Module: 2: Personas in Digital Marketing, Developing, Using and Refining

Personas, The Personas and User Journeys, Consumer Journey Mapping

Frameworks, Digital Marketing Mix and Digital Models, Content Marketing,
Email Marketing, Search Engine optimizations
 In marketing, a buyer persona is a conceptual profile of a brand’s ideal
customer. Businesses use this persona to develop a targeted marketing
strategy, considering this hypothetical customer’s demographic, income,
interests, and purchasing habits.

 A digital marketing persona is a way to hone your digital marketing efforts.

The more you know about your potential customers, the better you become
at communicating with them.
How to create a digital marketing persona

 To create a persona, digital marketers must complete the following tasks:

• Conduct market research: Find out who your customers are. You’ll want answers to
practical questions like their age, location, and income level, but also their interests,
aspirations, values, and routines.
• Analyze website data: Discover where your website visitors are coming from, the
keywords they use to find you, and how long they stay on your page. This will help you
understand your buyer’s journey.
• Look at customers’ relationship to your brand: What do your customers purchase
from your company, and how often? Are they repeat customers or one-time visitors?
 Putting this information together will reveal patterns that can help you create the profile
of your target customer. Many companies give their persona a name to further
humanize this ‘customer’ for digital marketers. You can distill the information into a
short paragraph or create a resumé-style cheat sheet that lists all the relevant data.
 Digital marketing persona example
 Here’s an example of a digital marketing persona for a travel company.
Danielle, age 45, nurse
1. Married with three children
2. Owns a house in the suburbs of Dublin, Ireland
3. Husband Dave works as an accountant
4. Finances can be tight, but they always save for one vacation a year
5. Busy lifestyle with late shifts at the hospital, caring for her children, and managing the household — she
needs a break
6. Active on Facebook, where she gets the majority of her news
7. Values spending quality time with her family
 With the persona of Danielle in mind, the travel company can focus its marketing
efforts on showcasing affordable family vacations.
 Digital marketing personas are an excellent way to ensure your campaigns are perfectly
tailored to your customer base. Take some time to craft your ideal customer profile and
watch your marketing efforts soar.
One big advantage of online marketing over traditional marketing is the ability to gather
and analyze data in real-time. Digital marketing teams can make data-driven decisions to
achieve their business and marketing goals.
Digital marketing examples
Below are two digital marketing examples:
Uber
 The ride-sharing app Uber has disrupted the taxi services industry since it
launched its first ride in 2010. Uber uses Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as its main digital
marketing channels, using social media to engage with customers and propagate positive,
inclusive messaging about connectivity and social awareness. By connecting its messaging to
cultural issues, customers feel a greater sense of connection to the brand.
Netflix
 The online movie streaming app Netflix has expanded into 190 countries worldwide. Netflix uses
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram and actively engages with customers
across its social media channels. The brand creates relatable, culturally relevant, and
entertaining social content, sometimes crowdsourcing product improvement decisions from
customers using polls.
Digital Marketing Strategy Frameworks

