Digital Marketing 101: Get Good at Marketing your Business

1. Introduction: Welcome to Digital Marketing 11, a comprehensive, practical and fun course with everything you need to know about digital marketing. This course is divided into four main sections. The common ground, the foundations, the tactics, and the practice, all of which are intertwined to help you connect the theory with the practice and have fun throughout the process, we will talk about digital marketing, Seven Pillars that support this way of marketing online. And they will help you to promote your business from now on for sure. But we will also see why JK Rowling might be the best marketed ever. I will also tell you what I've learned about affiliate marketing. In a trip to India, we will learn the secrets of Richard Branson to market is Virgin Group. And so much more, I will even sprinkle some marketing jokes, but I don't promise they are any good. What I do guarantees that by the end of this course, you will have a strong foundation on digital marketing and you will be able to put together your own strategy. You will also be able to get to know different companies to analyze their strategy and to be much more attentive to people doing marketing and getting inspiration from them. Now, why am I qualified to teach anything about it until marketing? I've got a post graduation in digital marketing. I've been working on the industry for more than five years. And most importantly, I've helped dozens of companies to implement marketing in their strategy and to develop a stronger position in the market and get more revenue better yet, I preach what I teach and I do marketing, digital marketing myself on several platforms. If you are a beginner, this class is perfect for you because it contains very accurate and curated information that will help you to become much, much better if you are an intermediate level, I hope this class can give you a bit more curiosity and interests into some of the marketing concepts we are talking about. Seriously, I want to ignite your passion for marketing and to get really into this process. Are you ready to start on your digital marketing journey? If yes, I hope to see you inside the class. 2. What is Digital Marketing | The Foundation: Now, what exactly is digital marketing? Well, let's first start with the boring definition. Digital marketing refers to all marketing tactics to promote products and services online using different channels. Digital marketing is also referenced as online marketing as it takes place online, right? I like this definition, but let's be honest, it is a bit boring. In my own perspective, digital marketing is a way of getting new costumers online. That's how I like to put it. This is really a way to simplify the whole definition. There are two main caveats. The first is that digital marketing is not the only way of marketing deltas. We also have offline marketing where we come to a store and everything happens not in the online world, but in the offline world. And the second caveat is that digital marketing is not just for getting new costumers. You can use digital marketing to raise awareness for a brand, to get new leads, to make connections, to get new influences on ward, and even to promote your own employer brand. But obviously always or almost always, the main goal is to get sales even if that's not the first strategy. So you can have increasing sales later down the line. And obviously in today's digital world, digital marketing has an increasing presence in every single brand online and getting clients without employing any digital marketing strategy is almost rare because most brands have a website or at least they have some type of social media presence. So it's really common practice by now. However, even though it's common practice, this doesn't mean that all brands do it right. It's easy to neglect the fundamentals and the basis of marketing and jump right into social media. It's rude things that are dozens of ways to do digital marketing, whether that's on social platforms, for other platforms. But if you don't follow the main principles, if you don't know the basics of marketing, it will be very, very hard for you to get any results in the long run. But before jumping into those fundamentals, which is something we're going to do throughout the course. I really want to lay down the main benefits of using digital marketing in your own business. Or if you want to become a marketer, why you can sell your services to other businesses? And how can you explain why is it so valuable of what, of what you do? The first benefit of digital marketing is that it helps you to focus your attention on the right people. So if you place an ad on a magazine or on TV, you can't control who is going to see that ad. You might have an idea, right? Because a type of demographic and the type of persona washes that channel or reset magazine. But you can't have a lot of control over that. On the other hand, digital marketing allows marketers and businesses to do something completely crazy. Which is to nail down very, very specifically people who you want to show your ad to. This means you can show your Simpsons t-shirt design to the 30-year-old, like the Simpsons phage and have some type of interaction with these websites in the past few months. And so ultimately, digital marketing allows you to be very, very targeted. The second benefit is that digital marketing is very cost effective when compared to other methods. The thing is, when you're using digital marketing and let's say you are using paid ads on Google. You can control your budget. You can control how much money you spend. On each click. You can determine that you will not ever spend more than five bucks when a person clicks on your ad. You can control your budget over days, over weeks and months. And if the whole campaign is not yielding the results who are looking for, you can simply canceled with one-click. Now the third benefit is that digital marketing allows you to compete with big brands. Until very recently, small businesses could never compete with big rents because they have the bucks to pay millions for TV ads and billboards and magazines and so on. But now with digital marketing, you can be so specific you're targeting. You can create content that appeals so much more to these types of consumers that you can win, not necessarily in, in terms of the revenue, but you can win because you have a more personalized experience and you can reach those costumers much more easily. The fourth benefit is digital marketing is measurable. If you have tried to advertise on a newspaper, you have only a few metrics like the number of people who bought it. You don't know the number of people who actually went through that page in saw your ad, and how much time did they spend looking at your app. But with digital marketing, you know this, you know these details, you know this information and this allows you to nail your marketing campaign and to really understand if things are working or not. And finally, digital marketing allows you to easily pivot and change your approach. We have already discussed it, but you can always cancel a campaign with a click and helpful way through the campaign, you can simply give up and decide that you want to try a different thing. So the benefits of digital marketing are huge. However, there are still some questions we need to address. So let's jump right into the next video. See you there. 3. The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing | The Foundation: There are many ways of explaining digital marketing and I can make it as exciting or as boring as I want. But to be honest, I like to think and teach about digital marketing more creatively. And so in this video, rather than just telling you what are the seven pillars of digital marketing, I will show you with an example how these seven pillars appear in the normal routine of a business that is implementing all of these strategies. So let's pretend me in a business partner wants to start a business. And let's pretend we're going to make some handmade prints of The Simpsons series because we are obsessed with it. Obviously, we want to build our online presence and sell more prints as a result. So the first thing we're going to do is to create a website to show our prints, to put all the photos we have taken, and obviously to let people buy. But ideally, we simply don't just want a website. We want people to find as when they search for handmade Simpson spreads. And so we now have the need for search engine optimization or SEO, which is the first pillar of digital marketing. And SEO is simply a set of tactics and strategies that will allow you to rank higher on Google and be shown when people search for a specific keyword. So in this case, we want to use SEO because we want to appear when people search for handmade Simpson sprints. However, me and my business partner, we've been having conversations with different people across the web and we've been researching a lot of things. And we found that there are a lot of people interested in knowing how we made our prints. They want to know the materials and techniques in the process of going from a simple sheet of paper to a very some print. And so we decided to create a blog inside our website with a bunch of articles helping people create this brings by themselves. And this is what is called content marketing, which is the second pillar of digital marketing. And content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract and retain people by creating content, whether that's video, long text, or audio, like a podcast. So we do that and we have several blog posts on our block. Now one thing that we noticed was a comment in one of these blog posts. And this person was asking, can you actually put the links of the products you use because you can find the exact product. I don't know what brands you are using and I'm very interested on it. What we noticed was that we couldn't make money every time someone purchased the product, recommended using our link, and this is called affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing allows the affiliate to earn a small commission every time someone buys from the website. And so basically our business was going well because we were making revenue with a prince. But there were also some people interested in making those sprints and they were buying the products with our links. So we're also making some revenue there. However, we should notice that many creators were using social media platforms to share more stuff about series of Simpsons overall. But there were also sharing more about the process of creating these prints and getting people excited for buying it. So we decided that it was time to jump on Instagram and TikTok to