September | 2013 | Maeve Nunan

Marketing is notorious for jargon and Digital Marketing is no different. It is easy to get confused with processes and systems that companies follow to create and implement digital campaigns. Start by understanding the steps that are required. In all planning processes there are four key steps:

The first step is all about establishing where we are now. This is often described as Situational Analysis and for a digital marketing campaign you will need to gather information. Begin with competitors’ digital activities, consumer digital media usage and their behavioural patterns. Listening online is a great place to start. Set up Google alerts for key words that apply to your market. Use software like Radion 6 that monitors social conversations on multiple channels and search for articles, blogs and videos related to your market.

The next step is to decide where do we want to be in the future. What would success look like in that future. Set out goals and objectives that are clear, realistic and within an agreed time frame. Creating awareness and building relationships with your target audience are often common objectives. Quantify the number of connections you expect, the number of unique visitors to your website and the level of engagement you want to achieve.

The third step is working out how to meet our goals. Here we develop digital marketing strategies that fit with our objectives, target audience and products and services. Digital Marketing strategies are simply the decisions you make on the tools you need to implement a campaign. What are the channels, the message and the timing? Always check to ensure that these activities are aligned with where you want to go and are consistent across multiple platforms.

The final step is ensuring that you know if you have achieved success. With Google analytics, Insights data on Facebook and other social media platforms you can measure impressions, website traffic, engagement and sentiment. This data will allow you to amend and adapt your activities as you monitor them. Ensure you regularly collect and analyse the data and communicate these reports to the team.

On week three of the course we will look at Target Audience Profiling.

This week sees the start of a ten week course in Digital Marketing. Follow my blog each week to stay in touch with what we are covering in class. The course is designed to equip you with the knowledge to understand the main functions of online marketing and how companies use these platforms to meet business objectives. It starts with understanding the framework to produce digital marketing strategies and communication plans. It is all too easy to get overwhelmed by the myriad of technology, social media networks and new developments that happen on a daily basis in the digital space. The most important question to ask yourself is WHY. From the very beginning of the course you will need to shift your thinking when you see digital communication. You are no longer a consumer but a marketing executive who thinks about the objectives, the target audience and the positioning of products when you look at digital communication. Ask yourself WHY the brand or service has chosen to spend their budget on the activity. What is their goal?

At the heart of Digital Marketing is understanding your consumer. We go online to connect with friends, watch our favourite programmes, plan holidays, check bank balances and much more. Understanding our customers’ behaviour online is key to deciding what channels are best to reach them. In a world where we are now viewing multiple devices at any one time – TV, laptop and smartphone, reaching and communicating with our audience is a real challenge. Spend some time asking your customers where they go online and how they use these platforms. Build a profile of their interests, passions and viewing habits.

Networking How we communicate with our customers is the next step. Think of how you would act if you entered a room full of people you have not met before. You wouldn’t stand and announce to the room how wonderful you are and really everyone should pay attention to what you have to say. Listening to what people are talking about and joining the conversation is a much more effective way of engaging with your audience. Guiness created Arthur’s Day in order to meet their customers where their passions lie in music. Connecting your brand to your customers where they hang out and becoming an integral part of their experiences will increase the opportunity for engagement and building relationships with them online.