

Interests

New visitors is almost certain that is over reported

Because people might have cleared cache, moved to different devices etc

See your Facebook Ads cost & ROI in Google Analytics reports

https://supermetrics.com/blog/see-facebook-ads-cost-roi-google-analytics-reports

Social Plug-ins

You can track social shares on your websites but you need to add a bit of code

Or use integrated services like add this

https://www.addthis.com/

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1316556

URL UTM Tracking

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Event tracking

(email address clicks, downloads etc)

Live chats need to fire events as well

Monster Insights can track events as well

https://www.monsterinsights.com/your-ultimate-guide-to-monsterinsights-dashboard-reports/

Advanced Filters

Bounce rates more than 60%

Sessions more than 100

Priority pages to be optimised

Digital Growth

Slides

David from Google Digital Garage

Digital Garage Online

https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage

Google Analytics

How visitors found you
What have they done after founding you
Who are your visitors
What demographics they have

There is a misconception that the internet is a mass communication channel. If you can focus on a specific customer audience online, then you can make an impact.

People don’t like typing on mobile phones. They have shorter time spans. They experience content in a different way. You need to have content spread out to be easily clickable on mobile.

B2B customers tend to use desktop over mobile. But they still still find you on mobile as well.

People with short customer journey, buying something smaller are buying on mobile phone.

People looking for a car, house or travel, tend to look it up on the desktop. Long decision journeys. People can still find out about you on mobile as well.

You can make important business decisions based on Google Analytics data. Explore potential markets etc.

https://grow.google/

If there are obvious assumptions about your potential markets, it is good to prove yourself wrong in Google Analytics. Because then you know and your competitors don’t.

eCommerce experience in real life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sk7cOqB9Dk

SEO in 2019

Basics still apply

Title tag
Meta description

Search Console

https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Page speed insight

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Lazy loading

https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/lazy-loading-guidance/images-and-video/

Google Medic Update

https://yoast.com/googles-medic-update/

YMYL – your money your life

https://www.semrush.com/blog/eat-and-ymyl-new-google-search-guidelines-acronyms-of-quality-content/

E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, Trust

https://www.semrush.com/blog/ways-build-expertise-authority-trust-boost-seo-semrushchat-sherry-bonelli/

Write more content

Make sure stuff is up to date

Proof you have expertise

Citations

Like a Linkedin profile that has certifications etc

Links are still very important

https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/fighting-disinformation-across-our-products/
Quality over quantity
Use content to get links
Avoid spammy links

Reviews on 3rd party websites – how you are perceived on these review sites

Google is well aware of the reviews on these websites

Online reputation

What is the sentiment what people write about your brand

Use HTTPS

Natural Language Processing

https://wordlift.io/blog/en/advanced-seo-natural-language-processing/

Neural matching

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-neural-matching/271125/

Content Quality

Get rid of low quality pages
Duplicate pages
If you can not get rid of them, exclude them on the Google Index
Mostly similar content

Practical Application

Connect questions to answers
- 1 or 2 sentence answer you’d expect from a voice assistant
- (entity) is (answer) uses the question in the answer
Identify units, classifications and adjectives
- Use expected units, be specific
- 200 degrees Celsius not 200 degrees

Keep it simple

Reduce dependency hops
https://www.briggsby.com/on-page-seo-for-nlp

Google Cloud Natural Language
https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/

Avoid unclear antecedents

The cat was often in the tree but now it’s dead
- Whats dead, the cat or the tree?

Being correct requires clarity

Specific, short answer
Answer boxes in the Google
- 2-3x click through rate

Planning a Website

Purpose of a website

Provide information:
- Company, product, service, expert info
Sell online
- Subscription service, products via ecommerce
Marketing material
- Landing pages, videos, brochures and whitepapers
Provide a digital product or service
- As a service model
IT
- Integrate with other internal systems
Customer support
- Help desk, knowledgebase
Operations
- Reduce costs by streamlining a process
HR and Recruitment
- Advertise jobs, communicate culture etc

Planning your website

Review your current site
Benchmarking
Define goals and objectives
Develop personas
Use personas to develop user journeys
UX and site design
Choose a build option
Technical considerations
Build your site
Test
Measure against your goals
Continually review

