digital marketing guide a simple overview · times the traffic of social media (41% from search,...

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Contact Paul now on 07974 689642 to see how we can help your organisation market effectively online

A simple overview

Digital Marketing Guide

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A brief introduction

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Changing Media

2.1 Internet Usage

2.2 User activity online

2.3 Social Media

2.4 Mobile

2.5 Ecommerce - Impact on Purchasing

2.6 Search

3.0 Changing Marketing

3.1 Social Media

3.2 Search Engine Marketing

3.3 Email / CRM

3.4 Online Advertising

3.5 Web Analytics

3.6 Marketing Budgets

3.7 Return on Investment: Channels


Contents


4.0 A Guide to Digital Marketing Methods

4.1 Website

4.2 Search Engine Optimisation

4.3 Paid Search Advertising

4.4 Online PR

4.5 Email Marketing / CRM

4.6 Web Analytics

5.0 Examples

6.0 Next Steps

7.0 About Octave Digital

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The guide is designed to help you learn more about the merits of digital marketing. There are four primary reasons why you should use digital marketing to support your organisation:

Changing Mediathe media and marketing environment has changed. New media, ranging from search engines, social media, and smartphones, present genuine opportunities for companies and organisations to reach out to more audiences and connect with their customers.

Changing Marketingyou need to reach and influence consumers who are using online channels, developing your online presence and allowing you to contend against your competition. Increasing your level of online activity is the only way to do this.

Changing buying habitsYour target customers will be researching online to source products and services. They are also likely to be buying online too.

Budget PressuresBusinesses and public sector organisations are under pressure to reduce marketing spend, gain greater value for money, and improve overall marketing effectiveness. Online marketing can help reduce marketing inefficiencies and save money.




Our guide will help you to:

Learn more about how businesses and organisations are using digital marketing effectively

Find out the key benefits of online marketing

Make a case for persuading senior staff to invest more in digital marketing

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Changing Media

The entire media and marketing have changes rapidly in the past 5 years. Digital channels including search engines, websites, video platforms, and social media have shaken up the media environment with consumers using a variety of media to shop, communicate, and access information.

Changing Media

83% of households in Britain have Internet access (Office of National Statistics, 2013)

Time spent on the Internet has increased by 45% since 2006 (Office of National Statistics, 2013)

Over half (53%) of UK adults now use a mobile phone to go online, rising to 86% among smart-phone users, and more than one in ten use a tablet computer (16%), games console/ player (16%), or a portable media player (12%), all significant increases since 2011 (Ofcom, 2013)

The number of people accessing the internet via a mobile phone increased by 60.3% to 818.4 million in the last 2 years (jeffbullas.com, 2013)

Likewise, Smartphones and tablets now account for almost a quarter of traffic for affiliate mar-keting campaigns, a massive six-fold increase in less than two years (econsultancy.com, 2013)

User activity online To carry out a wide range of established ‘every day’ activities, such as purchasing goods or services online (92%), Internet banking (76%) and selling goods online (45%), (Office for National Statistics)

Social Media Social media use is huge. Facebook use now reaches over 50%

of adults in UK and Ireland. Business professionals are using Linkedin to communicate and connect. And Twitter is now usedby stakeholders and brands to communicate and reach out.

80% of users would rather connect with brands and businesses over Facebook, than directly (Visual.ly, 2013)

82% of buyers say they trust a company more when its CEO and senior leadership team are active in social media (TopRank Online Marketing, 2013)

Figure 2: Facebook Social Media Statistics Infographic (Huffington Post, 2013)


Changing media


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MobileHaving an accessible mobile website is fundamental to an effective digital marketing campaign. The number of people accessing the internet via a mobile phone increased by 60.3% to 818.4 million in the last 2 years (jeffbullas.com, 2013).

Likewise, Smartphones and tablets now account for almost a quarter of traffic for affiliate mar-keting campaigns, a massive six-fold increase in less than two years (econsultancy.com, 2013).

Ecommerce / Internet Impact on PurchasingUK Online sales reached £87bn in 2013 (Marketing Week, 2013)

Average weekly spending online (internet sales values non-seasonally adjusted) in July 2013 was £586.6 million. This was an increase of 10.7% compared with July 2012 (Office of National Statistics, 2013)

In a recent report, it seems that UK Internet users appreciate user reviews to enable them to make a decision about purchases with 81% of internet users saying that online reviews helped them (New Media Trend Watch, 2013)

In 2013, 72% of all adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008 (Office for National Statistics)

SearchGoogle has nearly 90% of the UK search engine market

UK Internet users made 2.3 billion visits to search engines in January 2012, up from 2.2 billion in January 2011, according to Hitwise (New Media Trend Watch, 2013)

Search engines play a critical role in how people access information about you online. If you have very low visibility on Google search in particular, then you will not be driving enough traffic to your website and will be loosing out compared to your competitors.



Changing Media

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According to the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, 2013, 91% of responding com-panies carry out SEO, 81% carry out analytics (81%), 78% practise paid search marketing and the same proportion (78%) do social media marketing (Econsultancy, 2013).

Email / CRM44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email

7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week

56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013 (All above from Sales Force, 2013)

Email newsletters allow businesses to send relevant and timely communications, and offer the following benefits:

Low cost - email newsletter are a lot cheaper compared to direct mail

Fast - businesses can quickly create and send email newsletters

Customer relations - Great tool for re-marketing to customers

Online Advertising

Display advertising continues to be a popular marketing method. Display advertising grew in line with the market at 12.4% on a like-for-like basis to £1.30 billion from £1.14 billion in 2011, representing a 24% share of digital ad spend in 2012 (IAB, 2013).