 A digital marketing strategy framework is like a compass guiding you towards your
marketing goals. Without one, executing successful marketing projects and campaigns
is challenging and unpredictable.
 Every company has different marketing goals and activities. With many moving pieces
and collaborators, a digital marketing strategy framework brings structure to the digital
marketing process.
 Marketers can save time by modeling their frameworks from existing frameworks
instead of starting from scratch with each new marketing project.
 Digital marketing strategy frameworks help develop an effective marketing plan. Nearly 40% of marketers
do not think their digital marketing strategy is effective. This failure is mainly due to a lack of planning and
digital marketing models — or using the wrong model to achieve your marketing goals.
 Digital marketing strategy frameworks help marketers:
1. Develop successful digital marketing plans by identifying critical actions for each stage of the customer
journey
2. Identify roadblocks to conversions by analyzing the entire customer journey and past marketing
performance
3. Recognize opportunities to drive customers towards the desired action
4. Avoid gaps in hand-offs by creating harmony between collaborating teams
5. Create a smooth experience and minimize friction at every customer touchpoint
Examples of digital marketing strategy frameworks
RACE planning
 RACE planning is a popular example of a digital marketing strategy framework. RACE stands for Reach,
Act, Convert and Engage, and focuses on sales growth.
 Reach: Building brand awareness and visibility are the main goals of the 'Reach' process. This includes
generating website traffic, external links, social media interactions, and earned media.
• Act: 'Act' entails persuading visitors to take a specific action on a website, sales page, or social media
account. Bounce rate, average time spent on a web page, and the number of subscribers are key metrics for
this stage.
• Convert: 'Convert' focuses on converting passionate followers into paying clients. Conversion rate, number
of leads, sales, and revenue growth are key performance indicators.
• Engage: 'Engage' is the process of developing authentic relationships with customers to increase retention.
Customer churn rate and repeat customer rate are two critical performance measures.
Marketing funnel
 This is one of the most commonly used digital marketing strategy frameworks. It
illustrates the customer journey from when prospective customers discover a company's
products to when they purchase. The marketing funnel is divided into four stages:
• Awareness: This is when a prospective customer discovers a brand through
direct digital marketing channels such as targeted online ads or indirect digital
marketing channels such as search engine optimization (SEO).
• Interest: In this stage, the customer's interest is sufficiently piqued by visiting the
company's owned media channels to learn more about their product.
• Consideration: This is when a potential customer begins contemplating a product as a
solution to their problem.
• Action: Here, the customer decides to patronize the company and purchase a product.
How to Use Buyer Personas to Improve Your Marketing
Strategy
1. Segment Your Email Lists
 Buyer personas can help you create customized email campaigns that are better at
converting subscribers into customers. With email segmentation, you can organize your
email lists by persona and send offers that are targeted to each group’s respective
preferences.
 And the more targeted you can make each email, the more likely it is that your
audience will engage with it. In fact, emails with personalized subjects are
50% more likely to be opened.
2. Identify Influencers
 Influencer marketing is emerging as a highly popular aspect of modern marketing
strategies. The perks of it are that you can leverage the voice of someone who already
has the ear of your best buyers.
 To start, identify influencers who speak directly to your buyer personas, then reach out
to see if you can form a partnership in order to leverage products or share content.
 Additionally, influencers could be customer advocates! In a survey conducted by
TrustRadius, 84% of participants said they would be willing to do more than they
already have in terms of advocacy, and an additional 27% said they would be willing to
provide a testimonial for the vendor.
3. Time Your Marketing Campaigns
 Each of your personas operate a little differently. Some check their emails first thing in
the morning, while others choose to check them at the end of their day.
 In fact, the best times to email are typically in the morning between 10:00- 11:30 AM,
and the time between 2 PM and 5 PM also sees good activity.
 Using tools like Google Analytics to identify peak engagement rates, and you can judge
what time your campaigns will reach the most buyers. Ultimately, buyer personas make
your marketing campaigns more effective when you know when and how to deploy
them.
4. Select the Right Channels
 Certain personas are more active on specific channels. Marketers can analyze their
personas and determine where their target audience is spending the most time — where
will they most likely see the content you distribute?
 Once you’ve figured out which channels your buyer personas frequent, you can
distribute personalized messages on those preferred channels.
 Furthermore, buyer personas allow you to align messaging and communication on all
channels, promoting brand unity and increasing awareness.
5. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize
 There are really unique ways in which you can personalize your marketing and
marketing automation efforts using buyer personas. And when you personalize your
marketing automation efforts, you can begin to drive different personas into different
marketing funnels.
 Other ways to utilize buyer personas for marketing personalization are:
• Referencing different kinds of content already written for each persona
• Create personalized responsive website content
• Personalize alternate nurture drip campaigns
6. Review Marketing Personas Regularly
 Over time your marketing personas are going to change — the people behind them
have to constantly adapt to their transforming markets. If your buyer personas become
outdated, your marketing efforts will fall out of reach.
 On an annual basis (or more), you should look over the pain points and emerging
opportunities attached to your buyer personas. Challenges your target accounts faced a
year ago could be completely different today — buyer personas aren’t immortal.
The Personas and User Journeys

