digital strategy and online marketing tools - rodney ferro

Digital Strategy & Online Marketing Tools

Presented by RODNEY FERRO Digital Consultant

[email protected] | www.pn.com.au 1300 131 932

About Me RODNEY FERRO 14+ years experience, working with SMEs, corporates and not for profits. After so many years being on the agency side, have now moved to client side and look forward to assisting organisations in this challenging and forever changing online landscape.

WORKED WITH:

Introduction Digital Strategy Planning Budget Resources Online Marketing Tools Time Management Conversion Thank You

http://linkedin.com/in/rodney.ferro

What you will get


What will you get

DIGITIAL STRATEGY and ONLINE MARKETING TOOLS Today I will be focusing on: forming a digital strategy, importance of planning, understanding your budget, building your team, sharing a few useful online marketing tools, trying to help better manage your time and most importantly looking at ways on increasing conversions.

What is digital strategy?

The importance of planning

Organising your budget

Building your team

Useful online marketing tools

Better managing your time

Increasing your conversions


What is digital strategy?


Digital Strategy

WHAT IS DIGITAL STRATEGY? In the fields of strategic management, marketing strategy and business strategy, digital strategy is the process of specifying an organisation's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximise the business benefits of digital initiatives to the organisation. Wikipedia

Everyone has a different interpretation

What does it mean to you?

Identify your brand (offline and online)

Who are you speaking to?

What are you trying to achieve?

What online mediums are you going to use?

What are your KPI’s?

Digital Strategy Template email [email protected]


The importance of planning


Planning Yes, planning

THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING… We all know the importance of planning, but due to time, budget and resource constraints we usually jump right in thinking everything will run according to plan…what plan? Benjamin Franklin - "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!"

Jumping straight in

Aims / Goals / Potential outcomes

Brand / Background / Positioning / Perception

Audience / Segmentation

Audience Demographics / offline & online

Competitor analysis / Performance online

What are your KPI’s?


Planning (continued)

AIMS & GOALS List all your aims and goals, prioritise, work on the target audience focus (direct / broad), difficulty, engagement period and what you are hoping to achieve?

AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION Who is your audience? What do they look like? Where do the live (offline / online)? What are their likes / interests?

We are looking for audience segments so we know how to communicate | where to | what may promote them



COMPETITOR ANALYSIS All businesses and organisations have some form of competition, whether it be direct or indirect.


Offline & Online

Website (brand, design, content, campaigns)

Google (SEO / SEM)

Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, YouTube and what are they doing?

Looking for opportunity

Looking for a better online presence



RESULTS MEASUREMENT After we look at the mediums (digital assets) that are required and what segments will be targeted, we look at how we are going to measure results…success.


After completing this process you will conclude that some digital mediums are not part of your strategy. Those that are should be measured with milestones and KPI’s. Best thing about digital you can measure nearly everything, so do it!


Digital Strategy Template email [email protected]

Understanding your budget


Budget How much?

UNDERSTANDING YOUR BUDGET… Ask questions! It is important to know what your allocated budget needs to cover. You need to look at digital assets, vendor selection, internal resources for delivery and ongoing support / management of your digital investment.

FALSE: Allocating full budget to website

FALSE: Redeveloping a website

Some costs: Digital Strategy, Domains, Hosting, Project Management, Website, SEO, SEM, Email Marketing / Newsletters, Social Media, YouTube, Blog, Content Creation, Payment Gateway, Paid Advertising and more.

IMPORTANT: Client side resources, what is the real cost?

Re-evaluate your budget and expectations!


Building your team!


Let’s admit it… We need help…whether it is with strategy, project management, design, development, online marketing, content creation… Keeping this in mind we need to refer to our budget and allocate funds to the team we need to build. What can we do in-house, what do we need to outsource, what will we have to give a miss? Next: How do we know if the resource(s) are good? • Interview them • Get them to do a pitch • Call their references & ask for similar project examples • Ask them for their budget range & ongoing support


What makes up the team


Resources can be an issue, it can be costly unless you are smart about it! • Start by getting an independent digital consultant to

conduct a digital audit Work with them to create a digital strategy and obtain a digital blueprint (roadmap) Look at organisations that may be able to assist you in:

• “Filling in the gaps” • Implementation and management of services • Look at reporting and review process

• Look at hiring internally • Look at specialists vs. internal vs. outsourcing

Again what are the cost benefits?

Digital Strategy & Online Marketing


Some handy online tools!


Online marketing tools Making life easier online without all the heavy cost factors We will look at some tools we use to help manage our clients’ projects, tasks and online marketing implementation. You will find there are many variations of these tools, some of which you may know. After a lot of research and product comparison these are the ones we have found to be most useful for our clients’ who are and aren’t computer savvy but now can’t do without them.


There are many arguments for and against Proprietary and OpenSource systems. When making a decision make sure you get a demo of the system and you have 14-30 days to play with it, before you go and invest a large part of your budget into it. Make sure that when selecting a platform you conduct a risk assessment on the development company and the platform they are recommending. Protect your investment, do not fall into the trap of having to re-build your website after 2 yrs.


