 Hi, welcome. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone. This is Unit 5 on Marketing Communications as part of your strategic marketing course. For the course layout, Unit 5 is on Marketing Communications and it is the last unit of the course. Here are the learning outcomes for this unit. Describe eight types of digital marketing strategies. Identify six metrics for measuring the success of digital marketing strategies. Relate cultural and legal factors. Justify why a company should use social media. Compare six major social media platforms. Examine content marketing and assess the use of email marketing. Why are learning outcomes so important? So every one of your learning outcomes ties back to your course materials and content and this includes assessments and test preparation. And then here are our overview topics for Unit 5. So digital marketing strategies identify metrics to measure digital marketing strategies, cultural and legal factors, social media platforms, content marketing, and email marketing. And these are the vocabulary terms that we're going to be discussing today that are part of the unit. So creating a digital marketing strategy is a good idea and should be part of any marketing plan. So using digital marketing to connect with consumers will help any marketer to promote product services or the brand. So there's numerous ways to include digital marketing in the marketing plan. These may include email, website marketing, content marketing, maybe targeted ads on social media, video creation, or even search engine optimization or SEO. They might include mobile device marketing or even text messages that offer a sales discount when the loyal customer is in the area. So when you're putting together your digital marketing strategy, it's important to consider that these connections be interactive and so that they can gain the attention of the consumer. For example, if a consumer searches for air conditioning repair on their cell phone in the morning and then later in the day they check into Facebook, they may find an air conditioning repair discount coupon on their page. So this is one way of interacting with the consumer on their level and it's known to have a higher response rate while the overall cost of the ads are low. So if the consumer is still looking for air conditioning repair, they will see these coupons as useful and maybe click on the advertisement. This type of interaction is beneficial for both the consumer and the business. Okay, so when we look at digital marketing and we look at your marketing plan in particular, it covers quite a bit of information. So some of these we've talked about in there. The biggest one in there is search engine marketing. So SEO is search engine optimization and essentially it is how high up on a Google search or a Yahoo search, how high up do you come? When a customer Googles, maybe you have an HVAC company, they, a customer Googles an air conditioning company, how high up and your city maybe, how high up do you come in on that search? If you're on page five, the odds are that the customer is never going to see that. It is really important to make sure that your SEO ranking is high and there's a bunch of ways that you can do that but one of them is content. So there on the left in that little red bubble it says SEO and content. So maybe you create lengthy content for a blog that's on your main website and then you take that content and repurpose it a little bit, change it up a little bit as some of it like a shorter version maybe to Facebook or Instagram. Maybe you create a video that might go to one or two websites or you can tweak it a couple of times to make it look like it's different content but all of those things help you if your longer content is on your website that may give your website higher ranking. A bunch of things when you really are thinking about your digital marketing to consider. So not only are you considering which social media am I going to put this on but also what kind of content? Are we looking at reviews? Are we looking at a blog? Are we looking at some kind of a video again coming back to your HVAC which is your heating ventilation and air conditioning companies? Maybe they do some kind of before and after video to show this is what the Air Conditioner Unit looked like when we got there. This is what it looked like when we left. There's a bunch of different ways that you might be able to create purposeful digital marketing. And then you're looking at some of the things that are there in the background. If you have a PR company that's handling all of this for you you may do direct sales directly to the customer themselves. You may use wholesalers to sell your products. You may look at print radio TV ads. You might do online display ads. There's so many different things that you can do to really attract customers. You've also got email marketing in there. Online referrals or offline referrals on there. Maybe a social referral from social media. So many options and things that you can do with digital marketing that are changing almost daily in the industry. But it is something to consider as part of your marketing plan. So when you're developing a digital marketing strategy it's important to consider the various types of digital marketing and then what are the best ways or ways that you might be able to target your specific market. So this may determine how successful or unsuccessful your marketing plan is. So a few issues that you might want to consider are to pick content assets. So will you only use one or three social media websites? Will you have a website? Will you if you do have a website you're going to create a blog. Why do you need to create a blog? Choose your content. You can also choose a content planning software. You can choose your social media platforms that you want to use. You do not want to use everyone that's out there but really just focus on the ones that are best for your brand and maybe considering where are the bulk of your customers. So some of the social media may be age related. And so if your customer is of a specific age you want to use the social media that's most appropriate for them. You can also create an avatar that demonstrates your brand and then use it on all sites. You can interact with consumers on these platforms as well. You can also measure any results by using Google Analytics or another type of measurement. So eliminate those sites that are not as popular and then focus on the ones where your consumers which ones your consumers use. You can also create a website blog and then add long content to that usually a minimum of 2000 words. You can also use hub and spoke marketing. So for example, all of the content in the hub which might be your blog and then create links back to that original content or to other social media sites. So you want to keep all of the content organized and relevant. So this little word scramble here is interesting because it really does get to