 Customer Journey Map

 It can be challenging for an organization or a product team to get into the minds of its
users.
 Often times, you might be left wondering why a user is spending so much time
performing a particular action (an example could be on an e-commerce website where
the customer is spending a lot of time adding products to their cart)
 or why does it take him/her several steps to get from Point A to Point B when it should
only take a few!
 Whatever your issue might be, the root cause of this is that you don’t have a clear grasp
of the customer journey. This is where a CJM comes into picture.
 CJM is a visualization technique which allows you to see how your users/customers
are interacting with your business over time and across channels (e.g. mobile,
website, laptop, social media etc.).
 A CJM allows you to:
• Understand the entire journey which a user takes to accomplish their goal when using
your product or service.
• Get a better understanding of (and subsequently improve) their experience when using
your product/service.
• Retain users!
example of CJM.
 In this CJM, there is a person named Eric who is impulsive, wants to buy a car and
wants to do his research online. He has certain expectations of an “ideal” website
which he can use to both search for new cars and also the dealership which will sell
him the car.
Specifically, Eric wishes that the website should have:
• Ability to compare cars and their breakdowns.
• Good photography with closeups, inside and out
• Video overview of car with demonstrations
 He comes across a website and starts searching for cars and also dealerships. The
following CJM describes his entire journey when he is doing all of this!
 It describes his frustrations, his expectations of when he is frustrated about how the
website “should have been designed” and also some moments where the design of the
website made him happy! Now to flesh out this CJM is a cumbersome process.
The Google Customer Journey Framework

 Very similar to the RACE planning framework, the Google framework focuses
on four stages:
 1. See (awareness): the customer is still passive and unconscious;
 2. Think (consideration): the customer considers options;
 3. Do (purchase/conversion): the buying moment;
 4. Care (loyalty): the customer repeats the purchase and spreads the word.
 Although the RACE framework is used as the basis for the Digital Marketing
Minor, the Google framework is also often used by companies in their business
and marketing strategies. Therefore, having knowledge of both will definitely be
of great use in your future career.
Customer Journey Stages

 These three steps generally make up most journeys: Awareness, Consideration, and
Conversion. These stages are most suitable for offline purchases.
 With the progress of digital platforms, two critical additions appear in the customer
experience: Retention and Advocacy. These new stages explore brand touchpoints
with online shoppers.
1. Awareness

 Awareness involves spreading general information about your products and services to
your target audience(s).
 During the customer awareness stage of the journey, consumers search for solutions
and encounter multiple brands and products.
 What consumers are doing: During this step, consumers are likely conducting
research. This can include searching online for solutions to keyword problems, reading
blog posts and news articles, browsing online forums, and first meeting brands.
2. Consideration

 Brands focus on promotion during the consideration stage of the journey. This is where
customers begin to look for alternatives to past purchases. During this phase, your
business strives to convince potential buyers to include you on the list of available
options.
 Your brand will most likely be considered alongside others, so make sure every
impression you make counts.
 At this point, consumers are directly interacting with your brand, and you want them to
stick around for the next step in the customer journey.
 What consumers do: Research specific brands and products, compare competitors, and
evaluate your priorities. This could include looking closely at your product and service
specifications and features, examining customer support policies, and turning to direct
comparison reviews.
3. Conversion

 This stage prompts visitors to take a particular action. Using a dedicated call-to-action
(CTA), you encourage customers to make a purchase, subscribe to a mailing list, or
sign up for services. You should use this phase to sell your product as the best fit to
solve a visitor’s problem.
 It is your moment to make or break during the Customer Journey. Once potential
customers are satisfied with researching and comparing their options, they will
eventually decide.
 Sometimes they find that none of the brands they’ve been considering offer what
they’re looking for. If they make a favorable decision, they want to make the process
easier by choosing their trusted products.
 What consumers are doing: They are considering factors like price vs. value,
customer service responsiveness, company values, and policies. When they’re in the
decision phase, it’s not just about product specifications or the shopping experience.
4. Retention
 At this point, you already have a new customer – Congratulations! All that planning and
asset building is paying off when they get to this phase. The consumer has decided to
make their purchase with you, but don’t assume it’s a done deal.
 A loyal customer brings an organization consistent business and costs less than the effort
to bring in new customers. A study by Bain & Company discovered that loyal customers
are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.
 Retention includes keeping customers happy with a relationship management/customer
success team to stop them from leaving and take them as many as possible to the next
and final stage – make them so loyal to your brand that they want to advocate for your
product and/or service.
 What consumers are doing: Depending on your business model, customers are taking
advantage of this moment to buy your products online, with a physical retailer, or are
booking a service they plan to experience soon.
 Once they have the product or service, they will start to implement their purchase and if
they go through the phase successfully, you will earn their customer loyalty.
5. Advocacy