share videos and posts about Simpsons. And this is social media marketing. And this is the fourth pillar of digital marketing. And it basically refers to using social media to promote a product. With time, more and more people were engaging with our content on social media and also on our websites. We even had to hire more people to help us with the business. In one of those people noticed that in a competitor's website, they were offering a free e-book that explain some crazy stuff about the Simpsons. And people were actually giving their emails so they could have access to that e-book. So we decided that it was actually a good idea to do this. So what we did was we set up a landing page for people to basically download our e-book. And in order to promote it, we decided to make a partnership with Google. Every time someone clicked and actually put their emails, we would pay Google's because they were doing all the promotion side of things. This is called paid advertising, where advertisers bid to participate in real-time auctions. To when different slots of advertising throughout the web in which so many people downloading the eBook. We got so many e-mails and we decided to gather these people and we created an e-mail list with a bunch of interesting facts about the Simpsons and resend it every Monday. This is called email marketing and has one of the highest ROI of marketing channels. And email marketing is the sixth pillar of digital marketing and business is going very, very great. However, in the last few months, we noticed that there was some people being recognized for being the Simpsons influencers. They had many people following them. They posted content creatively and consistently, and they had very high engaging rates. And so we decided to collaborate with these influencers and pay them to promote our prints. This is influencer marketing, a type of marketing that involves placements in endorsements done by influencers. And influencer marketing is the seventh pillar of digital marketing. And if you have been doing the math, this was also the last pillar of digital marketing. D7 pillars of digital marketing are going to be the ones. We're going to cover it with more detail throughout the course. And the first pillar was search engine marketing, the second content marketing, the third, affiliate marketing, the fourth, social media marketing, the fifth, paid advertising, the sixth, email marketing, and the seven influencer marketing. There is no need to memorize this. The most important part is knowing how to apply and when to use each of these marketing channels. If you are still confused, don't worry, because in the next video, I'm going to give you a simple example for each of these seven marketing pillars. 4. The 7 Applications of Digital Marketing | The Foundation: In the previous video, we covered the seven pillars of digital marketing and we have apply them to a handmade print Simpson example. But in this video, we're actually going to grab seven different real examples of businesses that have applied these seven different pillars very differently. And we're going to talk about it so you can actually understand how this plays in real life. The first pillar was search engine optimisation, and we're going to use the Lloyd's pharmacy. This company seeks to provide safe and reliable information about health care in the UK. In, after a period of research and analysis, they understood that they needed more backlinks for their blog posts. There were creating a lot of content. How about how to solve certain problems and how to find the solution and what types of doctors to choose and medication and so on. But they needed more backlinks. That is, they needed more people referencing that blog post. So they identified some bloggers, PR and so on. And these people were referencing their block, and as a result, they were ranking higher in higher on Google and they literally got 80% more revenue just because of this SEO marketing campaign, with the goal of ranking higher on those search results. The second pillar was content marketing. And I'm bringing one of my favorite nonfiction authors, call Newport to give you the example. Basically call is an author, he's a blogger, has a podcast, and he shares a newsletter every week with his readers. Now, if you think about it, each piece of free content he shares with his podcast or newsletter or video, he's creating a potential opportunity for readers to get to know him and eventually by his books, not only that, but call is a researcher and with every piece of content he polishes for free. He has the opportunity to explore different ideas and to see what resonates the most with his readers, which can later turn into a new book. And as you can see, content marketing is not. 5. Common Marketing Language | The Foundation: If you want to master digital marketing, there are still some concepts that are important to know before jumping into the main lessons of this class. And so in this video we are going to talk about ROI marketing funnels. Buyer persona is B2B vs B2C and the social listening. So let's start with ROI, which stands for return on investment. It simply refers to the amount of dollars you are able to generate when you spend $1 on marketing. So if you're ROI is five, it means that you spend $1 on marketing, but as a return, you got five. It's a very good deal. Measuring the ROI of the marketing campaign is absolutely critical. Everything accompany does, including marketing, but other things need to have a return. And it's very important to be able to justify the investment as a good or bad investment if you want to dive deep into this topic, I highly recommend the book, ROI in marketing by Jack Phillips. Then the second marketing concept we are talking about is the marketing funnel or the costumer journey. The goal of the funnel is to represent how people go from not knowing your brand to becoming a loyal costumer. There are four main phases in this final, the first one is awareness and interests. As people are in the very early stages of awareness in interests, they are just looking for information about their products and to see if there's any brand out there that might help them solve their problems. And so in this type of the funnel content that focuses on teaching people how to solve their problems into pinpoint what they might be feeling is very, very effective. Then we move on to the consideration phase, which is the second phase of the funnel. In this phase, people are aware they have a problem. They know there are some solutions out there. They are considering several options. And so in this case, it's very important to have contents in marketing campaigns that helped people understand your product is or is not the right fit for them. Then we have the conversion phase, and this represents the phase in which people are ready to take action. And so the role of marketing in this phase is to help people make the purchase. This might mean calling your company, buying directly through your website, or booking a call with a salesperson. And it is true that, for example, with social media marketing, you can immediately get someone to convert, but you can have, or you can establish all the other phases with content that is high-quality, that really pinpoints the pain of the person and tries to solve it and so on. So you will create a much closer connection with a prospect and they will be more likely be able to convert. And finally, we have retention. This is after the person has what your product or service and retention marketing can use, say with social media, content, with newsletters, would demos and webinars. You can also have cross cells where he tried to sell different things to people. You keep a contact with the person. And so by having content and by investing on the people that are already your costumers, you increase the likelihood that they will become a loyal costumer. They will be more happy with your brand and more likely to recommend it to other people. Now let's jump into the third concept, buyer persona. A buyer persona is simply a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience. This persona is fictional, so it doesn't have to represent a real customer, but it is based on research in real data. This means you might have interviews with real costumers. You might do a lot of online research. And you can combine everything you gathered and built a buyer persona that represents someone who would actually buy your products. And building buyer personas is completely essential to be able to then craft marketing campaigns that speak directly to that group of people. Because you can't have a marketing campaign without knowing who you are targeting. In fact, some of the work I do with my clients is exactly this mailing the marketing persona because it is so difficult to sell when you have no idea how the person looks like, what are their pain points, their motivations, their interests, what do they do in their free time? Hard to married or not married and so on. The fourth concept is B2B and B2C. And B2B stands for business to business. And it refers to a transaction that happens between two businesses. And B2C refers to business, to consumer, and it refers to transaction that happens between the business and an individual that is the end costumer. So for example, when you go on to the Nike website and you buy a pair of shoes, that's a B2C transaction, a business, nike is selling you the consumer a pair of shoes. But when Nike goes on to another company, a manufacturer, for example, and they make a deal, they are dealing with a B2B transaction. The reason why this is important is that B2B and B2C require very different approaches from a marketing perspective. Just take this information for now because in the future we're going to explore some more evident differences in terms of marketing. And finally, the fifth concept is social listening. And social listening is not as popular as other concepts, but I believe it to be essential, especially from now on. Basically, social listening is just the process of understanding what is being said about a company or a brand online. It's basically all about the process of monitoring what people are saying about your brands say on Twitter and understanding why they are saying that and really then taking that information and trying to apply it to your own business. This can give you insights of what products to improve or how to improve your customer service, or what things people love and that you should keep. These were the five concepts that you should know about digital marketing, ROI, the marketing funnel, buyer persona's B2B vs B2C. And now social listening. 