Digital Marketing LinkedIn Collaborative Articles

How do you link digital marketing to your business objectives?

Whether we run Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads etc, it is vital to use analytics in conjunction. To gauge the impact of both organic & paid traffic.

The new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is ideal. Default reports include:

• Realtime: Visualise events that occurred over last 30 min.

• Acquisition: Which channels (referral/paid search/direct etc) are your visitors coming from?

• Engagement: Which pages/buttons are your visitors interacting with? How many are clicking, scrolling, downloading, adding to cart, reaching checkout etc

• Monetisation: What items are your customers buying?

• Retention: Are your customers coming back?

• Demographics: What age/gender/location do your visitors belong to?

• Tech: What devices/OS are your visitors using?

How to measure online marketing objectives?

In Google Ads, we have the following choices of automated Campaign objectives:

Maximise clicks

We can optionally set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid limit.

Target impression share

We can choose from among absolute top of the page, top of the page or anywhere on the page. Available for Search Campaigns only. Particularly suitable for branded keywords. Here, too, we can optionally set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid limit.

Maximise conversions

Ideal when all conversions are valued similarly. We can optionally set a target cost-per-action (tCPA).

Maximise conversion value

Ideal when each conversion is valued differently. We can optionally set a target return-on-ad-spend (tRoAS). This objective needs prior conversion history.

How has digital marketing changed the way companies approach branding?

While performance marketing focusses on bottom-of-funnel conversions, brand marketing focusses on top-of-funnel awareness and middle-of-funnel engagement.

Performance marketing is near-term while brand marketing is medium- to long-term.

Accordingly, performance marketing metrics include website purchases, mobile app purchases, paid subscriptions etc. While brand marketing metrics include aided brand awareness, brand ad recall, brand familiarity lift, brand consideration, brand favourability etc.

What are the most effective ways to track online advertising ROI?

Conversion tracking gives a fuller picture (eg conversion rate/cost-per-conversion vs just click-through rate/cost-per-click).

Conversion action:

• Aligning this with the Campaign objective during setup is critical. Because certain settings and reporting elements become available accordingly. And the platform algorithm optimises smart bids based on this.

Conversion metrics:

• Video plays at >=75%. Versus all video plays. Lead generation forms completed and submitted. Versus merely opened. 'Purchased'. Versus 'added-to-cart', 'began checkout' or 'added billing info'.

Conversion window:

• Within which the platform attributes the conversion to our Ad. Shorter for e-commerce. Longer for industrial systems or applications with a long selling cycle.

How can you optimize the awareness stage of your e-commerce funnel?

At the top of the ecommerce funnel, our target audience is aware that they have a problem.

Our goal is to educate them about the answers/solutions we have to their problem.

In an informative and preferably entertaining way. So that they move down the funnel. And eventually become buyers.

Examples of content formats that suit the awareness phase include:

• Fun facts and snippets.

• Quizzes, polls and surveys.

• Tips and tricks.

• How-to tutorials.

• Comparison tables or articles.

• Question-and-answer (Q&A) blogs.

• Infographics.

• Checklists.

• Buyer guides.

• Slideshare/carousel posts.

Members of the audience who find our content helpful, relevant, interesting and timely are quite likely to move to the next step in the buyer journey.

How can you effectively target your E-commerce search ads?

Sharing a learning from my hands-on experience since 2015 running Google Search Ads, Amazon Sponsored Product Ads and Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads:

• Exact match and phrase match keywords require daily hard labour. But they yield higher click-through rates (CTRs) and lower costs-per-click (CPCs). Apart from greater control over search term relevance, of course.

• By their very definition, broad match keywords, on the other hand, save time initially. But their comparatively lower CTRs and higher CPCs soon compel you to start maintaining an ever-growing list of negative keywords. Which ends up consuming more time. And still gives less control.

This applies not only to manual bidding but even to smart bidding. Despite evolutions in the algorithms.