Website benchmarking

Understand how your current website is being used
- Use Google Analytics to understand your users and their current activity profile
Understand who is using your current website
- Use google analytics to understand demographic information about your current users ie age, sex, location, how they find your site etc
Understand current goals and how they are being met
- Customers interviews
- Online surveys

Website goals statement

SMART
- Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
- Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
- Achievable (agreed, attainable).
- Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
- Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

Example website goals statement

Generate more sales
- Increase monthly bookings by 15% within 6 months
Increase sales conversion rate
- Increase the website sales conversion rate by 5% over the next 12 months
Improve sales support
- Improve sales support on the website through inclusion of knowledgebase articles,
- Increase avg review rating to 4.5+ within 3 months

USER JOURNEY

What is a user journey?

Series of descriptive steps
Typically between 4 and 12
Represent i real world scenario
Demonstrate how a user currently does something
How they could do something in a new and improved website

Why should we use user journeys?

Demonstrating the vision for the project
Understand user behaviour
Identify possible functionality at a high level
Define your taxonomy and interface
Highlight similar journeys

How do I create a user journey?

User’s goals
Their motivations
Their current pain points
Their overall character
The main tasks they want to achieve

What should a user journey include?

Context
- Where is the user? What is around them? Are there any external factors which may be distracting them?
Progression
- How does each step enable them to get to the next?
Devices
- What device are they using? Are they a novice or expert? What features does the device have?
Functionality
- What type of functionality are they expecting? Is it achievable?
Emotion
- What is their emotional state in each step? Are they engaged, bored or annoyed?

Create a user journey

Remember to consider
- Your user’s goals
- Their motivations
- Their current pain points
- Their overall character
- The main tasks they want to achieve
Don’t forget to include
- Context
- Progression
- Devices
- Functionality
- Emotion
You can have different feature boxes for different personas, addressing their needs
- You can utilize different color codes for these different user journeys

USER EXPERIENCE

Why does User Experience matter?

Good design sells
Strong consumer trust
Perception of your product or server
User-friendly content
Good first impression
Sets you apart from competitors
Consistency = quality
Motivate people to take action

What is UX (User Experience)?

Human interaction
Design / aesthetics
Utility
Usability
Performance
Ergonomics
User Experience

How to do UX yourself

User journeys
Look at the entire process
Prototype / wireframes
- Challenge the status quo
- Try new ideas
Don’t just focus on aesthetics
Simple is usually best
Test with real users
- Prototypes first
- Once built
Use date
- A/B testing
- Once live use analytics
https://www.hotjar.com/

Digital Agency

Offer full range of services
- Designers
- Developers
- UX experts
- SEO experts
- Project managers
Things to consider when hiring a digital agency
- Do they work with similar companies to yours
- What project apprıach do they take – agile or waterfall
- How easily could you move from them if you wanted to
- Are they selling you their own website product or a known CMS
- What are their ongoing support and maintenance costs
4-6k standard website
10-15k custom website
10-30k ecommerce website

Freelancer

Technically skilled
Cheaper than an agency and may well have agency experience
Flexible
Usually a faster turn around than an agency
Might work with other freelancers for design, SEO, PPC etc
Things to consider when hiring a freelancer:
- Make sure you own the code / IP
- Be aware that they might not be available if they are with another customer
- Be mindful that they need to be paid on time
- They might work strange hours

WEBSITE FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY

Standard Features of a website

Navigation
Homepage
Content pages
Footer
Contact form
Newsletter signup
Blog
Carousel controls
Video content
Social links and widgets
Custom features

Navigation

Main navigation
Footer navigation
In-page navigation
- Internal links
- Off-page links
Think about information architecture
- Categorising of information
- Meaningful ways for users to find and move between information
- List pages
- Paging controls
- Descriptive links

Homepage

This is where you make your first impression
Communicate your businesses personality
Give visitors the information they need
Provide options for routes into your content

Content pages

Publish information about your business, product or service
Standard layouts – maybe 2 or 3 page templates
Concise and relevant copy
Use images (ideally real images of your offering not stock images)
Make sure content includes links to other relevant content on your site
Consider SEO
Include call to action (CTA)

Footer

Contact details
- Address
- Phone numbers
Legal links
- Terms and conditions
- Privacy policy
- Cookie policy
Newsletter sign-up
Social links
About us paragraph
Copyright
Company number and or VAT no

Blog

Communicate with your audience in an informal tone
Publish domain expertise
Present you organisations personality
Build trust with your customers
Attract inbound links
Increase search rankings
If you have a blog, make sure you post to it regularly
Integrated or stand-alone?