Figure 3: How marketers plan to shift their advertising spend in 2013 (Nielsen, 2013)


Search Engine Marketing


Search Engine Marketing

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Search Engine MarketingDigital Marketing Guide


Web AnalyticsUsing web analytics to gain insights about your website and visitors is now extremely important for businesses and marketing units.

Over 10 million websites now use Google Analytics (Marketing Land, 2012).

Figure 4: Google Analytics (IT Pro, 2013)

Marketing Budgets The Econsultancy Marketing Budgets Report for 2013 states that ‘companies surveyed are spending, on average, 35% of their total marketing budgets on digital, a slight decrease from 36% last year’ (Econsultancy, 2013)

They also state that ‘over two-thirds (70%) of companies surveyed derive up to 50% of their total revenues from digital marketing spend (Econsultancy, 2013).

Return on Investment: ChannelsSo digital marketers seem to be happiest with search engine marketing and email marketing, when measuring return on investment.

Figure 5: Digital Marketing Statistics 2013 (Econsultancy, 2013)

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This section provides a useful overview of several key areas of online media and marketing, including the benefits of each area.

Website Your website represents your brand online, so it is important to invest in a site that is modern and professional. Given recent developments in Internet media and social media, ensuring that your website includes links to social media profiles and provides content (blogs, advice guides, offers, and videos etc.) is paramount.

Search Engine Optimisation SEO is about making your website more visible, attracting more visitors and driving more sales through natural search results. SEO is one of the fastest growing Internet marketing services, which is unsurprising given the growth and importance of search engines for researching and purchasing.

Improve search engine rankings for clients’ main keyphrases

Increase quality web traffic for client site

Improve sales and leads

Search is the top traffic driver to content-oriented websites, producing on average nearly four times the traffic of social media (41% from search, 11% from social) (TopRank Online Marketing, 2013).

Paid Search Advertising Paid Search is the process of buying ad space on search engines, and getting a return on those ads when a user clicks on them; this technique is more commonly known as Pay-Per-click (PPC).

PPC is another form of search marketing. It’s often used along-side SEO to promote your website and brand in the search engines. With PPC you can gain immediate high listings in the search engines for relevant keyphrases in the sponsored links sections.

A Quick Guide to Digital Marketing Methods


Digital Marketing Methods

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Digital Marketing MethodsDigital Marketing Guide

Online PR

Online PR seeks to listen to online feedback about your brand, gain favourable mentions and react to negative online comments and material throughout the Internet.

There are two different forms of Online PR – Monitoring / Reactive and Proactive. Monitoring / ReactiveOnline monitoring plays an important part in protecting your reputation. Customers now have the power to create content and post reviews about your brand across a very wide spectrum of online media, which creates both risks and opportunities for your brand.

Find out what’s being said about your brand online

Respond correctly to positive and negative posts and comments including an assessment of the impact of the comments

Protect your brand online

ProactiveProactive Online PR aims to positively engage with target audiences on Internet communities, sites and forums. Essentially, this process is similar to traditional media relations – identification of relevant media and developing strategies to create brand awareness and understanding. Protect your brand online

Promote brand awareness and visibility online

Engage with target consumers

Email Marketing / CRM Email marketing is a customer relationship management method aimed at growing and retaining customers through regular, targeted emails. For example when you receive an email newsletter from a retailer such as Sainsbury’s or Amazon, that’s email marketing in actionengines for relevant keyphrases in the sponsored links sections.


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Digital Marketing MethodsDigital Marketing Guide

Email Marketing / CRM Continued

Recognised as the second highest rated marketing methods in the UK, email marketing helps you build relationships and sell more to existing customers.

Email marketing campaigns help achieve the following:

Customer interaction

Brand promotion

Inform customers of new products, offers etc.

Target segmented customers with relevant information

Drive sales with time-limited offers and sales

Web Analytics Email marketing is a customer relationship management method aimed at growing and retaining customers through regular, targeted emails. For example when you receive an email newsletter from a retailer such as Sainsbury’s or Amazon, that’s email marketing in actionengines for relevant keyphrases in the sponsored links sections.

Using tools such as Google Analytics, businesses can now track:

How much traffic accesses their website

What their conversion rates are

Average visit duration

Success of your keywords

Warning signs from web data: high bounce rates, low time on site


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Changing Media

It’s easy to think that it’s only larger businesses that use digital marketing; they have the resources to outsource and spend money, whereas smaller companies may not have this luxury. However, in this digital age, all businesses, regardless of size, should be investing in digital marketing. Take a look at the infographic below to see how small to medium businesses (SMBs) have developed with the use of digital marketing:


Examples of Businesses Using Digital Marketing


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Changing MediaDigital Marketing Guide

Octave Digital is a digital Internet marketing agency founded in 2009 to help businesses and organisations market effectively online. The consultancy specialises in online marketing strategy and campaign management and helps clients to understand, adopt and utilise new technology and media.

Our services include Digital Strategy and Planning, Digital Marketing Training, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click advertising management, Social Media Marketing, Website Design and Email Marketing.

The consultancy is operated by Paul McGarrity, Internet marketing and PR consultant with over 14 years’ experience in the UK and Ireland marketing sector. Paul is a well-known speaker on Internet marketing and writes a fortnightly Internet marketing column, ‘Online Insight’, for The Irish News.

About Octave Digital

Contact Paul now on 07974 689642 to see how we can help your organisation market effectively online.


digital marketing guide a simple overview · times the traffic of social media (41% from search,...

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