How can you ensure your search ad is relevant to the user's query?

The following three must ideally match for best results from search ads:

• User's actual search term or search phrase.

• The keyword the advertiser has bought. Preferably exact match or phrase match. Not broad match.

• The URL, H1 title and content of the landing page.

For instance, if a user searches for 'Acer laptops', Google expects to direct him/her to an 'Acer laptops' page on your website. Not to an 'All laptops' page. Or to an 'Acer desktops, laptops and tablets' page.

The more precise the match, the better. For the user, for the advertiser and for the credibility of the search engine.

How can you balance immediate results and long-term success in search advertising?

In Google Ads, we balance long-term and immediate results by targetting different audience segments.

Long-term:

• Demographic segments: Based on age group, gender, marital status, educational attainment, parenting stage, household income, home ownership and company size/industry. Note that the household income segment is available only in 12 countries.

• Affinity segments: Based on people's demonstrated interests, lifestyles and hobbies. 12 segments divided into sub-segments.

Immediate-term:

• In-market segments: Based on people's active purchase intent. 25 segments divided into sub-segments.

• Remarketing segments: Based on website visitors and customer match lists.

• Similar segments: Google has discontinued these effective Aug 2023.

How do you create and manage a digital marketing budget? 

News from the real world:

• Revenue targets go up every quarter. Marketing budgets don't go up proportionately.

• In the event of a revenue 'call down' during the quarter, the marketing budget gets cut inevitably. All of it from brand marketing. Not from performance marketing. Naturally.

• Most companies don't distinguish between expense dollars & discount dollars. So it's common to divert marketing budget to fund price drops during a mega campaign or event. Or to clear ageing stocks. Or to bid for a project ...

Against this backdrop, we marketers need to develop and maintain a flexible & dynamic budget allocation formula. So that, during a crunch, we can still protect critical long-term objectives. While pursuing immediate revenue.

How can you manage a digital marketing budget in an uncertain environment?

Even in 'peace time' (ie during 'business as usual'), marketing needs to align with sales and with senior management to allocate budgets between:

• Long-term brand marketing and immediate-term performance marketing activities.

• Top-of-funnel (awareness), middle-of-funnel (consideration) and bottom-of-funnel (conversion) Campaigns.

During a period where business goals happen to evolve dynamically, this allocation will need to be adaptive and flexible. More than ever.

Furthermore, during a period of declining or uncertain demand, this allocation priority will even vary with the company's market standing. For instance, No 1 may look to consolidate its market leadership while No 4 will probably seek to protect its profitability.

When advertising budgets are under pressure during an economic downturn, it is tempting to hide behind metrics like CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per 1000 reach) or CPL (cost per lead). But this is, in fact, the period when metrics like return on ad spend (RoAS), conversion rate (CR) and average order value (AOV) become even more important. Quality must always prevail over quantity.

What are the most important online marketing trends and developments that you need to keep up with?

Just sharing my own belief and hope ...

Proliferation of formula-based and commoditised content on the web and in social media will eventually lead to audience fatigue. As well as hypercompetition among bloggers/influencers with no real differentiation or unique domain expertise.

To the point where both sides reach their thresholds of tolerance.

From then on, content produced and content consumed will both become:

• More specific than generic.

• More data-based than gut-feel-based.

Deciding on which niche to address and target will become more critical. Creators who realise this earlier will invest their time wisely and stand to benefit more.

After all, quality and relevance will always remain cornerstones of content. Online and otherwise.

How can you make sure your social media marketing is transparent?

Most consumers are willing to repose their trust in a brand that apologises for a mistake in a genuine, specific and timely manner. Rather than ignore it, hoping that the internet will forget.

Most consumers trust a business that displays both positive and negative reviews on its page. Rather than only positive ones (conveniently).

Most consumers do not mind paying a little bit more for a brand that displays transparency and integrity. Over the long term.

