MODULE 1: THE DIGITAL MARKETING LANDSCAPE

INDEX

1. Defining Digital Marketing (Pag 3)

• What is Digital Marketing and How Can We Understand it in Today’s Digital World?
• Fit: Success in the Digital Landscape.
• Core Concepts of Digital Marketing.

2. Strategy: Understanding the Methodology of Digital Marketing (Pag 7)

• The Marketing Mix.

• Point/Counterpoint.

3. Ethics: Understanding the Norms in Working towards Ethical Marketing (Pag 10)

• The Value Exchange.

• Creating Trust.
• Code of Conduct.

4. Future-proofing: Understanding the Direction of Digital Marketing (Pag 14)

• Digital Adoption.
• Looking back to Look Forward: The History of Digital and Why it Matters.
• Innovation and Digital Transformation.

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 Introduction

This course is unique in the world of digital marketing. Over the next six weeks, our goal is to equip you with the
knowledge of digital tools and strategies that make for successful campaigns and to give you the opportunity to
uncover what kind of digital marketing leader you hope to become. It’s no longer sufficient for marketers to sit on the
sidelines and simply push out the products and services that their organizations create. The best digital marketers are
strategic thinkers and collaborative leaders.

Module 1 content:

1. Defining digital marketing,

2. Establishing how this field differs from the field of marketing in the past,
3. Examining the roles that exist and the qualities necessary for the right fit as a digital marketer.
4. core concepts regarding strategy,
o the marketing mix
o the four Ps,
5. How the digital realm has influenced and transformed marketing tactics.
6. How has the customer changed? And how is the message adapting to this change? We will discuss ethics and trust,
o How digital marketing can adapt to the consumer's growing consciousness and growing need for trust.
7. The traditional product development approach to design thinking that drives innovation.

Goals:

• How marketing has grown and changed

• Where this field is going due to the influence of an increasingly digital world and the consequential change in
consumer needs and behaviour.

The four keys of this module:

• Fit: Quality which makes a successful digital marketer. Wide range field, which requires people with different skills
to work together to achieve business goals:
o Visual thinker with artistic skills
o Strategist (puzzles – challenges).
o Project manager
o Number cratcher: extract meaning from data

• Strategy: The ability to think strategic, proves valuable in all fields. A good strategy define the path to take and the
opportunitie to reject. It consist on constantly testing hypothesis. Goal -> drive consumer engagement.
• Ethics: A sustainable business must consider long term impact of our actions. Our team, customers, society and
planet. It is necessary to consider the right and wrong. Insight, language and tools, to make ethical human center
decitions. This makes trust.
• Future-proofing: Digital Marketing is really into the future. We will study trends, to predict and build.

Learning Objectives

• Explain how the history of digital marketing informs where the field is headed
• Probe the importance of ethical decision-making in the future of modern marketing
• Assess your own goals as aspiring digital marketers and the extent to which they align with opportunities in the
field

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 1. DEFINING DIGITAL MARKETING

1.1. What is Digital Marketing and How Can We Understand it in Today’s Digital World?

Marketing comprises all the activities of a business related to buying and selling a product or service.

Digital marketing, therefore, is any of those activities that occurs online using digital tools and technologies.

1.2. Fit: Success in the Digital Marketing Landscape

The Qualities of Successful Digital Marketers

Digital marketing is a truly expansive field, so finding your fit is an exciting challenge. What gets you 'in the zone,' or
feeling a sense of flow? When do you feel most energized, focused, and involved? Successful digital marketers know
what their own 'zone of genius' is and lean into that with the roles and projects they take on. Review the questions to
the right, and reflect on the times when you feel like you're truly at your best. Some important factors that lie along a
spectrum – What gets you excited?

• about people skills or technological skills

• investing in only a single brand/mission or a wider variety
• collaborating with big teams or independent work
• being creative or being analytical
• visuals, words, or numbers
• processes or products

The specific qualities of a successful marketer depend very much on the role within digital marketing. Below are just
a few examples of different roles and what kinds of qualities are expected in each.

1. Marketing Management 2. Technology

• Extensive marketing experience • People skills
• Executive presence • Technical skills
• Strategic thinking • Negotiation skills
• Excellent communication skills • Process improvement mindset
• Negotiation skills • Project management
• Financial, managerial, and coaching skills • Research

3. Brand Management 4. Research

• Problem-solving • Psychology
• Analytical proficiency • Analytic skills
• Executive presence • Strong presentation/persuasion skills
• Excellent communication skills • People skills
• Partner/vendor management • Project management
• Solid educational background in Marketing • Strong background in multiple types of research
5. Creative 6. Community and Partnerships
• Excellent people skills • Strong people skills
• Creativity • Passion for company/product/brand
• Graphic and writing software proficiency • Resourcefulness
• Stamina • Negotiation skills
• Executive presence • Resilience
7. Advertising 8. Public Relations
• Planning/project management skills • Strong people skills
• Strong research background • Background in journalism/communications
• Active listening/client focus • Psychology/behavior
• Good communication skills • Resilience
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 • Partner/vendor management • Strategic thinking
• Solid educational background in Marketing • Crisis management
You might choose to work inside a digital marketing agency. In an agency, teams work with a wider variety of clients.
Although there are many more possible roles depending on the specific industry an agency focuses on, roles include:

• Account manager: the main point of contact for a client and ensure their needs and goals are met.
• Strategists and creative: develop campaign concepts and map out marketing plans.
• Project managers: keep all the pieces of campaigns and strategies moving forward on time, on budget, and to
the highest standard.
• Content creators, graphic designers, and video specialists: develop digital assets for campaigns.
• Social media managers:keep digital channels running.
• Web and SEO specialists: ensure clients’ sites are findable and intuitive for consumers.

Harvey Coleman’s P.I.E. Model

What makes someone

• successful in their work

• be at their best
• climb the organizational ladder?

Management consultant Harvey Coleman proposed a model in 1996 with the first edition of his book, “Empowering
Yourself: The Organizational Game Revealed,” which still proves true today. He called it the P.I.E. model, in which the
mnemonic PIE stands for:

60% exposure:
• exposure—to people, resources, and opportunities—helps to become successful
• Introducing cutting-edge thinkers in digital marketing and related fields
• Providing inspiration for professional growth
• Offering opportunities to connect with fellow students
• Emphasizing the importance of exposure to people, resources, and opportunities for success
• Acknowledging the role of networking in career advancement
• Highlighting the significance of information and opportunities for professional development
• Encouraging students to start taking advantage of these opportunities now
30% image
• Image—how others understand and perceive you—
• helps professionals excel in their work.
• digital marketing challenge is to develop and maintain the images of an organizations so that customers
continue to engage and to buy
10% performance
• work hard is a small piece of the puzzle
• your basic ability to do your job is less important,
• Performance is the entry point to many roles, but excellence must be a given.
• Do well in your work, but don’t expect to be able to compete on performance alone.

CONSIDER: Remember this framework as we talk about the ethical side of marketing. The fact that image and
exposure play such critical roles in our professional advancement has important implications for equity and inclusion.
What biases might we carry about someone’s image that might hinder their growth, despite performance? Who has
access to that exposure, and why? How can we help improve access to bring more diverse voices to the table—which,
we’ll learn shortly, improves outcomes for everyone?

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1.3. Core Concepts of Digital Marketing

There are a few basic tenets that set digital marketing apart from its more traditional, broadcast marketing
predecessors.

Measurement: Calculating the Return On Investment (ROI) of a billboard or even a television ad is challenging and
unreliable. With digital marketing, measurement is built into the very systems that deliver the content. The
sophisticated digital marketer can track every touchpoint with a customer, notice patterns that emerge, and respond
accordingly. In digital MArketing theres a lot of information and it is possible to measure.

Iteration and optimization: The relative ease of content development, release, and measurement means that testing
and iteration are not only possible but required for effective digital campaigns.

Cost efficiency: When digital marketing efforts are well-targeted, measured effectively, and optimized for maximum
results, dollars invested in marketing can be used much more efficiently than with traditional marketing. This is not to
say that digital marketing is cheaper, as campaigns run the gamut. For example, a small nonprofit may invest a cautious
$25 into Facebook advertising, while a single digital marketing campaign for a large brand may run in the hundreds of
millions of dollars. Rather, whatever the spend, it can produce more reliable returns with less waste and higher return
on investment.

Interactivity: Digital marketing opens up the opportunity to not only talk to your audience, but with them. Effective
digital marketing often feels more like an organic conversation with your potential customers than a one-directional
sales pitch. Smart brands use this truth to their advantage and find ways to listen to and involve their customers in
various aspects of the organization.

Speed: Digital marketing moves much faster than traditional marketing, in many respects. Campaigns can be created
and launched with ease. Content is quickly and easily adaptable. Content delivery is fast and seamless

Reach/scale: As of January 2021, nearly 60% of the world’s population was online based on the number of internet
users in the world (Statista 2021). While there are significant disparities in internet access—less than 5% of the
population of many of the world’s poorest countries like Somalia and Madagascar are online according to the website,
Our World in Data, digital connectedness has become not only common but critical to everyday life around the globe.
The advent of digital marketing brings unprecedented opportunities to reach potential customers, wherever they may
be.

Lowered barriers to entry: Whereas traditional marketing may require big budgets and access to exclusive channels,
digital marketing allows anyone with access to the internet the opportunity to reach their target market and build a
customer base.

Precision of targeting: Broadcast marketing is so named because it is precisely that—broad, intended to reach large,
undifferentiated crowds. With digital marketing, businesses have the opportunity to present their offerings to only
those potential customers who will be most likely to be interested in their products or services.

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Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

There are two broad categories of marketing in the digital age: inbound and outbound.

Inbound marketing: any kind of marketing in which the customer is drawn to the business—they come to you. It’s a
pull strategy. It’s also often called content marketing. The premise of inbound marketing is that if you want to invite
an exchange of value, you need to first draw in your potential customers with something of value. This style of
marketing is more of a soft sell. The intention is to provide content that begins a conversation and a relationship, in
order to build that know, like, and trust factor. Inbound marketing tactics include:

• Content marketing
• SEO
• Email marketing
• ...and much more that we’ll cover later in this course

Outbound marketing: all the ways in which a company seeks to position itself in front of a potential customer; the
company finds the audience and makes first contact. Outbound marketing is based on push methodology—essentially,
get the company, brand, product or service out there, and hope that the right people see it. Outbound marketing
tactics include:

• Cold calling
• Direct mail
• Trade shows
• Social media advertising
• Print media, TV, or radio advertising

Inbound is the preferred method of many marketers today; according to HubSpot, 70% of marketers are actively
investing in content marketing. (Hubspot 2021)

Inbound and outbound marketing can work well in tandem. For example, a bicycle company may create a
downloadable guide to bike repair on their website in exchange for sharing an email address, whilst also investing in
Instagram advertisement to target bicycle enthusiasts. This would be an example of outbound marketing (social media
advertising) enhancing inbound marketing (the bicycle repair guide as content marketing).

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 2. STRATEGY: UNDERSTANDING THE METHODOLOGY OF DIGITAL MARKETING

2.1. The Marketing Mix

Traditional marketing has always been focused on the “marketing mix” of the Four Ps: product, price, place, and
promotion. The tactical tools that marketers use to implement their strategies, engage customers, and deliver superior
customer value are known as the marketing mix. Each element of the marketing mix should support the product’s
positioning. The product, its price, its distribution channels, and of course the promotion should all reinforce the
message. Without a coherent, fully integrated mix, even the best product in the world will fail.

Product is either a tangible good or intangible service that fulfills a need or want of consumers. The product must
deliver a minimum level of performance on all attributes that are important to the target group consumers. Product
is the fundamental element in the marketing mix; if product is not delivering the best work, the marketing mix won’t
help to deliver consumer value.

Price is the cost consumers pay for a product are often tied to promotion. Price depends on the cost of production,
segment targeted, ability of the market to pay, supply/demand, and a host of other direct and indirect factors. There
can be several types of pricing strategies, each tied in with an overall business plan. Pricing can also be used to
differentiate and enhance the image of a product.

Promotion refers to all the activities undertaken to make the product or service known to the target user. Promotion
includes advertising, content marketing, public relations, in-store or online promotions and incentives, commissions,
and awards to the trade. These activities aim to convince consumers that they want the product and should pay a
certain price for it. Promotion can include consumer engaging activities, direct marketing, influencer marketing,
contests, and prizes.

Place is where a company sells a product and how it delivers the product to the market. It could also be referred to as
the point of sale. In every industry, catching the eye of the consumer and making it easy for them to buy it is the
main aim of good distribution or place strategy. Products are only successful if they are found by their target segment
if they are appropriately placed. The right place might extract a premium, regardless of the online or brick-and-mortar
nature of distribution.

Examples

Product failure: In 2012, Nike made an early foray into the emerging world of wearable sensors. The product,
unfortunately, didn’t live up to consumer expectations. The tracker could only capture customers’ walking, jogging,
and running, but customers expected it to capture all of their exercise habits, such as swimming or biking, as well.
Additionally, the tracker translated exercise into unfamiliar, branded units (called “fuel”), which was confusing and
frustrating for customers. Since the product didn’t operate as expected, the gap between what consumers expected
and what the software could deliver was too much to overcome. Competitors came in and addressed customers’
concerns, and ultimately Nike shut down the product less than three years later. The lesson? The product itself has to
deliver for your customers.

Promotion Failure: While a technically strong product, Zune was severely under-marketed and simply did not make
the case to the customer as to what the benefits were. On the other hand, iPod, which had been released five years
earlier, and had already soaked up much of the market, was consistently and aggressively promoted. Zune failed and
Apple continued to dominate the market. The lesson? It doesn’t matter if your product is superior if your potential
buyers don’t know about it, or aren’t convinced of its value.

Price Failure: When you’re an established brand, customers develop expectations around your pricing. Changing those
expectations takes time. So when Volkswagen attempted to enter the luxury car market at a significantly higher price
point than their other vehicles, they failed because Volkswagen is associated with safety in customers’ minds with
safety, reliability, functionality, and reasonable prices. Volkswagen pulled the product from the market. The lesson?
Pricing is an important marketing decision because it has to do not just with how much your product costs, but how

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your customers think of you. If you want to change price, you must also change your customers’ perceptions of your
brand.

Place Failure: The channels you choose to share your product on have to be consistent with where your customer
thinks about that product and how it is purchased and consumed. When Trump Steaks were introduced, they were
sold exclusively through QVC and, more unexpectedly, high-tech lifestyle chain The Sharper Image. While the potential
audience may have been correct, the offer failed, and the steaks were pulled from the shelves after only two months.
The lesson? Consider again your customer’s mindset and expectations for where and how they get what they are
searching for. In the digital world, this comes through in terms of the channels you choose.

The Fifth P

In the digital age, marketers continue to lean on the Four Ps. But they are also considering where that traditional
model falls short. There have been many attempts to introduce a “Fifth P” into the mix to account for the fast-moving,
customer-centric digital world. Read the following articles and consider for yourself: do you agree with these
suggestions? What would your “Fifth P” of marketing be?

REQUIRED READINGS

In The Power of the Fifth P, author William J. McEwen argues that the fifth P is People:

• Building a relationship with the customer is the key to creating repeat sales and fostering loyalty.
• Marketing 101 focuses on the Four Ps: Product, Place, Promotion, and Price. However, the Fifth P - People - is often
overlooked in brand marketing.
• Customer-facing employees play a crucial role in delivering the brand promise and building customer relationships.
Yet, these employees are often the responsibility of human resources, not brand managers.
• Neglecting the customer experience can be costly to companies. Customers have long memories of
disappointments and unmet expectations.
• Gallup Organization surveys suggest that employees who deal with customers not only represent the brand but
also become the brand in customers' perceptions.
• Adding a fifth P - People - to the Four Ps can be challenging due to organizational rigidity. Companies need to select,
manage and train their employees for brand-enhancing behaviors.
• In the fast-food industry, customers are more likely to return to a source based on the quality of the interactions
with the people who take and serve their orders than the taste of the food.
• In the airline industry, the quality of customer service is a more significant factor than promotions and place in
creating customer loyalty.

The article Purpose Is the 5th "P" of Marketing You Absolutely Need by Jeff Barrett states that Purpose is the fifth P:

• Purpose is the fifth "P" of marketing that companies need to focus on to beat their competition.
• Connecting with a purpose can give companies an edge in today's marketplace.
• Purpose can be the predominant buzz word of 2019 as people seek out brands with a purpose and stay with the
ones that continue to have a purpose. brands need to communicate their purpose to connect with customers.
• Loyal customers identify with the purpose just as much if not more than the product.
• Brands that take a stand on important issues can create deeper and longer-lasting relationships with their fans
around a shared set of values.
• Companies should focus on being deeply loved by some rather than inoffensive to all.
• Taking a stand on important issues of our time can deepen and lengthen relationships with customers who share
their values.
• Companies need to create a deep, meaningful connection with their target audience to be loved by them rather
than trying to be inoffensive to all.
• Customers identify with a brand's purpose just as much, if not more than the product.

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A Word of Caution: An excellent marketing mix in one period may not be as effective in another period. The marketing
mix changes over time due to market changes, shifts in consumer preferences, emergence of new segments,
introduction of new trends, technological advances, attitudinal changes, competitive actions, etc. Therefore, the
marketing mix must be reevaluated periodically to identify weaknesses and opportunities. Try different things to
achieve different results. Reevalutation, innovation, changes in economy, companies, customers, etc, is essential. For
example: an online company sells travels. Covid happens. They try to stand out by being relevant as possible. The
company searched for other products which where more needed by that time, like home goods, groceries, etc. Even
support of local businesses.

Revaluationg starts with the audience. What do consumers need? How can you connect with their needs and mindset
during this time?

The 6th P  The Process: The way of shipment or customer services are processes which must work smoothly. The
customer should not think about all the processes.

2.2. Point/Counterpoint

Start with Why: To make customers know, like, and trust us enough to exchange value, we need to rise above the
noise. What is the importance of "Why?" Author Simon Sinek famously proposed that the most successful businesses
are those that “start with why.” He uses Apple as a classic example of a company with a strong “why” that has used
this core idea to consistently keep its customers engaged. Only from there do those brands then address the 'how' of
their work, and finally the 'what' - their actual products and services. Apple has always been, and always will be, about
beautiful design. No matter what products they create, that 'why' lies at heart of the company.

Video to learn more about sharing your message and inspiring action by starting with why.

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action (ANNEX 1)

• Leaders and organizations who inspire people think, act, and communicate in a specific way - the opposite to
everyone else - and Simon Sinek has codified this into the "golden circle" concept.
• The vast majority of people and organizations know what they do, some know how they do it, but very few know
why they do what they do (i.e., what's their purpose, cause, or belief).
• People and organizations that inspire others all think, act, and communicate from the inside out, starting with why
they do what they do, not from the outside in.
• When communicating from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior,
which is where gut decisions come from.
• People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is to sell or hire people who believe what you
believe, not just people who need what you have.
• Attracting those who believe what you believe is important because they'll work for you with blood, sweat & tears.
• Example: The Wright brothers and importance of the why, as they attracted people who believed in their cause,
and this belief sustained them through years of failure until they finally succeeded in inventing the airplane.
• It's not enough to talk about what you do, how you do it, and expect some sort of behavior. To inspire people, you
need to start with why.

