TEMA 8.

DIGITAL MARKETING

planning marketing campaigns to achieve lead and sales targets is a regular and essential
activity for all types of organizations as they launch new products, offer promotions and seek
to generate demand for their brand propositions.

digital marketing has offered many new options for campaigns to achieve their objectives,
such as reaching the public through new channels like social networks.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL MEDIA

1. From push to pull

Traditional media such as print, TV and radio are push media – one-way streets where
information is mainly unidirectional, from company to customer.
Push media: Communications are issued from an advertiser to the consumers of the
message, who are passive receivers.
In contrast, many digital marketing activities such as content, search and social media
marketing involve pull media and inbound marketing.
Pull media and inbound marketing: The consumer is proactive in actively seeking out a
solution and interactions with brands and is attracted through content, search and
social media marketing

2. Interactive dialogues
Interactivity: The medium enables a dialogue between company and customer.
dialogue is a feature that differentiates digital marketing, it allows to create a long
term relationship between the customer and the company.

3. From one-to-many to one-to-some and one-to-one

Traditional push communications are one-to-many (from one company to many
customers), often the same message to different segments. e-marketers can afford to
tailor and target their message to different segments through providing different site
content or email for different audiences through mass-customisation and
personalization.

4. From one-to-many to many-to-many communications

Digital media also enable many-to-many communications. Here customers can interact
with other customers via a website, in independent communities or on their personal
websites and blogs.

5. From ‘lean-back’ to ‘lean-forward’

digital media must be well controlled and designed, because the customer wants to
find what he needs quickly and easily. if this does not happen, the customer will
abandon the site.
 6. The medium changes the nature of standard marketing communications tools such
as advertising (El medio cambia la naturaleza de las herramientas de comunicación
estándar, como la publicidad).
The wastage in traditional advertising where ads are either ignored or are
not relevant for an audience is reduced in online marketing, and search marketing in
particular.
Pay-for-performance communications: advertising models where the advertisers only
pay for a response (cost-per-click)
Four of the elements of the model that can limit the effectiveness of digital marketing
are:
- Encoding (codificacion): poor design and development of the website that makes
the public not understand the content
- Noise: This is the external influence that affects the quality of the message, e.g.
slow downloads or too much information on the screen
- Decoding (descodificacion): This is the process of interpreting the message, and is
dependent on the cognitive ability of the receiver
- Feedback. This occurs through online forms and through monitoring of on-site
behaviour through web analytics

1. Increase in communications intermediaries

digital media have many more communication options to reach customers than
traditional media.
The online marketer has to select the most select the most appropriate of these media
that customers visit to drive traffic to his own website.

2. Integration
we should combine and ntegrate traditional and digital media

3. Timing of campaign communications have additional ‘always-on’ and real-time

marketing components (El tiempo de las comunicaciones de la campaña tiene
componentes adicionales "siempre activos" y componentes de marketing en tiempo
real)
Another change in the timing of marketing campaigns and communications is from
forward planning of campaigns to a more agile, dynamic approach now known as real-
time marketing (and PR).
Real-time marketing (and PR): brands use social media advertising to help increase
their visibility and influence through positive brand mentions. they also respond to
negative brand mentions.
real time means that news is created in minutes, not days. it can also be broadcast
(difundir) instantly to a global audience.
companies can use memes and storytelling in their campaigns through newsjacking .
newsjacking: a brand seeks to take advantage of the interest generated by a current
viral story to create its advertising.

THE STEPS TO PLAN AN ONLINE CUSTOMER ACQUISITION CAMPAIGN ARE:

 1. GOAL SETTING AND TRACKING FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
(Establecimiento y seguimiento de objetivos para el marketing interactivo)

Digital marketers develop communications objectives for different timescales:

- Annual marketing communications objectives. objectives to be met annually, such

as achieving a certain number of new customers per year.
- Campaign-specific communications objectives. specific objectives of a time.
specific objectives established by the company to fulfill a specific campaign.

Brand- building campaigns: brand building campaigns are created to build brand awareness
and are carried out over the long term.

Direct-response campaigs: the campaign aims to create an immediate purchase intention. the
campaign is conducted in the short term.

Terminology for measuring digital campaigns: the main measures you will encounter in
models for campaign planning and reports from online campaigns are:

- Volume measures including clicks, visitor session and unique visitors:

Opportunities to see or impressions: average based on the number of times a
campaign ad has been viewed over a period of time
Visitor session: The period of time a visitor spends on a website, i.e. the time that
elapses between entering and leaving a website.
Unique visitor: Individual visitor to a site measured through cookies or the IP
address of an individual computer.

- Quality measures including conversion rates to action and bounce rate:

volume measures do not indicate whether the user stays on the site or leaves the
site. for that we use quality measures.
conversion rate is the best known quality metric and represents the proportion of
visitors who convert over a period of time into leads, sales or subscriptions.