6. Pillar #1: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | The Tactics: I've got a question for you. Where is the best place to hide? Yeah, it's in the second page of Google. Seriously, everyone wants to be on the first page of Google, and yet only a very few percentage have that luck, hopefully with some of the strategies we're going to cover on this video, you will increase your chances of ranking higher on search results. This is where search engine optimization or SEO comes very handy. It is basically all about increasing your chances of ranking. Believe me, when I say that SEO is a very, very complex topic and there are so many factors that must be accounted for if you really want to take it seriously. But this is obviously not an SEO complete course. And in fact, most businesses don't need to worry that much about it. What we're actually going to talk about in this class are the two main principles that will help you rank higher on Google without getting into the nitty gritty details. These two concepts are relevant and authority. So how much relevant is the content on your website? And how does Google determine the authority of your website? We want to increase the relevancy of your content and increase the authority that Google gives to your website. But how can we do this? Let's start with relevancy. There are two main things that are very important for the content you create to be relevant, and Google to be able to perceive it in one of the easiest ways to be considered relevant for a particular Google search is having content on your website that matches the intent of those who made that search. And this is basically what on-page SEO is really about. It's the type of search engine optimisation that focuses on optimizing the content you have on your website. So if I search for online clothes for women to a ceremony or something like that, I want to see content on the website that matches my search. If your website is all about, I don't know, some type of sport or anything that doesn't match my intent. So hopefully Google will not show your website to my search. And the second thing that helps you to become more relevant is having all of those nuts and bolts. Things are related with SEO, titles, keywords, Meta tags, and so on. Now as you remember, there were two main factors that contribute to making your website more searchable on Google. The first was relevancy, and now we're going to talk about authority. Now let's put ourselves into Google's shoes. So they have found your website and the content on your website is relevant for the search. So what you are showing are what you have on your website actually is interesting for this search. But how does Google know that the information you are providing is accurate, is true. Like how do they know how the level of authority you have? It could be that you have just made a bunch of inflammation and things that are not true. And so obviously Google will need to do everything it can to validate and make sure that your website is accurate. And they have several ways of doing this. But one of the most important art links. And so effectively, they believed that if a dozen websites are referencing your website versus 100 websites referencing your competitors website, maybe your competitors information is more relevant, is more, has more authority. But there is a caveat here. Google does not think that all back lengths are the same. Because suppose you have someone linking your website. It's from a very relevant source. Let's say Forbes is linking to your website page. This tells Google that this backlink is more important than a random website on the web that has no content or nothing relevant linking to your website. So yes, ideally you want to have a lot of back links referring to your website, but you want them to be as relevant as possible. You don't want to have a bunch of random websites on the web linking to your website if they don't provide anything more, simply linking without any purpose behind it. And all of this we're been talking about is off page SEO. It basically refers to all of the SEO activity that takes place outside your main website. And so the number of authority of places that link to your website will give you a higher off-page SEO. And so remember that our multiple services promising to give you dozens, if not hundreds, of backlinks. They charge you something and then they give you some backlinks. But remember, they are not from authority in domains, or even if they are, they might be irrelevant to your website. So why would a website about productivity constantly be mentioning more referencing? I don't know, women's ceremony dress website. It doesn't do any good to have irrelevant websites linking to your website. It actually might get you band or in the dark list of Google. So again, to recap, in order to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google, you need two things, relevancy and authority. You get relevancy when you have a website that matches the intent of the user when they search on Google. And you'll get authority when you have a bunch of websites that have also Authority themselves. They are related with your website and they are linking to your content. This is kind of the most fundamental thing you need to know about SEO. Yes, there are other elements that are very helpful too, and we're going to slightly disgust them, but just make sure you get these two concepts, relevancy and authority. Now, technical SEO is that part of SEO that many people worry too much about without focusing on the fundamentals and technical SEO focuses on the structure of your code. It focuses on the Meta tags, descriptions in other particularities of your website that can be optimized for Google, even loading speed will increase your chances of ranking higher without wanting to get into too much detail. We're going to talk about the five commandments of SEL, and I believe they are a very cool foundation for you to start with. Now, the number one SEO commandment is to reference each of your pages. Essentially what this means is when you want to cure rate every page, the content of that page, and not the overall website. So the keywords are used in each page, the Meta title, tags and so on, need to be specific to that page of the website and not to the overall website. So for example, if you have a women's clothing shop, you want to make the first page or the homepage of your website specific to that, right? So you want to talk about in this website, wherever in this sharp there are dresses, blouses, shoes, and so on. But if we go over to the dresses page, you want to make the information relevant to the dress this page. So when this page you will find short, long black and white addresses. So remember, the keywords and all the information you have on each page should be optimized for that page. And it's not a coincidence that Amazon and Wikipedia of one of the best referencing systems across the web, because they make each page very accurate and very specific to each search. Now the SEO commandment number two is to think like your audience to properly referenced and create all the descriptions are your website and pages. You need to think like your audience. Yes, google has a very relevant role on sorting the pages and the results. But essentially the people who are going to click are your target audience. So think more about your audience than you do about Google's algorithm or their changes because no one really knows what's behind all of that complex system. But your target audience, they want to have their problems solved. So think more about them and not about Google. Now, the SEO commandment number two is to think long tail keywords search on Google contains on average four words. This is called a long-tail search, and it is an essential point to your SEO strategy. And it's easy to understand why you need to focus on long-tail keywords instead of short keywords. If you simply search on Google men's shirt, you will have kind of a crazy number of search results. But if you search for short sleeves, men shirt, you will find obviously a much smaller number. It's not small, but it's much smaller. And so it's easy to see that it's way less competitive to be more specific. Because there are going to be way much lower results, which means that you have a higher chance of ranking. But now you might argue, okay, but probably more people search for men's shirt than they do for short sleeve shirt. And that's probably right. However, there is something more that I want you to think about. What is the likelihood of these people of making a purchase? If I simply search for men's shirts. Just probably looking for some images. I'm just looking for potential alternatives. I'm looking for a couple of websites and probably I'm not going to buy anything. But if I search for men, linen shirt with Mel color, well, in that case, I'm really looking for this particular result. And if I find something that really entails my interests and my desires, I will much more likely by long-tail keywords have two main advantages. They have less competition. And people who search for these long tail keywords usually have a higher intent of committing some type of action. So to exploit the whole functionality of SEO is way more effective to have hundreds of pages, each one of them exploring different long-tail keywords, then having a huge website always focusing on the same keyword. Now the fourth SEO commandment is to optimize your conversion rate. As we have already talked, the most important thing is not to get people to click on your website. We want them to stay, we want them to buy, to download our products, to start a trial, or to get a second to a sales call. And so we want to have great optimization rate in this sense, because those who stay more on our website give Google a sign that our website is irrelevant for their search. And obviously, when you optimize the conversion rates on your website, you are also increasing your profitability. So it's fundamental to not only get the click, but when people get to your page, to your website, you need to get them saying You need to get them continue browsing in going from one page to another and eventually converting into a costumer. Now the final SEO commandment is have patients. But when will I rank on page number one? This is the most asked question, but the thing is, SEO is a long-term business. There is no simple way of making a quick change and then getting exponential results. Maybe there is, but I probably haven't figured out yet. Well, the thing is the rules are constantly changing and the algorithm change in many things change that you can control. So it's not accurate to be constantly expecting to rank on page number one if only one month have passed by before you made some changes. So what I like to emphasize here is you need to have a lot of patients when it comes