 Most organizations acknowledge the benefits of word-of-mouth (WOM). However, few

companies commit to a plan for boosting customer advocacy. Encouraging each customer to
share reviews or opinions can take time and money. Reaching out to influencers or guest
bloggers is an effective alternative to traditional word-of-mouth.
 Enthusiastic customers are more likely to recommend your brand and products to a friend,
which can be a deal-breaker for many.
 When you keep your customers happy and exceed their expectations with innovation and
excellent customer service, the customer journey shortens and transaction costs decrease.
 What consumers are doing: At this point, customers are using your offerings to address their
needs. The better the results and experience they get with your product, the more likely they
will buy again and recommend you.
 They can also begin to engage with your brand more casually on social media and plan their
next purchase.
Customer Journey Analysis

 Understanding the organization from the customer’s point of view brings new ideas and
opinions to the table. Customer Journey Analytics does precisely that – it analyzes customer
viewpoints about products so that you can make appropriate changes to keep customers loyal
to your brand. Use data from customers to implement improved marketing strategies.
 The analysis involves three stages: gathering accurate information, developing
customer personas, and analyzing customer interactions.
 Here is how customer journey analysis is beneficial in gathering information:
• Clearly defines all customer interaction points.
• Evaluates how the journey progresses from beginning to end.
• Analyzes the impact on customer loyalty and brand shareability according to customer
interaction points.
• Highlights areas that waste a customer’s time to improve efficiency.
• Generalize the journey of similar audiences to make improvements and keep customers
satisfied.
Customer Journey communication channels
• On-site: Capture feedback in the moment customers visit businesses with physical
locations. For example, let’s say you run a restaurant. Give diners a short survey to
complete along with their bill at the end of their meal.
• Email: Sending emails is one of the easiest ways to get customer feedback. Set up your
sales system to trigger an email after a customer completes a purchase.
• Call center: After every customer interaction, you can collect feedback via email
or phone-based survey.
• In-App: For app developers, collecting responses without leaving the app is ideal. An
in-app survey allows users to continue enjoying the app while still providing you with
feedback.
• Website: Your prospects browse your site to consider becoming customers. Once
customers, continue visiting for support and account access. Gathering feedback on
your website is essential to a holistic customer experience approach.
Using Personas in making a customer journey map

 While there are several steps involved in making a CJM, the most important step is
making a user persona.
 A user persona forms the backbone on the basis of which a good CJM is made.
 If you take a look at the CJM template which I have shared below, you can see that a
user persona is presented in the same CJM, and the pain points, expectations and
frustrations of the persona would be represented in the CJM.
 Personas are a tool that helps you take a user-centric approach to customer journey
mapping: they help you to really define the tasks that your users want to complete and
their needs and pain points in doing so across the customer journey.
 If there is one persona which you need to make, then this is a relatively straightforward
process.
Say for instance, you need to make persona for Eric (on whom the above CJM is based),
then the process would look like:
• Contact Eric and users similar to Eric and agree for a suitable time for interviewing.
• While interviewing, understand more about him, his needs and wants from an online
car shopping portal.
• Make a persona which describes Eric the best.
• You observe Eric when he is searching for a car online and makes a purchasing
decision.
• Based on your observations, you draft a CJM.
Digital Marketing Models
1. 7 Ps of the marketing mix
2. Growth-share Matrix
3. USP
4. RACE model
5. The 4 Cs
6. The Honeycomb model
7. The ACCD model
8. The STDC model
9. PR Smith’s SOSTAC model
7P’s of Digital Marketing Mix and Digital Models

 The digital marketing mix is an expansion of Kotler’s traditional marketing tools. The 7
Ps of Digital Marketing mix include product, price, place, promotion, people, process,
and physical evidence.
1. Product

 Product refers to the ‘thing’ you offer that your target audience wants. This can be a
physical, tangible item, or an intangible service. From clothing or water bottles to home
insurance or a digital marketing agency, a product is the item or service the user seeks
to fill a need.
 Think of the product in terms of supply and demand. All consumers have wants and
needs. You are in business because you offer something that is wanted or needed by a
consumer. Your product supplies that consumer’s demand.
 Focus on the Consumer First
 A lot of businesses think they have a great product and then try to market it to the
public and fail. Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, reports that
over 30,000 new products are launched every year, only 5% of which succeed.
 Most times, it’s because of poor market research. They have not asked the fundamental
question: Why do people want this?
 If there’s no need for your product, it won’t sell. Understand the consumer
demand first and then design your product around that need. From there, identify your
unique selling point (USP) that makes your product valuable to buyers and
differentiates you from competitors.
2. Price
 Price is what the consumer is willing to pay for your product. While it’s a generally easy
concept to understand, it can be tricky for many businesses to apply — prices that are too
high push users to search elsewhere; prices that are too low cut into your profit margins.
 Understanding your target audience and the relationship between perceived benefits, price,
and value can help simplify the process. If perceived benefits increase or price decreases, the
perceived value should generally go up. But if perceived benefits decrease or the price
increases, the perceived value goes down.
 Factors That Affect Product Pricing:
 There are so many factors that can impact the price of your product, some of the most
common including
1. Competitive offerings and prices
2. Market share
3. Product branding and quality
4. Materials or input costs
5. Customers’ perceived product value and fair price.
3. Place