Conversion rates can be expressed in two different ways – at the visit level (visit or
session conversion rate) or the unique visitor level (visitor conversion rate).
Visit or session conversion rate: An indication of the capability of a site in
converting visitors to defined outcomes such as registration. Calculated by dividing
the number of conversion events by the number of visitor sessions within a time
period.
Visitor conversion rate: same as above but divided into unique visitors (visitors
who accept cookies)

Conversion window: period of time between a customer's interaction with an

advertisement during which a result (purchase or non-purchase) occurs
Bounce rate: percentage of visitors who leave after entering the site for the first
time

- Media cost measures including cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand:

 Cost per click: The cost of each click from a referring site to a destination site, typically from a
search engine in pay-per-click search marketing.

Cost per thousand: The cost of sending an ad seen by 1,000 people.

- Acquisition cost measures including cost-per-action or acquisition:

Cost per acquisition: The cost of acquiring a new customer or achieving a sale. Typical cost
targets include: cost per acquisition of a visitor, of a lead and of a sale.

To control costs, it is important for managers to define a target (objetivo) allowable cost-per-
acquisition.

Allowable cost acquisition: A target maximum cost for generating leads or new customer
profitably

- Return on investment (ROI) or value measures (retorno de la inversion o medidas

del valor)

ROI is used to evaluate the profitability of any marketing activity. It is calculated by dividing the
profit generated by the amount spent on advertising.

a measure that does not take profitability into account is the return on advertising investment
(ROAS), which is calculated by dividing the revenue by the amount spent on advertising.

- Branding measure

measures that help the company to know what the brand generates in the customer, the
memory of the advertisement in the customer, purchase intention in our brand...

- Lifetime value-based ROI measures (Medidas del ROI basadas en el valor de la vida
útil)

Here the value of gaining the customer is not just based on the initial purchase, but the
lifetime value (and costs) associated with the customer.

Examples of digital campaign measures

An interactive marketing communications plan should have five main types of goals included:

1. Audience or traffic-building goals. These define targets for using online site promotion
and offline site promotion to drive quality visitors or traffic to a website or other social
presence that convert to the outcomes required (sales, lead, newsletter sign-up, social
interaction) at an acceptable cost.
2. Conversion or interaction goals: use communications to send effective messages to
the customer and create a need to buy
3. Third-party site reach and branding goals (Alcance del sitio de terceros y objetivos de
marca): It consists of interacting with the client on sites other than our website, such
as magazines, social networks...
4. Multichannel marketing goals. Integrate all methods of communication to help
achieve marketing objectives supporting mixed-mode buying.
 5. Longer-term brand engagement goals. sustain long-term interactions leading to
additional sales.

Online response mechanism (mecanismo de respuesta en línea)

The mechanisms that the company can use in a digital marketing campaign to obtain a
response from the client are:

1. Home page: in the majority of cases, investment in online media will be wasted if
visitors are driven from the media site to the home page of the destination website.
2. Microsite/landing page: A focused landing page or specially created microsite can
more effectively convert visitors
We can use a URL strategy to make the page easier to identify offline.
3. Company social media presence: add our advertising on social networks such as
instagram and from there lead the customer to our website
4. Personal (chat or call back): In this case the creative or landing page encourages
campaign respondents to ‘talk’ directly with a human operator. It is usually referred to
as a call-back service and integrates web and phone. The advantage of this approach is
that it engages the customer more and will typically lead to a higher conversion-to-
sale rate
5. Offline: phone, post or store: If part of a campaign is run online it does not mean that
offline responses should be excluded.

2. CAMPAIGN INSIGHT (informacion de la campaña)

Research into the target audience and how they select products and services within the
marketplace is core to a campaign planning approach. (client discovery process) .

This data is then used to inform campaign targeting and media selection.

Customer insight for digital marketing campaigns: There is a lot of information about customer
knowledge and the most suitable one for our campaign must be selected. We may use
different sources of information about the customer such as: average customer consumption,
competitor campaigns, customer search behavior.

3. SEGMENTATION AND TARGETING (segmentación y focalización)

Campaign targeting strategy defines the target audience or type of people that you need to
reach with your campaign communications. Targeting methods vary according to the market,
campaign and e-communications tools involved. A range of targeting and segmentation
approaches for a digital campaign: (Una serie de enfoques de orientación y segmentación
para una campaña digital)

- Relationship with company. Campaigns will often be intended to target new

contacts or existing contacts. Marketers have to consider whether it will be cost-
effective to have separate communications for new, existing and lapsed contacts –
or to target each of these groups in the same communications but using different
content aimed at each.
 - Demographic segmentation. This is typically based on age, gender or social group.
- Psychographic or attitudinal segmentation (Segmentación psicográfica o
actitudinal) This includes attitudes to risk and value when buying (e.g. those who
buy the product first, those who care about the price.).
- Value: higher value customers (the value of their purchases is higher) tend to have
different offers. digital channels are not suitable for higher value customers as
direct contact is better. digital channels will be used for lower value customers.
- Lifecycle stage. separate customers according to the purchase history they have
had during their life cycle in the company (number of products purchased,
categories purchased).
- Behaviour. Behavioural targeting is one of the big opportunities provided by digital
marketing. the company analyzes customer information about past behavior such
as link entries or purchases. this is used to estimate future behavior.

