The new digital era has enabled brands to selectively target their customers that may potentially be interested in their brand or based on previous browsing interests. Businesses can now use social media to select the age range, location, gender and interests of whom they would like their targeted post to be seen by. Furthermore, based on a customer's recent search history they can be ‘followed’ on the internet so they see advertisements from similar brands, products and services,[38] This allows businesses to target the specific customers that they know and feel will most benefit from their product or service, something that had limited capabilities up until the digital era.
This guide is designed for you to read cover-to-cover. Each new chapter builds upon the previous one. A core idea that we want to reinforce is that marketing should be evaluated holistically. What you need to do is this in terms of growth frameworks and systems as opposed to campaigns. Reading this guide from start to finish will help you connect the many moving parts of marketing to your big-picture goal, which is ROI.
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“1. Use a sticky navigation bar: A ‘sticky’ navigation bar can help people explore ‘Edgar’ in a comfortable and controlled manner. People like to explore websites without them feeling that they are losing control. Even if they never use the navigation bar, it can still have a positive impact on the overall experience. Not having control can potentially trigger a feeling of stress which can cause people to leave the site and therefore increase bounce rates. (Think of the analogy of a GPS in your car)
Landing page copy is an underleveraged, powerful tool. Done right, it builds brand, engenders trust, and sells product—to anyone with an internet connection, on their schedule. But it’s not automatic. Landing page copy must deliver a convincing first impression, consider the maturity of the market, and reflect the customer’s stage of awareness. It must meet prospects where they are and get them to where they—and the business—want them to be. Once it does, hand waves became high fives, and high fives turn into handshakes—and conversions can happen without much human intervention.
Have been through many rounds of A/B testing. Testing and correction is how we learn and better ourselves. A/B testing your landing page (tweaking individual elements and seeing how they perform against the previous setup) is probably the most powerful tool in creating excellent landing pages. Not sure where to start? Signal vs. Noise provides a nice example of good A/B testing that’s an easy read. There are always things you can do to improve, so don’t ever stop testing!
Before sending your email to your list, send a test email first to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and see how it will look to them. Research from Litmus shows that 71% of people will delete an email immediately if it doesn’t display correctly, so use this test email to ensure your email is a high standard and everything is functioning perfectly.
When compared to other forms of marketing such as direct mail - email marketing gives you a degree of visibility that direct mail cannot match. With direct mail, when your mailer lands on the door mat, you don’t know how people are reacting to what you’ve sent - do they read it, keep it to read later or just throw it away. With email marketing, you have access to all of this information, at your fingertips.
As you can see from the example above, emails following the model contain a succinct headline that highlights the key message of the campaign, as well as supporting information and visuals to help convince readers about the benefits of clicking-through. The reader is then presented with a prominent call to action button that makes it crystal clear what to do next.
Digital marketing activity is still growing across the world according to the headline global marketing index. A study published in September 2018, found that global outlays on digital marketing tactics are approaching $100 billion.[40] Digital media continues to rapidly grow; while the marketing budgets are expanding, traditional media is declining (World Economics, 2015).[41] Digital media helps brands reach consumers to engage with their product or service in a personalised way. Five areas, which are outlined as current industry practices that are often ineffective are prioritizing clicks, balancing search and display, understanding mobiles, targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic, and cross-platform measurement (Whiteside, 2016).[42] Why these practices are ineffective and some ways around making these aspects effective are discussed surrounding the following points.
Non-profit corporations and political entities use Internet marketing to raise awareness about the issues they address and engage individuals in their campaigns. They strongly favor social networking platforms because they are more personal than websites and they are easy to share, increasing the “viral” word-of-mouth effect that is so prevalent in online media.