 Place refers to where the consumer is able to purchase your product. It solves the
complicated process of getting the product from the manufacturer into the hands of
buyers.
 Traditionally, place referred to strictly brick-and-mortar locations. But the internet has
added some complexities to this principle of the digital marketing mix, opening the
door for many more distribution channels to meet consumers where they are.
 Ecommerce sites can be an incredibly useful place to sell your product. In 2021,
retail eCommerce retail sales exceeded $5 trillion US dollars globally — a number
that’s projected to rise above $8 trillion by 2026.
4. Promotion

 Jim Blyth defines promotion as “the marketing communications used to make the offer
known to potential customers and persuade them to investigate it further.” Simply put,
it’s your strategy for getting people to notice your product or service.
 Thanks to modern technology, businesses have more channels than ever to
communicate through. A few examples can include sponsored ads, Instagram posts,
email newsletters, and much more.
5. People

 In the digital marketing mix, people refers to anyone who represents your product and
comes in contact with the consumer. Aside from your customer service team or sales
force, people can include your employees, business partners, or anyone that consumers
associate with your brand.
 It’s important you’re hiring people who understand your brand’s vision and believe in
your goals. You should be able to trust that when they come in contact with customers,
they’re representing your brand in a positive light.
 This is increasingly important if your brand is on social media.
6. Process

 Process is defined as the core tasks and operations required to deliver the product or
service to your customer. This can refer to anything from logistics and shipment and
delivery to wait times and check-out processes.
 If your customers find your processes to be too complicated — for instance, the time
from placing an order to receiving it is too long — you’re likely to lose out on future
sales.
 Listening to customer feedback can be a really useful tool for defining your process
strategy. Take customer complaints as an opportunity to reevaluate your current process
and strategize how to fix it.
7. Physical Evidence

 The final P in the digital marketing mix is physical evidence. It’s the proof that your
product or service exists and is credible. In the online universe, your brand’s digital
footprint can serve as your physical evidence.
 Your website is the most important measure of physical evidence for most people. If
it’s up-to-date and easy to navigate, your brand can seem more trustworthy.
 Personal touches like thank you notes, confirmation emails, and receipts after a
purchase can be another piece of physical evidence to keep your brand top-of-mind for
customers.
 Additionally, it’s important your brand is represented on social media. You should be
prioritizing creating solid brand awareness across multiple platforms and channels.
Existing on these platforms and staying active can build credibility.
Growth-Share Matrix
 The growth share matrix is a portfolio management framework that helps companies
decide how to prioritize their different businesses. It is a table, split into four quadrants,
each with its own unique symbol that represents a certain degree of profitability:
question marks, stars, pets (often represented by a dog), and cash cows.
 The matrix’s symbols for the four corners are as follows:
• Stars: The growth-share matrix stars high-growth, high-market-share opportunities.
The stars in the upper right quadrant represent the best investment options.
• Cows: The bottom right quadrant represents low-growth, high-market-share potential.
Cows initially make a lot of money but may not be good for development.
• Question marks: The upper left quadrant has a low market share but significant
growth. The question mark signifies market uncertainty.
• Pets (usual dogs): Low-growth, low-market-share opportunities are in the bottom left
quadrant. A dog symbol can represent opportunities the corporation should discard or
reposition.
USP
 Unique Selling Proposition (USP) may separate your company from the competition!
 The USP model spells out your company’s values, how you plan to differentiate
yourself from competitors, and why clients should choose you.
 Focusing on what makes your company and its products stand out from the competition
will help you create a strong USP.
 A strong USP is:
• Convincing: A unique perspective that requires you to argue against competing items
making it more memorable than a generic one.
• Focused on your consumers’ values: “Unique” doesn’t matter if your target customers
don’t care.
• Beyond slogans: Your USP can be expressed in your return policy, supplier chain, and
motto.
Head & Shoulders has made a name for themselves
through their USP