Social widgets and plugins

Great if you are active on social media
Remember that your posts will be seen on your website so be mindful of what you post
Some plugins and widgets are easy to add others require a developer

Choosing a domain name

Choose a domain name that represents your business
Avoid hyphens or numbers if you can
Think about domain suffixes
- Com
- Co.uk
- Org
- Uk
Since 2015 there are hundreds of new domain suffixes
- .london
- .name
- .agency
- .shop

Buying a domain name

There are lots of places that will sell you a domain name
Ultimately all domains are registered on a central register
Make sure the domain is registered in your company name, not the company you are purchasing it via
123-reg.co.uk
Costs range from 1-100 GBP

Hosting

Your own server
- Located at your business
- Limited resilience / failover
- Requires IT to take responsibility for security and updates
Dedicated server
- Locate in data centre
- Shared responsibility for security and updates
- Can be expensive
Virtual server
- Located in a data centre
- One of many virtual servers on one physical server
- Often includes automatic security updates
Cloud hosting
- On demand resource provision
- Very scalable and can be cheap at the entry level

Hosting and website builders

Hosting is included
SaaS model means you are in effect subscribing to a hosting package
Check terms for usage limits
Once your site is built and hosted with a service such as wix.com you can not move it another hosting provider
Some builders such as wordpress do offer an export / backup restore feature meaning you can move it to another hosting provider
- This can be time consuming and might cause issues

Cross-browser testing (F12 key)

Web browsers render HTML as web pages
Each browser has a slightly different rendering engine
Make sure your site looks the same in all browsers / devices
Most website builders will have cross-browser compatibility covered
Most frameworks ie Twitter bootstrap have it covered
Most modern themes and templates will also have it covered

WordPress Plugin Recommendations

Yoast
Smush
WP-cache

Developing Content for the Web

CONTENT MARKETING

You can use fragments to move users to a place in that same post. Similar to an outline.

Get the right context and focus on every single post.

Authority, you know what you are talking about. So make sure you reflect this.

It’s all about the content

At the end of every link is content
There are lots of content type
Information
Meaning
Context
Authority
Credibility
Content that will drive traffic that will convert

Why is content important?

Content communicates your message
- Brand
- Product
- Service
- PR message
Builds a community of loyal customers
Helps make your brand an authority
Get to know your customers better
Improve SEO
Adds value

Effectiveness: The degree to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are solved.

Setting content goals

Goals give us something to measure against
Clearly defined success criteria
Understand how effective we have been
Modify goals based on data insights
Set new goals once a goal has been met

Content goals statement

Increase brand awareness
- Double the number of social shares within 3 months
Drive more traffic to your website or blog
- Increase the number of unique visits to my blog by 20% within a month
- Hit 10% returning customers in 12 months
Generate sales leads
- Generate at least 5 new sales leads per product video published
Convert more leads into customers
- Increase conversion rate to 15% on landing pages published in the next 6 months
Improve retention and drive upsell
- Increase revenue from “Customer also bought” feature by 8% over the next 4 weeks

What is content?

Company info
Sales info
Customer service content
Event content
Employee generated content
Marketing content
Campaign content
Advertising content
Customer generated content

Content marketing is a strategic marketing apprıach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

What is content marketing?