to SEO. But in the meantime, while the weight that you will bring on page one makes sure your content is the best it can be. Make sure you are optimizing the conversion rates. Make sure you are having happy costumers. And in the meantime, you will eventually rank. And even if you don't rank on page one, you will get good results because you are focusing on other important things. If there was one simple tactic to ranking on page one, well, your competitors would be also doing it. So don't focus too much on this, on the little tactics unless you already have everything else figured it out. 7. Pillar #2: Content Marketing | The Tactics: I don't really know how some people get my telephone number. But here's the thing. I don't like receiving calls from telemarketers and I bet that neither do you. I'm not criticizing this job after all. It's a job, but I don't like being interrupted during the day by someone I don't know. And then being forced or push to give my credit card by phone, this is no longer a type of marketing that we as consumers tolerate. In fact, we run away from intrusive marketing. We simply invent some excuse. Let these people go on with their days because we are very busy. C, We can now head over to the web, compare five alternatives, find reviews, and then decide which one we are going to buy. This is what I expect to do as a consumer, not blindly buy something over the phone that I didn't have any interest in. And that's why the second pillar of digital marketing we are covering is content marketing. If I'm being honest, content marketing is my favorite way of digital marketing because it starts with giving value first with content. Require you to push anything to a prospect. Instead, you should tune in into their desires and problems and values and center them around your content. But we are all a bit tired of advertising. It's a burden to see thousands of ads every single day, in every single place. So obviously it's becoming very, very hard for brands and businesses to stand out because we can't take it anymore, but those are not bad news by itself, the content Council shows that 60% of people are more likely to buy when they see content that is purposefully written for them. And so brands have a huge opportunity here to provide valuable content. And then they can convert those people into costumers. And this is great news for small businesses to that don't have a huge pile of cash to spend on advertising and content marketing is really the way that I started my business. I didn't went to anyone selling my marketing services. Simply published content online, helped people with my content. And I got people asking me, so how much do you charge? I want to work with you. Can we get into a call and so one. So with content marketing, you get to do something very special. You get people talking with you without you pushing anything to them. This is a very powerful way of marketing and it's why I'm so passionate to teach and talk about content marketing because this is almost like a wave content marketing. And that's why I'm so excited about it. Well, but what exactly is content marketing? It's all about producing relevant and interesting content for a specific group of people. This happens usually between brand and target audience. But see that we mentioned the word relationship. And this is not a coincidence because content marketing isn't simply just about creating content and letting it be. You want to build relationships. You want to talk with these people. You want to listen a lot. In many, many brands are creating content, all focusing on themselves and they don't listen to their audience. They are simply sharing company news all the time. New employees, we did this, we did that. And people don't care. Remember that for content marketing to work, you must do your homework. You must deeply understand your audience, Spain's needs problems, and then your content needs to talk to them. In this I'm particularities, then you need to have goals, right? What is your goal with your content? Is it to build relationships, to get people on a call with you? Is it because you want to build an educational business, raise awareness to a social cause or convert people into clients. There is no right or wrong, but usually people just publish content without knowing their overall goal. And this is also dangerous, but it's only after this previous work of finding your target audience, their problems, their pains, and so on. Then understanding how are, what are your goals and how you want to achieve them, that it makes sense to jump into the content, calendar and to create content and polish the contents. And so because hitting publish isn't just the goal, there are five main stages that I consider to be essential if you want to have a strong content strategy, the five stages or research content strategy, content creation, content distribution, and analysis. So let's start with the number one, research. As I said, you can simply jump into content creation without understanding everything that is behind your content. This comes down to defining objectives and goals for your content strategy. This can include leave measures. These are the things that you can control. The number of Facebook posts you're going to share, or the number of common replies you're going to provide. And they can also include leg measures. These are measures that aren't really 100% on your control and take more time, like number of followers or the number of people engaging with your content, then you also need to research more about your persona's in target audience. Hopefully this is something that I've already done for other marketing campaigns. But if you have not, make sure you do it before creating any content. Finally, if you are a bigger organization or if you have already some content, it's very important to do a content audit. This is about getting all the contents you have already created, analyzing the data, and seeing what can be repurposed in what can you learn from the statistics that you have from previous contents? Now the second step for the content marketing strategy is to actually define your strategy. And this is important because firstly, it will help you create content faster. And second, it will make sure that your content is going into your goals. It will help you achieve your goals. And so some things that you can include in your content strategy, our keyword research, the definition of the clusters, the development of ideas, and the creation of an editorial plan. Now, keyword research is very important because if there's something you want to rank for it, well, you need to research the keywords that are behind it and how to rank your page in your website according to that, those keywords and keyword research can also give you very good ideas for future content that you want to create. And finally, it's a good practice to see which keywords are your competitors are ranking for. You can also adjust your strategy. Then the cluster definition, there are 1 million things a business can write about, but that doesn't mean all topics are a good fit. For this reason, I always aim to establish three to five content clusters. These clusters are basically the main topics that will then be explored across the content and throughout different formats. Then we have the development of ideas. I always use the Content Strategy face to get into a creation or an ideation phase. I do this by spying some competitors, reading books, seeing what's around on the internet, talking with people and so much more. This is very fun, but I usually require people to get a notebook and write everything down. So if you have an idea, make sure you jot it down, and then we have an editorial plan. Now, editorial plan basically provides an overview of the content assets you need and the strategies behind them. So this can include the content assets, the audience that you're trying to target, your goals, the immediate type of the post and other related things with content, it's basically where you plan all of the content you are going to publish in the next months over several platforms. Now that you have the strategy, it's time for content creation. And this is the third step. There are not proper and guidelines to give you when it comes to content creation, it all depends on the type of content you are creating, your target audience, the media in so much more. But an important point to make is to make sure that all of your content follows some type of brand guidelines. You have a cohesive image across the web, and then you can use very different types of media to share and to create content. First, you have blog posts, which are the most common ones and that people usually refer to. The great thing about blogposts is that you show expertise in your industry, you connect with readers, you get the possibility to rank, to rank higher on Google. And you just have a space that is your own to create and share content, then you have e-books and white papers. These are usually more common on B2B or business to business because they share more information, they are more dense and usually a bit more kind of boring in a sense, not that all of the e-books I read are boring, but you get what I mean. Usually B2C brands don't have eBooks, then you have infographics which kind of combine text with images and are very good to share lots of information in a very concise and engaging way. You then have audio and visual content while we're talking about YouTube, videos, podcasts and so much more. But you can create content around any format you desire. But I just want to kind of give you the idea that you can create content on any type or format, but makes sure you are creating it for your target audience. You're making sure that you are adapting your style to the people you are talking with. I always have this question which is, Should I do it myself or hire someone? And this is an alternative, and this is something you should consider regarding the resources you have or the time and ability you have to create content for you or for your business. Now the fourth stage of a content marketing strategy is content distribution. Today's consumer, we're not loyal to a single platform. We check multiple competitors, we open different websites, we navigate through dozens of social media platforms. And so much more. Great content marketers know that they need to have their content on different platforms. In other words, they need to distribute their content. This is where content distribution comes from. So for example, after hitting publish on your blog posts, you have the opportunity to grab the content from your post and repurpose it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can then create a more visual way of presenting the content