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Digital Marketing Cheat Sheet

1. Your digital real estate

Your digital real estate for your business includes:

1. Your website
2. Your social media accounts
3. Possibly local business listings on Google and Bing

2. Search engines

Search engines are the number one way how websites are found!

There are two primary ways for how you can leverage search engines for marketing: organic search (SEO) and paid search ads (SEM). 

Here are some details:

• Organic search – improve your ranking using SEO
  • You should rank number 1 for your brand keyword using SEO and have a nice couple SERPs for it too
    • PR Newswire can help improve both the quality and quantity of your on brand SERPs
  • Aim to rank high for a few non-brand, but product-related long tail keywords using SEO
  • The older your webpage the higher it ranks
• Paid search ads – SEM
• Both organic and paid search use keyword targeting

3. Targeted advertising

Targeted advertising (Audience targeting) is the quickest way to get in front of an audience!

The two main platforms for doing targeted advertising include: Advertising on search (SEM) and Advertising on Social Media. 

Here are some details:

• Advertising on search (SEM)
  • For example, Google Adwords search ads (PPC)
    • Recommended minimum campaign
      • $5 dollars a day, target long tail keywords where you can bid around $1. So you should get 5 click throughs and new visitors per day.
      • You can pause and play the same campaign at anytime
• Advertising on Social media
  • For example, Twitter ads
    • Recommended minimum campaigns
      • $30 budget for one day of advertising. Types of ads:
        • Either PPC campaign for clicks to your website
        • Or a brand awareness campaign where you pay per 1000 impressions
      • $30 budget to gain 15 new followers. Average cost is $2 per follower.

3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

• Social media is usually used to build a fan base rather than a customer base

• The main goal of social media is almost always to build brand awareness. If you can use it to bring traffic to your site then that is even better.

• Think of each post as a song, we’re going for hits here

• Find some accounts you’re a fan of and mimic their approach

• You should be on two or three platforms, Twitter and IG are good

• Social media posting shouldn’t be planned. You should post what’s on your mind along the way on your business journey. They shouldn’t be forced. And followers don’t necessarily need to see your posts immediately in their feeds. They should want to look back at your feed at random times and skim through your latest posts to catch up on what they missed. They should enjoy it. That should be your user engagement pattern.

4. Getting your website ready

A checklist:

• Having the recommended content
• On page SEO ready
• Mobile friendly
• Fast loading
• Cross-device and cross-browser tested

4. Marketing strategy

1. Identify one Northstar KPI that will help you navigate all marketing decisions. Set a goal for it.
2. Then identify secondary KPIs that help you meet the Northstar KPI and set goals for them
3. Create a marketing action plan for how to meet your goals
4. Review your KPIs on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis and course correct when needed

5. Other forms of marketing

• Content marketing – Creating blog posts that don’t explicitly promote your brand, but are intended to stimulate interest in your website
  • Blogging, videos, and social media posts can all be considered as content marketing

• Email marketing – The act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email
  • Every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing
  • It involves using emails to send advertisements, bring traffic back to your site, solicit sales using promotions, etc.

• Inbound vs outbound marketing
  • These are vague buzzwords which separate traditional, broadcast types of marketing which hit a very wide and large audience (like TV, magazine, and radio ads), most of whom aren’t interested in your product, vs. modern, targeted marketing (like SEM advertisement) which hits your audience at the exact time they are looking for products that you offer.

• Retargeting
  • Retargeting marketing enables you to remind your customers of your products and features you offer after they leave your website without converting. One way to do it is to send them an email a little while after they have left your site.

• Affiliate marketing
  • In affiliate marketing, you pay other people a performance based commission for their own marketing efforts that bring visitors and customers to your site

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