Content Management System (OpenSource)

Administrating a website has never been so easy, many of our clients pick it up with no training. Themes & Popular Plugins: - Themeforest.net - Backup Buddy - All-In-One SEO - MailChimp / Campaign Monitor - AddThis, ShareThis social - Gravity Forms - Redirections - WooCommerce - XML Sitemap - Google Maps - and hundreds more…


FREE and easy way to track social shares from your website or articles. AddThis code can be applied to any website which will allow your users to share you content on their preferred social network. With an AddThis registered account, you can get an report on the social sharing that has occurred throughout your site or selected articles. Best of all you can get started for FREE.


FREE tool for a quick test. Google Chrome Window Resizer This tool sits in the top right of your Google Chrome browser and allows you to quickly see how your site / page will look in a different resolution. Now if you site has been optimised for a mobile you may not see all its features, but you will get an idea for how the site / page renders and very quickly. The tool is free and also allows you to put in your own custom resolution settings (i.e. we added iPad Portrait)

Responsive Design


Low cost tool, allows you to test in multiple platforms, operating systems and browsers! To save the trouble of having to log onto various devices iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Firefox, Windows 7 and IE 10, whatever the combination may be, BrowserStack makes it all so easy. BrowserStack allows you to simulate the platform, operating system and browser you need. For example IOS, iPad 3rd (6.0)


Google Chrome Extension Screen Capture : FREE Having problems being able to capture various screens, content, quickly and accurately? Wanting to highlight a section, make notes? How about a scrolling web page window? With the FREE Screen Capture tool from Google this makes things so much easy and fast. No more stitching or missing bits. Ctrl+Alt+H….Done!


Comprehensive website Maintenance tools, managing How Google sees you. : FREE Use this FREE tool from Google to check to see if your website has any errors. Get your web developer to: 1. Submit your sitemap here 2. Check to see if there are any errors 3. Fix the errors 4. Re-submit your site to Google (Fetch) 5. You can demote and URL’s you don’t wish to be

indexed high by Google (i.e. Terms and Conditions) 6. And more….just make sure your developer is on

top of this.


World class web analytics software…FREE! If you don’t have Google Analytics installed you must have a real good reason. 1. Make sure you are setup as Administrator on your

own account. 2. Understand the basis (online tutorials) 3. Customise your dashboard, so you save time on

reporting every month (multiple dashboards) 4. NEW: See who is on your website and what page in

real-time follow their path! 5. Use the Content > InPage Analytics to see where

your ‘hotspots’ are on your site. 6. Visitors, Return Visitors, Session Time, Bounce Rate,

How Many Pages visited.


But wait…there is more! Loads more! 7. See how users browse your site, the path they take

Audience > Visitor Flow 8. See the keywords used to find your page 9. What are your most popular pages? 10. You can now even track your Social Relationship

Remember to use your time wisely here, we can easily get carried away in analytics and detail. Listen, Evaluate and Act!


FREE: Google Keyword Tool Using this tool you can see the previous months’ average searches for a particular keyword, key phrase and like terms. For example type: ‘donate a car’ Local Search. (donate furniture 1,600, donate to charity 2,900) Use this tool as a guide and make sure to select Australia when conducting your research.


Email Marketing Software Easy editing tools Campaign Monitor has a nice clean admin interface to allow you to create your email marketing templates. With new features constantly added, Campaign Monitor makes sending out your email campaign easier. Features include: - Template building - Campaign sending - Split A/B testing - Social Sharing / Reporting - Auto Responders - Comprehensive Reporting (clean layout) - Live Worldview / Subscriber snapshot - Integration with your website


Email Marketing Software FREE Account (limited) With similar features to Campaign Monitor Mailchimp is a leading email marketing software provider. With a great bank of resources and online tutorials you can really ‘get into’ email. Pricing there is a FREE account available which is a great place to start!


Organise your links Count popularity Share your links : FREE When having character limits the last thing you need is a really long URL. Bitly allows you to shorten your URL and use that link supplied for your post (i.e Twitter). Some applications now do automatically shorten your URL. If you create an account with Bitly you can track stats, with the number of times your link was clicked etc.


Image Editing Software When making updates via social media we find an application like PicMonkey comes in really handy. You can quickly import your image, make edits using: premade, templates, overlays, speech bubbles and export your image to use within minutes. No need to go to a graphic designer for those quick updates.


Mobile Image Editing Software : FREE Another great tool for editing images while snapping them on your mobile. You can quickly open your image apply a filter, edit / undo, save and then share. It really is that simply download it and have a play!


Video Editing Software & Screen Recording FREE: OpenSource Camtasia has a great video editing studio, which allows you to cut video, add new elements, transitions, change audio, add links, export in various formats and more… There is an OpenSource tool CamStudio with limited functionality that allows screen recording only. A great way to editing training videos, client testimonials and/or product videos.