Let’s Not Start with Why

While this idea has taken off and spurred entire industries towards the idea of “finding your why” and living it out
through their business, there are competing ideas. In an article titled "The Three-Word Brief", Bob Hoffman, a
published author in the field of advertising, challenges this idea of "brand meaning," claiming that although there are
a few select brands where the consumer forms a deeper connection, for most this is not necessarily the driver for
success in their marketing strategy.

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 3. Ethics: Understanding the Norms in Working towards Ethical Marketing

3.1. The Value Exchange

Marketing and Digital Marketing are the practice of inviting the exchange of value. You have something of value to
offer, and your customer provides something of value in return. Marketing encompasses all the activities, systems,
tools, and processes that invite this exchange. Digital marketing also known as web marketing, online marketing, or
internet marketing. The goal of a marketer is always to help customers know, like, and trust us enough to keep
exchanging value.

That means that digital marketing is, in part:

• Psychology and sociology: You have to understand people—what they value, how they behave, how they make
decisions—both individually and as a group.
• Education: You have to be able to share information about your organization, your product, your service, etc., in
a way those people can understand.
• Entertainment: We need to keep our customers engaged and inspired so they build a connection with our brands.
• Technology: We have to have a working knowledge of the tools of the trade, and how they can serve your strategy
to reach and engage your customers.
• Measurement and analysis: How will you know if your marketing efforts have been effective? Being able to name,
track, and analyse the metrics that matter is key to being a successful digital marketer.
• Operations: Marketing must align with every aspect of the company or organization you represent, with strong
communication and clear workflows. This will keep your efforts responsive to the environment and compelling to
your customers.
• Business: Peter Drucker famously said, “The goal of business is to create and keep a customer.” He argued that
business only has two functions: marketing and innovation. In “Peter Drucker On Marketing,” it states that no
business can exist without inviting and facilitating that exchange of value, so marketing is fundamental.

3.2. Creating Trust

Ethics and Trust “Your story is a hook. And you’re on it” (Seth Godin “THIS IS MARKETING”). It is important to be
coherent to the values. If you lose the trust, people will look for alternatives, and if there is a lot of competition.

Is it a matter of size? Not always small companies do well.

What about wrongdoers?

• Adding value on other things: For example diet coke, light cigarretes, planting trees, etc.
• Needs of the company: “This are the needs of the company, and it is what it is”.
• Time make change companies:

3.3. Code of Conduct

The Role of Code of Conduct in Building Trust

Ethics, at heart, are the set of moral principles that guide our behaviour and help distinguish right from wrong.
Marketing is the most public-facing aspect of the business, so it is subject to the most scrutiny. Ethical digital
marketing is crucial because it drives profit and builds trust. Trust is a critical component in building and maintaining
relationships with both current and potential customers.

“Marketers know that a brand’s success is built on consumer trust and so delivering on its promise is key. If a brand
fails to act ethically, whether this is done accidentally or deliberately, this trust is undermined.” (Boote 2017)

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The American Marketing Association, in their Code of Conduct, offers three ethical norms for marketers to stand by.
These norms are as follows: “Do no harm." This means consciously avoiding harmful actions or omissions by
embodying high ethical standards and adhering to all applicable laws and regulations in the choices we make. Foster
trust in the marketing system. This means striving for good faith and fair dealing to contribute toward the efficacy of
the exchange process, as well as avoiding deception in product design, pricing, communication, and delivery of
distribution. Embrace ethical values. This means building relationships and enhancing consumer confidence in the
integrity of marketing by affirming these core values: honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and
citizenship. (AMA Code of Conduct 2021)

AMA’s Statement of Ethics (ANNEX 2)

The AMA Statement of Ethics outlines the ethical standards that marketers should follow in their profession, including
research standards.

The preamble emphasizes the AMA's commitment to promoting high ethical norms and values for its members, who
act as stewards of society and are responsible for multiple stakeholders.

The ethical norms include avoiding harm, fostering trust in the marketing system, and embracing ethical values.

The ethical values include honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency, and citizenship, with specific actions
outlined for each value.

The implementation section encourages AMA members to lead their organizations in fulfilling promises made to
stakeholders and encourages industry sectors and marketing sub-disciplines to develop their own specific codes of
ethics.

As a digital marketer, you are in a position to influence the people around you at three levels:

Your company and team: Internally, you can be the voice of more ethical standards of marketing. We’ll talk more
about this in our module on Digital Leadership.

Your customers: If you’re in the world of marketing, you believe in the power of persuasion to change people’s beliefs
and behaviours. How you interact with them matters. Throughout the subsequent modules, we’ll discuss ways you
can engage your customers online to ensure you’re building trust, and treating your customers with respect.

Society more broadly: Digital marketing is everywhere. A huge indicator of success is how far our messages spread on
their own; how “viral” they become. Our marketing becomes woven into the fabric of our culture. We therefore need
to consider the potential repercussions of those messages, both productive and destructive, as they travel beyond our
target audiences. What kind of (positive) impact can we have?

These three levels of consideration should come into play when it comes to building ethical practice into your
marketing.

Your Role in the Ethics of Digital Marketing (Beasley 2021)

For now, let’s focus on how more ethically aligned digital marketing starts with you. How do we wield the influence
we have as digital marketers to ethically make better decisions and build trust? Brett Beasley of the Notre Dame
Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership offers four straightforward tips for wielding our power more ethically:

• Focus on the responsibility that comes with power

• Develop a strong moral identity

• Encourage others to use their voice

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 • Find mentors to keep you humble

Issues of digital marketing ethichs which we need to be conscious and work to avoid: Click-bait, unfounded scientific
claims, advertising vulnerable population, misuse of customer data.

In the age of bradcast marketing, ethics were defined by how you treated your competitor than how you treated your
customer.

In the digital world, the focus shifted to how businesses treat their customers.

84% Americans believe brans have the power to make the world a better place.

92% of millennial consumers, are more likely to buy products from ethical companies.

Ethical digital marketers understand that building trust is essential to create a maintain a customers base, and setting
that ethical standard begins with the marketing:

• Where you choose to share your talents?

• Before accepting a job in digital marketing its better to research to company in Glassdoor to look for previous
employees opinions. Talk with people which is familiar with the company. Look at their current marketing and
how current and potential customers are working.
• Include in the digital marketing strategy “what ethical issues we could struggle with”. Review them regularly.

Karina Tama-Rutigliano: “do not use fake reviews. Ask for real reviews from real customers”.

If finding something portentialy unethical in your company, talk about it with your team and make questions. Share
your perspective.

If this doesn’t happen there can be serious PR disasters  Balenciaga designer sorry for ‘inappropriate’ campaign
featuring children

“As a marketer, it is your responsibility to net ROI marketing while holding the line on ethical marketing practices.
Customers expect transparency, and newer technology will give them an access to it. It’s time for us to rise to the
occasion and quit pretending unethical practices are acceptable”.

25 Years Ago I Coined the Phrase “Triple Bottom Line.” Here’s Why It’s Time to Rethink It (The Harvard Business
Review, John Elkington).

This article talks about the need to recall this term as it has become more about accounting than actual change in the
way businesses operate.

About 25 years ago, John Elkington coined the term “triple bottom line” as a challenge for business leaders to rethink
capitalism. It was supposed to offer a radical new way forward, as businesses learned to stop focusing solely on profits
and expand their focus to include improving the lives people and the health of the planet. But 25 years later, this
radical goal has been largely forgotten, and “triple bottom line” thinking has been reduced to a mere accounting tool,
a way of balancing tradeoffs instead of actually doing things differently.

Today, we continue to outstrip our planetary boundaries with no sign of slowing down. And so Elkington offers a
management concept “recall.” Because when it comes to sustainability, the time has come to either step up, or to get
out of the way.

• Management concepts are not subjected to recalls like industrial products, and failures are often ignored in
poorly regulated environments.

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• Poor management systems can jeopardize lives and entire businesses, so it is time for a management concept
recall to fine-tune the triple bottom line, a sustainability framework that examines a company's social,
environment, and economic impact.

• The triple bottom line was coined in 1994 and was designed to provoke deeper thinking about capitalism and its
future, but it has been captured and diluted by accountants and reporting consultants. Many early adopters
understood the concept as a balancing act, adopting a trade-off mentality.

• The concept has been proliferated into a bewildering range of options, which can provide businesses with an
alibi for inaction. The data produced are not being analyzed to track, understand, and manage the systemic
effects of human activity.

• The TBL was intended as a genetic code, a triple helix of change for tomorrow's capitalism, pushing toward the
transformation of capitalism. It was never supposed to be just an accounting system.

• Some companies moved in this direction, among them Denmark's Novo Nordisk, Anglo-Dutch Unilever, and
Germany's Covestro.

• It is time for progress on two dimensions of the TBL while the third remains unaffected to become the default
setting for leading businesses.

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 4. Future-proofing: Understanding the Direction of Digital Marketing

4.1. Digital Adoption

Nearly 60% of the world's population is now digital. Social media users have increased by more than 1 billion in the
past 3 years. Simon Kemp

In the last year, digital adoption accelerated around the world as people spent more time online. There are now 4.66
billion people who use the internet—close to 60% of the world’s total population. The average internet user spends
nearly seven hours per day using the internet, a 9% increase from last year. This means that we spend roughly 40% of
our waking lives using connected devices

Social media users increased by more than 13% over the past year, bringing the global total to nearly 4.2 billion. That’s
over 1 billion new users over the last three years.

This dramatic uptick has put social back in the spotlight for marketers. As the CMO Survey shows, social media
spending has increased from 13.3% of marketing budgets in February 2020 to 23.2% in June 2020—a 74% lift. CMOs
anticipate that social media investments will remain high at 23.4% of marketing budgets in 2021.

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4.2. Looking back to Look Forward: The History of Digital and Why it Matters

In order to get a sense of where things are headed, it is often helpful to look back at where we’ve come from. Let’s
look at an extremely brief overview of the history of the internet and digital technologies:

a) The web began by connecting data (files): The first message was sent from one computer to another in 1969; the
first email was launched in 1971. Static websites were first built in 1990 and made public in 1993. Amazon.com
launched in 1995, Google and Yahoo came out in 1997.

b) Then it connected people (social media): Social media platform Friendster (now defunct) launches in 2002–2003.
Facebook comes on the scene in 2004.

c) Then both of those connections went mobile (the rise of mobile phones): Apple introduces the first iPhone in 2007.

d) Since then, digital experiences have become more personalized and immersive: Virtual reality (VR) was widely
introduced to the public when Oculus Rift ran its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Augmented reality
(AR) game Pokémon GO brought AR to the masses in 2016.

e) Devices are more seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives and are practically omnipresent: Alexa, Amazon’s
virtual assistant smart speaker, was introduced in 2014. A 2019 Perkins Coie report argues that by 2025, AR and VR
technologies will be as ubiquitous as smart phones. (Perkins Coie and XR Association 2019).

Notice the trends in the timeline? Digital technologies have gone from connecting information to connecting people.
For example, from the connection of computers in one location to people on the move along with the information
being housed in the devices we carry, to broadening to whole new worlds. As digital marketers, our job is to be both
responsive to the current environments and predictive about what’s next. Consider for yourself: where is the digital
world taking us next? What is the next digital frontier, and what will that mean for digital marketing?

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4.3. Innovation and Digital Transformation

Some companies were born into the digital world and understand intrinsically how to harness its power and potential
in their marketing.

Zappos.com and Customer Service

Zappos.com, founded in 1999, is technically a shoe company, but it has also developed a relentless focus on customer
service as its true differentiator. Zappos founder Tony Hsieh went so far as to say that Zappos is a customer service
company that "happens to sell shoes online." Recently, Zappos has tapped influencers to host "shoppable livestreams,"
allowing customers to interact directly with the people they follow, get introduced to products they might enjoy, and
seamlessly make their purchase right through the platform. Zappos is an excellent example of a successful “digital
native brand.” For these companies, keeping up with digital is part of who they are—it’s in the company’s DNA.

For others, the challenge to adapt to the ever-accelerating pace of change in the digital world is an uphill battle. This
is because digital transformation isn’t just about updating your new tools and technologies—it’s about adapting to the
reality of a customer-centric digital world at every point of interaction with your audience. And that takes a lot more
than just setting up a Facebook page. For many companies, it means reimagining the structure of internal departments,
updating roles and job descriptions, and considering how your company’s culture supports, or stands in the way of,
near-constant innovation and iteration.

Traditional Approach to Developing Product/Service Innovation

Consider, for example, how traditional companies approach developing a product. As you can see in the figure below,
the traditional approach begins with the generation and screening of an idea that is then developed, tested, and
marketed. After these initial steps, a business analysis is performed that leads to product development, test marketing,
and finally commercialization of the product. This approach starts with the leadership of the company and doesn’t
incorporate the customer’s voice until it hits the market. All of the company’s internal systems support this lengthy,
internal process.

But with the advent of digital technologies, businesses suddenly find themselves in an environment in which they are
speaking with their customers, not just to them (whether they like it or not). They can get immediate feedback on
their products and services. Unfortunately, the traditional product development process they have in place doesn’t
allow them to respond to that feedback in a timely way.

Design Thinking Can Be Used to Enable Innovation

Digital native brands that put their customers at the center of every interaction are often using a design thinking
approach, whether they name it as such or not. They are constantly empathizing with their customer, coming up with
16
ideas for how to address their needs and desires, testing out new offerings to see how they resonate, learning, and
adjusting again. The true challenge of digital transformation is not about adopting digital technologies, it is about
moving from a company-centric view of the world to a radically customer-centric one.

As you can see in the figure below, this shift to a customer-centric focus produces a non-linear approach. Unlike the
traditional approach, which was based on a linear method with a series of steps, here the approach is to allow user
learning and testing to guide the steps to follow in the creation of a product or service.

Many digital native brands, on the other hand, take a different approach to product development that is better aligned
with the culture of the digital age. Design thinking is an iterative process that allows you to produce goods and services
in collaboration with your audience. That process looks like this :

Digital marketing is not the same as digital transformation, but digital marketing can be the work that leads the change
in your organization because it is inherently so close to the customer. If you find yourself working in digital marketing
in a traditional organization, know that the process of digital transformation can feel slow and challenging. But know
that your role, insight, and support can drive meaningful change that both moves the company forward, increases
revenue, and serves your customers better in the long run.

SUMMARY: With every step, the digital world has gone from centering content to centering people. More and more,
digital marketing is centered on delivering relevant and resonant content and experiences personalized to each
individual. So, knowing your customer, and knowing how to learn about them, is crucial when delivering this kind of
content and experience. This is exactly where we will begin in the next module.

Forum: The World of Digital Marketing. What draws you to the world of digital marketing, and what role do you hope
to play in this field? Share a little bit about the companies/brands, people, and events that inspired you to pursue this
field.

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 Glossary

Digital Marketing: Any marketing activity that occurs online using digital tools and technologies.

Inbound Marketing: Refers to any kind of marketing in which the customer is drawn to the business.

Marketing: Comprises all the activities of a business involved in buying and selling a product or service.

Marketing Mix: The tactical tools that marketers use to implement their strategies, engage customers, and deliver
superior customer value.

P.I.E. Model: A model proposed by management consultant Harvey Coleman in 1996, in which the mnemonic PIE
stands for performance, image, and exposure.

Place: As part of the four Ps of the marketing mix, place refers to where a company sells a product and how it
delivers the product to the market. It could also be referred to as the point of sale.

Price: As part of the four Ps of the marketing mix, price refers to the cost consumers pay for a product and how it is
often tied to promotion.

Product: As part of the four Ps of the marketing mix, product refers to either a tangible good or intangible service
that fulfills a need or want of consumers.

Promotion: As part of the four Ps of the marketing mix, promotion refers to all the activities undertaken to make the
product or service known to the target user.

Outbound Marketing: Outbound Marketing encompasses all the ways in which a company seeks to position itself in
front of a potential customer; the company finds the audience and makes first contact.

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 ANNEX 1

How do you explain when things don't go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to
achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year,
after year, they're more innovative than all their competition. And yet, they're just a computer company. They're just
like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same
media. Then why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights
Movement? He wasn't the only man who suffered in pre-civil rights America, and he certainly wasn't the only great
orator of the day. Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out controlled, powered man
flight when there were certainly other teams who were better qualified, better funded -- and they didn't achieve
powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There's something else at play here.

About three and a half years ago, I made a discovery. And this discovery profoundly changed my view on how I thought
the world worked, and it even profoundly changed the way in which I operate in it. As it turns out, there's a pattern.
As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King
or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to
everyone else. All I did was codify it, and it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the golden circle.

Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where
others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet
knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition
or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do.
And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit." That's a result. It's always a result. By "why," I mean: What's your
purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in
the morning? And why should anyone care? As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from
the outside in, it's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired
organizations -- regardless of their size, regardless of their industry -- all think, act and communicate from the inside
out.

Let me give you an example. I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it. If Apple were like
everyone else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: "We make great computers. They're beautifully
designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?" "Meh." That's how most of us communicate. That's how
most marketing and sales are done, that's how we communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say how
we're different or better and we expect some sort of a behavior, a purchase, a vote, something like that. Here's our
new law firm: We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients, we always perform for our clients. Here's our new
car: It gets great gas mileage, it has leather seats. Buy our car. But it's uninspiring.

Here's how Apple actually communicates. "Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe
in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple
to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?" Totally different, right? You're
ready to buy a computer from me. I just reversed the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people
don't buy what you do; people buy why you do it.

This explains why every single person in this room is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple. But we're
also perfectly comfortable buying an MP3 player from Apple, or a phone from Apple, or a DVR from Apple. As I said
before, Apple's just a computer company. Nothing distinguishes them structurally from any of their competitors. Their
competitors are equally qualified to make all of these products. In fact, they tried. A few years ago, Gateway came out
with flat-screen TVs. They're eminently qualified to make flat-screen TVs. They've been making flat-screen monitors
for years. Nobody bought one. Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs, and they make great quality products, and
they can make perfectly well-designed products -- and nobody bought one. In fact, talking about it now, we can't even
imagine buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you buy one from a computer company? But we do it every day.
People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs
what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

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Here's the best part: None of what I'm telling you is my opinion. It's all grounded in the tenets of biology. Not
psychology, biology. If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, from the top down, the human brain is actually
broken into three major components that correlate perfectly with the golden circle. Our newest brain, our Homo
sapien brain, our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The neocortex is responsible for all of our rational and
analytical thought and language. The middle two sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are
responsible for all of our feelings, like trust and loyalty. It's also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making,
and it has no capacity for language.