The evolution of social media over the years has compelled businesses and brands to be more accountable to their communities. Than ever before.

What are the best online tools to streamline your small business marketing tasks?

Of all the content creation tools available to laymen like me, I've found Canva to be absolute best-in-class.

Been using it since 2016. For website home page banners, product collection galleries, organic Facebook posts, promotional events, Google Ads, LinkedIn carousels, newsletters, email marketing etc.

• Canva has a multitude of designs, styles, shapes, graphics, charts, tables, frames, grids, text elements etc to choose from.

• You can even upload photos, icons, illustrations, clipart etc from your own Google Drive or Google Photos. To use them in your designs.

• You can download and share your designs in various formats.

Even their free account is a blessing for professionals and small business owners alike.

What are the best digital marketing tools for you?

In my experience, the following categories of tools have been invaluable for on-page SEO purposes:

• Trending news sites.
• Keyword research.
• Word cloud.
• Headline analyser.
• Meta title/meta description viewer.
• Readability index.
• Duplicate content checker.
• Stock image archive.
• Image editing.
• Image compression.
• HTML cleaner.
• HTML minifier.
• HTML weight checker.
• Page speed checker.
• URL shortener.
• RSS feed submission.

Have always used free versions of the above tools.

Needless to say, we should never compromise on the following:

• Basic grammatical correctness.
• Classic/time-tested copywriting principles.

Have always believed we should master basic routine and standard practices before trying to get creative.

Where can you find free or low-cost digital marketing tools?

Shall always remain grateful to the creators of all the free tools and websites I've been using for digital content creation and ecommerce website management since 2014. For:

• Stock visuals, PDF conversion, optical character recognition, photo editing, background removal, colour palette generation, image compression ...

• Case conversion, unicode text styling, word clouds, keyword generation, keyword density checking, readibility testing, duplicate content checking, search snippet optimisation ...

• Web page analysis, site SEO audit, schema markup generation, URL shortening, HTML cleaning, HTML minifying ...

• Backlink checking, RSS feed management, web directories ...

... the list goes on!

What are some creative ways to demonstrate your digital marketing skills?

Starting and maintaining a regular blog is an great way to illustrate our digital marketing skills.

• If our blog posts and pages are consistently focussed on the niche we have consciously taken up ...

• If our niche audience finds our blog content relevant and, hence, engages with it via reactions, comments and shares ...

• If our posts and pages consistently maintain a respectable search engine ranking ...

• If we use formats (short-form/long-form articles, images, quizzes, carousels, PDF documents etc) that our niche prefers ...

• If our content is specific and data-based and represents our unique point of view ...

... Then we have already demonstrated what we are capable of. After all, we can do for clients what we have done for ourselves.

How can you train in online marketing with the best platforms?

I've personally benefited from taking free online courses on the following portals:

• Google Digital Garage
• Google Skillshop
• Amazon Ads Learning Console
• LinkedIn Marketing Labs
• LinkedIn Learning
• Meta Blueprint
• HubSpot Academy
• Shopify Academy

All courses on the above platforms have "knowledge checks" in the form of multiple-choice quizzes. I have found these relevant and useful.

Apart from the main content itself, most of these course modules provide links to additional references and resources. Where one can optionally delve deeper into specific sub-topics at one's own pace. In detail.

They say the journey is as important as the destination. Similarly, the learning process itself is as important as the final certification.

What are the most important usability features for a publishing website?

I've always found it useful to apply one or more of many free online readibility checkers available for authors.

On the checker, you can either:

• Copy/paste your draft copy or

• Enter your webpage URL.

The checker assigns a score between 0 and 100. Higher being better. For example, 57.6/100.

It also indicates what age group of readers will be able to understand your content comfortably. Lower being better. For instance, '14 to 15 year olds'.

Most readability checkers award you a high score if you maintain:

• Fewer characters per word.

• Fewer words per sentence.

• Fewer sentences per paragraph.

• Fewer complex words (ie words with three or more syllables).