One of the largest search engines behind Google. As we know video content is now more valuable than ever. Optimising your video for YouTube will help your video be found in search and if the content of the video is contagious, it may just go VIRAL! YouTube Channel – allows you to stream video content through your website with no costs to your organisation (using the embed code)


Artistic, Cinimatic, great video content YouTube is mainstream, Vimeo its nearest competitor has a slightly different twist. If you spend time on Vimeo you will notice a number of short films, great videography, sound, even the player is built for watching it on your TV. Vimeo also has a similar service to YouTube allowing you to stream video through your site and little to no cost.


Want to create a WordCloud? Infographics are taking over, but if you did want to create a WordCloud, a free and easy to use tool would be Wordle.net Simply add your paragraph in the text box and click go! It’s that simple! You can click on randomise to then play with the visuals, but quite a neat little tool.


Social Media Management FREE: Limited • Manage multiple social networks • Schedule messages and tweets • Track brand mentions • Analyse social media traffic • 6 million+ satisfied users TweetDeck – as of May 7th no longer supports Facebook.


Social Media Management Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Google Analytics Similar to HootSuite, Sprout Social allows you to manage all your social media accounts in the one place. • Engagement • Profile users • Schedule posts for future dates • Manage profiles as a team • Easy to understand reporting Tweetdeck – as of May 7th no longer supports Facebook.


Even if you don’t want another social network, you need: Google Authorship 1. Great a Google Plus individual account 2. Add your image and complete your profile 3. Create a blog article 4. Add the Google Authorship code to your blog

article (with your Google ID) 5. From your Google Plus account link to your blog

article. 6. DONE!

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986&expand=option2




Task Management FREE : Limited Asana has a FREE account which is actually quite generous allowing you to use all its features for up to 30 users. Create, Manage, Share tasks with your team. Instead of a task sitting in your inbox and losing track of replies, Asana allows you to group responses to one task, add attachments and send you email notifications of updates etc.


Simple Project Management Wrike similar to Asana has some added features which allow you to really manage your tasks and projects in a quick, yet organised manner. • Create folders • Create user profiles • Create unlimited collaborators • Useful Gantt Chart • Set permissions for user access • Dashboard interface

We have found that with Wrike our clients productivity has dramatically increased, ours definitely has.


Simple file sharing FREE : Limited 2GIG • No more sending 10MB files over email • Even sending DVDs or USB via mail • Share your files with anyone • Have access to your files on any device,

mobile, tablet, desktop and online!


Share your screen FREE Join.Me allows you to share your screen with multiple viewers. The free version does have some limitations, but it is a great tool for meetings and presentations. • up to 10 meeting participants • screen sharing • internet calling • share control • multi-monitor • chat • send files


What is most precious to you?


Time Management

WHAT IS DIGITAL STRATEGY? In the fields of strategic management, marketing strategy and business strategy, digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximize the business benefits of digital initiatives to the organization. Wikipedia

Online marketing, content creation, website monitoring… It’s all taking over our lives! Here are some simple tips to keep things on track while having a bit more control over YOUR TIME!

1. Don’t put it in the too hard basket and get left behind.

2. You need to allocate and better manage your time.

3. Block off time in your daily/weekly/monthly calendar for the ongoing tasks.

4. Use some of the online marketing tools that might just make your life easier!

Content Calendar Template email [email protected]


Time Management

WHAT IS DIGITAL STRATEGY? In the fields of strategic management, marketing strategy and business strategy, digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximize the business benefits of digital initiatives to the organization. Wikipedia

Some questions you should ask how you might be able to do better:

- Do you need to go to that meeting or can you do it remotely?

- Manage your teams’ tasks?

- Share files through Dropbox ? (not email)

- Get your reports compiled and emailed to you?

- Test your website from one computer not every single device and type of browser

- Manage your social profiles in one place?

- Managing content & social media updates images…..

USE A CONTENT CALENDAR!

Content Calendar Template email [email protected]


Increasing conversions


Don’t let your investment die a slow death Continue to monitor, tweak, modify while aligning it with your digital and online marketing goals 1. Use your reporting and measurement tools you have

access to (Google Analytics). 2. Make sure you collect feedback from your users both

internally and externally. 3. Use this information and ACT as it is vital for you

improving your results and most of all…

Looking after your online assets.

Increasing Conversions

WHAT ARE REAL CONVERSIONS… Conversion optimisation is one of the most important parts of a digital strategy, as it helps improve your ROI. You don’t need to always build a new site. You do however need to give it some LOVE. LISTEN to what your reports are saying and ACT accordingly.

No need to build a new site

LISTEN, ACT and LOVE your digital assets

Reporting and monitoring are key

Analysing and test your actions

Some examples

Increase conversation

Increase conversion


Thank You Really appreciate your attention and

“your time”.

Presented by RODNEY FERRO Digital Consultant

[email protected] | www.pn.com.au 1300 131 932

digital strategy and online marketing tools - rodney ferro

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