In other words, when we communicate from the outside in, yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated
information like features and benefits and facts and figures. It just doesn't drive behavior. When we can communicate
from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to
rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from. Sometimes you can give
somebody all the facts and figures, and they say, "I know what all the facts and details say, but it just doesn't feel
right." Why would we use that verb, it doesn't "feel" right? Because the part of the brain that controls decision-
making doesn't control language. The best we can muster up is, "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right." Or sometimes
you say you're leading with your heart or soul. I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body parts controlling your
behavior. It's all happening here in your limbic brain, the part of the brain that controls decision-making and not
language.

But if you don't know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will you
ever get people to vote for you, or buy something from you, or, more importantly, be loyal and want to be a part of
what it is that you do. The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who
believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it's to hire people who believe what you
believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money,
but if they believe what you believe, they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears. Nowhere else is there a
better example than with the Wright brothers.

Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early 20th century, the pursuit of powered
man flight was like the dot com of the day. Everybody was trying it. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume,
to be the recipe for success. Even now, you ask people, "Why did your product or why did your company fail?" and
people always give you the same permutation of the same three things: under-capitalized, the wrong people, bad
market conditions. It's always the same three things, so let's explore that. Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000
dollars by the War Department to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard
and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the
best minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him around
everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they had none of what we consider to be the
recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a
single person on the Wright brothers' team had a college education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York
Times followed them around nowhere.

The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed that if they
could figure out this flying machine, it'll change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He
wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo
and behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them with
blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked for the paycheck. They tell stories of how every time the Wright
brothers went out, they would have to take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before
supper.

And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even experience
it. We found out about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day
the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing discovery, guys, and I will improve
upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.
20
People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those
who believe what you believe.

But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe? Something called the law of diffusion of
innovation, if you don't know the law, you know the terminology. The first 2.5% of our population are our innovators.
The next 13.5% of our population are our early adopters. The next 34% are your early majority, your late majority and
your laggards. The only reason these people buy touch-tone phones is because you can't buy rotary phones anymore.

We all sit at various places at various times on this scale, but what the law of diffusion of innovation tells us is that if
you want mass-market success or mass-market acceptance of an idea, you cannot have it until you achieve this
tipping point between 15 and 18 percent market penetration, and then the system tips. I love asking businesses,
"What's your conversion on new business?" They love to tell you, "It's about 10 percent," proudly. Well, you can trip
over 10% of the customers. We all have about 10% who just "get it." That's how we describe them, right? That's like
that gut feeling, "Oh, they just get it."

The problem is: How do you find the ones that get it before doing business versus the ones who don't get it? So it's
this here, this little gap that you have to close, as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" -- because, you see, the
early majority will not try something until someone else has tried it first. And these guys, the innovators and the early
adopters, they're comfortable making those gut decisions. They're more comfortable making those intuitive decisions
that are driven by what they believe about the world and not just what product is available. These are the people who
stood in line for six hours to buy an iPhone when they first came out, when you could have bought one off the shelf
the next week. These are the people who spent 40,000 dollars on flat-screen TVs when they first came out, even
though the technology was substandard. And, by the way, they didn't do it because the technology was so great; they
did it for themselves. It's because they wanted to be first. People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and
what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe. The
reason that person bought the iPhone in the first six hours, stood in line for six hours, was because of what they
believed about the world, and how they wanted everybody to see them: they were first. People don't buy what you
do; they buy why you do it.

So let me give you a famous example, a famous failure and a famous success of the law of diffusion of innovation.
First, the famous failure. It's a commercial example. As we said before, the recipe for success is money and the right
people and the right market conditions. You should have success then. Look at TiVo. From the time TiVo came out
about eight or nine years ago to this current day, they are the single highest-quality product on the market, hands
down, there is no dispute. They were extremely well-funded. Market conditions were fantastic. I mean, we use TiVo
as verb. I TiVo stuff on my piece-of-junk Time Warner DVR all the time.

But TiVo's a commercial failure. They've never made money. And when they went IPO, their stock was at about 30 or
40 dollars and then plummeted, and it's never traded above 10. In fact, I don't think it's even traded above six, except
for a couple of little spikes.

Because you see, when TiVo launched their product, they told us all what they had. They said, "We have a product
that pauses live TV, skips commercials, rewinds live TV and memorizes your viewing habits without you even asking."
And the cynical majority said, "We don't believe you. We don't need it. We don't like it. You're scaring us."

What if they had said, "If you're the kind of person who likes to have total control over every aspect of your life, boy,
do we have a product for you. It pauses live TV, skips commercials, memorizes your viewing habits, etc., etc." People
don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe.

Now let me give you a successful example of the law of diffusion of innovation. In the summer of 1963, 250,000 people
showed up on the mall in Washington to hear Dr. King speak. They sent out no invitations, and there was no website
to check the date. How do you do that? Well, Dr. King wasn't the only man in America who was a great orator. He
wasn't the only man in America who suffered in a pre-civil rights America. In fact, some of his ideas were bad. But he
had a gift. He didn't go around telling people what needed to change in America. He went around and told people
what he believed. "I believe, I believe, I believe," he told people. And people who believed what he believed took his

21
cause, and they made it their own, and they told people. And some of those people created structures to get the
word out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the right day at the right time to
hear him speak.

How many of them showed up for him? Zero. They showed up for themselves. It's what they believed about America
that got them to travel in a bus for eight hours to stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August. It's what
they believed, and it wasn't about black versus white: 25% of the audience was white.

Dr. King believed that there are two types of laws in this world: those that are made by a higher authority and those
that are made by men. And not until all the laws that are made by men are consistent with the laws made by the
higher authority will we live in a just world. It just so happened that the Civil Rights Movement was the perfect thing
to help him bring his cause to life. We followed, not for him, but for ourselves. By the way, he gave the "I have a
dream" speech, not the "I have a plan" speech.

Listen to politicians now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans. They're not inspiring anybody. Because there are
leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority, but those who lead inspire us.
Whether they're individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want
to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. And it's those who start with "why" that have the
ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them.

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 Annex 2

AMA Statement of Ethics

The Statement of Ethics addresses the AMA’s position on the ethical standards that marketers should observe while
practicing marketing as part of their profession. This includes standards for research into marketing.

Preamble

The American Marketing Association commits itself to promoting the highest standard of professional ethical norms
and values for its members (practitioners, academics and students). Norms are established standards of conduct that
are expected and maintained by society and/or professional organizations. Values represent the collective conception
of what communities find desirable, important and morally proper. Values also serve as the criteria for evaluating our
own personal actions and the actions of others. As marketers, we recognize that we not only serve our organizations
but also act as stewards of society in creating, facilitating and executing the transactions that are part of the greater
economy. In this role, marketers are expected to embrace the highest professional ethical norms and the ethical values
implied by our responsibility toward multiple stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, investors, peers, channel
members, regulators and the host community).

Ethical Norms

As Marketers, we must:

1. Do no harm. This means consciously avoiding harmful actions or omissions by embodying high ethical
standards and adhering to all applicable laws and regulations in the choices we make.

2. Foster trust in the marketing system. This means striving for good faith and fair dealing so as to contribute
toward the efficacy of the exchange process as well as avoiding deception in product design, pricing,
communication, and delivery of distribution.

3. Embrace ethical values. This means building relationships and enhancing consumer confidence in the integrity
of marketing by affirming these core values: honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and
citizenship.

Ethical Values

Honesty – to be forthright in dealings with customers and stakeholders. To this end, we will:

• Strive to be truthful in all situations and at all times.

• Offer products of value that do what we claim in our communications.

• Stand behind our products if they fail to deliver their claimed benefits.

• Honor our explicit and implicit commitments and promises.

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Responsibility – to accept the consequences of our marketing decisions and strategies. To this end, we will:

• Strive to serve the needs of customers.

• Avoid using coercion with all stakeholders.

• Acknowledge the social obligations to stakeholders that come with increased marketing and economic power.

• Recognize our special commitments to vulnerable market segments such as children, seniors, individuals with
low socioeconomic status, individuals not familiar with marketing, and others who may be historically
disadvantaged.

• Consider environmental stewardship in our decision-making.

Fairness – to balance justly the needs of the buyer with the interests of the seller. To this end, we will:

• Represent products in a clear way in selling, advertising and other forms of communication; this includes the
avoidance of false, misleading and deceptive promotion.

• Reject manipulations and sales tactics that harm customer trust.

• Refuse to engage in price-fixing, predatory pricing, price gouging or “bait-and-switch” tactics.

• Avoid knowing participation in conflicts of interest.

• Seek to protect the private information of customers, employees and partners.

Respect – to acknowledge the basic human dignity of all stakeholders. To this end, we will:

• Value individual differences and avoid stereotyping customers or depicting demographic groups (e.g., gender,
race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, etc.) in a negative or dehumanizing way.

• Listen to the needs of customers and make all reasonable efforts to monitor and improve their satisfaction on
an ongoing basis.

• Make every effort to understand and respectfully treat buyers, suppliers, intermediaries and distributors from
all cultures.

• Acknowledge the contributions of others, such as consultants, employees and coworkers, to marketing
endeavors.

• Treat everyone, including our competitors, as we would wish to be treated.

Transparency – to create a spirit of openness in marketing operations. To this end, we will:

• Strive to communicate clearly with all constituencies.

• Accept constructive criticism from customers and other stakeholders.

• Explain and take appropriate action regarding significant product or service risks, component substitutions or
other foreseeable eventualities that could affect customers or their perception of the purchase decision.

• Disclose list prices and terms of financing as well as available price deals and adjustments.

Citizenship – to fulfill the economic, legal, philanthropic and societal responsibilities that serve stakeholders. To this
end, we will:

24
 • Strive to protect the ecological environment and communicate sustainability efforts and aspirations honestly
and transparently in the execution of marketing campaigns.

• Give back to the community through volunteerism and charitable donations.

• Contribute to the overall betterment of marketing and its reputation.

• Urge supply chain members to ensure that trade is fair for all participants, including producers and their
families in developing countries.

Implementation

We expect AMA members to be courageous and proactive in leading and/or aiding their organizations in the fulfillment
of the explicit and implicit promises made to those stakeholders. We recognize that every industry sector and
marketing sub-discipline (e.g., marketing research, e-commerce, Internet selling, direct marketing, and advertising)
has its own specific ethical issues that require policies and commentary. An array of such codes can be accessed
through links on the AMA Web site. Consistent with the principle of subsidiarity (solving issues at the level where the
expertise resides), we encourage all such groups to develop and/or refine their industry and discipline-specific codes
of ethics to supplement these guiding ethical norms and values.

They are all of equal importance. Performance, image, and exposure are all important aspects of a person's work that
can lead to professional advancement. Performance is important in order to demonstrate competency and reliability,
image is important in order to create a positive reputation, and exposure is important in order to gain visibility and
recognition.

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 IMODULE 2
CREATE A CUSTOMER: MARKETING STRATEGY

Learning goals:

● Describe customer-centric digital marketing strategy.

● Identify the “characters” in an organization’s story.
● Probe the ethical considerations and implications surrounding customer-centric messaging.

Index

1. What is a Marketing Strategy? PAGE 2

1. Customer Creation
2. Interview with a CMO
3. The Building Blocks of Successful Digital Marketing
4. The Ultimate Marketing Shorthand: POST Planning

2. Target Audience: Who do You Seek to Serve? PAGE 9

1. Listening in Order to be Responsive and Predictive
2. Introduction to Market Research
3. Research Methods
4. Segmentation

3. Core Messaging PAGE 18

1. Demographics and Psychographics
2. Translating Research into Action
3. Messaging and Storytelling
4. Personas/ Customer Avatars
5. Two Sides of the Coin: Customer Journeys and the Marketing Funnel

4. Ethics PAGE 28
1. Messaging Strategy: Speaking to Diverse Populations
2. Ethical Considerations in Digital Storytelling
3. Future-proofing

5. MIRIAM BROSSEAU NOTES PAGE 30

 1. WHAT IS A MARKETING STRATEGY?

Introduction

The era of broadcast is over. The web has gone from connecting content to connecting people,
and our devices continue to get smaller, closer to our bodies, and more embedded in our daily
lives and routines. The digital world is all around us—just as it is all around our customers. Our
job is to take them on a journey, help them to know, like, and trust us, and invite that exchange of
value. That is only possible if we really understand who they are, what their pain points are, and
what messaging is going to resonate with them.

In 1954, Peter Drucker wrote that the purpose of business was to create a customer. That
statement is as true today as it was back then. In this module, we’re going to learn how to define
who that customer could be, so that when we talk, they’re ready to listen.

Marketing is moving toward a customer-centric approach. What strategy looks like in this
changing environment? Looking at the keys to success, or fit, as it pertains to customers, an
industry leader share the keys to ensure reaching the potential consumer through the core basics
of marketing to align your organization with your audience. In terms of strategy, we will:
1. Discuss the processes to learn about and reach a customer, which will in turn create value
for the business.
2. Talk about getting to know your customer through market research and discover the
purpose of this area of digital marketing.
By laying out the general steps, the types of market research that exist, and how to best analyze
the information you extract when getting to know your customers, it will be possible to understand
how this process works.
We will follow this by considering the ethical questions that come into play, once we identify who
our customer is and how to navigate speaking to your audience, in a way that embraces diversity
and leaves no potential consumers out of the equation.

Future possibilities → What are the emerging markets? Where else can we turn the camera?

Learning Objectives
● Describe customer-centric digital marketing strategy
● Identify the “characters” in an organization’s story
● Probe the ethical considerations and implications surrounding customer-centric messaging

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 1. Customer Creation

What is the purpose of business? Customer creation is the purpose of business. Peter Drucker,
considered the father of business consulting, argued that business has only two functions,
marketing and innovation, and that marketing was the distinguishing, unique function.

Business cannot happen without a customer; marketing is the practice that creates a customer.

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. It is the customer
who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good
or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. The customer is the
foundation of a business and keeps it in existence.” (Peter Drucker)

2. Interview with a CMO

Michelle Calcagni - career → marketing and marketing strategy. She leads PhoneBox Group,
a company that helps women entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground by providing
the initial foundation they need for success, as their ideas grow.

What role does strategy play in digital marketing?

Because the way I look at it, strategy is the building blocks, it's all those questions that have to be
answered about your offering, your audience, and your messaging so that you can do whatever
you want to do in marketing, so it is going to be successful.

According to Calcagni, the particular challenge that exists in digital marketing is the sheer
amount of possibilities and new ideas which can become disorienting. For this reason, she
mentions that it is especially important to keep sight of the core elements of business and strategy:
(a) Target Audience; (b) Core Messaging; (c) Differentiation

● The reasons why is important getting right these key pieces of the puzzle, when
developing effective marketing strategy:
○ In digital marketing, there are so many new things to try all of the time. They can get really
distracting, so you focus a little bit more on the tools than on some of the basics.
○ Solution: alignment to the basic core elements of the business unit strategy.
■ Who is the target audience?
■ What is the core messaging they need to be hearing from you? So, they're going to
make the purchase decision that matters.
■ How are you going to be sure that you stand out as a differentiated offering compared
to everybody else?
○ If you can get these basic building blocks in place, whether you're using the latest cool,
fun technology, or you're doing something tried and true, it's still going to come across,
but you've got to make sure that you're anchored in those strong core basics. Otherwise,

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 the greatest tools in the world can't sell something without great messaging or great
differentiation. So, keep your eye on the ball, on those basics.

Marketing strategy connects business objectives with marketing tactics.

There is a marketing process we follow to create and capture customer value, which consists of
five major steps.

Strategy is the Tough Part

● It is an integrated set of strategies and actions that together will secure sustainable, unique,
and profitable competitive advantage
● Forces tough trade-off decisions
● Gives permission to say NO to product ideas, customer segments, and tactics

Above All, Strategy Has to Be Customer-Centric

● American Customer Satisfaction Index ® (ACSI) tracks customer satisfaction for a cross-
section of American Companies
● For the Last 18 Years, ACSI has been a great predictor of a company’s success (or failure)
to deliver the desired financial results

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 3. The Building Blocks of Successful Digital Marketing

Value is at the heart of marketing. It will vary from customer to customer. (Personal) Value=
benefits received - cost = Direct and indirect. Not just price—what does it take for me to receive
this value? Creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging are the four main marketing
activities that create value. In order to learn more about the part that each role plays and how
they are connected, click on each of the four activities of marketing below.

VALUE = Creating → Communicating → Delivering → Exchanging → Creating

1. Creating: The process of collaborating with suppliers and customers to create offerings
that have value
2. Communicating: Broadly describing those offerings, as well as learning from customers
3. Delivering: Getting those offerings to the consumer in a way that optimizes value
4. Exchanging: Trading value for those offerings

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“Your strategy should be a hypothesis you constantly adjust” (Amy Edmondson and Paul Verdin
- Professors of Management) (ANNEX 1)

Strategies must be constantly adjusted to incorporate information from operations and the market.
Research on recent dramatic cases of strategic failure in different industries and involving vastly
different business models and strategies shows a common pattern:

What started as small gaps in execution spiraled into business failures when initial strategies were
not altered based on new information provided by experience. These companies’ strategies were
viewed by their top executives as analytically sound; performance gaps were blamed on
execution. An alternative perspective on strategy and execution — one that is more in tune with
the nature of value creation in a world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
— conceives of strategy as a hypothesis rather than a plan. Like all hypotheses:

● it starts with situation assessment and analysis — strategy’s classic tools.

● it must be tested through action.

With this lens, encounters with customers provide data that is of ongoing interest to senior
executives — vital inputs to dynamic strategy formulation. The authors call this approach strategy
as learning, which contrasts sharply with the view of strategy as a stable, analytically rigorous
plan for execution in the market. Strategy as learning is an executive activity characterized by
ongoing cycles of testing and adjusting, fueled by data that can only be obtained through
execution.

4. The Ultimate Marketing Shorthand: POST Planning

The mnemonic POST stands for people, objectives, strategy/story, and tools/technology.

POST planning as a tool for developing marketing strategy.

In 2008, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Lee published “Groundswell” a work in which the new digital
era is described and the rise of social media. Also explained the implications for entities who want
to have impact in this internet-driven world. They suggest a strategy for how organizations can
approach their marketing in the digital landscape: POST. This is a process inside the organization
goals.

As a business, you have to know what you want to accomplish. Whether that be the revenue you
hope to bring in or the change you hope to see in the world through a nonprofit mission. With
those bigger pictures in mind, POST helps to put a digital strategy in action.

People: Who is your audience? Try to describe the people you are trying to reach. By describing
them demographically, where they are, their income level, their age, etc. Perhaps more
importantly, it also means knowing their psychographics or what they think, feel and believe. The

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starting point is understanding and perspective taking. Empathize with the audience, in order to
address and solve their pain points and speak to their desires and interests.

Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish with the target audience? How will you know if
you have accomplished it? On the other side of this, it is really important to understand what our
audience goals are for themselves and to unearth the intersection between these two things.
How does what I am offering, help these people meet their own goals for them to become the
kind of people they aspire to be?

Strategy: How exactly are you going to reach those objectives? What are the steps that you are
going to take? What messaging will resonate and what content you will speak to your audience?
What stories will you tell to invite customers to see what you can offer them? What is that going
to look like?

Tools/Tech: What do you need to put your strategy into action to reach those goals? This includes
your digital platforms, the content calendar or scheduled you put together for your campaigns, the
team you need to implement and the budget it will take to make it all happen. Digital strategies
will look different in every organization, depending on its size, industry, culture and many other
factors. But every digital strategy needs these fundamental elements.

The power of POST planning:

1. It forces to begin with PEOPLE. Even in the era of shiny objects, and sophisticated technology
and marketing, it always comes back to people.

2. It separates strategy from technology (which are oftenly mixed in digital marketing, because
we use platforms that carry their own culture. We must not fall in the trap of expecting those
platforms to do the work for us). Facebook or Tiktok are not a strategy.

First → dig into the journey we want to create for the customer.
Second → Deploy the best suited technology, to take them on that journey.

By making this separation, digital marketing is sophisticated and skills future-proof. The digital
landscape is going to keep evolving. Don't let your strategy be stuck to one platform.

POST is the backbone for smart marketing. You can use it to draft ideas or even create
multidimensional plans.

CONSIDER: Use this mnemonic of P-O-S-T as a way to jot out an initial idea of your marketing
strategy; whether it be for the release of a new product, the launch of the new company, or the
beginning of a marketing campaign to bring in volunteers for your nonprofit. This mnemonic is
something that you can keep in your back pocket and continually come back to as the basis for
developing a stronger, more resonant, and fleshed out marketing strategy. It will help ensure your

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strategy really speaks to your customers, puts them at the center, and is delivered in a consistently
compelling and effective way.

Things that are really important about the way that this mnemonic and process is laid
out:

Start with the people

First of all, POST strategy starts with people. It starts with being customer centric and putting
your audience at the center of absolutely everything you do, to deeply understand who they
are and what they are looking for. We must do this in a way that is empathetic, nuanced, and
without stereotyping or projecting your assumptions onto that group. It starts with doing some
deep listening and empathy work to understand what they care about, what they are trying to
do, and what their needs and aspirations are.

Strategy and technology are separate

Secondly, what is really valuable about this particular flow is that strategy and technology are
separate. This can be a very difficult thing to understand in our digital landscape today
because all the amazing tools and technologies that we have access to seem to lend
themselves to particular strategies. They also carry cultural implications with them as they
are spaces for conversation and connection. This makes it difficult to work out strategies from
tools and technology especially when we often conflate them, which means we put them
together in a way that's not really representative of how we want to act as marketers.

POST planning helps us understand: What is your strategy? What is your approach? What is
your messaging?

It is valuable to consider the steps you need to take in order to reach people before you
actually dive into which tools, technology, platforms, or channels are going to help you put
that strategy into action. The reality we face is that tools and technology are going to keep
changing and evolving. It’s part of our work as marketers to continue to keep up to date with
them. We also have to be able to think strategically to get into the minds and hearts of our
audience regardless of what tools and technology we have in front of us.

Putting tools and technology last is really important because ultimately, this changing
landscape has to first be about the people. If we start with tools and technology, we're going
to be chasing algorithms instead of reaching people.

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 2. TARGET AUDIENCE: WHO DO YOU SEEK TO SERVE?

1. Listening in Order to be Responsive and Predictive

Market research is fundamentally about listening to your current and potential audience. We listen
in order to understand our customers’ needs, pain points, interests, and aspirations. We listen in
order to be both responsive and predictive.

Market research helps us:

● Assess market conditions

● Analyze competitive positioning
● Research current and potential customers to uncover needs (articulated and implied)
● Fine-tune targeting and messaging
● Develop and test positioning
● Assess and adjust 4Ps
● Identify new trends

2. Introduction to Market Research

Before we dive into market research, it is essential to understand the role of inquisitiveness as a
digital marketer. As the creative director for a global digital services company, David Ostroff has
a background in graphic design and considers his zone of genius to be in website design and
marketing.

According to Ostroff, one quality that every successful digital marketer should have is being
inquisitive → ask the right questions to get the right answers. Your clients might think they want
something but actually need something else; part of your job is to get that information so that you
can have a successful campaign.

What we need to conduct research:

● Identify Research Needs: Identify research needs based on business questions and
stakeholder input.
● Lock Research Scope: based on budget and resources available.
● Choose Research methods: based on research scoping and standards
● Generate/Obtain data sources: for research for multiple data types
● Analytic Tools: Leverage analytical tools that are optimal to conduct analysis based on
chosen data sources and analytic methods

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 3. Research Methods

Next, we will need to assess needs by asking probing questions from all stakeholders affected by
research outcome.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK

● What is the underlying question we want to answer with the research?

● How will the insights be used?
● What changes are we anticipating to make in our processes based on this research?
● Who will be affected by changes in processes?

GET INPUT FROM STAKEHOLDERS

Where might the data for your research come from? There are a two basic possibilities:

1. Primary sources, meaning it is your own data that you have collected, in other words,
self-generated specifically for the purposes of current research. PROS: Relevant, can be
customized and used in their entirety. CONS: Slow - Expensive.

2. Secondary sources, meaning the data was collected by a third party, in other words,
generated by others for a different purpose. PROS: Fast to obtain (ready data source).
Usually cheaper than primary. CONS: Might not be an exact match for needs. Not 100%
sure of data quality

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 Research methods can be quantitative and qualitative.

Focuses … Best use

Obtaining data Based on few unrepresentative inputs develop initial

through open-ended Uncovers less obvious motivations and understanding of
and conversational connections motivations and
Unstructured data collection potential actions
QUANTITATIVE communication
Directional results

obtaining data Based on many representative inputs quantify potential

through closed- Observes behaviors and uncovers obvious outcomes to
ended questions motivations recommend a
QUALITATIVE and statistical Structured data collection course of action
observations Statistically significant results

Examples of each research method

Traditional Qualitative Research Methods

Focus Groups: 6–10 participants and a moderator. Often used to uncover new ideas and test
concepts

One-on-one Interviews: Single participant and interviewer. Often used to uncover deeply
seeded/unarticulated motivations

Ethnographic Research: Varying number of participants. Used to passively observe natural

behaviors and environments

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Digital Qualitative Research Methods

Text Analysis: Varying number of

participants. Uses complex
linguistic analysis to infer
sentiment towards a topic

Image/Video Analysis: Varying

number of participants. Uses
image analysis to
answer research
questions
Neuro-analytics:
Single participant.
Used to measure
nonverbal (emotional,
physical, biological)
responses to stimuli

Quantitative Research Methods

Surveys: Needs a large sample to be statistically significant. Often

used to quantify a hypothesis

Descriptive Analytics: Uses existing data set to reflect what was

happening at a past point in time

Predictive Modeling: Uses existing data set to predict what will

happen in the future using statistical modeling

The best analyses combine multiple research methods and different types of data. Combining
qualitative and quantitative methods facilitates the development of hypotheses as well as
quantifying and prioritizing opportunities.

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REMEMBER: How you share the results of your research matters as much as what they are.

Just sharing the raw results of your research is not enough. Your responsibility is to make sure
your insights are heard and understood, and that means speaking to more than just the rational
side of your listeners’ brains. Marketing experts and authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath proposed
in their 2010 book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, that when presenting
information (like the findings of a market research study), we need to speak to three elements:

● The “rider,” the rational part of our brains

● The “elephant,” the emotional part of our brains, which has much more weight—and therefore
greater control—than the rider
● The "path," naming the where we should go with this information from here, and how to get
there.

The elephant, rider, and path analogy for understanding decision making. How might you
incorporate all three elements into the way you present your research findings?

Psychologists know that there are 2 systems of thought, the rational system and the emotional
system. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposed an interesting analogy to illustrate these two
systems: Imagine our brain as a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider represents the rational
system, the part of us that plans, that solves problems. The rider does analysis in order to decide:
Hey, I'd like to go this way! But it is the elephant, which represents the emotional system, that
provides the power for the journey. The rider can try to lead the elephant or to pull the elephant,
but if they don't agree, who would you bet on? The elephant has 6 tons of advantage due to its
weight and it is exactly this power in the balance that makes it difficult to adopt new behaviors. If
we want this duo to take a new direction, we also need to think about the path which represents
the external environment. The duo will be more likely to complete the journey if you can reduce
the distance and remove the obstacles in their way.

This is the baseline. If you want to lead the change, you need to do 3 things. First, give the rider
directions, information so they can get to their destination. Second, you have to motivate the
elephant, i.e. stimulate its emotions. And finally, you have to shape the path to facilitate the
progress. This is how change happens.

To keep in mind:
● There are two systems of thought: the rational system and the emotional system.
● Our brain can be imagined as a rider on the back of an elephant, with the rider representing
the rational system and the elephant representing the emotional system.
● The elephant provides the power for the journey, and if the rider and the elephant don't agree,
the elephant's power can make it difficult to adopt new behaviors.
● To lead the change, you need to give the rider directions, motivate the elephant, and shape
the path to facilitate progress.

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● By reducing the distance and removing obstacles, you can increase the likelihood of success
for the rider and the elephant to complete the journey.
● Understanding the interplay between the rational and emotional systems can help us become
more effective in pursuing our goals and making changes in our lives.

Therefore, sharing your research findings as a story or narrative can have a much greater impact
than simply stating the numerical results. A narrative is a way of ordering events and connecting
thoughts into a coherent sequence that makes them interesting and memorable. Click on each
question to learn more.

Who: Frame your learning as a narrative, with a central character - usually your customer - driving
the action. And, as in your outward-facing marketing, you must also consider the audience with
whom you are sharing your findings. What are their priorities and pain points? How can you
ensure that your findings are delivered in a way that is relevant and tailored to them?
What: It's not enough to share the raw data; you have to interpret it and help others draw meaning
from it as well. Less is often more. Instead of sharing everything you learned, highlight what was
most interesting, important, useful, and urgent. Focus on sharing: (a) Insights and "aha" moments;
(b) Implications for your work; (c) Important next steps based on those findings.

How: How will you be sharing your findings? Make sure your presentation is effective for the
setting. The clearer and more engaging your presentation, the more likely it is that you will be
heard, understood, and gain the buy-in you need to take action. This kind of learning should be
happening all the time, so it's best to have mechanisms in place feedback loops - mechanisms
for continually sharing insights that can be evaluated, tested, and help you and your organization
continually improve.

4. Segmentation

We conduct market research in order to understand the different possible groups—usually called
segments—we could potentially reach with our marketing. Market segments are possible targets
for our digital marketing efforts. There are four basic types of market segmentation:

● Demographic segmentation breaks up people in terms of basic statistical data such as age,
gender, income, or location.
● Psychographic segmentation breaks down the population in terms of their beliefs, attitudes,
or values.
● Behavioral segmentation divides audiences into groups depending on how they act, including
spending habits and brand interactions.
● Geographic segmentation is fairly self-explanatory—dividing people up based on their
location, which may be as specific as a zip code or broader such as urban vs. rural.

Research conducted in the 1990s about dog owners resulted in some important audience
segmentation that helped dog food brands determine, and speak to, their target audiences. The

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researchers identified four possible audience segments, broken up psychographically, based on
the kind of relationship they had with their dog (their values and attitudes towards their dog):

Dog as child: These customers focused on the health, wellbeing, and full lives of their pets. Much
like children, they wanted to see their dogs live up to their full potential.
Dog as grandchild: Customers who treat their dogs as grandchildren were prone to spoiling and
indulging their pets.
Dog as friend: These customers appreciated their dogs for the functional, companionable
relationship they had with them.
Dog as dog: The smallest group of dog owners saw their dogs as nothing more than an animal
that lived with them and had to be cared for.
One more key term to understand as we think about digital marketing strategy is positioning.

What position do you occupy in the customer's mind in relation to your competitors? Determining
where you want to sit, who you want to be considered alongside is the act of positioning.
It is like thinking about a library bookshelf. Pretend that your company/service/product is a book.
What section is it in and what shelf is it on? What other books is it next to it? If you write a book
about the history of French Cuisine, would that book appear alongside other history books, under
a section of France or with cook books? That is a positioning question, and the answer to that
depends on your goals and your broader strategy. Where you sit in your customers minds has
implications for how you market yourself, what messaging will resonate, what price point you can
attach to your offerings, and so much more. So, getting your positioning right and working to
change it when need be is a powerful piece of a bigger marketing strategy.

For example: Krispy Kreme (a donut shop popular in the south of the USA), Starbucks (coffee
chain) and Dunkin Donuts which is a popular Donut company, rebranded as Dunkin. That is why
customers associate it more to krispy Kreme than starbucks. They advertise through traditional
channels with signature lines “time to make the donuts” and “america runs on Dunkin”. Their
coffee was a secondary product, which represents 24% of the US coffee market share, compared
to Starbucks with 30%. But in 2018, the market changed. Dunkin wanted to grow and keep being
profitable, so they updated their position and spoke to younger generations. Americans were
becoming more health conscious, profit margins on donuts are lower than on drinks, and moving
from being a donut-focused to a beverage-focused, would allow for more growth and sustainability
as a company. They just not rebrand but a repositioning, to make their customers see them more
alongside upscale coffee companies (starbucks) rather than alongside donut companies, like
Krispy. They removed the “donut” word from their image. The most important changes were:
offering new menu items, retooling thousands of stores to equip them with espresso machines
and other necessities to update their positioning, and retraining their staff to be able to offer and
talk about Dunkin´s new approach. Dunkin redesigned its stores, introduced a mobile order drive-
thru lane, and added new afternoon drinks such as Cold Nitro Brew Coffee. They communicate
to the target customers that they deliver good quality coffee (as starbucks) but quickly and at
about half the price. All told, the company poured around 100M U$D into this beverage led
strategy. This ended up being an effective and profitable repositioning for Dunkin. After a year,
the company saw its biggest increase in earnings in 6 years, with espresso sales alone showing

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40% increase.
Answer: 2) Where you sit in your customers’ minds in relation to your competitors.

News source: https://propane.agency/lux/dunkin-donuts-successful-rebranding-in-an-evolving-

industry-2/

Where you sit on the library shelf matters. So, choose wisely and reposition with care.

Reasons to rebrand:

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 3. CORE MESSAGING

1. Demographics and Psychographics

1.1. Generations/Demographics/Psychographics

After knowing the customer, you must know your competitors (Who else is vying for the same
people’s attention and trust?)

A competitor analysis is the process of researching and analyzing other companies’ marketing
strategies, and it’s critical in answering this question and succeeding in the digital space. A
competitor analysis will give you an insight into:
● what your competition is up to
● what your potential customers are responding to
● what they might be missing from your competition
● how your messaging and overall approach might resonate

A competitor analysis is not a one-and-done process; this is a process that should be revisited at
least quarterly to keep up with changes in the market and emerging trends.

1.2. Conducting Competitor Analysis

Here are a few useful strategies for approaching competitor analysis in the digital age:

A) Identify your competitors

Who are you really competing with? This is where the importance of positioning comes in. Your
positioning should tell you who your competitors are so you can make the most of your research.
Consider the Dunkin’ case study: do you want your customers to think of you in relation to coffee,
or doughnuts? Who do you want to be associated with? Note, also, that you will have direct
competitors: those who are offering the same product or service as you, and indirect competitors:
those who are in a similar category, or with whom you have something in common. For instance,
a comic book shop may be directly competing with other comic book stores, while competing
indirectly with bigger book stores, board game sellers, or novelty shops. At this stage, you can
also talk to your team and current or potential customers. Who do they consider to be your
competitors? What do they like and dislike about them? What do they look for and expect? What
are they missing that you could offer that your competitors don’t?

B) Conduct an initial review of competitors’ websites, email, and social media channels

Review their websites. What do you notice about the look, feel, and structure of their website?
How about the products or services they’re offering? The language they use? The price points
and perks? The process the customer goes through? What can you learn, and replicate, in your
own work? What do you want to avoid? Sign up for their email newsletters. How frequently are

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they sending emails? What content are they sharing? What calls-to-action do they use? Review
your competitors’ social media channels. Take note of what kind of content they share, their
sharing frequency, the messaging and tone, and the level and type of engagement you notice
from their fans and followers.

C) Go deeper with digital tools

● What platform is your competitor’s website built on? BuiltWith.

● What other technologies are they using on their site? Wappalyzer.
● What keywords (search terms your customers may be using on Google and other search
engines) are working best for your competitors, and where are they missing out? SpyFu.
● Gain important insights into your competitors’ email marketing with OWLetter.
● Who is linking to your competitors’ websites with Neil Patel’s Backlink Checker.
● Get a comprehensive look at your competitors’ performance online using tools like SEMRush.
● Keep track of your competitors’ performance across social media using Brand Mentions and
Board Reader.

D) Map out your challenges and opportunities

Pull all your findings together into a single document or spreadsheet to discuss with your team.
What patterns do you notice? Where are your competitors strong, and where are they lacking?

2. Translating Research into Action

2.1. Research Success Story from Katie Auerbach

As the Vice President of Digital Strategy for Radancy, Katie Auerbach works with clients to
understand their pain points and help them craft a multidimensional solution to give them the edge
over the competition and achieve their goals. Auerbach considers herself a born advocate and
her zone of excellence to be in digital strategy. In her work, she researches and understands the
competitive and data landscape to help her clients build a solution that will help them differentiate
themselves, stand out, and make a statement that is unique to them that achieves their desired
goal.

Her story: One of the biggest successes I've had in my career to date was a comprehensive
content Wiki that I created around Git for a highly technical client. I knew nothing about
programming or development. All I knew was what it took to make great content and how to really
optimize for organic searches, answering the questions candidates wanted. I started by giving
into the internet and really doing a lot of research and seeing what others were doing, then built
a comprehensive, detailed outline on some of the densest subjects I've ever encountered. To be
completely honest, I still don't understand exactly what Git does. But based on these detailed
outlines, really taking the time to see what competitors are doing, how it was working and why,
and building clear recommendations and working with a writer who has the knowledge to back it

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up. We created a completely redone Git Wiki for our client that was so successful, it doubled their
organic search traffic, and had several other departments coming to my main point of contact,
asking for us to do the same thing for them. This was incredibly nerve-wracking because it was
going into an area I knew that I knew nothing about. I understood the fundamental art of marketing
in organic search and how to make it great. Then, having to defend it to experts and Git trying to
ask me why I structured things in this way and having clear and detailed answers. Sort of a
combination of my marketing, legal nerd, data nerd, and research nerd being able to come
together, defend, present, and then have such a success that it led to a lot more work. It also
gave me confidence and it's built in me the love for really diving deep into industries I might not
be familiar with. It helped me understand how critical it is, first and foremost, to understand the
nature of that industry so that you can understand what users really want and give that to them.
Also, to understand what the client wants and create that solution and be willing to defend if there
are doubters, because you have to be confident in what you know, which is the marketing aspect.
That's why they brought you in and this was proof that my gut instincts, research, and knowledge
really delivered the best and strongest solution for my client.