and sharing it on Instagram. Well, you can then narrate the video and create something interesting and polish it on YouTube and TikTok than the long video can be chopped into smaller cuts and be shared across all platforms. And this is just the beginning. You can then partner up with media influencers, news outlets and so much more and share your content everywhere. Maybe this sounds like too much, but my goal is not overwhelming you. It is instead to inspire you to turn a single piece of content into multiple pieces of content. And this is great because it leverages your efforts into one single piece of content. It will give you more resources to dedicate to other projects. So you won't just be creating content for your business. Well, the benefits are immense. And then just like any other marketing campaign, we have reached number five, which is all about analytics and evaluating your results depending on the goals you have. Usually you want to keep track of engagement rate in the conversion rate from lead to client or from stranger to leave. You want to track your conversions, perhaps number of followers, and a few other metrics. And this will help you understand if your content is doing what you want it to do. It's helping you to evaluate what's working and what does not work. And essentially, it's just a fundamental part of any marketing campaign. Because if you are spending resources on something, you should then take the time to see if they produce the results that you weren't expecting. And if you are looking to dive deep into content marketing, I highly recommend you the book content ink by Joe pollute Z, or simply to follow me on LinkedIn where I share a lot of stuff about content marketing. 8. Pillar #3: Affiliate Marketing | The Tactics: Back in 2017, I remember going to India with my parents. It was amazing. The culture, the places, the people, the smells that colors. It was incredible. But why am I telling you all this on a digital marketing course? Well, because it illustrates a great example of affiliate marketing, we were heading to Taj Mahal with a driver who made several stops throughout the road. Obviously, as we were very eager to buy some souvenirs and things to offer our families and to keep as a memory from the trip. So we would go to the stores, we would buy things for the amount we haven't seen in ten years, and then we would return to the taxi. But the funny thing happened afterwards. So the taxi driver would again go back to the store and received his commission from every bridges we were making. After all, he was the one taking dozens of tourists to specific stores. And so he was bringing those stores revenue. And so one day he probably establish some type of deal with those stores and they were paying him for a commission for every purchase that the tourists He brought we're making. So the simplicity of affiliate marketing is on this example, and in the digital world is very, very similar. And so for example, an advertiser shares specific link for people who want to sell that product for them. Then the affiliate shares the link throughout the web on several platforms. And then the costumer uses the affiliate link to purchase on the other website. And so throughout this whole process, the advertisers get a new costumer and the affiliate gets a commission from the sale. It's a win-win-win situation. If you have recently read any product review on line, there is like 90%, 99 per cent chance that there were some type of affiliate link throughout the post. This is a great way to monetize content or to give value to people and then in return, get a small commission. And if you are on the other side, so if you are selling stuff online, you can get these people, these affiliates, to share your product and then as the reward, you give them a commission of the cell. And so using women's clothes, for example, you can write reviews or you can show every single angle of the clothes in your website. And then you will say, if you're interested in this dress, you can purchase it here. Then you will receive a commission from the sale. And the person who's selling the dress also receives a new costumer. Now, obviously, unless you choose to promote only a few products, it is very time-consuming to be establishing these relationships with all of these. Well, all of these companies are that you want to be an affiliate width. And that's why most people opt to use an affiliate network. Basically, this network acts as an intermediary between the buyer and the seller. So advertisers can submit the links that they want affiliates to promote. And then the affiliates can go there and see if it's something of their interests or not. So the advantages are that the advertisers enjoy higher visibility where the affiliates and the affiliates have a wider pool of options to choose from. Obviously, there is a fee that is usually charges by affiliate networks for all of these services. So if you want to obviously avoided. 9. Pillar #4: Social Media Marketing | The Tactics: I often get distracted by an infinite pool of social media content. It's not something that I'm proud of. And that's why I've deleted most of the social media apps from my phone. These platforms are engineered to get a scrolling non-stop. We think we only need to check Facebook for five minutes. But when we noticed it's been 45 and it's not entirely lack of discipline. These are sophisticated algorithms that are tailored to make us get the content we want to see. And obviously when we see what we want to see, we don't want to leave the platform. Obviously, there is a reason for so much money being thrown at us to stay on these platforms? And the answer is advertising. So these social media platforms make money. Well, they make tons of money because we are their products. They sell our attention to businesses and advertisers and brands. So yes, social media marketing is very, very effective, especially when you combine the organic side with the paid side. So organic means you're just publishing content and getting the attention of people. When you are paying for that attention, you will obviously be able to leverage your efforts. And so the whole goal of social media marketing is to get you leads to get you sales, to get you awareness and so much more. And so obviously we already know it's not just about sharing selfies rate, it's about building businesses on these platforms. And some of these platforms are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, pinterest, and some others that will emerge after you watch this video. But with so many platforms, your social media strategy also needs to be adapted to all of these platforms because people have different needs and they look for different things when they search across the web, and this case across the social media channels. And so for example, if you are a B2B company selling something for corporations, LinkedIn is probably a best, a better place than TikTok, for example. Your strategic goals will also determine how many posts you should post each day and how much frequent, who should pay for ads in so much more. There are many, many things that will help you shape your social media strategy, but there are indeed some best practices that will help you across any platform. They will help you, no matter your business schools. And that's the ones we are going to focus right now. The first strategy is to be consistent with your branding. And the reason to be consistent is because you want people to recognize you independently of the channel they are seeing your content. So they want to understand that your business on Twitter is the same then your website and Facebook and YouTube and so on. In a great way to do this is to use the same color, the same font, the same ways styling the elements across all platforms. This will make it easy for people to remember you M2 create a solid image of your brand in their minds. If you're not sure how to start with branding, perhaps consider hiring someone who can help you with it, because it's very, very important to create a solid brand across platforms that make you and your products and services stand out in the market. The second principle is to post high-quality content. If you're not regularly posting interesting, relevant, and engaging content, you will eventually get your audience sport and also gets search engines board. You really want to make sure you are posting high-quality content. And well, there's nothing that defines exactly what high-quality content is. But essentially it must be targeted to your audience. It must be engaging, it must fit your brand, right? Must be on-brand and check things on a fun and engaging way. Because when we are scrolling across social media, we don't want to be bored. The third principle is to post regularly. There is no hard rule of how often you should post. Some platforms require you to post more often, other platforms work well with less frequency. However, I would aim for at least two to three times a week in most platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, for example, Twitter, you might want to increase the frequency because posts are usually shorter. And YouTube usually when posts per week or one video per week, is totally okay. Again, make sure you test this. See the spikes or differences in traffic and engagement when you change the frequency. Well, try to keep it consistent. The principle number four, to succeed with social media marketing is to reply to messages and to engage with your target audience. So if somebody's taking the time to appreciate the content and to comment on the things you are publishing. Try to be nice about it into reply back. Obviously, there is a limit. If you are completely famous and well, you have thousands of comments. You might not be able to reply to everyone, but perhaps liking a few comments and providing two or three comments back, he's totally awesome. Now in more than ever, we have a different relationship with marketing. We want connection. We want to understand who is on the other side. The more you can do this with your brand, the more results you will have. Number five is to use hashtags. Hashtags are cool because they allow other people who don't follow you to discover your content. They also allow you to find other people with similar content and then you can make partnerships and connect with these people and so much more. However, don't think that hashtags will change the game for you. They are important, yes, but they are not the most critical factor ever. Number six, it's to experiment with social ads. Social media ads are a great way to increase your exposure and to get more costumers. And they are particularly interesting to experiment with when you have already some stable and good data about your target