 Although this unique selling proposition is nothing new…they belong on every list of
best USPs because they paved the way.
 Head & Shoulders has one of the most famous unique selling proposition examples of
all time. Clinically proven to reduce dandruff — so simple yet so powerful.
 This company did so well with defining their unique selling proposition that Head &
Shoulders is almost synonymous with anti-dandruff. That’s the power of your unique
selling proposition.
 What makes their statement so assuring is the social proof and use of statistics.
Clinically proven will catch any consumer’s eye, as well as “100% dandruff
protection.”
 RACE Model

 RACE is the next model in the list of 9 popular digital marketing models.
 The RACE model encourages you to define simple goals and arrange your digital
marketing strategy into bite-sized chores. This simplification makes it easy to see the
strengths and weaknesses of your approach, so you can quickly make changes and
improve it.
 All four RACE model steps must be performed constantly and concurrently for optimal
results.
 RACE can be adjusted and applied to all sizes and types of B2B and B2C businesses,
including small firms, startups, and bigger organizations undergoing digital
transformation.
RACE Framework example - NETFLIX

 Reach : Netflix Approaches its potential Customers with a very attractive

offer: 1 Month for free.
 Act : Then, Netflix studies what each user likes the most and shows them
different Suggestions:
• Highlighting the Series, Movies or Documentaries that suit them best.
 Convert
 After that month, if Netflix has hit the right “key”, the user will sign up for a full
account.
 Engage : Netflix engages its users by developing its own original productions
The 4 Cs

 It consists of customer, cost, communication, and convenience.

• Customer: Value, competitive advantage, and market positioning. The 4Cs marketing
method requires you to clearly define your target customer and consider reaching out to
more than one group.
• Cost: Satisfaction, affordability, and value. The 4Ps Matrix considers cost from the
seller’s or manufacturer’s perspective, whereas the 4Cs consider cost from the
consumer’s perspective.
• Communication: Customer interaction, WIIFM (What’s in it for me?), and social
media. Always tailor your communication to each target. Each group has its own way
of talking.
• Convenience: Online sales, purchasing hurdles. Today’s fast-paced world values
comfort. Don’t underestimate its impact on your customer’s purchase.
 The 4 Cs model can help any marketing strategy in many ways. This strategy forces
marketers to really get to know their audience before making a product. It also requires
communication throughout the whole process, from beginning to end.
The Honeycomb Model
 All social media marketers, users, and platforms work within the Honeycomb model,
which shows the most important forces in the social media ecosystem.
 Each of its seven blocks illustrates an effective social use:
• Relationships: Managing the structural and flow properties in a
network of relationships
• Groups: Membership rules and protocols
• Conversations: the amount of user-to-user interaction.
• Reputation: Monitoring the strength, passion, sentiment, and
reach of users and brands
• Sharing: Users’ information exchange, distribution, and reception.
• Presence: Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and
immediacy of the context
• Identity: Data privacy controls and tools for user self-promotion
The ACCD Model
 ACCD is an inbound marketing term that refers to the process of converting a buyer
into a customer. It stands for attract, convert, close, and delight. This generally includes
emails, content, social media, and customer service techniques. These help customers
move from being visitors to leads to customers to promoters.
 SEO experts are familiar with this approach because it’s based on trust and
competence, not a sales pitch. Inbound is the focus.
The STDC Model

 The See-Think-Do-Care (STDC) Model is another simple but effective way to run a
business. It could completely change how you reach and engage your target audience.
 It’s fascinating since it’s oriented toward the customer rather than the business. This
sets it apart from other widely used models. There are four distinct groups of audience
goals that are represented across the stages.
 The approach can be used for all common digital marketing strategies, such as content
marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), social
media marketing (SMM), and display advertising (DMA). It teaches you to determine
which resource best suits a certain phase of the customer’s journey. Banner ads are an
example of display advertising.
PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Model
 The final model of digital marketing models is SOSTAC. SOSTAC stands for
situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, action, and control. It can help you identify
process flaws.
 Everything you do in marketing needs the plan to help you reach your goals and boost
digital growth.
 SOSTAC’s processes—
1. identifying existing conditions,
2. establishing your goals,
3. building your strategy,
4. outlining how you’ll execute your strategy,
5. working your plan, and
6. assessing these actions to ensure you’re accomplishing your goals
Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Search Engine optimizations