the business of analytics and it looks at visualization. It looks at what are your resources. How are you going to collect that information? Google Analytics is really one of the best websites out there. And if you've ever looked at it, it's really interesting, but you can track where your customers are coming from. So are they being referred from other sites? Are they finding you through Google searches or other types of searches? Where are they coming from? And then you can look at detailed information. How much are they spending on average? How many pages do they click on? How long are they staying on your website? These are all things that can help you consider not only traffic, but also what are you going to do with this information? If they're all coming. So for example, maybe they're all coming from a website that you don't even know or recognize and then you go and you check out that website only to find that maybe this website's giving 10 different businesses and you just happen to be one of them. It may be important for you at that point to try to develop a relationship with the people who have that website since the bulk of your traffic is coming from them. And it comes down to money. It really does. Yeah, anyway, just some ideas about analytics. When you're developing a marketing strategy, it's important to consider cultural and legal factors that may affect advertising. So when you consider these factors, you also want to think about digital marketing because you may need to consider marketing in several cultures or internationally. And digital marketing can be one way of doing this. So cultural factors might include their beliefs, values, language or traditions. It's important to consider digital marketing content that will be appropriate for all of the cultures that you want to target. And then legal factors are another consideration in digital marketing. These might include health and safety issues, consumer rights, appropriate product labeling and advertising standards. By ensuring digital advertising that complies with legal factors, you will comply with regulations. You won't break any laws or you won't damage the reputation of your brand. So legal factors to consider might be health and safety issues, appropriate labeling on products, abiding by advertising standards, and then considering consumer rights and laws and product safety. Social media has proven to be an effective way to engage with customers, promote your products of services, and it allows potential customers to learn more about the brand. So using the same social media sites that your customer uses is a great way to answer product questions, promote the brand and show videos that demonstrate products or the brand or conduct consumer contests. Companies that maintain a Facebook page now is commonplace. So most businesses today use social media to connect with customers. This does not mean that a business will try to be on every social media platform, but they may promote their business on the same platforms that their customers use. The main social media platforms that businesses might participate in include Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, and the WhatsApp. So by matching the brand with the correct type of social media platform, then you can better connect with your target market. So for example, if a company is looking to hire employees, they may post an open job on LinkedIn and most likely not post the job on Snapchat. So a clothing designer might post their clothing lines on Pinterest or a company that produces movie shorts might use YouTube as their platform to show and market their products. By understanding social media platform purposes, you can better match the brand with the correct platform. So this just shows you overall the size of some of these, and notice TikTok is not on here, but it is, Facebook is rather large, YouTube is almost as large. So then Instagram is third, you've got, we've got Twitter on here, Reddit, Pinterest, and then other make up the 10%. Just to consider the sheer size of some of these is always interesting, I would say at minimum, you would want to have a Facebook page for any business, but then you have to decide according to your content and how you want to reach your customers, which other social media platforms are important for you to use. So content marketing attempts to create and maintain consumer interest. It does not necessarily try to promote a specific product, but it tries to gain interest in the brand itself. Content marketing may include videos, podcasts, social media, or research. It's important that content marketing be specific to the brand, which may help to create increased consumer engagement and interaction. Once the content has been created, it may also be used on other social media platforms. This will better, this will help you to better align the brand. It's also important to create content marketing that's engaging and visually appealing. This type of marketing will better engage with customers and potential customers and may also create higher brand loyalty and build brand awareness and reputation. So this can be useful when it comes to promoting products or the brand itself. And then finally, we have email marketing. So when it comes to digital marketing, the use of email is still very effective. Although it's been used now for several decades, many people check their email daily. For those consumers who do not check into social media on a daily basis, email may be the only way to reach them. So once content marketing is created, it may also be used for email. And this may also include short video content. So for your brick and mortar stores collecting email addresses when the customer is checking out is relatively easy. When you're creating a digital marketing plan, it's important to include various ways of contact with the consumer. Email is just another way for a brand to interact with customers and potential customers. And then emails can also be scheduled in advance to be sent promotional advertisements. And then in conclusion, we have your learning objectives. So these are the things that we cover today. So we talked about digital marketing strategies. We identified six metrics for using digital marketing strategies. We looked at cultural and legal factors. We also looked at social media and connecting with potential customers. And then also we looked at quite a few social media platforms. And then we examined content marketing through text, visuals, and consumer interactions. And then finally, we talked about the use of email in building those relationships with customers and potential customers. Okay, so what's next? So here are some other resources that you can look at that can help you prepare for any tests. You've got your case studies, you've got your study guide, you can rewatch any of these videos that have been created for the course. And I just wanted to say thank you. So my name is Dr. Marcy Stone and thanks for listening.