Attracting an audience to an experience or destination you own
Linked to a marketing objective or business goal
Not overtly selling a product or service

Make your buyer more intelligent
Consistency
Value driven
Expertise
Knowledge
Part of the team / club

CONTENT TYPES

Website content page
- Clear descriptive heading
- Short but descriptive summary
- Section headings
- Links to other relevant content
- May have a CTA
News article / press release
- Headline
- Summary
- Body content
- Image
- Publish date
- Author
Blog
- Title
- Summary
- Body content
- Images
- Lists
- Links
- Quotes
- Comments
- Category
- Tag
- Parts
- Quality over quantity: Generate more quality content with the same amount of time and energy.
- Analyse, use data, make research, expert opinion
- Use visual breaks in the blog posts to rest people’s eyes and minds
- https://buffer.com/resources/
- Storytelling, enough words
- Good content, helping people with their problems

https://backlinko.com/hub/seo

6 RESOURCES

Social
- Employees can link business related posts on their personal linkedin
Images
- Format
- Size
- Resolution
- Colour
- Style / filters
- Alt text
- Usage rights
Videos
- Professionally produced
- Produced on mobile
- Hosted
  - Youtube
  - Vimeo
- Embedded
- Shared
- Meta info
- Comments
Web forms
- Gather info
- Simple
- Multipart
- Surveys
- Questionnaires
- Dynamic
- Embedded
- Secure
- Autofill
- Rich controls
- Make sure it is working
Infographics
- Visual representation of information / data
- Diagram
- Chart
- Dataflows
- High design values
- https://www.canva.com/
Podcasts
- Digital audio file
- Series of episodes
- Downloadable
- Subscription
- Free usually
- Can be consumed while doing something else (eg while driving)
- Accessed via apps, itunes, google play
- Utilize another podcast that has already have a following
Whitepapers
- Heavy weight content
- Domain expertise
- Technical knowledge
- Pretty valuable
- Designed as a print or pdf
- Formal language
- Includes images, charts, figures and stats
- Sometimes paid for content
- or require email or other info before download (gather leads)
Comments
- User generated content
- Moderated and edited
- Onsite ie blog posts – probably no one will comment on your blog
- Easier to get comments on social
Testimonials
- Provided by customers
- Short form – quote
- Long form – more descriptive
- Versatile content type
- Customer trust
- Credibility

Who creates your content

Marketing department
Technical experts
Products owners / specialists
Suppliers
Customers
Industry experts
Not recommended but can be tested, relevant freelancers
- https://www.peopleperhour.com/

Created by your business

How regularly will you create content
How will you ensure the tone is correct
What media items will you need to include
Who will check content before it is published (it should not be the author)
What extra support do non-marketing team members require
What feedback will provide
You can record meetings or internal talks and transcribe them into blog posts

Created by others

What value does their content bring
How can you make sure it fits your guidelines
- Provide guidelines
- Edit once submitted
- Does it even matter?
What about deadlines?
Can you offer to create content for them?

Ingredients of effective content (for humans)

Information
Attraction
- Being different
Engagement
- Being funny is a way of doing it
Strong message
Memorable
Be developed with an audience in mind
Consistent

Ingredients of effective content (for search engines)

Well written, natural content (like humans like to read)
Semantically well formed
Descriptive content
Inbound links
Good use of images (don’t forget alt tags here)
Design
Well UX really
Bounce rates are a good indication of the quality of your user experience
SEO for beginners by Moz
- https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Audience

Understanding who you are developing content for is very important
Style
Tone
Language
Attention span
Level on knowledge
Propensity to share
Appetite

Content Marketing Infographics

https://www.pinterest.com/michaelschmitz/content-marketing-infographics/

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Why Design Matters?

Good design sells
Strong consumer trust
Perception of your product or service
User-friendly content
Good first impression
Sets you apart from competitors
Consistency = quality
People get attracted to design.
- But they do get attracted to different things, different designs
Motivate people to take action
Design is more than how it looks, it is how it works, too. (User experience)

Designing effective web content

Ensure your html is correctly formed
Ensure all relevant tags and attributes are included
- Meta tags
- Image alt tags
Clearly defined section headings
Short concise paragraphs
Responsive content
Whitespace is important
Lightweight
- Performance
- Device
- Connections
Consistency

LANDING PAGES AND CTA’S

Usually a standalone web page
Communicates a single message
- A promotion
- A product launch
- A whitepaper download
- A newsletter signup

Before you start for the landing page

What is the goal
- Buy something
- Fill out a contact form
- Signup for a newsletter
- Define the conversion
Who is my audience
- Who are you hoping to attract and convert?
- We’ll do more on personas later
How did they get to my landing page?

