Digital Marketing for Dummies

Get digital with your brand today!

Digital Marketing for Dummies has the tools you need to step into the digital world and bring your marketing process up to date. In this book, you’ll discover how digital tools can expand your brand’s reach and help you acquire new customers. Digital marketing is all about increasing audience engagement, and the proven strategy and tactics in this guide can get your audience up and moving!

You’ll learn how to identify the digital markets and media that work best for your business—no wasting your time or money! Discover how much internet traffic is really worth to you and manage your online leads to convert web visitors into paying clients. From anonymous digital prospect to loyal customer—this book will take you through the whole process!

• Learn targeted digital strategies for increasing brand awareness
• Determine the best-fit online markets for your unique brand
• Access downloadable tools to put ideas into action
• Meet your business goals with proven digital tactics

Digital marketing is the wave of the business future, and you can get digital with the updated tips and techniques inside this book!

Ryan Deiss is founder and CEO of Idea Incubator and creator of Traffic & Conversion Summit. He has consulted with more than 200,000 businesses in 68 countries. Russ Henneberry is founder of theCLIKK.com, a free daily email newsletter about digital business. He has trained and certified thousands of professionals in SEO, social media marketing and content marketing through his coaching, courses, and stage presentations.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Started with Digital Marketing 5

Chapter 1: Understanding the Customer Journey 7

Creating a Customer Avatar 8

What to include in your customer avatar 9

Introducing Agency Eric: A customer avatar example 10

Getting clear on goals and values 11

Finding sources of information and entertainment 12

Honing in on demographics 12

Adding challenges and pain points 13

Preparing for objections 14

Getting Clear on the Value You Provide 15

Knowing the Stages of the Customer Journey 16

Step 1: Generating awareness 17

Step 2: Driving engagement 18

Step 3: Building subscribers 19

Step 4: Increasing conversions 20

Step 5: Building excitement 20

Step 6: Making the core offer sale and more 21

Step 7: Developing brand advocates 22

Step 8: Growing brand promoters 23

Preparing Your Customer Journey Road Map 23

Optimizing the Customer Journey 24

Avoiding an Optimization Mistake 25

Chapter 2: Choosing the Right Marketing Campaign 27

Establishing Marketing Objectives 28

Defining a Digital Marketing Campaign 29

Understanding the Three Major Types of Campaigns 32

Campaigns that generate new leads and customers 32

Campaigns that monetize existing leads and customers 34

Campaigns that build engagement 35

Balancing Your Marketing Campaign Calendar 37

Choosing the Campaign You Need Now 37

Viewing Your Digital Marketing through the Campaign Lens 38

Chapter 3: Crafting Winning Offers 39

Offering Value in Advance 40

Designing an Ungated Offer 41

Designing a Gated Offer 42

Zeroing in on what matters 43

Making a specific promise 44

Giving a specific example 44

Offering a specific shortcut 45

Answering a specific question 45

Delivering a specific discount 45

Generating leads with educational content 45

Generating leads with tools 47

Filling out the gated offer checklist 50

Designing Deep-Discount Offers 52

Using physical premiums 52

Employing a book 53

Leveraging the webinar 53

Selling software 54

Splintering a service 54

Brainstorming “little victories” to offer your leads 55

Filling out the deep-discount offer checklist 55

Discovering your deep-discount offer 57

Maximizing Profit 57

Making an upsell or cross-sell offer 58

Building bundles and kits 59

Tacking on a slack adjuster 59

Recurring billing 60

Part 2: Using Content to Generate Fans, Followers, and Customers 61

Chapter 4: Pursuing Content Marketing Perfection 63

Knowing the Dynamics of Content Marketing 64

Finding Your Path to Perfect Content Marketing 65

Understanding the marketing funnel 66

Exploring the prospect’s intent 74

Providing a path to the next step 75

Segmenting your marketing with content 76

Appearing everywhere your customer expects 77

Customizing your content 78

Executing Perfect Content Marketing 78

Step 1: Choosing avatars 79

Step 2: Brainstorming content assets 80

Step 3: Choosing the vehicle and channel 80

Step 4: Planning for ascension 80