4. BIG IDEA, OFFER, MESSAGE DEVELOPMENT AND CREATIVE

companies simplify their message and offers to summarize the idea of the campaign. to be
effective, the campaign idea must include these areas:

- concept: original idea to attract the audience

- creativity: distinctive creativity such as a slogan

- viral element: the campaign idea must be easily transmitted.

- brand alignment (alineacion de marca): the creativity and concept must be in line with what
the brand intends to convey (transmitir)

- brand value messages: apart from achieving brand recall and recognition, we also want to
achieve brand familiarity, brand preference and purchase intent.

Which factors affect campaign effectiveness?

the main objective of digital media is the direct response, to achieve this objective it is
necessary to define the right offer, but there are also objectives to communicate the big idea
or to position the brand.

Finally, it is also important to consider the objectives of the offer – for example, capture
attention, develop interest or stimulate action. This may involve a primary offer and message;
the creative needs to stimulate desire and action with the secondary offer and message,
which:

- explains the benefits of the product to potential customers

- convinces hesitators and encourages them to click through

- attracts different types of people to the main offer

- it also has to get the action

Content marketing

content marketing should be at the heart of digital marketing for all types of brands, because
content fuels all the main digital marketing channels we use to communicate with our
audiences. Within a campaign, content is vital as the method of engaging the audience and
generating demand.

many companies are looking to create a content strategy as part of their digital marketing
campaign. as with all strategies, the company should review the current approach, specific
objectives and strategy development.

Selecting content or editorial themes for social media posting (seleccionar contenido o temas
editoriales para publicar en redes sociales).

companies regularly post on social networks to engage the audience with the objectives of
branding and direct response. defining a content calendar is useful to maintain engagement
with followers and meet communication objectives.

5. BUDGETING AND SELECTING THE DIGITAL MEDIA MIX (Presupuestar y seleccionar la

combinación de medios digitales)

Digital marketing campaign plans require three important decisions to be made about
investment for the online promotion or the online communications mix. These are:

1. Level of investment in digital media techniques in comparison to offline promotion: A

balance must be struck between online and offline communications techniques based on the
strengths and weaknesses of the different media options. Offline media are often superior in
generating attention, stimulating attention and gaining credibility. Online media tend to be
better at engagement due to personalisation, interaction and support of word of mouth.

Econometric modelling: A quantitative technique to evaluate the past influence or predict the
future influence on a dependent variable (typically sales in a marketing context) of
independent variables, which may include product, price, promotions and the level and mix of
media investments.

2. Selecting the right mix of digital media communications tools: When selecting the mix
(combinacion) of digital media for a campaign or longer-term investments, marketers will need
to determine the most appropriate mix and they may make this decision based on their
knowledge built up through experience of previous campaigns.

digital media make it possible to assess (evaluar) factors such as the ability to drive a response
and the quality of the response.

the company decides the optimal spending on different communication techniques by

analyzing the proportion of spending on different channels and comparing it to the number of
new customers created using the first channel.
Digital attribution modelling to asses the influence on sales by digital media channel
(Modelización de la atribución digital para evaluar la influencia en las ventas del canal de
medios digitales)

marketers must address digital media touch points across multiple channels that influence the
purchase. this is because rarely does the customer go to one website directly and buy, but
rather the customer visits several websites and finally decides which one to buy from.

In a multichannel business environment, it is very important to understand the efficiency and

cost-effectiveness of digital channels to maximize the effectiveness of a digital marketing
strategy.

the last click method of media channel attribution is a method that provides an approach for
attributing the influence of the different online media a customer consumes prior to purchase.

3. level of investment in digital assets (nivel de inversion en activos digitales)

Los activos digitales son las creatividades que soporta una campaña. Incluyen: anuncios
gráficos como pancartas, micrositios, plantillas de correo electrónico, video, audio, y otros
medios interactivos.

Las empresas tienen que decidir entre el gasto en publicidad creativa y el gasto en medios para
llevar a cabo las acciones.

6. INTEGRATION INTO OVERALL MEDIA SCHEDULE OR PLAN (Integración en el programa o

plan general de medios)

In common with other communications media, digital media are most effective when they are
deployed as part of an integrated marketing approach.

Integrated marketing: the plan to achieve communication objectives by sending messages

through different channels. focusing on the characteristics of each channel, and identifying its
strength, weaknesses and communication potential in relation to the message. For example,
Twitter has extensive reach, and is good for ‘short, witty and pithy messages

Key activities in media selection and planning

The starting point for media planning, selection and implementation is to have a clearly
defined campaign. objectives:
 - For direct response campaigns, the most important goals are response volume,
quality, and cost.
- For campaigns where awareness and branding are the primary results, brand
metrics become important.

Finally, here are five integration questions to ask when creating a campaign.

- Consistent branding and messaging. Are the brand and message similar enough?
(consistent) throughout the campaign?
- Varying the offer, messaging and creative through the campaign. Is offer and
messaging varied sufficiently through the campaign?
- Frequency (number) and interval of communications. Are you exposing the
audience? enough or too much to your messages?
- Sequencing of communications. Launch communications online first, offline first,
or at the same time.
- Optimizing timing. Do communications get delivered and received at the optimal
time?