Once you’ve compiled your research, it’s time to translate your learning into an actionable insight.
Identify areas where your digital marketing efforts could have the biggest impact—where are their
needs not being met, or opportunities not being capitalized on? How and where can your strategy
help you rise above the competition to delight your customers?

In order to translate your research into action, you need to look at your insights and hypothesize—
what can you do to capture the attention and earn the trust of your target audience? Try using
sentences like the ones presented below to sketch out the beginnings of your digital strategy:

● Because my audience values {X}, we will {Y}.

● My audience struggles with {X}, which we can help them overcome with {Y}.
● My audience aspires to be {X kind of person}, which we can help them become by {Y}.

3. Messaging and Storytelling

3.1. Who are the characters in your story?

Market research helps you identify your potential customers. Once you have a sense of who they
are, your challenge is to hone in on a few specific audience segments you will focus your efforts
on, and this is called targeting.

But even within a target, we need to get more specific. We need to be able to reach our potential
customers as individuals.

Everytime we share a message with an audience, it is important to remember that it is ultimately

heard by individuals. This is where the argument for creating marketing personas, or customer
avatars stand for. A persona is essentially an imagined example of the type of person you are

20
trying to reach. It often includes a picture, demographic information such as age, location and job,
and personal or psychographic information such as values and interests. The most important
thing about developing personas, though, is that they truly reflect the pain points, needs and
desires of your customer in a way that helps you understand tem and speak more effectively to
them. Your personas should tell you what problem you can solve for your customer and give you
guidance for how to offer that solution in a way that they can hear, understand and appreciate. If
that key element is not included, the persona does little good and does nothing to help you
distinguish your ideal customer from anyone else.

For example: King Charles and Ozzy Obourne, both are males, born in 1948, raised in the UK,
married twice, lives in a castle, and are wealthy and famous.

The personas read precisely the same, but clearly represent entirely different people. Would this
be enough or the right information to help design your marketing strategy?

In a digital world that demands customer centricity, personas are intended to help you humanize
your marketing. They are there to remind you that even when you do not see them, there is a real
living, breathing human being on the other side of your messaging.

As a digital marketer, your job is to keep their needs, interests and aspirations in mind at every
step. By limiting your focus, personas also help you determine who you are not talking to (limit
your focus), which is an important part of its strong strategy. Keep in mind though that personas
and targeted marketing as a whole is inherently discriminatory in the most basic sense of the
word. In some ways that's a very good thing.

In the age of broadcast, there was very little targeting. So, everyone saw everything. Whether it
was relevant to them or not. So, targeting solves the problem of interruptive advertising. Targeted
marketing can cross the line into predatory advertising. For example, targeting teenagers with ads
for vaping pens. Or targeting housing ad by multicultural affinity, in a way that could exclude
certain races. When we translate personas into targeted audiences, theory turns into action, and
those actions have real consequences.

Tech companies have taken steps to mitigate the potential harm done by predatory targeting, but
at least as much of the responsibility is on ourselves as marketers. The most important way to
ensure that your marketing is targeted but not predatory is to put your relationship with the
customer at the center. Is the value you are offering addressing a genuine pain point,
meeting a real need or genuinely improving their life in some way?

Personas at their best will help you approach your marketing as an invitation. A peer relationship
even, that keeps the exchange of value mutually beneficial. Marketing icon Seth Godin coined
the term “minimum viable audience”, which is the smallest possible group of people that could
sustain your work in your business.

21
Paradoxically, it is through this narrowed focus that marketers see the most success. When you
know who you seek to serve and what you have to offer, your audience is more likely to respond,
because it feels tailored to their needs and responsive to their interests.

Consider your own experience online. As you are scrolling through emails, social media, or news,
you’re exposed to an enormous amount of information and messaging. You can’t possibly absorb
all of it. How do you filter through it? The question you are likely asking yourself—and the question
your customers also have in their minds is: what does this have to do with me?

With this constant, internal question, we are looking for relevance and resonance. If your target
is wrong, or poorly defined, and your audience can’t find a compelling answer that tells them
something is helpful, entertaining, or interesting within a few seconds, they will just keep on
scrolling.

DEFINITION of “Spray and pray” marketing: the practice of putting ads or other marketing
pieces in front of as many people as possible (spray) and hoping customers will notice and buy
the product or service (pray).

4. Personas/ Customer Avatars

You need customer avatars: While targeting your audience is critical, do we really need
personas? There are those who argue yes, personas are critical to strong digital marketing
(Wright 2017).

Customer avatars are a waste of time: Some marketers, on the other hand, see personas as a
crutch that ultimately get in the way of effective marketing (Baker 2021).

CONSIDER. Do you think personas or customer avatars are necessary?

4.1. Who is the hero of the story?

Every brand, every organization, every company has and tells a story. Who and what you put at
the center of that story has important implications for how you reach and engage with your
potential customers. When you think of your organization's brand, company culture, and
messaging, ask yourself: who is the hero of the story? Who's at the center, driving the action?

If it's the company itself, you may be working in a profit-first environment. If it's those you serve,
you're likely in a consumer-first environment. Click on the images below to learn more about the
implications of each of these approaches.

Consumer first - Value Creation: The performance of actions that increase the worth of goods,
services, or even a business. Many business operators now focus on value creation in the context
of creating better value for customers purchasing its products and services

22
Profits First - Revenue Extraction: The philosophy of operating a business with the sole goal of
getting money from customers. It’s the exact opposite of value creation.

Subaru’s advertisement positions the customer as the hero by focusing on the customer's
story or memories and making them the focal point of the commercial. The commercial follows
the father as he cleans out his Subaru and reflects on his daughter's memories. It ends with the
father gifting the car to his daughter, emphasizing the value of the car in the customer's life and
subtly promoting the car by saying, "You can pass down a Subaru." They point out his in their
website, by saying "The SUBARU Group strives to put the customer first in all business
activities" (source).

Chevrolet's advertisement, on the other hand, centers the product by focusing on the features
and qualities of the four different Chevrolet models. It does not focus on any customer's story,
but rather on the features of the cars and how they can benefit the customer. Neither does it
make any mention of the customer's story or how the car can make a difference in their life. The
commercial instead focuses on the product itself and its qualities, emphasizing the product as
the center of the story. In the antipodes of Subaru, Chevrolet's website first look shows how
good they are selling cars, by saying that the Chevy S. is the 1# in sales (source).

In conclusion, it could be argued that Subaru, as a company, is focused on creating value for
the consumer. And conversely, Chevrolet, as a company, is most focused on making profits
and revenues rather than creating value.

4.2. You still need to be profitable.

Contributing factors to the difficulty of building customer-centric strategies

● Technological advances make it difficult to keep up with the pace and evolution of customer
needs that have rapidly changing habits.
● Increasing transparency creates roadblocks for companies to reach their audience
● Competitive marketplace makes it challenging to win over consumers
● Complexity of the set of alternatives creates a landscape that is tough to navigate.
● the customer has needs that are not articulated as there are generational differences
between different sets of consumers
● With human beings as the audience, may have different perceptions of value and different
goals and dreams despite being within the same desired group.
*Value creation is the great differentiator.

And in a crowded economy, if you want to stand out, you have to win your customers over with a
ton of value. (Neil Patel). Entrepreneur, Analytics Expert, and Investor

23
Value-centered businesses start with an external focus on the market. Profit extraction models
begin with internal needs.

To be an effective value creation company, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of

the consumer. This includes understanding the customers' goals, attitudes, and behaviors as well
as their needs, wants, and demands.

Goals

a) Understanding consumer goals is imperative to create value.

24
Needs, Wants, Demands

Consumer goals and their hierarchy shape needs and wants; resource availability determines
demands: (A) Wants that are backed up by buying power to get products and services with
benefits to provide value and satisfaction. (B) Forms that human needs take as they are
shaped by culture and individual personality. (C) States of deprivation that are felt, including
basic physical needs, social needs, and individual needs

Attitudes: The goal of marketing is to create customers who demand your offering.

Behaviors: We have to find customers who are the most likely to purchase our product or service.
High customer satisfaction drives up the perception of value.

VALUE = BENEFITS - COST

BENEFITS = HIGH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

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5. Two Sides of the Coin: Customer Journeys and the Marketing Funnel

As you develop a deep sense of who your customer and your hero of the story are, the next piece
is to understand the journey you want to take them on. How does this person go from knowing
nothing about your company, organization, product, or service, to knowing, liking, and trusting
you? How do we introduce them to who you are and what you’re about, and begin that exchange
of value?

This process is called the customer journey. It encompasses all the steps a potential customer
takes to achieve their goal with your company.

Customer journeys can be descriptive, in other words, you can map out the current process your
customers need to take to get from point A to point B. Descriptive journeys can help existing
companies identify roadblocks their customers may be facing and improve their processes
accordingly. Or they can be aspirational, in which case, you would design the process you expect
your customers to take. In either case, a customer journey should be a visual representation of
the process; a map of the experience, from their perspective.

A customer journey, whether descriptive or aspirational, typically takes that person through
several stages, from first becoming aware of your company, to taking whatever step you hope
they take (making a purchase, attending an event, becoming a volunteer, etc.). The key here is
that it is done from the perspective of the customer, and not from the perspective of the company.

Marketing funnels, or sales funnels, are a classic tool for organizations to map out their
processes from the company’s point of view. They typically address several stages of
advancement, from a customer initially becoming aware of a product or service, to considering a
purchase, making that purchase, becoming a loyal customer, and recommending or advocating
for that brand or product.

26
Awareness → consideration → conversion → loyalty → Advocacy

Marketing funnels help businesses focus their efforts and align each stage. For instance, in the
“awareness” stage, companies may focus on outbound marketing tactics such as Facebook
advertising. Once a customer has clicked through and landed on the website, the goal is to move
that person to the next stage of consideration, which may be done by offering a discount or
exclusive offer.

Customer journeys, on the other hand, are about mapping out this process from the perspective
of your audience, which is critical in the customer-centric world of digital marketing. There is
typically no single path customers follow, and journey mapping can help account for the different
iterations of that process.

Customer journeys will also look radically different depending on the industry you’re serving.

In B2C environments, your goal is to move a single potential buyer. Those potential buyers are
typically inundated with messaging, so it’s important to reach them wherever they are, as often
and consistently as possible, and to meet their needs at the moment they are seeking out
solutions.
For B2B environments, the sales process is typically longer, slower, and driven more by
reputation and thought leadership. The journey typically focuses more on ongoing relationship-
building, repeat business, and referrals.
Nonprofit examples: Customer journeys in the nonprofit sector are often quite complicated
because nonprofit organizations typically have a wider range of potential audiences they need to
speak to: beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, or advocates, to name a few. Savvy nonprofits are
adept at juggling the needs and interests of these multiple stakeholders who respond to very
different types of messaging.

A marketing funnel describes the process a customer goes through from initially learning
about your organization or offering to becoming a loyal customer. How is a customer
journey different?

A customer journey is different from a marketing funnel in that it is focused on mapping out the
customer experience from their perspective. It is more descriptive, looking at the individual steps
a customer takes to achieve their goal with your company. It also takes into account the different
paths a customer may take, as well as any obstacles they might face along the way. A customer
journey also looks at the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer experience, such
as how they feel when interacting with your company, which is something a marketing funnel does
not address.

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 4. ETHICS

1. Messaging Strategy: Speaking to Diverse Populations

There is a growing recognition in the world of marketing that our audiences are multifaceted, not
monolithic. Customers want to see themselves represented in the campaigns marketers create.

This concept is powerfully demonstrated in Dove’s wildly successful “Campaign for Real Beauty,”
which has run in various iterations since 2004 (Zed 2019). The challenge for brands interested in
speaking to and representing the diverse populations they seek to serve is to figure out how to do
so in a way that is humanizing, not tokenizing—to show their customers as people, not props.
Global beverage giant Pepsi's attempt failed with their notorious 2017 ad featuring model Kendall
Jenner diffusing a standoff between protestors and police by handing over a can of Pepsi.

Why the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such a Glaring Misstep:

• Pepsi's controvert ad in which Kendall Jenner joins a protest and seems to defuse tensions
with police officers by handing Pepsi.
• The ad follows the Coke playbook of using a vaguely defined, outside-of-history sense of
uplift to feel urgent and contemporary
• Criticized the ad for its misstep of turning real moments of high tension into an opportunity
to celebrate commerce and fame
• Recent ads have used easily-understood, vaguely political messaging to transmit the idea
that to buy a given product would make you happier and … virtuous
• Noted that Pepsi's ad fails not solely for its insensitivity but its overextension of faux-wokeness
to sell a product, past the point where it can be reasonably ignored

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 2. Ethical Considerations in Digital Storytelling

The most important rule of thumb in marketing in diverse populations is to ensure the voices of
those you seek to reach are in the room when you are creating your strategy and content. Creator
platform Etsy, for instance, runs an Instagram account called @LifeAtEtsy, which features the
real lives and stories of their employees, in an effort to recruit diverse talent. Etsy has made it
clear that the account is not just for optics; they’ve made an ongoing commitment to becoming
more inclusive, ensuring that the voices they represent in their marketing are authentically
represented inside the company as well (MacLellan 2020).

3. Future-proofing

Who is the hero of the story? When you ask this question, and think of your ideal customer…
what voices might you be missing out on?

Digital marketers interested in staying ahead of the curve will learn to recognize that classically
overlooked and underserved market segments are often hungry for recognition. This
means solving a problem for them and driving revenue for your company.

Take, for example, Old Navy’s recent push into the plus-size market (Thomas 2021).

Identifying and reaching emerging markets means checking your assumptions about your
ideal customers, listening more closely to the real needs and aspirations of the people you serve.
A digital marketer must constantly think about how your offerings can be adapted to speak
to the lived realities of your potential customers.

Put your customer at the center of the story. But be conscious of where else you can turn the
camera, and what other stories there may be to tell.

How Etsy doubled its hiring of black and Latinx employees in one year:

● Etsy experienced a leadership change in 2017 and employees were concerned about the
company's commitment to inclusivity.
● In 2019, Etsy doubled the number of black and Latinx employees hired from the previous year,
representing 15% of US hires.
● Black and Latinx employees still only make up 11% of Etsy's US workforce.
● Elizabeth Spector Louden, head of diversity and inclusion, is proud of the progress that has
been made so far.
● In 2018, Etsy created a Diversity and In clusion team of five employees
● Rebalanced its referral program to increase hiring and employee-referral based hiring in each
group

29
● Rolled out a career development mentorship program and aligned performance evaluation
and hiring rubrics to reflect company's diversity goals
● Provided managers with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment training
● Partnered with programming training schools to attract diverse candidates
● Room for improvement: not enough senior positions held by black or Latinx employees, one
black board member, no black or Latinx executives on leadership team

Old Navy overhauls plus-size fashion line for women to win sales in $32 billion market

● Old Navy will offer more of its women's apparel in extended sizes, as demand for plus-size
apparel rises in the U.S.
● Old Navy, which is owned by Gap, has offered a limited selection of plus-size apparel since
2004.
● Coresight Research estimates the extended-size market for women in the U.S. will grow to
$32.3 billion this year, representing roughly 20.7% of the total women's apparel market.
● Old Navy is looking to seize the opportunity of the growing plus-size apparel market by
offering sizes 0-28 and XS-4X for all of its women's styles in stores and up to size 30 online.
● Old Navy will create a single destination for all women's clothing on its website, and will
feature mannequins in sizes four, 12 and 18 in its stores.
● The value of the extended-size market for women in the U.S. is estimated to be $32.3 billion
this year, representing roughly 20.7% of the total women's apparel market.
● Old Navy has offered a limited selection of plus-size apparel since 2004, but with this
expansion it hopes to reach many more customers.
● Old Navy promises complete pricing parity, so all styles will be the same price no matter the
size.
● Old Navy store employees have also received special training to talk to customers about
body positivity and size inclusivity.

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 5. MIRIAM BROSSEAU NOTES

Inadequacy Marketing: assumes that “something is broken with you (client)” and our product
have the solution.

Empowerment Marketing: Customer as a hero. Assumes they are good enough, the product
helps them become the bet version of themselves. So, the product makes the client “better”.

Customer centricity in Action:

● Use the word “you”. That makes feel you are talking to the customer. Check the you/me
ratio of the text. Focus on benefits over features.
For example → Hootsuite: A pop up of the website shows personality.

31
TWO DIFFERENT WAYS OF STRUGGLING WITH A TRAGEDY

32
Customer centricity can lead to different solutions.

Why is customer centricity hard? Obstacles

● Broadcast still determines our mindset and drives many orgs systems.
● Bureaucracy and siloes.
● Data overwhelm
● Assumption …. Complete

Examples of customer centricity:

• Wayfair offers over 8 M products, from furniture to décor to appliances and storage. Uses
predictive analytics and AI to create detailed buyer personas to show the most relevant
products for customers. Uses machine learning technology to work out which products
complement one another and recommend them to customers. Data is used across the
organization, allowing the company to better execute its strategy through improved
personalization.

• Hilton is one of the biggest hotel brands in the world, annually, 178 M guests stay at its
properties. With the free Hilton Honors mobile app, guests can book their stay, select the
exact room they want, order meals, check-in and our, unlock their door and elevators with a
Digital Key, all from their smartphone. The honors program app provides frictionless
experience from booking and pre-stay to on-site. Front desk staff can focus on more valuable
face-to-face interactions.

How to do better:

● Build these habits into your work.

● Experiment
○ Start with one project
○ Prove the value
○ Translate the lessons

Share in the chat! What is one take away you will use to create your unique content?

● POST Planing
● Minimum viable audience
● Empathy, no assumptions
● Inadequacy vs empowerment
● The power of you
● Personalizxation and its limites
● Contextualize and be repsonsibe
● Why this is hard, and how to do this better

33
Customer centricity: the problem is not the attention but the relevance it has for the consumer.
Empathy map Canvas: Our opinion and how it affects the analysis of empathy.
Empower marketing: transfer the responsibility to the customer who knows what he wants.