audience because you can better nail the way you will get to these people are the way you will reach these people on the social platforms. Finally, the seventh principle to get the most out of your social media marketing strategy is to track your analytics. Tracking results is fundamental to any marketing campaign. And when you use social media ads, you should really try to pay attention to the results. How many people are converting? How are they approaching your ad? They click on it. Do they comment, they engage, or the block you? Well, it doesn't matter. You want to get all of these information. It doesn't matter the experiment that you are running. You always want to track their results. This could be the number of followers you've got with the new post. Perhaps the number of people visited the website, the number of people who signed up for your newsletter, or the number of people who bought. You always want to track and get the results on your Google Analytics or other platforms because you want to see what is working and what is not working. And it's only after getting these results and data that we can change and pivot our approach. And there you have it. These are just a few things that you want to consider regarding social media marketing. They are not specific to any platform because any platform could become a huge course by its own, but they can be a great start. Especially they can help you set and understand the foundations of what really social media marketing is about. And you want to experiment and try different things and see what works best with your target audience. That's how ninety-nine percent of people actually do it. Never question that. Yes, social media marketing is a very effective way to connect with prospects, to get them on your list, and eventually to get sales. 10. Pillar #5: Paid Advertising | The Tactics: Head over to any flight reservation website and make a search. Now, don't be surprised that tomorrow you are navigating on your Facebook page, you will see an ad for that exactly destination in the dates you chose. This is an example of a remarketing campaign then through paid advertising. And this is why paid advertising is so effective. You are shown exactly the type of search that you're actually doing one day ago. So it's very, very relevant and it's targeted. This is very different from using mass media like TV, where everyone is watching and you can't target that specific group of people, or in this case, targeting a single individual. So let me first begin by telling you why paid search is so interesting. Paid traffic can first generate you traffic, and then it can generate two cells. Google wants people to click on your ad because they make money as a result. And we can also mentioned Facebook or other social platforms in which you can pay for the ads to be shown. So Google and other platforms want your ad to be as relevant as possible. So more people click it and they make more money. So they will give you all the tools they have to make it as effective as possible. So you can create an ad that is so specific that you can simply target when simple individual. And that's why these platforms are so crazy, effective and they make so much money. But how does it exactly work? How do they know if they should show our should not show your app? Well, a key concept for paid advertising is pay-per-click or PPC. It's a method of promotion in which the publishers are in money every time someone clicks on your link in PPC is obviously a very broad category. There are multiple things we can talk about, but there are two main ones that cover most advertising, which is Google ads and social media ads. So let's start with Google PPC ads. As we said, in a PPC campaign, you pay Google to appear on several search results. They may also appear on other places because Google as a display network, but that's for another video. Your ads might also appear on other platforms because Google has a connection with several networks. But when a user clicks on your ad, you pay the cost per click. That is the cost that Google determinants that you should pay to be able to get a click on your ad. This cost-per-click is determined by a variety of factors. One of which is the competition in the search result. So the more competition there is, and the more that people search for that keyword, usually the more you have to pay for each click. And Google will serve your ads in four different ways through search ads, through local ads, through display ads, and remarketing. Search ads are basically the most common ones in which a user type secured. You tell Google that you want to appear when the user's search for that keyword. And so there will be a little auction in which you are one of the bidders, but more competitors are also bidding for that keyword. And Google will almost automatically conduct a bidding in real time. And who wins the auction is the business or the website that will appear on the Google display ad. Now, local search ads are a subcategory of Google search ads because they add another criteria, which is your location. They will take into account your current location and we'll show you add these ads target users within a certain area. Then we have the Google display ads, which take advantage of Google's network. Basically, these ads allow you to show your app or your website on several websites that Google has a partnership with. It's very, very similar than advertising on Google. It's very similar than any other type of creating a campaign. Then we have remarketing or retargeting. And this is all about showing you an ad that is related with one of your previous searches. And this usually appears not when you search again for that keyword, but when you're just navigating through the web, because Google has such a vast network of partners, they can show you an ad for that booking or that flight you were booking through several websites. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google ads. Also social media ads that obviously leverage social media platforms to promote your ads. The biggest player in social media ads is Facebook because they have many, many users and they are also the owners of Instagram. Then there is also linked in and they are very targeted to B2B industries because you can really capitalize on their past experience and their current roles. It is true that LinkedIn ads are usually a bit more expensive than Facebook ads. But that's because they are associated mostly with B2B businesses and those usually involve a higher volume of sales, then you obviously have ads in other platforms like Pinterest, TikTok and so on. But hopefully this was enough explanation to help you understand how this works in real time. Yes, it does cost money obviously, but the whole thing here is to get a higher return on investment. So if you can spend $100 on a campaign, but yet to costumers that pay you 1 thousand, well, that's very cost efficient. You are making a good decision. Paid advertising is simply just another way of marketing your products, your services, and getting awareness to your brand. And the disadvantages also exist. First, you might need to tweak your campaign several times until you get exactly it right. So definitely it's not a set it and forget it. You have to tweak it until everything fits perfectly with your target audience. In another disadvantage of paid advertising is that you are essentially renting space. So once you stop paying the campaign, your ad will disappear. So basically you are renting space online and you are not actually leveraging, for example, other platforms in which your content lives forever. So obviously there are pros and cons to everything in paid advertising is no exception. But essentially when you learn how to use it correctly and when you find the right timing, it's really, really worth trying. 11. Pillar #6: Email Marketing | The Tactics: There are many, many ways to get in contact with your target audience. You can use Facebook, you can use TikTok, you can use Instagram and so on. But by far, the best way to contact your target audience is through email. Email subscribers are way more valuable than social media followers. Why? Because you have their contact information, they give you permission for you to contact them through email. And let's be honest, we are always checking our emails. For this top tier audience. You are not just another person competing for their attention. On Facebook. You have their email, and so you are in complete control of the content. You send, the frequency and how to reach these people. And so I love e-mail marketing for many reasons. But the main one is, it is still the best way to contact your costumers directly online. Because remember, you might have thousands of followers on social media, but you don't own those platforms. You don't own the followers, you don't own their contact information, and you don't own their attention. Facebook might change their algorithm and you can lose the access to those followers. And they did it a few years ago in which page with millions of followers have to pay millions to get every single person of the page to see their content. But when you have the e-mail, it's way more effective. You can simply hit send and you know, most of them will see your email or at least they will receive it. So let's say you already have a list of e-mails. How do you go about creating a successful e-mail campaign? Well, the first is to determine your objectives into fully understand your target audience. For each email you send, you should be asking this question, what is my purpose with this e-mail? I wanted to get sales where I wanted to get them to watch my new YouTube video? Or do I want to get them into a survey? There is nothing wrong with selling to your email list, but just make sure you're not doing it in every single e-mail, then you need to have an in-depth knowledge about your target audience. What are their needs, their expectations, and their behaviors? What are their concerns and pain points? You must really determined who are these people so you can hit the mark with every email. And the best part with email is that you might notice that our two different groups of people within your email list, you can segment them in both indifferent lists, and you can reach them with different emails to make sure you make the message fit and speak directly to each of these groups. Then the second most important thing about sending an email campaign is to optimize your conversion rate. Because truly the key metric here is the open rate. You want people to open your email, otherwise they will never see what's inside. And so this involves optimizing a few things. The first one is the name of the sender. People like to see names. They want to see who's contacting