Distributing Content to Attract an Audience 81

Marketing through email 81

Capturing leads through search marketing 82

Using social media to drive traffic to your site 82

Paying for traffic 82

Developing a style guide 83

Determine grammar and punctuation rules 84

Document editorial process 85

Document brand voice 85

Determine additional sections 86

Create formal documentation 86

Distribute style guide 86

Chapter 5: Blogging for Business 87

Establishing a Blog Publishing Process 88

Brainstorming blog post ideas 88

Establishing content segments 90

Working with content creators 91

Editing the first draft 95

Copyediting the post 96

Applying Blog Headline Formulas 96

Tapping into self-interest 96

Piquing curiosity 97

Employing urgency and scarcity 97

Issuing a warning 98

Borrowing authority 98

Revealing the new 98

Auditing a Blog Post 99

Presents an exceptional headline 99

Includes a strong introduction 100

Offers easy-to-consume content 101

Satisfies your goal 102

Includes quality media 103

Provides a compelling close 104

Uses search engine optimization 104

Categorizes your topics 105

Completely delivers on the promise 105

Keeps professional consistency 106

Chapter 6: Taking Stock of 65 Blog Post Ideas 107

Defeating Writer’s Block 107

Writing useful content 108

Being generous 114

Entertaining the masses 118

Capitalizing on the timely 119

Showing your humanity 120

Getting promotional 123

Stirring the pot 125

Engaging the audience 127

Creating Stellar Content without All the Fuss 128

Curating and aggregating content 129

Reacting to popular content 130

Crowdsourcing content 132

Part 3: Generating Website Traffic 135

Chapter 7: Building High-Converting Landing Pages 137

Exploring the Types of Landing Pages 138

Creating a Lead Capture Page 140

Creating a Sales Page 140

Writing a sales letter 143

Understanding the elements of a product detail page 149

Grading a Landing Page 152

Chapter 8: Capturing Traffic with Search Marketing 155

Knowing the Three Key Players in Search Marketing 156

Understanding searchers’ needs 156

Knowing what search engines want 156

Targeting Search Queries 158

Defining a search query 159

Choosing the right queries to target 161

Satisfying searchers 163

Optimizing Your Assets for Specific Channels 165

Optimizing for Google 165

Optimizing for YouTube 168

Optimizing for Pinterest 170

Optimizing for Amazon 172

Optimizing for iTunes 174

Optimizing for review sites 175

Optimizing for search engine robots 176

Earning Links 177

Step 1: Cross-link your own content 177

Step 2: Study your competitors’ links 178

Step 3: Create generous content 178

Step 4: Create content worthy of a link 178

Step 5: Publish primary research 178

Step 6: Keep up with the news 179

Chapter 9: Leveraging the Social Web 181

Social Channels 182

Facebook 182

Instagram 184

LinkedIn 185

Twitter 185

The Social Success Cycle 187

Listening to the Social Web 189

Listening by channel 190

Choosing a social listening tool 191

Planning to listen 192

Listening without paid tools 193

Utilizing the feedback loop 194

Handling customer service issues 196

Influencing and Building Brand Authority 197

Influencing by channel 198

Growing your social following 199

Increasing frequency 200

Keeping your content interesting 200

Socializing blog content 201

Networking That Moves the Needle 204

Networking by channel 205

Tapping into niche media 205

Reaching niche media 206

Networking by topic 206

Creating a social media “short list” 207

Flipping the script on media outreach 207

Staying compliant with the law 208

Selling on Social Channels 208

Selling by channel 209

Leading with value 209

Designing “value first” offers 210

Avoiding Social Media Mistakes 212

Knowing When to Automate 212

Chapter 10: Tapping into Paid Traffic 213

Visiting the Traffic Store 214

Understanding Traffic Temperature 214

Choosing the Right Traffic Platform 216

Introducing the Big Six traffic platforms 216

Setting up Boomerang Traffic 232

Defining ad retargeting 232

Setting cookies and pixels 232

Segmenting with content 233

Troubleshooting Paid Traffic Campaigns 233

Strengthening your offer 234

Tweaking your targeting 235

Scrutinizing your ad copy and creative 235

Checking the congruency of your campaign 236

Chapter 11: Following Up with Email Marketing 237

Understanding Marketing Emails 238

Promotional emails 238

Relational emails 239

Transactional emails 239

Sending Broadcast and Follow-Up Emails 241

Broadcast emails 241

Follow-up emails 241