34
 Glossary

Communicating: A marketing activity focused on broadly describing offerings, as well as learning

from customers.
Creating: A marketing activity focused on the process of collaborating with suppliers and
customers to create offerings that have value.
Delivering: A marketing activity focused on getting offerings to the consumer in a way that
optimizes value.
Descriptive Analytics: A quantitative research method that uses an existing data set to reflect
what was happening at a past point in time.
Ethnographic Research: A traditional qualitative research method that uses a varying number
of participants in order to passively observe natural behaviors and environments.
Exchanging: A marketing activity focused on trading value for offerings.
Focus Group: A traditional qualitative research method that uses participants and a moderator
to uncover new ideas and test concepts.
Image/Video Analysis: A digital qualitative research method with a varying number of
participants that uses image analysis to answer research questions.
Neuro-analytics: A digital qualitative research method with a single participant that is used to
measure nonverbal (emotional, physical, biological) responses to stimuli.
One-on-one Interviews: A traditional qualitative research method with a single participant and
an interviewer used to uncover deeply-seated or unarticulated motivations.
POST planning: A strategy for how organizations can approach their marketing. P-O-S-T where
P is for people, O is for objectives, S is for strategy, and T is for tools and technology. It’s a
powerful way to sketch out an initial plan and make sure all the pieces of your digital marketing
align. POST is a process that lives within your bigger organizational goals.
Predictive Modeling: A quantitative research method that uses an existing data set to predict
what will happen in the future using statistical modeling.
"Spray and Pray" Marketing: The practice of putting ads or other marketing pieces in front of as
many people as possible (spray) and hoping customers will notice and buy the product or service
(pray).
Survey: A quantitative research method that uses large samples of data to quantify a hypothesis.
Text Analysis: A digital qualitative research method with a varying number of participants that
uses complex linguistic analysis to infer sentiment towards a topic.
Value: Value is the benefits received from a product or service, minus the direct and indirect cost
paid to acquire it.

References
● Baker, David C. 2021. "Buyer Personas Can Over-Complicate Your Marketing —
David C. Baker". David C. Baker. URL.
● Bradley Chevrolet of Parker. 2016. “Chevrolet J.D. Power Dependability Awards”.
Video, 1:00. URL.

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 ● Board Reader. 2021. "Boardreader - Forum Search Engine". Boardreader.Com.
Accessed February 16, 2022. URL.
● Brand Mentions. 2021. "Upgrade The Way You Monitor Your Brand & Competitors".
Brandmentions.Com. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● BuiltWith. 2021. "Builtwith Technology Lookup". Builtwith. Accessed April 13, 2022.
URL.
● D'addario, Daniel. 2017. "Why The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such A Glaring
Misstep". Time. URL.
● Edmondson, Amy C, and Paul J Verdin. 2017. "Your Strategy Should Be A
Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust". Harvard Business Review. URL.
● Freshpet. 2019. “Booba The 130-Pound Lap Dog | Freshpet Select Commercial :50.”
Video, 0:50. URL.
● Kotler, Philip, Veronica Wong, John Saunders, and Gary Armstrong. 2005. Principles
Of Marketing. 4th ed. Essex, England: Pearson Education. PDF
● Lariviere, Marty. 2010. "A New Twist To Managing Black Friday". The Operations
Room. URL.
● Life at Etsy (@lifeatetsy). 2021. “In honor of National Coming Out Day on October
11th...” Instagram photo, November 2, 2021. URL.
● MacLellan, Lila. 2020. "How Etsy Doubled Its Hiring Of Black And Latinx Employees
In One Year". Quartz. URL.
● Negocios y Empresa. 2021. 10 frases de Peter Drucker | Unas pinceladas de su
legado. Image. URL.
● OWLetter. 2021. "Monitoring Your Competitors' Email Marketing Newsletters".
Owletter. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● Patel, Neil. 2021a. "Backlinks". Neil Patel. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● Patel, Neil. 2021b. "Want More SEO Traffic?". Neil Patel. URL.
● SEMRush. 2021. "Get Measurable Results From Online Marketing". Semrush.
Accessed December 16, 2021. URL.
● Sprout Social. 2021a. "What Is A Marketing Funnel?". Sprout Social. URL.
● Subaru. 2017. “2017 Subaru Forester Subaru Commercial Making Memories
Extended”. Video, 1:00. URL.
● Thomas, Lauren. 2021. "Old Navy Overhauls Plus-Size Fashion Line For Women To
Win Sales In $32 Billion Market". CNBC. URL.
● Wappalyzer. 2021. "Find Out What Websites Are Built With". Wappalyzer. Accessed
April 13, 2022. URL.
● Wright, Amy. 2017. "What Is A 'Buyer Persona' And Why Is It Important?". Social
Media Today. URL.
● Yadav, Yash. 2017. “Full Pepsi Commercial Starring Kendal Jenner”. YouTube
Video, 2:48. URL.
● Zalis, Shelley. 2019. “Inclusive Ads are Affecting Consumer Behavior, According to
New Research.“ Think with Google. URL.

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 ● Zed, Olivia. 2019. "How Dove's Real Beauty Campaign Won, And Nearly Lost, Its
Audience". Prweek. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media

● D'addario, Daniel. 2017. "Why The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such A Glaring
Misstep". Time. URL.
● Edmondson, Amy C, and Paul J Verdin. 2017. "Your Strategy Should Be A
Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust". Harvard Business Review. URL.
● Los mejores anuncios de siempre y de hoy. 2018. “PEPSI Kendall Jenner So
Controversial Commercial”. Video, 2:40. URL.
● MacLellan, Lila. 2020. "How Etsy Doubled Its Hiring Of Black And Latinx Employees
In One Year". Quartz. URL.
● Propane. 2019. "Dunkin Donuts: Successful Rebranding In An Evolving Industry".
Lux, Propane Agency. Published July 2, 2019. URL.
● Rare. 2015 “The Elephant, The Rider and the Path - A Tale of Behavior Change”.
YouTube Video, 2:02. URL.
● Thomas, Lauren. 2021. "Old Navy Overhauls Plus-Size Fashion Line For Women To
Win Sales In $32 Billion Market". CNBC. URL.
● Zed, Olivia. 2019. "How Dove's Real Beauty Campaign Won, And Nearly Lost, Its
Audience". Prweek. URL.

37
 ANNEX 1

The widely accepted view that strategy and execution are separable activities sets companies up
for failure in a fast-paced world.

One of us (Paul) is a strategy scholar and economist; the other (Amy) studies organizational
behavior and operations management. We came together to consider why strategy so often
breaks down in the execution stage. While conducting research on recent dramatic cases of
strategic failure in different industries, involving vastly different business models and strategies,
we discovered a common pattern: What started as small gaps in execution spiraled into business
failures when initial strategies were not altered based on new information provided by experience.
These companies’ strategies were viewed by their top executives as analytically sound;
performance gaps were blamed on execution.

Take the notable failure at Wells Fargo last year. Executives formulated a distinctive strategy of
cross-selling, which had much to recommend it. Selling additional products to current customers
leverages the costs of establishing those relationships in the first place, and serving more and
more of their financial service needs (to grab a greater “share of wallet”) is appealing, in theory.
Wells Fargo was even good in implementing the strategy — up to a point.

Yet the strategy eventually hit the realities of customers’ finite wallets (their spending power) and
real needs.

Cementing the business failure, salespeople appeared to believe that senior managers would not
tolerate underperformance, and found it easier to fabricate false accounts than to report what they
were learning in the field. The widespread nature of the behavior strongly suggests that the fraud
was not the result of some corrupt salespeople. Rather, it points to a system set up to fail — by
the pernicious combination of a fixed strategy and executives who appeared unwilling to hear bad
news. (From the perspective of the senior management at many companies, missing sales targets
is a failure in the execution of an analytically sound strategy.)

INSIGHT CENTER

The Gap Between Strategy and Execution Aligning the big picture with the day-to-day.
An alternative perspective on strategy and execution — one that we argue is more in tune with
the nature of value creation in a world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
(VUCA) — conceives of strategy as a hypothesis rather than a plan. Like all hypotheses, it starts
with situation assessment and analysis — strategy’s classic tools. Also like all hypotheses, it must
be tested through action. With this lens, encounters with customers provide data that is of ongoing
interest to senior executives — vital inputs to dynamic strategy formulation. We call this approach
“strategy as learning,” which contrasts sharply with the view of strategy as a stable, analytically
rigorous plan for execution in the market. Strategy as learning is an executive activity
characterized by ongoing cycles of testing and adjusting, fueled by data that can only be obtained
through execution.

38
Imagine if Wells Fargo had adopted a strategy-as-learning perspective. Its top managers would
have taken repeated instances of missed targets or false accounts as data to help them assess
the efficacy of the cross-selling strategy. This learning would then have triggered a much-needed
adjustment of the original hypothesis.

The key indicator of a strategy-as-learning approach lies in how managers interpret early signs of
gaps between results and plans. Are they seen as evidence that people are underperforming? Or
as data that indicates the initial assumptions were flawed, triggering further tests?

Volkswagen’s software that allowed diesel engines in its vehicles to cheat on emissions tests is
another case of a top-down fixed strategy that suffered in implementation. VW’s strategic ambition
to become the largest car company in the world required it to conquer the U.S. market. To help
VW stand out and win in the U.S. market, its executives formulated a strategy of developing so-
called clean-diesel vehicles that leveraged the company’s core competence.

As was the case at Wells Fargo, VW’s culture — specifically, its executives’ lack of tolerance for
pushback from people lower in the organization — seems to have played a major role in its diesel-
emissions fiasco. Bob Lutz, who held leadership roles at General Motors, BMW, Ford, and
Chrysler, describes a “reign of terror” that had long prevailed at VW. This, he says, undoubtedly
contributed to VW’s ignoring evidence that the claim that the diesel technology could comply with
environmental regulations was too good to be true. In this way, VW leaders lost out on the
opportunity to revisit and update the strategy. Meanwhile, engineers had developed software to
fool the regulators — postponing the inevitable.

Cheating and cover-ups are natural byproducts of a top-down culture that does not accept “No”
or “It can’t be done” for an answer. But combining this with the approach that treats strategy and
execution as separable is a sure recipe for failure. At both Wells Fargo and VW, disconfirming
data was available for a surprisingly long time and was not acted on by senior management. Signs
that corners were being cut were ignored. And the illusion that brilliant top-down strategies were
working persisted — for a time.

We are not saying top-down fixed strategies necessarily lead to fraud. Rather, our point is that
these two visible examples of strategic failure illuminate the risks of failing to integrate strategy
and execution through a deliberate and continual executive-learning process.

Strategy as learning requires senior executives to engage in an ongoing dialogue with operations
across all levels and departments. The people who create and deliver products and services for
customers are privy to the most important strategic data the company has available. And the
strategic learning process involves actively seeking deviations that challenge assumptions
underpinning current strategy. Deviations and surprises must be welcomed for their informative
value in adapting the strategy. Executives who adopt a strategy-as-learning framework
understand that pushing harder on execution may only aggravate the problem if shortcomings

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are, in fact, evidence of inadequate market intelligence or flawed assumptions about the business
model.

Companies that fuse strategy and execution, continually making adjustments and periodic
dramatic pivots, demonstrate what strategy as learning can look like in action. Consider the steady
strategic morphing of Amazon from online bookseller to global retail powerhouse. Or take ING
Bank in the Netherlands, which adopted an agile approach to strategy and execution that uses
“squads” as the company’s “nervous system” to sense changes in customer needs and
competitive realities and to give senior executives the data they need to rethink strategy and
respond. These and other cases exemplify a fundamentally different (iterative) approach to
strategy making.

Of course, embracing a learning approach at the top of the organization is not a new idea. What
we suggest has much in common with the notion of execution as learning, introduced in HBR
some years ago. Our ideas are also consistent with current work on organizational agility —
defined as an ability to sense and respond quickly to changes in the environment. (See these
articles by Jeff Gothelf, McKinsey, and the Boston Consulting Group.)

What is new is the idea that closing the gap between strategy and execution may not be about
better execution after all, but rather about better learning — about more dialogue between
strategy and operations, a greater flow of information from customers to executives, and more
experiments. In today’s fast-paced world, strategy as learning must go hand in hand with
execution as learning — bypassing the idea that either a strategy or the execution is flawed — to
recognize that both are necessarily flawed and both are valuable sources of learning,
improvement, and reinvention.

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 MODULE 3 - PLATFORMS AND CAMPAIGNS

1. Tools for Communicating with your Audience PAGE 3

1. Fit

2. Aligning Strategy with Goals (POST Refresh)

2. Marketing and Advertisement Channels PAGE 12

1. The PESO Model, with Pros and Cons of Each Channel

2. The Role(s) of Your Website

3. Major Types of Marketing Campaigns PAGE 16

1. SEO

2. SEO, SEM, and PPC

3. Display Ads vs. Native Advertising

4. Content Marketing

5. Three Essential Steps for Success

6. Sweet Spot

4. Digital Platforms PAGE 26

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

2. Ethics

3. Email Marketing and Mobile/SMS Marketing

4. Affiliate Marketing vs. Influencer Marketing

5. Future-proofing

6. Point/Counterpoint on Shiny Object Syndrome

1
Introduction:

In this module, we will focus on:

● The application of platforms and campaigns to get your message out to your consumers.
● The current landscape of Digital Marketing: an industry leader insight and perspective
● The importance of emerging technologies (social media platforms) to communicate with your
audience.
● When and where is more effective? How to align your strategy with your goals, ensuring that
your campaigns go out across all channels and that you’re messaging is effective in each
environment.
● Ethical practices of each of these tools: How to ensure they align with our message, our
values, and the belief system of our customers.
○ This will ensure that we are associated with the type of audience we seek, the values we
want to embody, and what we are saying.
● How to deliver our message as it constantly evolves as a result of changing culture.

Once you find your audience, you must also choose the best places to reach and engage them
to invite that exchange of value. This mode will focus on the use of platforms and campaigns to
get your message out to your consumers. In order to explore the realm of platforms,

Learning Objectives
● Describe the current landscape of digital marketing channels and platforms
● Create a POST (People, Objectives, Strategy and Story, Tools/Technology) plan
● Investigate the alignment of digital channels with personal values and company
mission/purpose

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 1. TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

1. Fit

Interview with a Brand Strategist - The importance of technology to reach the public

Jason Shim serves as Director of “Digital Strategy and Transformation” at “Pathways to

Education”, Canada. The organization helps young people, who are living in low income
communities, to graduate from high school and reach their full potential. In this role, Shim works
with emerging technologies to ensure Pathway’s name and mission are heard through innovative
ways that effectively deliver their message to a wider audience. Pathways is an organization that
helps youth who are living in low-income communities to graduate from high school and reach
their full potential. In terms of my digital marketing zone of genius, it is using emerging technology
in ways that can help our organization better meet its mission. Specifically, implementing
technology in creative ways to help people really connect with their mission as well as to achieve
better outcomes to surprise and delight folks, wherever they may be.

As we discussed in Module 1, there are many qualities that a Digital Marketer can bring to the
table. Which skills may be more important than others is subjective as it depends on personal
experience and perspective.

What quality is essential for someone working in the field of Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketers should possess the ability to listen. This is an important skill in this field because
it allows one to really get a sense of how a message is landing, of how your initiative is being
received. It creates a feedback loop because if you are able to listen carefully, you'll be able to
make improvements over time. And truly, over an extended period of time, if you're listening
carefully and paying close attention, it will allow you to really improve quickly on the types of things
that you are developing, such as the messaging that you're putting out into the world.

Working with emerging technologies means that not every attempt to incorporate new forms
of communication will be successful. For example, social media platforms may or may not be
useful for an organization, as it depends on their needs which can sometimes be difficult to know.
Although emerging technologies may offer new and exciting ways to communicate with your
audience, they don't always have enough use history to decide if they are the right fit for you.
Nonetheless, every experience comes with lessons to extract, and information that can be applied
to future cases.

Shim discusses his experience with a particular platform and how he used this to guide
future decisions: The story that comes to mind in regard to a time that failed are the explorations
of social media platforms that are always fraught with new and exciting platforms that are coming
out. You know, I remember when Vine first came out; it was quite exciting. That was something
that I remember reviewing with my team, and, thinking, “Yeah, we should totally explore this, and
I think there could be some good potential around it”. So, we spent some time developing videos

3
for Vine, and putting it out there, but it just didn't stick, we weren't seeing the numbers. After a few
weeks, we just had to call it and shelve it. I think what I took away from that, reflecting back on it,
it may have felt like a failure at the time, but really, the learnings we took away from it is , it did
allow us that opportunity to test it out and be nimble around it. It's actually more important that
we're able to do that quickly and take away the learnings from it. Vine wasn't the only platform
that was initially explored. Even prior to that, I remember taking a look at Twitter, and, at the time,
the assessment there wasn't a use case for it because it was way too early in Twitter's
development to see any kind of meaningful impact. But being able to document those learnings
for a future implementation, it wasn't necessarily like, “we're not doing it ever” it was just “not now.”
And so, in the years that have since passed, since some of these early explorations, what that
has allowed us to do is refine our approach so, when a new social media platform does emerge,
we have a better set of criteria, and we have a better sense of like, “okay, you know, we're clear
on how we test this” and how we will run a pilot around new and emerging platforms. What I've
learned from that is there is value to rapidly trying out these new things. It's just making sure that
there is an acknowledgment of what the threshold for success will be, and to make sure that it
doesn't keep dragging on so that it can also free up space to do other things to move your work
forward.

2. Aligning Strategy with Goals (POST Refresh)

An strategy to create a customer has to start with your customer! The POST model as a shorthand
for our digital marketing strategy:

P: People S: Strategy and Story

O: Objectives T: Tools/Technology

An important ingredient in defining your strategy is ensuring alignment. The digital age pushes
us to become more radically customer-centric in our marketing approaches, which means being
attentive to our customers, not only in experiences in one channel, but across all of them. This is
what’s referred to as Omnichannel marketing.

● Traditional Store → The good, old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar store

● E-commerce → Online shopping has skyrocketed in recent years

● Multichannel → Various, disconnected channels for customers to use independently

● Omnichannel → An integrated, seamless experience across multiple devices and

touchpoints

4
What is Omnichannel and why is it important? Omnichannel retailing means selling to
customers through both traditional offline outlets (e.g., brick-and-mortar locations, mall order
catalogs, even direct-to consumer telemarketing) as well as online outlets (e.g., e-commerce
sites, social media, email marketing, marketplaces.)

Why It’s Important: Higher transparency - Channel blending - Omnichannel shoppers spend
more - Every channel has a unique role and can be profitable - Aligns perfectly with how
customers already shop

The Iterative Process of User Experience Design - For Omnichannel and Beyond.
Checklist

● Let the customer decide when/where they want to shop

● Provide multiple shopping options: in-person, mobile, online, or any blend of the three
(e.g., click and collect)
● Make the brand experience consistent
● Manage inventory centrally
● Translate loyalty programs across devices
● Accept multiple types of payment
● Provide excellent customer service in every channel
● Apply discounts and customize taxes
● Provide several receipt options
● Allow for several returns options
● Process refunds promptly and accurately

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Why Sephora Wins at Omnichannel

● Every channel has a clear role and maximizes its strong points
● Heavy use of technology across stores
● Personalized experience on every platform—from loyalty program to location services to
customized product recommendations
● Plenty of options to choose from and you can get the best product for your needs
● Excellent customer service before, during, and after purchase

Challenges of Omnichannel Marketing

● Logistics: How do we maintain a system that services all our channels, including shipping
directly to customers?
● Pricing: How do we charge consistent pricing without leaving money on the table or losing
sales?
● Technology: How do we allocate and effectively spend marketing dollars across multiple
channels?
● Attribution: How do we know which specific marketing triggers ultimately lead to the
purchase?