them. So you can always use the technique, even if you are working for a company of having your name and then the company name, then the subject of your email. Make sure you make it intriguing, captivating, and that kinda leaves people wanted to click, then you want to optimize the time of the sending. So if you know your audience is in Germany, in France, well, you need to optimize the time of sending. Make sure you find the optimal spot when people are most likely to open your emails. Then the third factor you need to account in your e-mail campaigns is providing value. Now, as you have convinced them to open the e-mail, it's important that you keep your promise and that you share relevant content. This might mean sharing information about their problems, trying to help them solve them. Or perhaps he is sending a sales e-mail, but try to make it as targeted as possible. And in terms of using visual content in your emails, just make sure you don't overdo it, because when there are too many images on the e-mail, it will highly likely go to spam. Then the fourth main thing to consider when creating an email campaign is making sure you are optimizing the call to action. At this stage, your target as received that e-mail, they read the content, but now you don't simply want them to close the email and go about their days. You want them to take some type of action. This can be a Buy Now, a reply now, or a think now, or something in those lines. But you usually want to give your readers a call to action. And finally, now that they have opened your email, they read it, they took the action. It's time for you to analyze the campaign. And there are some indicators that can help you to see if your campaign was successful or not. First is the deliverability rate. Basically this tells you how many emails were delivered. So for example, if you have a 98% deliverability, that means that most of your emails on your database are okay. They are still used by people. Then you have the open rate. This means the number of people or the percentage that opened your emails obviously wanted as high as you can, then you have the click-through rate. This means is the number of people that clicked on your link on the e-mail. So if you're saying people please buy here this product, well, you obviously want them to click on the link. Then you can also analyze other matrix more specifically, like the unsubscribe rate. These are the people who inscribe your list after receiving the e-mail. It's not that uncommon to have some people and subscribing and that's a healthy thing because it means that they are no longer interested in your things. So they will subscribe and it's better for them to unsubscribe them to be receiving your emails if they are not interested in them. But obviously you don't want this number to be big. And these indicators will help you measure the effectiveness of your e-mail campaign. And optimally, you want to use email as often as you can, and you want to rely more on e-mail and contacting directly your audience then using social media platforms. Because remember, your followers are not, your followers are on other platforms like Facebook and other social media platforms, so you don't own their inflammation. 12. Pillar #7: Influencer Marketing | The Tactics: If you're not yet convinced that influencer marketing is a big thing, take a look at this number. 49% of consumers depend on influenza recommendations. And in fact, 40 per cent of them had purchased something after seeing someone talking about that product on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. This is not a small number. And an interesting fact about influencer marketing is that it's not exactly new. We have done it with celebrities like Hollywood celebrities and pop artists and so on. Now we are seeing this phenomenon with way less famous people that have an audience of say, ten k people following them and being influenced by them regarding their purchases. And so much more. And what distinguishes these celebrities from people with way less following is that they have a very specific niche. So having 10 thousand followers on your Instagram page about golf swings is not exactly a very small number. It's actually a very considerable number Given that you have a very niche audience. This is very different from having 100 thousand people following you. If you talk about a lot of things and you don't have a concrete niche. And so this means that it has the business. You might have a significant interests in paying someone with just 10 thousand followers to promote your brand if they have exactly the target audience that you are looking for. These influencers can be broken into categories based on their number of followers. We have mega influencers and these are famous in Hollywood people and artists and so on. They tend to have millions of followers and usually only do partnerships with brands that also make their millions and billions. Then we have macro influencers. They usually have between 100 K and 1 million followers. These are kind of high-profile internet celebrities that have been building they're following over the past five to ten years. Then we have micro influencers. And here we have influencers with 1 thousand, 100 thousand followers. They are credible even though smaller types of influencers. And they have been building an audience in a very specific niche. And then we have nano influencers. These are people who have built a community online or offline and have influence around a very small group of people. But obviously it's also very niche. And so if you want to collaborate with some sort of influencer, It's important to know what options you have available. So if you're looking to collaborate with some type of influencer, It's important to know to which factors you should pay attention to in order to choose the best people to collaborate with. The first thing you should pay attention to is their audience type in quality. This basically requires you to understand who their target audience is and if they match your target audience, or if there's something very common between your target audience and the influencer's followers. Then the second thing you should look at is the preference social networks that this influencer explores. So if they explore, say, TikTok, but your audience is not on TikTok, well, this influencer might not be the right choice then content quality. It's very fundamental to choose someone who, whose content quality actually matches the one of your brand. Because if you are selling to, say, more corporate type of people, you should make sure that the quality also matches and that it's the type of content that they preferred then authenticity. So it's important to not just rely on influencers because they have followers. It's even more important for them to be authentic and to show that he has established an interesting connection with their audience, then we have engagement rates. Well, obviously you want to collaborate with people who have engagement. After all, you can buy ten thousands of followers for, I don't know, $100. That doesn't mean you are an influencer. And finally, it's the fees they charge in your budget. You need to be aware of how they charged. So if they charge proposed, if the charge per sale, if the charge per click and so on. And make sure that fits your budget and that it's reasonable given your goals. And so getting the answers to all of these questions will really help you narrow down the list of influencers that you want to collaborate width. But now you might be asking, okay, But how can I promote my product with this influencer? In this case, there are some interesting media types that you can use to promote your products. First, you have collaborations, and in this case, influencers in business will collaborate together on something, then you have shared channels. This means the influencer will share content on their social profiles or newsletters. Then we have takeovers. This means the influencer will manage the social media platform of a business, say for example, through instagram stories. And then finally we have content creation. This means the influencer will create by him or herself some type of content and we'll share in their own network. This can mean, for example, you to work creating a video on a specific product. It's very important to decide early on which type of route you're going to choose. And most importantly, make sure you choose something that makes the influenza also feel comfortable with it. And you want to leverage their platform. So if they never did takeovers and they prefer to do post that, they create themselves, evaluate that option because it might be the best one. Now, obviously just like any other marketing campaign, you want to measure the effectiveness of the companion run with these influencer. And there are several ways of doing this. The first one are through native e-commerce tools. Overall, you can track the sales, the performance, and how that changed over the course of the campaign. You can also use affiliate network tools. This allows you to track product views, clicks, purchases, and so on. Then you have a website analytics. You can track e-commerce sales from the different channels like social or from the influencers links. Influencer marketing can be a very effective strategy to not only reach a completely different audience, but one that fits exactly the people you are looking for while leveraging the platform that someone else is already building. But this obviously requires you to choose influencers that makes sense and fit the overall feeling of your brand. So more than the followers, it's important to look to other types of measures. And often it's also a question of gut feeling. And what do you, what do you feel about this person and the content they create and the comments they receive. So it's a very important choice, one that might take some time, but if you do it correctly, the result will be incredible. And in the end, you can always measure the effectiveness inside if it makes sense or not to continue working with that influencer. 