Building a Promotional Calendar 242

Cataloging your products and services 242

Creating an annual promotional plan 244

Developing a marketing plan 245

Creating a 30-day calendar 246

Creating a 90-day rolling calendar 247

Creating Email Campaigns 247

Indoctrination campaigns 248

Engagement campaigns 250

Ascension campaigns 250

Segmentation campaigns 251

Reengagement campaigns 252

Writing and Designing Effective Emails 253

Harvesting proven email copy 253

Answering four questions 254

Knowing why people buy 254

Writing effective email subject lines 255

Writing body copy 256

Cuing the Click 257

Getting More Clicks and Opens 257

Ensuring Email Deliverability 260

List Hygiene 260

Monitoring your reputation 261

Proving subscriber engagement 261

Part 4: Measuring, Analyzing, and Optimizing Campaigns 263

Chapter 12: Crunching Numbers: Running a Data-Driven Business 265

Leveraging the Five Google Analytics Report Suites 266

Understanding Where Your Traffic is Coming From 267

Tracking the Origins of Site Visitors 269

Campaign source (utm_source) 269

Campaign medium (utm_medium) 270

Campaign content (utm_content) 270

Campaign name (utm_campaign) 270

Dissecting a UTM 271

Creating UTM parameters for your URLs 271

Creating Goals to See Who’s Taking Action 272

Segmenting Your Audience with Google Analytics 274

Creating audience segments 275

Honing In on Your Audience 278

Drilling into demographics 279

Drilling into psychographics 281

Putting It All Together 285

Chapter 13: Optimizing Your Campaigns for Maximum ROI 287

Understanding Split Testing 288

Obtaining the tools you need to run split tests 288

Following the split test guidelines 290

Selecting Page Elements to Optimize 293

Considering qualitative data 293

Using qualitative tools 294

Getting Ready to Test 295

Developing an optimization hypothesis 295

Choosing the metrics to track 295

Calculating your test timeline 296

Preparing to Launch 296

Defining goals in Google Analytics 297

Checking that your page renders correctly in all browsers 297

Ensuring that you have no testing conflicts 297

Checking links 297

Keeping variation load times similar or identical 298

Calling a Test 298

Knowing How a Test Performed 298

Analyzing the Test 299

Part 5: The Part of Tens 301

Chapter 14: The Ten Most Common Digital Marketing Mistakes 303

Focusing on Eyeballs Instead of Offers 304

Failing to Talk about Your Customers (and Their Problems) 304

Asking Prospects for Too Much, Too Soon 305

Being Unwilling to Pay for Traffic 305

Being Product Centric 305

Tracking the Wrong Metrics 306

Building Assets on Other People’s Land 307

Focusing on Your Content’s Quantity Instead of Quality 307

Not Aligning Marketing Goals with Sales Goals 307

Allowing “Shiny Objects” to Distract You 308

Chapter 15: Ten Trending Digital Marketing Skills to Add to Your Resume 309

Content Marketing Positions 310

Brand journalist 310

Managing editor 311

Content marketing manager 311

Paid Media Manager 312

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manager 313

Social Media Marketing 313

Community Management 314

Video Marketing and Production Positions 315

Video production specialist 316

Video marketing manager 316

Web Design and Development Positions 317

Front-end developer 317

Back-end developer 317

Direct-response copywriter 318

Email marketing analyst 318

Data Analysis Positions 318

Data analyst 319

Testing and optimization specialist 319

Chapter 16: Ten Essential Tools for Digital Marketing Success 321

Building a Website 321

WordPress.org 322

Joomla 322

Drupal 323

BigCommerce 323

Shopify 323

Hosting a Website 323

WP Engine 324

HostGator 324

A2 Hosting 325

Rackspace 325

Choosing Email Marketing Software 325

Constant Contact 326

AWeber 326

Mailchimp 326

Considering Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software 326

Keap 327

Salesforce 327

HubSpot 327

Zoho CRM 328

Adding a Payment Solution 328

Stripe 328

Square 329

PayPal 329

Adyen 329

Using Landing Page Software 329

Instapage 330

Leadpages 330

Unbounce 330

HubSpot 330

Sourcing and Editing Images 331

Canva 331

SnagIt 332

Managing Social Media 332

Hootsuite 332

Meet Edgar 333

Mention 333

Measuring Your Performance: Data and Analytics 333

Google Analytics 334

Google Data Studio 334

Google Tag Manager 334

Optimizing Your Marketing 334

Visual Website Optimizer 335

Optimizely 335

TruConversion 335

Index 337

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The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.