When Creating Distribution Strategy, Use Caution

6
 ● Strategy needs to be consistent with the brand positioning, company’s objectives, market
realities, and capabilities
● Find your customers where they are
● Always plan for omnichannel
● Create a distribution strategy that creates the most value for your target customers

Why Some Things Catch On And Get Shared by Kare Anderson (FULL TEXT IN ANNEX 1):

1. High arousal negative emotions such as anger or anxiety can motivate people to share
messages.
2. Connecting a message to a familiar or frequent situation for the customer can be more effective
than a catchy slogan.
3. Using the six STEPPS principles of contagiousness can help to create a message that will be
shared.
4. Crafting an emotional story to wrap around the desired benefits of a product can help to create
a connection with the customer.
5. Attaching your message to a well-known story can help to create a trigger that will remind
customers of your product or message.
6. Anti-campaigns can backfire, as they give the habit more visibility and can evoke the opposite
reaction.
7. Most word of mouth messages happen offline, so focusing on real-life exposure can help to
transport your message.
8. Anyone can spark an idea that catches fire and spreads, regardless of fame or wealth.

Effective messaging: Omnichannel marketing requires strong, consistent messaging. But what
should that messaging be? As with everything, it should start with your customer. You should ask:
what is the benefit to them?

A quick differentiation: Features vs. Benefits

Products and services all have two important qualities for your audience to consider:
● Features are the components of a product and what they can do,
● Benefits describe how life will be different for the consumer when they use that product
or service.

● For example: a vacuum cleaner. Its features may include a long hose, or cordless
operation. Benefits, though, might include a deeply-cleaned carpet, or the sense of
satisfaction from knowing that you’ve sucked up every last bit of dust from your living room.

Emphasizing the features of a product often centers the company, while emphasizing the
benefits puts the customer, their experience, and the value (they ultimately derive from the
product), at the center of your messaging.

7
Here are a few other important best practices for developing powerful messaging:

● Appeal to Emotion

“Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that when evaluating brands,
consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than
information (brand attributes, features, and facts).” (Murray 2013)

Different emotions cause us to take different actions. For instance, happiness makes us
share, sadness makes us empathize, and surprise makes us cling to the familiar. (Decker
2021)

Fitbit shares an emotional introduction to a longer customer story on Instagram,

encouraging them to visit the website to continue. The emotional hook creates empathy
and builds curiosity. (instagram)

● Surprise and Delight with a Publicity Stunt

Getting playful and surprising with your brand can help you rise above the noise—just
make sure it’s aligned with the brand's voice and positioning.
McCormick Spices did this well by creating a new job posting—“Director of Taco
Relations” (Pomranz 2021): Creating headline-worthy "dream jobs" has become a
popular marketing trend — featuring titles like Chief Noodle Officer (for Top Ramen), Chief
Biscuit Officer (for Red Lobster), and Chief Thirst Officer (surprisingly, not for Instagram).
But as these somewhat satirical names imply, the extent to which these positions are
actually real jobs with real responsibilities and real pay can vary significantly:

• Creative marketing trend of creating headline-worthy "dream jobs"

• Slice's Head of Pizza gets paid mainly in pizza
• Responsibilities include keeping tabs on taco trends, developing content for social media,
and consulting on recipes
• Must submit a creative video showcasing personality and passion for tacos
• McCormick's new "Director of Taco Relations" is a real job with real responsibilities and
real pay - $100,000 paid out at $25,000 per month.

Kraft, on the other hand, missed the mark with their cheeky #SendNoods campaign,
a mismatch for their family-friendly image. (Walansky 2020).

• Social media users said the "family company" had "sexualized" the classic dish.
• Kraft launched a #SendNoods promotion, which allowed fans to send a free box of mac
and cheese (or a coupon to redeem a free box) to a loved one.
• The promotion was meant to provide comfort in "strange times" but was met with
unexpected backlash from social media users who thought the promotion was sexualizing
the classic dish.

8
 • Kraft removed the promotion and released a statement saying they appreciated the
feedback.

The article "Publicity Stunts that You Can't Lick " details some of the events that
caught the public's eye.

• Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen introduced a limited edition Kraft Mac N Cheese ice cream
to celebrate National Macaroni & Cheese Day
• McCormick is hiring someone to be their Taco Sherpa for four months to guide them
through the world of taco flavors
• Publicity stunts can capture the consumer’s imagination and be used to get a brand on
the evening news and blow up the Internet
• Secrets to a great stunt include finding a shareable and newsworthy hook, taking the
brand into a new channel or category, and creating novel apologies to gain goodwill

● Create Positive, and Familiar, Associations

When you connect your product or service to something your customers already know
and have a positive connection to, those positive associations will translate to your brand.
In this example, an organization draws on the familiar act of checking your Instagram
notifications as a powerful reminder about women’s health.

● Appeal to the Bandwagon Effect

Also known as social proof, this is the idea that if everyone else, or at least everyone else
like you, is doing something, you should too. The bandwagon effect is built into the basic
functionality of social media. For instance, when you visit a Facebook page and it displays
how many of your friends also like that page, Facebook is showing you that you might also
be interested in this page.

● Lean on Expertise

Sometimes it takes the voice of an expert to help your audience see the value of the
product or service you offer. Unlike the bandwagon effect, leaning on expertise explicitly
brings in voices with different educational backgrounds and experiences to speak about
the value of your offering.

The nonprofit organization Make-A-Wish, which grants wishes to children with critical
illnesses, leaned on the role of expertise—specifically doctors—in order to move their
brand image from being “nice to have” to a “need to have” among their donors. (Make-A-
Wish 2021)

● Draw on User-Generated Content (UGC)

9
 How better to speak with the voice of your audience than to use the very content they
create in your marketing? User-generated content campaigns encourage customers to
create and share content that reflects their own interactions with your product or service.
It turns every fan or follower into a potential influencer.

Airbnb consistently draws on UGC for their impressive social media presence, especially
on Instagram.

● Use Storytelling

Our brains make sense of the world through storytelling. So, to stand out, our messaging
needs to be memorable. Stories are remembered up to 22x more than facts alone (Aaker
2019) making it a fundamental part of strong marketing. When people think of advocating
for their ideas, they think of convincing arguments based on data, facts, and figures.
However, studies show that if you share a story, people are often more likely to be
persuaded. And when data and story are used together, audiences are moved both
intellectually and emotionally. When telling a story, you take the listener on a journey,
moving them from one perspective to another. In this way, story is a powerful tool for
engendering confidence in you and your vision. Stanford Marketing Professor Jennifer
Aaker demonstrates the importance of story in shaping how others see you and as a tool
to persuade. Aaker shares the elements of successful stories and makes the case for
developing a portfolio of signature stories. Harnessing the power of story will enable you
to be more persuasive, move people to action, and progress into your career.

When Huggies brand diapers saw a dip in their sales, they turned to the power of
emotional storytelling to re-engage their customers with their “No Baby Unhugged”
campaign. The campaign increased sales of Huggies by 30% (Clark 2017). During
pregnancy, there are many important purchase decisions, but the diaper brand a mom
chooses for her baby was not one of them. Most moms deferred to the diaper used by
their birthing hospitals, and Pampers had 100% of Canadian hospital contracts. We were
challenged to change third trimester mom’s behavior by getting her to embrace and
choose Huggies, even before she went to the hospital. To accomplish this, we knew we
had to give her a strong emotional reason to choose us. Solution & Cultural Context:
The solution to winning over moms emotionally lay right there in our brand DNA: a hug.
Over 600 studies prove that hugs help stabilize babies’ vital signs, build immune systems,
ward off illness, improve brain development, and that’s just the beginning. So we created
No Baby Unhugged, the world’s first brand-led initiative to: 1) educate mom on the power
of skin-to-skin hugs for her baby and 2) help put volunteer huggers in hospital Neonatal
Intensive Care Units for babies in need of hugs. Impact: In 2016, sales of Huggies
Newborn Diapers increased by almost 30%. Our online advertising achieved a click-
through rate 12x higher than industry benchmarks. Social media was the top driver of
database sign-ups, garnering over 2 million likes, comments, shares and re-tweets, and
an engagement rate 300% higher than industry benchmarks. We currently have 3 No Baby

10
 Unhugged hospitals in Canada, with a 4th on the way. And our campaign is being adopted
by 16 countries worldwide, including the U.S.

CONSIDER: Bonus Best Practice

Especially in times of economic downturn, many people are unwilling to open their wallets and
buy anything beyond the absolute necessities. Studies have shown, though, that an appeal to
nostalgia can change that (Harvard Business Review 2014). Fast food giant Burger King’s first
rebrand in 20 years was actually a throwback to their logo from 1970—a wildly successful
nostalgia campaign that spoke to an audience suffering from the economic impact of the
coronavirus pandemic (Meisenzahl 2021).

HEINZ commercial, “Based on a real DM (direct message on social media) from Ed Sheeran
(worldwide popular musician)”: I have got an idea for a Heinz Ketchup commercial. I was at this
super posh restaurant, super posh. The type of place that has chandeliers and paintings on the
wall and way too many forks. Classical music was playing or maybe it was Jazz. No, definitely
classical. The hostess walked up to me and she said, “Mr. Sheeran, is this your first time dining
with us?” And I say, “Yep”. The waiter comes over. He is telling me about the specials: “Super
fancy, fancy vegetables, fancy sauces”. And I said “it sounds fancy”. So, fast forward and the food
comes. The waiter foes on to tell me “we are proud to present this farm to table blah blah posh
and fancy blah blah with a side of blah blah”. You know, the food good look. I just thought there
was something missing. So, I reached into my bag and I take out the only thing that can complete
me. And at that point, the whole world came to a stop. Posh people was straight staring at me,
with faces like saying “no way, you are not going to eat that here”. The waiter was screaming
through his eyes, meanwhile I put Heinz Tomato Ketchup on my food. So, that is my idea. Do you
want to do it?

This commercial demonstrates several best practices in digital marketing. First, it appeals to the
emotions of the audience by recounting a humorous story that is relatable to many people.
Additionally, it uses the power of celebrity endorsement by featuring a well-known musician.
Finally, it features a recognizable product that many people have a positive association with.

Overall, this commercial is effective in its use of digital marketing best practices. It appeals to the
emotions of the audience, features a recognizable product and a celebrity endorsement which
helps to further engage the audience.

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 2. MARKETING AND ADVERTISEMENT CHANNELS

1. The PESO Model, with Pros and Cons of Each Channel

In order to create the most effective digital

marketing strategy to support an Omnichannel
customer experience, let’s explore some of the
most important channels and platforms. The
PESO model is a model for considering the
balance among four different possible types of
media: paid, earned, shared, and owned.

Now, let’s discuss the pros and cons of each

type of media.

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 2. The Role(s) of Your Website

Digital Platforms and Channels: How You Show Up

In order to have an effective presence and invite the exchange of value with your customers,
digital marketers need to both:

1. Present their services and products effectively and consistently

2. Adapt to the culture and expectations of different digital channels

Much like your personal presence in real life, you’re always the same person, but you “show
up” differently depending on the space you’re entering. At home, you may dress more relaxed
and speak more casually than you would in school. At work, you may dress more formally and
use entirely different language than you would at a nightclub with friends. You’d present yourself
differently at a job interview than a date, but you’re always yourself. This is how we need to think
about building an effective digital presence. It’s about holding that tension between maintaining
consistent messaging while adapting to your surroundings. It’s about being you, wherever your
customer may find you.

Web marketing is a series of baby steps. Some get you further than others, but it’s mostly a lot of
little things that add up to something big.

Professor: If showing up online is like showing up in real life, your website is the equivalent of
your home. Its the place where you gave the most freedom and opportunity to really show your
customers who you are and what you’re all about. Building and maintaining a website that truly
represents your brand and provides a smooth, compelling experience for your customers can be
as simple as puting up a one page static site with nothing but a “contact us form” or as complex
as Amazon.com. As with everything in marketing, what your home base on the web does,
depends on your goals, audience, industry and strategy. There are a few website basics that
every digital marketer should be familiar with.

1º The Language: Websites are written into being. Everywhere you visit on the web is built with
code, and as a digital marketer, it is good to be familiar with the basics of how websites function
and some of the key terms.

The backbone of web development:

● Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): it was created in 1989 by web pioneer Tim Berners-
Lee, to help programmers describe the content of websites. It is used to publish online
documents, create forms, or retrieve information online through hyperlinks. It provides the
structure.
● Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): It is a language that complements HTML, by modifying
the display and design of HTML elements. It eases site maintenance and may be used to

13
 design colors, fonts, layouts, or to adapt a web display across different devices. It provides
the style.
● Javascript, Python, Ruby, and many others: each has its strengths and weaknesses.
● Content Management System (CMS): Digital Marketers will be most familiar with it. It is a
software that allows to create, manage and modify all the content you need to build a
website without having to code. For example: WordPress (40% of all websites), Magento
(e-commerce), Squarespace, Wix.

The look of the website: it must reflect the taste or experience of the company. It must align with
your overall brand to make it easy to find what the visitor is looking for. And leaves them feeling
satisfied with the experience. The design must be planned, tested and continually adjusted. Web
designers takes into account the following factors:
● How information is organized
● The role of images, colour and white space.
● Responsivenes to various devices
● Create a path that guides the user to clear and intuitive steps.

The numbers: a website is a goldmine of insights into your audiences, interests and behaviors.
Tools like google analytics provide an immense amount of data, to let you listen to and learn from
your users. The key is not in the raw data itself, but in its interpretation and translation into action.
Data and Analytics will be in Module 4. Now, visit your favorite brands, notice what stands out to
you about them, the way the site feels and the journey they are taking you on. Are there good
elements to replicate or things yo avoid in your own marketing?

A Word On Websites and Accessibility

According to the World Bank, 15% of the world’s population (one billion people) live with some
kind of disability (The World Bank 2021). Regardless of who your target audience is, some of
them are living with a disability. Are those people able to read, navigate, and take action on your
website, just as any “typical” user would? This is the question at the heart of website accessibility.

When you look at the broad range of abilities and disabilities that people might have, you can see
that designing and building products only for people who have perfect vision, hearing, dexterity,
and cognition seems incredibly narrow. It's almost self-defeating, because we're creating a more
stressful and less usable experience for everyone, and for some users creating an experience
which actually excludes them altogether. Victor Tsaran - Technical Program Manager at Google

The more accessible you can make your digital presence, the wider your potential customer base.
In particular, making your website more accessible is an issue of equity, but it’s also just good
business practice.

There are lots of considerations to take into account when making your website accessible. Here
are the broad categories, as outlined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:

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Perceivable: Can users perceive the content? This helps us remember that just because
something is perceivable with one sense, such as sight, it doesn't mean that all users can perceive
it.
Operable: Can users use UI components and navigate the content? For example, something that
requires a hover interaction cannot be operated by someone who can't use a mouse or touch
screen.
Understandable: Can users understand the content? Can users understand the interface and is
it consistent enough to avoid confusion?
Robust: Can the content be consumed by a wide variety of user agents (browsers)? Does it work
with assistive technology?

The organization WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) has a robust checklist of tactics you can
implement to make your website more accessible: WebAIM: WebAIM's WCAG 2 Checklist. You
can also enter your website’s URL to test your website’s accessibility and generate a list of
immediate opportunities for improvement here: WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool.

CONSIDER: Just as your website can be more accessible to those with disabilities, the language
you use can also be more inclusive for all types of people. Digital agency Whole Whale developed
a tool to automatically review your website and flag any potentially offensive terms. Learn about
it here: About The Inclusivity Tool - Whole Whale.

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 3. MAJOR TYPES OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

1. SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization—the process of improving your website so that it
ranks higher in search results. In order to understand SEO, you need to understand a bit about
how search engines work, and how consumers behave while they are searching.

Search Engines: Search engines use crawlers (an internet bot that systematically browses the
World Wide Web) to delve into websites, gather information on the content housed there, explore
the internal and external links, and understand how that site is connected to other sites on the
web. That information is stored in the search engine’s database, called an index. When you enter
text into a search engine like Google, an algorithm then determines which information is most
relevant to your search, and presents the results on the search engine results page (SERP).

Consumer Behavior: When was the last time you looked something up online? When you did,
how many pages of results did you go through before finding what you needed? The vast majority
of consumers are only looking at the very top results, and rarely go more than a page or two
deeper. Being at the top of the SERP is the best way to get attention and potentially earn a click
through to your website.

The challenge for digital marketers is to understand how pages are ranked = what the search
algorithm thinks is important. If you understand what helps pages show up higher in SERPs,
you can adjust your website to align with that; this is “optimization” in SEO. 94% of all searches
happen on a Google property. SEO is what helps your website rank higher among organic
(nonpaid) search results. As Google dominates the search market, let’s take a more detailed look
at the different areas your business can feature in within Google:

● Organic search results. This is where your SEO strategy comes into play.
● Paid search results/Google Ads (Section 4 - Module 3)
● Shopping search results. If you are marketing a retail business, you can sell your products
through Google Shopping.
● Maps search results/Google My Business. If your business has a physical location, it’s a
good idea to set up and maintain a Google My Business account.
● Image search results. Optimizing your images for SEO can help your business appear at the
top of image search results, another channel where your potential customers may search.
There are lots of tips for optimizing images; start with ensuring all your images are sized
appropriately for your website and social media, and, where possible, make sure they have
appropriate names, captions, and ALT (short for alternative) text.
● Video search results. As the most emotion-rich medium for content, video is dominating the
digital marketing landscape more and more. If you create a video as part of your digital
marketing strategy, upload the video to YouTube, add a compelling title, thorough descriptive
text that aligns with your website SEO keywords, and, where possible, also publish the
transcript to make your content even more searchable.

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The next challenge is that Google and other search engines are constantly changing their
algorithm—hundreds of times a year according to most experts—and updating their service.
For instance, you may have noticed that Google, in response to the way most people use their
search engine, began functioning as an answers bank with suggestions of related questions and
quick responses available right on the SERP.

8 ways SEO has changed in the past 10 years (ANNEX 2): How has the search landscape
changed over the last decade? Columnist Jayson DeMers explores the biggest shake-ups over
the last 10 years and their impact on search engine optimization (SEO):

• The rise of content: Google's Panda update in 2011 served as the death blow to spammy
content and keyword stuffing, emphasizing the importance of producing high-quality content for
SEO success.

• The death of link schemes: Google's Penguin update in 2012 penalized participants in link
wheels and exchanges and paid linkers, emphasizing the importance of natural link attraction
and valuable link building.

• The reshaping of local: Google's Pigeon update in 2014 more heavily incorporated traditional
web ranking signals into its ranking algorithm, giving well-optimized websites a major edge in
local search.