13. JK Rowling is the Best Marketer Ever? | The Practice: The Harry Potter series sold more than 500 million copies. And then unless there is some spell, I am unaware of, JK Rowling did not make her fortune with magic. For many, it was a mix of skilled persistence in luck and well, I've got to agree, but only if we had another great dose of marketing, it is true then when I put my marketing lens, I tend to see marketing everywhere. But it's not a coincidence that I've been able to see a marketing genius behind JK Rowling success. She has followed a set of principles that make her marketing work better than most companies. So in this video, we'll take a look in rewind back in time to see exactly what may JK Rowling successful and what marketing principles we can learn from her chapter one, don't be afraid of marketing. There is a certain perception that creatives don't need marketing. After all, their job is writing the book, producing the movie, or composing the song. That might have worked for some characters in S3. But nowadays it's a gamble. Austin Kleon, the author of show your work says it best. It's not enough to be good. In order to be found. You have to be findable. And take a look at JK Rowling. Even after selling millions of copies, she wasn't afraid of promoting her work. She created Pottermore, a digital platform with blog posts, quizzes, and so much more about the wizardry world. Was it necessary? Well, I don't know, Probably not, but it was a great marketing move that showed how loyal she is to her fans. As she said, I wanted to give something back to the fence that have followed Harry Potter, so devoted only over the years. And to bring the stories to a new generation chapter to give them what they want. What do you do after publishing seven books and a total of 4,100 pages? You stop. Yeah. But JK Rowling didn't stop at the seventh book. Instead, she built an empire with movies, toys, video games, and so much more. She knew that her fans wanted more than just the books. And I have a confession to make. I loved the books, but they were simply not enough for me. I have to buy the ones I have to buy the Franco pops, the DVDs, fancy box that I had to save for Christmas. And so much more. See, she's simply made easy for people to buy into her world. So if your audience keeps asking you for something or they're clearly giving you the signs that they prefer this over this, then you should pay attention to it and probably give it to them. Does this means selling your soul? Well, Absolutely not. This means listening and caring deeply about your audiences problems while being authentic to your mission, your vision, and your values. Chapter four, story cells. Now, let's be honest for a moment here, the Harry Potter series is absolutely brilliant. The stories that character, the pacing, that's surreal. Yeah, you might argue, right? But isn't the goal of any fiction book to play with those three factors? The answer is yes, but there is something more. Harry Potter is a brand and it doesn't just sell the story of a kid living in the cup board under the stairs. It sells an entire new world. And that's exactly what a great brand does, creating a world where a group of people below, this is more than having your recognizable logo or name. It's an emotional connection that you create with a story and the elements around that, that makes something meaningful in when you create something like this, your audience has a reason to believe in what you create something to be a part of. And as a consequence, you have a story that cells. This is how the author of the book marketing public relations puts it. The Harry Potter case illustrates the unique form of marketing in which the firms that initiate the message when, because they get the word out about their work. Those that deliver the message width, because it draws the public to bear information outlet and the consumers web because they can access to the information they crave. Chapter Five, test failed and get up. There is power in knowing what you don't know. At least it's how Adam Grant puts it in his book. Think again. Jk Rowling was probably aware she didn't knew much about the publishing industry or how to get a book selling millions of copies. But that doesn't mean she gave up. In fact, Harry Potter was rejected right to wealth publishers. Before being published, see, JK Rowling had what most marketers meet, your willingness to put it out there, to experiment. Have the guts to fit my main posting, a YouTube video and getting nine views, all coming from your own devices, sending a sales email that gets you 0 sales. So what? It comes down to persistence and the ability to pivot and change when things are not working until you finally get. And then you repeat the process over and over again. But in the meantime, you can expect to become a better person and more resilient professional with a stronger passion for learning. Now, I don't know about you, but I remember waking up at six AM during school. Just to finish reading the Deathly Hallows, reading these books was a true experience. And this is no different than marketing any other brand that sells. A remarkable experience. I still get excited about buying any new Apple product after ten years of buying their stuff. For me, this is marketing than right? It's not just the product, it's all the elements that also come with it from the website copy to the packaging. And so the question remains, is JK Rowling the best marketed ever? I don't know. I will let you decide. 14. Richard Branson Marketing Strategies | The Practice: Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group. Release, release, release, one of the world's most recognizable brands. And he is considered one of the British reaches people. He's way of turning businesses into global success stories is one of hard work, dedication and some clever marketing. So let's take a look at some of the marketing lessons we can take from the Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. Chapter one. How Richard Branson built is Empire. Richard was always fascinated by the music industry. He started his own record store in Oxford, England and actually sold the records at discounted rates. We've far lower prices than the competition. And obviously this earned him a recognition. He didn't use the money from his record store to start an entire record label called Virgin Records. And the catchy name was an instant success. Virgin Records signed artists that were too controversial for other record labels such as the Sex Pistols in the underground success evolve those artists during the Virgin Records into an overnight success story. It became the world's largest independent record label. Richard, then use the success from the record label to build or their businesses such as the Virgin Atlantic airline. And the more successful He's businesses got, the more industries he would enter diversifying the Virgin Group overall chapter to put yourself in your customers shoes. When Branson started Virgin Atlantic, he knew that costumers were fed up with airlines in general. Banks were unwilling to invest in this new airline, but he knew exactly what costumers wanted. He started his airline with a lot of firsts. The first onboard bar, the first onboard message, the first seat back entertainment. And at the time these were obviously some gimmicks, but over time, more and more costumers became used to these features. In other airlines shortly followed suit. Essentially, Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to prioritize costumer care over profit. And this built costumer confidence on the brand, something most brands can only dream of. Chapter three, the use of social media. The Virgin Group always goes on long and sometimes very expensive social media campaigns to promote its brands. Why? Well, there's simply isn't a bigger all pledge to promote your brand out there. For example, Virgin Atlantic once started a campaign in which they donate $5 to the key IPP school for every flight that would be booked that day. This ended up being one of the most successful days in the history of the airline. Chapter Four, Don't be afraid of being outlandish. The Virgin Group has always been rather outlandish in its marketing campaigns. It has been known to pull some publicity stunts that keep the brand fresh in the eyes of the consumers. The group once launched a bridal wear company called Virgin Brides. This new brand was almost instantly successful, thanks to reach your brands and dressing up in drag is a bride, which at the time was pretty shocking for a CEO of a major company, sales immediately took off. In during the launch of Virgin Cola, Richard Branson drove downtime square in a battle tank, ensuring all eyes were on him and no one else. He even dressed up as a traditional Zulu warrior to celebrate Virgin Atlantic launching flights to South Africa. Something that would be controversial today but was a massive success back then. Chapter Five, keep engaging with your costumers. Richard Branson believes in creating a strong bond with his costumers. He has revealed that he often calls up costumers taking the Virgin limo after your flight and asks them how their flight was. After revealing he is actually the CEO of the airline. He says it's a great way of treating your costumers like the actually met her in creating clients for life. Chapter six, you don't need to be the leader. One of the most important lessons that we can learn from Branson is that you don't need to be the market leader in everything. All you need to do is be successful. This means creating a brand that might not have the highest number of costumers. But the brand where the costumers are the happiest, the Virgin Group doesn't have the largest airline, the largest cell phone service provider, or the largest record label in the UK. But it does have a wide range of successful businesses that care about their costumers and really tried to offer them the best experience. And that's a wrap for today's marketing lessons from Richard Branson. What do you think is his most valuable contribution to market? Let me know in the comments below and as always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this. See you in the next one. 15. Conclusion: We arrived at the end of this course. It was an amazing marketing, right? I hope you have enjoyed as much as I did. We have gone through the foundations of digital marketing. We have seen how they apply in several companies and how to make these seven pillars work for you. We even talked about the most common language used across marketing, and we saw some cool examples of JK Rowling and Richard Branson. Now, in order to put what you've learned into practice, I challenge you to do this class project. The goal is to pick one company or one brand, select one type of marketing campaign they have done. And to share with the community. Tell us what is the strategy, what you like about it, and how you would improve upon it? This is a great way of getting your brain primed to finding interesting marketing strategies all across the world. And now we'll definitely be commenting on your class projects because I also love to learn more about marketing. And that's a wrap. Thank you very much for staying until the end of the class. And if you want to follow my work, make sure you follow me on LinkedIn and YouTube to see more and learn more about marketing and content marketing. So I hope to see you around.