Chapter 9 Marketing communications using digital media channels

Main topics

• Search engine marketing

• Online public relations and influencer relationship management

• Online partnerships including affiliate marketing

• Opt-in Email marketing

• Social media and viral marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Two main types:

Search engine optimisation (SEO):

• Achieving the highest position or ranking practical in the natural or organic listings

• The search engine results pages (SERPS) across a range of specific combinations of
keywords entered by search engine users

Paid search (pay-per-click) marketing (PPC):

• Similar to conventional advertising

• A relevant text ad with a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search
engine types in a specific phrase

• A series of text ads usually labelled as ‘sponsored links’ are displayed above or to the right
of the natural listings

• Although many searchers prefer to click on the natural listings, a sufficient number do click
on the paid listings

• There are also opportunities to create awareness and response from pay-per-click ads
displayed on third-party sites

Q. How to improve positions in the natural listings?

A. Processes include:

1. Crawling

2. Indexing

3. Ranking or scoring

4. Query request and results serving

Figure 9.5 Stages involved in producing search engine listing for the natural listing
Advantages and disadvantages of SEO

Advantages

• Traffic driver

• Highly targeted

• Potentially low-cost visitors

• Dynamic

Disadvantages

• Lack of predictability

• Time for results to be implemented

• Complexity and dynamic nature

• Ongoing investment

• Poor for developing awareness in comparison with other media channels

Paid search marketing

• Pay-per-click ads

• Sponsored links

• Product Listing Ads (PLAs): ads showing product images and prices

Paid advertising examples

• Google Ads (www.ads.google.com)

• Microsoft Bing (https://advertise.bingads.micro soft.com)

Advantages

• Advertiser is not paying for the ads to be displayed

• PPC advertising is highly targeted

• Good accountability

• Predictability

• Technically simpler than SEO

• Remarketing

• Prospecting with the customer match

• Branding

Disadvantages

• Competitive and expensive

• Inappropriate

• Requires specialist knowledge

• Time-consuming

• Irrelevant

Online influences and influencers relationship management

Online public relations (e-PR)

• Public relations are about reputations.

• The main online activity are media relations or managing outreach with different online
influences or key opinion leaders.
Advantages and disadvantages of online public relations

Advantages

• Reach

• Cost

• Credibility

• SEO

• Brand-enhancement and protection

Disadvantages

• Limited control unlike online advertising

• May generate negative as well as positive comments

Online partnerships including affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is known as:

• Pay-per-performance marketing

• Commission-based arrangement where the merchant only pays when they make the sale or
get a lead

Digital marketers have options for this type of marketing:

• Aggregators

• Review sites

• Reward sites

• Voucher code sites

Figure 9.9 The affiliate marketing model

Advantages

• SERPS visibility

• Reach different audiences

• Responsiveness to marketplace changes

• Target generic phrases in SERPs

• Increase reach in SERPs

• Generate awareness

• Pay-per-performance

Disadvantages

• Incremental profit or sales may be limited

• Affiliates may exploit your brand name

• May damage brand reputation

• Program management fees

• Program management time

Opt-in email marketing

• Cold-email campaign:

recipients receive an opt-in email from an organization that has rented an email list from a
consumer email list or trade publisher and event provider

• Co-branded email:

recipient receives an email with an offer from a company they have an affinity with and from
whom they have agreed to receive ads

• Third party e-newsletter:

a company publicizes itself in a third-party e-newsletter, and e-newsletter recipients tend to

engage with them by scanning the headlines or reading them

Advantages and disadvantages of email marketing

Advantages

• Relatively low cost

• Direct-response mechanism

• Faster deployments

• Ease of personalisation

• Options for testing

• Integration

Disadvantages

• Deliverability

• Renderability
• Email response decay

• Communication preferences

• Resource intensive

Social media and viral marketing

Social media marketing

• Monitoring and facilitating customer interaction and participation throughout the web to
encourage positive engagement with a company and its brands.

• Interactions may occur on a company site, social networks and other third-party sites.

Viral marketing

• Online viral marketing, or buzz marketing, is a form of electronic word-of-mouth

marketing. Brands and promotions are discussed and awareness of them transmitted in two
main forms, either as pass-along email or discussion in a social network.

• VM is closely related to social media and is a marketing approach which involves

harnessing the network effect of the Internet

• VM can be effective in reaching large number of people rapidly

Mountain Dew’s DEWmocracy campaign

Customers participate in lunching a new Mountain Dew flavor, from choosing and naming
the flavor to designing the can to submitting and selecting TV commercials and even picking
an ad agency and media.