Anatomy of a landing page

clean , uncluttered and short is key
Impeccable grammar – you can’t afford to lose trust due to a silly mistake
High quality content
Single idea
Testimonials are great – trust indicator
Buttons and CTAs should stand out – make it really easy to convert
Make sure the design is really good – you only have a moment to impress
Limit your links – do not distract users
Use images and videos that relate to the copy – strong imagery
Shorter to conversion, the better

What is the call to action (CTA)

CTA is an element on a webpage that invites a user to commit an aciton
CTA is a priority item on a page
Every page ideally have a single CTA

Content strategy steps

Define customer personas
Create a keyword list
Identify which types of content you are going to create
Develop an attractive personality and style
Determine a frequency problem
Decide how you are going to promote your content

What is a persona

Represent a major user group for your website
Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of each user group
Give a clear picture of the user’s expectations
Describe how users are likely to use your site
Help to uncover universal features and functionality
Describe real people with backgrounds, goals and values

How to create a persona

Describe the user
- Age,gender
- Highest level of education / expertise
Profession
- Professional background
Motivation
- What is your person motivated by?
- What are they looking for?
- What is your person looking to do?
- What are their needs?

B2D Persona

Lara, 40 years old, has 2 kids, employed
Does most of the household shopping
Tech-savvy, uses mobile for ecommerce
Value seeker, bargain hunter
Searching for air travel, new house and car so higher end of value seeker
Interested in cooking, travel, celebrity news
Motivated by the needs of her family and looking for ways to add value (find a bargain)
Don’t really have much time, quite busy with all the housework, kids and work.
They want a good deal, trusted seller, frictionless ecommerce experience.

Keyword Research

Choosing Content Types

What content do your customers currently engage with
What are they asking for – do you get asked the same questions a lot
What do your competitors do
Do you have the skills
Does the content type fit with your overall goals
Can you calculate a ROI
What tools are out there that I can use

Personality and style

Conversational
Formal
Technical
Funny

B2B
Consumer
Adult
Teen
Children

High design values
Quick and dirty

Content Promotion

What channels are you going to target
How will you promote?
- Organic SEO
- Social shares
- Paid advertising
Are there specific channels for different content types
How can you use your community
Promotion calendar / schedule

Sharing your content

Social media
Email marketing
Direct email (B2B)
Industry websites / publications
3rd party websites

Scheduling

What time is best
What platforms are best
Cumulative campaigns
Re-scheduling

Social media scheduling tools

Buffer
Hootsuite
Sprout social
Viralheat
Socialoomph
Tweetdeck
Sprinklr
Watch out: Algorithms are demoting content posted by these tools

Testing your content

Content goals statement
Measuring success
Improving our content
Repeating what works
Stop doing what doesn’t work
Our Facebook page appears busier
- Instead, double the number of shares in 3 months
Data is key

A/B Testing

Also known as split testing
Compare 2 versions of a web page
Discover which performs better
Experiment with 2 or more variants
Variants shown at random to users
Statistical analysis
Results based on predefined goals

Issues with A/B Testing

Usually tests small variations
Small changes often regress back to the mean
- Small changes = small results

Google Optimize

This is better than traditional A/B testing
You can create loads of variations and test with AI
https://optimize.google.com/optimize/home/

Previous 1 2 3 4 Next

Task	Months
Campaign objectives 1 2 3	Increase brand awareness (Increase branded google searches by 20%) Increase returning customers from 6% to 8% Increase returning visitors from 21% to 25%
Website updates / blog
Press packs	1-2 pages Half of it is about business, reason for being These are the 3 things we’d like to talk about Company, individual, 3 things A press kit, often referred to as a media kit in business environments, is a pre-packaged set of promotional materials that provide information about a person, company, organization or cause and which is distributed to members of the media for promotional use.
Press releases
Story angles
Forward features
Opinion pieces
Social media	You can hunt journalists on social media and learn about what they are talking about. Twitter and Linkedin
Cost / time
Results