Content Marketing
 Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an
audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.
This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your
business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.
 Content marketing is a go-to tactic that’s proven to work. Also, it provides a
competitive advantage. Take a look at what the data says about content marketing:
• Businesses with blogs get 67% more leads than other companies.
• 67% of business to business (B2B) marketers say B2B content marketing
increases engagement and the number of leads they generate.
• 88% of people credit branded videos for convincing them to purchase a
product or service.
How to get started with content marketing
Content marketing and SEO
 Keywords are the foundation of your SEO effort. These all-important words and
phrases are the terms a prospect types into a search engine when they’re looking for a
company, product, or service.
 When you include the right keywords in your content, you’ll attract more traffic. The
best keywords are:
• Plain-language: language your audience uses to describe their pain points and needs
• Relevant: keywords that match the expertise, products, and services you provide
• Specific: a combination of your focus, industry expertise, prospect pain points, and
other relevant details
 SEO has evolved so that search success depends in part on how well your content does
what it says it’ll do. Search engines review content copy, assess its relevance, and
determine whether it delivers on what the headline promises.
 Because of the importance, Use the following guidelines:
• Focus on 1 to 2 keywords. Avoid “keyword stuffing” by writing about what matters to
your prospects with a focus on just a few keyword phrases.
• Use keywords in the title. Make what the article is about clear and explicit.
• Use keywords throughout. Find a way of naturally incorporating your keywords into
your content.
• Stay on topic. Good-quality content that provides advice related to a headline will
perform best.
Social media and content marketing
 Once you have content, it’s time to get the word out about it. Social media—Facebook,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Medium, Instagram, and others—is a proven and easy
way to promote your content. You write a post and link to your content, and then voila!
People are engaged.
 You can do this through 3 steps:
1. Focus on high-potential channels. The best social media outlets for you are the ones
frequented by your audience.
2. Craft your copy to fit the channel. Before you write posts for a channel, spend some
time reviewing posts to familiarize yourself with these details. Then, give your posts
some of your own company spirit.
3. Test and modify your approach. A winning social media promotion effort involves trial
and error. Track responses from the various channels for quantity and quality.
Email Marketing

 Email marketing is a form of marketing that can make the customers on your email list
aware of new products, discounts, and other services.
 It can also be a softer sell to educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep
them engaged between purchases. It can also be anything in between.
History of email
 The very first email was sent in 1971 by a computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson.
The message he sent was just a string of numbers and letters, but it was the beginning
of a new era of communication. Tomlinson was also the person who introduced the
usage of the “@” symbol in email addresses.
build your email marketing list
 Don’t buy email lists. Many email marketing companies have a strict, permission-based policy when it
comes to email addresses, which means that sending to purchased lists is prohibited.
 Instead, concentrate on encouraging folks to opt into receiving messages from you by using lead
magnets. You could offer a discount on your customers' first orders when they sign up for your email
list via a custom signup form. Or maybe you can offer new subscribers free shipping on their next
order—or give them a chance to win a prize when they join your list. Here are some more tips to help
you build an email list.
 Be aware of national (and international) email regulations. Make sure you adhere to any legal
requirements and applicable laws in your area when sending automated emails, like the
CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL), or the
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union for the treatment of personal
information.
 Use email to have a conversation with your customers. Consider taking the occasional break from
your regular marketing content to send out surveys, tell you customers how much you appreciate them
after buying from you, following up after an abandoned cart, or just say hello. Not only does it give
your audience a chance to provide you with valuable feedback, but it also allows them to get more
insight into the person behind the business.
 Only send when you really need to. Once someone has trusted you with their email address, don’t
abuse that trust. Flooding your audience’s inbox with superfluous emails will cause them to lose
interest or unsubscribe entirely. Focus on sending them relevant, engaging messages about the stuff
they like, and they'll be loyal for a long time to come.
SEO? How does it work?

 SEO stands for search engine optimization.

 SEO practitioners optimize websites, web pages and content for the purposes of
ranking higher in search engines, like Google.
 SEO is a set of practices designed to improve the appearance, positioning, and
usefulness of multiple types of content in the organic search results.
 This content can include web pages, video media, images, local business listings, and
other assets. Utilizing SEO best practices is essential for ensuring that the digital
content you publish can be found and chosen by the public, increasing your website’s
organic traffic.