Such checkers remind us to reduce unnecessary jargon before we publish our article.

What are the best ways to write copy for a product demo?

The demo landing page should have:

• The company logo.

• A relevant image or video thumbnail that gives the reader a visual preview of what will be demo-ed.

• A few bulletised points highlighting the benefits (not features) of the product/service to be demo-ed. Without using jargon. Or uncommon abbreviations.

• An indication of how long the demo will take.

• (If possible) Social proof in the form of a quote from a customer who had watched the demo. And who eventually went on to buy.

• A clear yet concise call-to-action. In a colour that stands out. Preferably written in first person. With the word 'free' incorporated. For instance, "Book my free demo".

• Minimum outbound links. To encourage the reader to stay focussed on the page content.

What are the best ways to use remarketing in search ads?

• With the migration from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), a whole new world of custom audiences has opened up.

• Activating Google signals and enabling Personalised Advertising are mandatory, of course.

Although we are still in the early days, it is safe to say that, with GA4, remarketing will become far more powerful than ever.

How can you use lookalike audiences to maximize e-commerce sales?

Specifically for ecommerce, sharing my own experience with:

Facebook lookalike audiences:

• Algorithm matches user demographics, interests and behaviours. Audiences extrapolated to 1% of user population, although smallest in size, proved to be more effective. Compared to audiences based on 3% of population (never tried any higher percentage ranges).

Google similar audiences:

• Algorithm matches user demographics, search history and content of websites browsed. Audiences created from customer match lists based on actual sales transactions (eg on Shopify) were far more effective. Compared to audiences created from email subscriber lists, 'all website visitors' or even 'cart abandoners'. Google has removed similar audiences from Aug 2023.

For those interested, here is a historical timeline of when each platform introduced 'lookalike audiences' for advertisers to use:

• Facebook: 2013.

• Pinterest: 2016.

• Google: 2017 (discontinued in 2023).

• LinkedIn: 2019.

• Tiktok: 2019.

How can you identify your digital competitors?

On Google Ads, this is fairly straightforward.

Under Auction Insights for Search:

• Google lists the display URL domains that we compete with in its Search auctions. This directly enables us to identify our competitors. The report compares impression share, overlap rate, position-above rate, top-of-page rate, absolute top-of-page rate and outranking share for each of our competitors versus us.

Under Auction Insights for Shopping:

• Google lists the store display names that we compete with in its Shopping Auctions. This again enables us to identify our competitors. The report compares impression share, overlapping rate and outranking share for each of our competitors versus us.

At times, I have found some competitor names to be eye-openers!

What is the difference between first-click and last-click attribution in digital marketing?

I feel data-driven attribution (DDA) is the most scientific (and, hence, safest) way to go.

DDA, unlike First Click and Last Click, is not universally defined. It is specific to each advertiser account.

Our account needs to gather (and maintain) adequate conversion history to become (and remain) eligible for Google DDA.

It takes every type of user interaction into account.

• Click-through as well as view-through.

• Across Search, Display, Discovery and Standard Shopping Campaigns.

• Across all device types.

By analysing past data, the DDA model assigns weightages to individual events and interactions. And thus attributes fractional credit to each of them for every purchase.

This is especially helpful when buyer paths are non-linear.

How can you effectively visualize your marketing data?

The shiny new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides an excellent set of data explorations. These enable us to visualise raw event-level as well as user-level data. In tables and graphs. These are more advanced than the default aggregated reports. And are sufficient for most of us.

GA4 explorations include:

• Templates like:

  • Free form (in which you can customise various available combinations of segments, dimensions and metrics to cross-tabulate for different date ranges).

  • Funnel exploration.

  • Path exploration.

  • Segment overlap.

  • User explorer.

  • Cohort exploration.

• Use cases like:

  • Acquisition.

  • Conversion.

  • User behaviour.

• Industries like:

• Ecommerce.

• Gaming.