• SERP overhauls: The SERPs have changed significantly since 2006, requiring SEOs to
consider different ranking factors.

• The rise of the Knowledge Graph: Google's Knowledge Graph, which first emerged on the
scene in 2012, attempts to provide users direct, concise answers to their queries, often taking
precedence over organic search results.

• Mobile prioritization: Mobile devices have exploded in popularity since the iPhone first
emerged back in 2007, and Google has done everything it can to emphasize the importance of
optimizing websites for those mobile users.

• The soft death of keywords: Google's Hummingbird update in 2013 introduced semantic
search, attempting to understand meaning rather than matching keywords.

• Update pacing and impact: Google's updates are now smaller, less noticeable, and roll out
gradually, giving them a much less dramatic impact on the industry.

The key to effective SEO is to understand your customers’ expectations when they search.
Are they interested in making an immediate purchase? Maybe. But probably not.

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Case of Olay: They realized that consumer behavior was changing, and that their SEO would
have to evolve as well. It was not the channel for a direct sale, but a place to be helpful, answer
questions, and start a conversation: “We started to see search as a direct dialogue with the
consumer,” said Spencer Kelly, brand manager for Olay e-commerce. “If they were standing in
front of us asking the question, how would we answer? We probably wouldn't respond with ‘Buy
Olay!’ But this is how most of our ads responded to consumers’ questions. So we started to rethink
how we respond back to consumers in a way that gets them what they need.” (Wiers 2019)

In approaching SEO, the question we must answer is: what are our customers searching for?

Let’s take a look at some tips for getting started with SEO.

1. Understand who your user is and what they’re looking for. This goes back to really
understanding your customer. Let’s say you’re a local bakery. Are your potential customers
folks with a sweet tooth looking for an everyday treat? Or are they health conscious
consumers who want organic ingredients? A tool like AnswerthePublic can help you uncover
what questions your audience might be asking.
2. Determine and prioritize keywords. A tool like SpyFu can help you get a sense of what
people are looking for. Those keywords can then be built into different places on your website.
3. Develop a strategy for backlinking. Backlinks, or external links, are the hyperlinks that
connect one website to another. When another site links to your site, web crawlers see this
as a sign of authority or trustworthiness and increase the ranking of the site. Proceed with
caution though! Backlinks need to be genuinely earned to drive the right traffic from potential
customers.
4. Implement your strategy, track your progress, and set a plan for reviewing and revising
your efforts regularly.

There is a lot more to explore when it comes to SEO; it’s even a career specialization you might
want to take on. Because it is such a specific niche, many companies have SEO specialists or
outsource SEO to digital agencies. If you’re interested in learning more about SEO, Moz.com has
a thorough beginner’s guide:

CHAPTER 0: QUICK START SEO GUIDE. Speed up to catch up: Go from zero to hero with our
step-by-step refresh on the core fundamentals for setting your site up for SEO success.
CHAPTER 1: SEO 101. What is it, and why is it important?: For true beginners. Learn what search
engine optimization is, why it matters, and all the need-to-know basics to start yourself off right.
Download your free Quick Start Worksheet.
CHAPTER 2: HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK – CRAWLING, INDEXING, AND RANKING.
First, you need to show up: If search engines literally can't find you, none of the rest of your work
matters. This chapter shows you how their robots crawl the Internet to find your site and add it to
their indexes.

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CHAPTER 3: KEYWORD RESEARCH. Understand what your audience wants to find.: Our
approach targets users first because that's what search engines reward. This chapter covers
keyword research and other methods to determine what your audience is seeking.
CHAPTER 4: ON-SITE OPTIMIZATION. Use your research to craft your message.: This is a hefty
chapter, covering optimized design, user experience, information architecture, and all the ways
you can adjust how you publish content to maximize its visibility and resonance with your
audience.
CHAPTER 5: TECHNICAL SEO. Basic technical knowledge will help you optimize your site for
search engines and establish credibility with developers: By implementing responsive design,
robot directives, and other technical elements like structured data and meta tags, you can tell
Google (a robot itself) what your site is all about. This helps it rank for the right things.
CHAPTER 6: LINK BUILDING & ESTABLISHING AUTHORITY. Turn up the volume: Once you've
got everything in place, it's time to expand your influence by earning attention and links from other
sites and influencers.
CHAPTER 7: MEASURING, PRIORITIZING, & EXECUTING SEO. Set yourself up for success.:
An essential part of any SEO strategy is knowing what's working (and what isn't), adjusting your
approach as you go along.
THE SEO GLOSSARY. Understand key terms and phrases: Learning SEO can sometimes feel
like learning another language, with all the jargon and industry terms you're expected to know.
This chapter-by-chapter glossary will help you get a handle on all the new words.

2. SEO, SEM, and PPC

What are SEM and PPC marketing, and how are they distinct from SEO?

● SEM stands for search engine marketing.

● PPC stands for pay-per click, and is also called CPC (cost per click), paid search, and
search advertising.
The distinction is cause for debate among marketers (Hollingsworth 2019).

SEM
● is an umbrella term for maximizing the exchange of value through search by investing in
paid placements.
● isn’t limited to search giants like Google; it can extend to other sites that offer a search
function to their users, such as Amazon, Etsy, or TripAdvisor.
PPC

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 ● is a specific type of SEM in which the marketer pays for their placements based on the
number of people who click through the advertisement.

The most important distinction is this: SEO is focused on organic search, while SEM/PPC are
focused on paid placements.

3. Display Ads vs. Native Advertising

Display ads are a kind of online advertising in which an image or video is used to draw a user to
click through to another site, usually where a potential customer can learn more or make a
purchase. There are many different forms and types of display advertising.

Display advertising indicates an initial interest or curiosity in a product or service, but not
necessarily a readiness to buy. With that in mind, one of the most important reasons digital
marketers use display advertising is to create an audience which can be retargeted. Remarketing,
or retargeting, is the practice of focusing your advertising on those people who have already
indicated their interest by visiting your website.

EXAMPLE: 97% of people will not make a purchase the first time they visit a website. Retargeting
allows you to collect data on these users and remind them to return, often by showing them
additional ads on subsequent sites. This tactic allows you to personalize your marketing, use your
advertising dollars more efficiently (as they’re focused on those who are already curious), and
drive results. A 2019 study found that retargeted ads caused 14.6% more users to return to a
particular website within four weeks. (Conick 2019)

Very few consumers buy after the first exposure to an ad, so marketers use retargeting to increase
conversion. Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple code to anonymously
"follow" your audience on the Web.

20
Retargeting, though, has come under scrutiny. While consumers appreciate personalization, they
don’t necessarily want companies chasing them around the internet. “Retargeting is an intrusive
form of user surveillance that requires regulation,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director at the
Center for Digital Democracy. “Digitally shadowing consumers for online targeting is an unfair—
and undemocratic—process. Retargeting works, but it shouldn’t mean that privacy and consumer
protection is tossed by the wayside for the gain of a few digital dollars.” (Abramovich 2012).

Digital Marketing in a Cookie-less world

While powerful, retargeting has come under serious scrutiny recently. While consumers
appreciate personalization, they dont necessarily want companies chasing them around the
internet. “Retargeting is an intrusive form of user surveillance that requires regulation” (Jeffrey
Chester - Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy).

Digitally shadowing consumers for online targeting is an unfair and undemocratic process.
Retargeting works, but it shouldn't mean that privacy and consumer protection is tossed by the
wayside for the gain of a few digital dollars. In fact, the tech industry is shifting away from tracking
and retargeting customers by means of what are called cookies, little bits of code that browsers
store to keep track of who has already visited a site.

Cookies can be very helpful. For instance, if you are shopping online and view certain products
on a particular website, cookies are what tell the website who you are when you come back, so
you can see those products again. They allow the site to remember you and create a more
personalized experience. Those arent the kinds of cookies that are coming under fire. It is third
party cookies, or tracking cookies, that are causing the bigger issue. These are cookies attached
to advertisements. Imagine you are reading the online new, you see a catchy add and you click
on it. If you find the same ad following you on the next website and on social media and seemingly
anywhere you go online, thats what tracking cookies do. These kind of cookies are automatically
disabled on safari, firefox and other internet browsers.

Google has also announced that the are phasing that out in 2022 as well. This shift from google
has significant implications for marketers who want to provide a personalized approach and
gather data on the effectiveness of their advertising spending.

What might digital marketing in a cookie-less world look like? Digital marketers putted lots of ideas
out there as to what the cookie-less world will be like. Everyone agrees that taking control of your
first party data is key. This means, it is necessary to work harder to develop real relationships with
their customers and capture the kind of data like email addresses and phone numbers that they
can carry with them from one place to another. That might mean creating more useful and
entertaining content in exchange for an email address or holding events to capture information at
registration or building and nurturing brand communities outside of Facebook groups or other
social media platforms, or any number of options. The shift to a cookie-less world is neither the
first nor the last time digital marketers will have to contend with major shifts in the industry and

21
learn how to adapt. Its those who embrance change, deepen their empathy, and lead with
creativity, who will survive and thrive through this change and whatever else is yet to come.

Forum: Retargeting. Discuss and share your thoughts on the topic of cookies and retargeting with
your peers. While answering the forum, consider: if third party cookies are being phased out, how
else might companies capture first.

Let’s now dive into embedded advertising. Embedded advertising includes two major types:

● Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form
and function of the user experience in which it is placed and appears fully integrated in other
content.
● Product placement is a practice in which manufacturers of goods or providers of a service
gain exposure for their products by paying for them to be featured in movies, television
programs, video games, and other forms of visual entertainment.

CONSIDER: Native advertising is mostly digital while product placement can take any form.

To qualify as a Native Ad, the promotional material has to meet strict guidelines:

Form: Does the ad fit within the overall page design? Does it appear in-stream or out-of-stream?
Function: Does the ad function like other page elements? Does it deliver a similar content
experience compared with the rest of the page?
Integration: How does the unit’s behavior match surrounding content? Does it mirror page
content behavior or does it introduce new behavior (for example, linking to content off-site)?
Buying and targeting: Is ad placement guaranteed on a specific page, section, or website? Will
it be delivered across a network of sites? Is the ad narrowly or broadly targeted?
Measure: What metrics are used to judge an ad’s success? Does the ad result in brand
engagement or a direct response from customers?
Recommendation Widgets: Sponsored content is suggested to readers.
In Feed Ads: Sponsored content is staggered in between other articles and named as an
advertisemen.
Sponsored Content: It is presented alongside other content, and is designated as coming from
a particular (advertising) partner.

Product Placement: (1) Video games: The video game industry is massive and growing, likely
reaching over $180 billion by 2021, with 2.5 billion gamers around the world. Additionally, while
the stereotypical gamer may be a teenager, the reality is that the average age of a video game
enthusiast is 34. Product placement in video games can get you in front of highly engaged,
specific audiences. (2) Advertainment: Advertainment is the height of content marketing, in which
your product takes on a life of its own. The LEGO movies are an excellent example of
advertainment; the content itself then becomes a revenue generator.

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4. Content Marketing

What is the purpose of content marketing?

● Content is what people want online
● Marketing and advertising are what people want to avoid.

The purpose of content marketing is to add value to the potential customer’s life—to make them
appreciate your existence, and turn them into loyal, paying advocates.

When comparing content marketing to traditional advertising, you can identify the difference in
goals and outcomes:

● Traditional advertising casts a broad net, seeking to find its audience in order to push
content to this group. As a result, traditional advertising will reach fast outcomes that will be
expensive and shallow
● Content marketing looks for a more specific group and uses it to build an audience from, by
means of content. As a result, content marketing will result in deep engagement through a
cheaper, yet slower process
.

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5. Three Essential Steps for Success

Content marketing is about earning permission to enter someone’s personal space. In doing so,
there are three essential steps for success. Click on each of them to learn more.

What Goal By doing what?

Company Increase the

Mission/Objective number of young
users

Create relevant Company mission Provide healthy lifestyle

Content Target audience advice to 18–24 y/o
Mission/Strategy content in Business objectives demographic through blog
accordance with → Content objectives and social media to reach
desired level of health

Message: healthy attributes

of product with strong appeal
Content Choose the most to self-care
Marketing relevant platforms to create strong
Main platforms: own blog
Strategy and content engagement with
distribution the target audience. Social media amplification
cadence (Snapchat and Instagram)
Lebron James influencer
Call to action: try our product

Execute content to create the Blog: start the day in a

marketing calendar largest platform healthy way by using product
and optimize footprint at
content delivery minimum cost.
Snapchat: healthy routine
Content including our product
Marketing
YouTube: how LeBron
James makes a healthy
breakfast using our product

To get in front of the right customers in a Sea of Content, your content has to stand out. Two
strategies for doing so are the content sweet spot and content tilt.

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6. Sweet Spot

Content sweet spot: Intersection of a company’s authority area and customer’s pain point

Content tilt: A twist on a familiar idea that makes your content unique

What is your organization uniquely good at, and how does it address a specific pain point for your
audience? This is the intersection where you want to focus your content.

Your passion, authority and expertise Your customers pain points and aspirations

Content Tilt → Four elements will help you find your content tilt

Audience - WHO Is your audience niche enough that nobody talks to them directly?
Is your audience large enough to support your business?

Story - WHAT Is the way you tell your story unique?

Is the way you tell your story different?
Does the way you tell the story resonate with your audience?

Platform - HOW Is there a platform that is being underutilized by our competitors?

Is there an emerging platform that is particularly relevant to our
audience?

Subject Matter - Is the subject matter we chose unique?

WHY Is it uniquely relevant to my specific chosen audience?

Example of Hitting the Sweet Spot and Finding Tilt

Andy Schneider, known as the “Chicken Whisperer,” started out as a hobbyist raising his
chickens, but has since turned his side gig into a chicken enthusiast’s empire. Learning that his
friends were also interested in raising chickens, he started a small meetup group, which attracted
media attention, and grew into a one-stop shop media platform for all things chickens. Looking at
his content now, you can see how the sweet spot of his existing expertise and his audience’s
desire to increase their own knowledge, as well as the content tilt of humor, storytelling, and
hyperspecificity, has come together to make an engaging experience for his thousands of
subscribers.

What is the right tilt? If your content can get you to the point where you can fill in the sentence:
“Only we can provide X customer with X.” That’s a great start!

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 4. DIGITAL PLATFORMS

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Facebook

Audience:# of monthly active users: 2.7 billion. Largest age group: 25–34 (26.3%). Gender:
44% female, 56% male. Time spent per day: 38 minutes. Tactics that work/best practices:

● Ads: Facebook gathers an enormous amount of detailed user data, which translates into a
very powerful ad targeting platform. Create custom audiences based on your personas. Install
the Facebook Pixel on your website to retarget your audience.
● Going live: Livestream video is an effective method of engaging your audience with your
brand. Interviews, tours, and new product announcements all work well for live events.
Loosely script your event and be sure to build in interaction with your viewers as they comment
on the video.
● Groups: Facebook Groups are a powerful way to connect your customers not only with your
brand, but with one another. Effectively moderated, Facebook Groups can provide your
customers with a sense of community that builds trust and loyalty to the brand.

Examples: 8 of The Best Facebook Groups We've Ever Seen:

• HubSpot Academy Content Marketing Pros: Private group for members to share ideas about
content challenges and projects, use and plan to use HubSpot, share details about courses, and
list ideas for courses.
• Instant Pot: International community of Instant Pot users to ask questions, post recipes, and
share the joy of cooking with their products.
• Women of Impact by National Geographic: Group to celebrate world-shaping powerhouses and
encourage anyone passionate about women breaking barriers in their fields.
• Elementor: Private group for Elementor users to help each other learn how to use the page
builder and answer any questions or resolve any challenges.
• Official Peloton Member Page: Private group for customers and users to discuss Peloton
products, learn about latest announcements, feature roll outs, and product updates.
• MobileMonkey: Product-specific group for MobileMonkey users to ask questions and share
knowledge about Instagram and Facebook Messenger, SMS & Chatbot Marketing products.
• Canva Design Circle: Group to learn how to take advantage of Canva's product and its features
and functions through their Design School.
• Tasty: Group for members to share recipes, ideas for substitutes, and cooking tips; competitions,
incentives, and group activities to encourage members to interact and connect.

26
Instagram

Audience: Nº of monthly active users: 1 billion. Largest age group: 25–34 (33.1%). Gender: 57%
female, 43% male. Average time spent per day: 29 minutes. Tactics that work/best practices:

● Your Instagram grid, the series of signature square images on every IG profile, is where
you make your first impression. Those images don’t have to stand alone; they can work
together to have a powerful, integrated effect. Check out how mineral water brand Jana
used IG for their campaign, “Deep” and created the “deepest” IG profile grid to-date.
● Instagram Live: Much like Facebook (both owned by parent company Meta), going live
on Instagram is a great way to connect directly with fans and followers in the moment.
● Stories: Use these fleeting, mini documentaries as an opportunity to offer your followers
a window into the day-to-day operations of your organization.
● Hashtags: Hashtags can organize information, pull together communities, or drive
momentum for a campaign. Research the hashtags your target audience is already using
to add to your posts, and bring in unique, branded hashtags for campaigns.

Examples: Instagram Powers Taco Bell's Innovation (businessinsider.com)

LinkedIn

Audience: Nº of total users: 738 million. Largest age group: 46–55. Gender: 51% male, 49%
female. 63% of LinkedIn users access the network monthly, and 22% weekly. Tactics that
work/best practices

● Teach fellow professionals: LinkedIn is the ideal space to reach other professionals and do
business-to-business (B2B) networking and marketing. But no one wants to feel like they’re
constantly being sold to. Instead, approach the platform as a place to teach: share your
insights and respond to others.
● Develop your team’s professional presence. As with so many social media platforms,
personal profiles tend to perform better than branded company pages—take advantage of
that! Work with your team to develop their personal profiles.
● Highlight your company culture and share open job opportunities: When talented people
are ready for their next job, they often brush up their LinkedIn posts and explore the
opportunities there. Use your LinkedIn page to show off your company’s people and values,
and entice the kind of talent that can help you grow.

Examples: WWF Company Page: (2) World Wildlife Fund: Overview | LinkedIn

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Twitter

Audience: Nº of daily active users: 187 million. Largest age group: 30–49 (44%). Gender: 32%
female, 68% male. Time spent per day/week: 3.53 minutes per session Tactics that work/best
practices:

● Keep it timely: Tweets have the shortest lifespan of any social media content—about 18
minutes. Timeliness is key; don’t be afraid to be responsive in the moment.
● Connect with the press: Twitter has become the go-to place for breaking news, and a great
platform for building relationships with journalists and influencers. Start by responding to them
and regularly offering value before requesting their support.
● Show personality: Twitter’s unique 280 character limit for posts means you need to get to
the heart of your message quickly. Use descriptive words, play on popular memes, and share
pictures and videos that help your followers get a sense of your brand’s personality in a short
period of time.

Examples: MoonPie (@MoonPie) / Twitter

YouTube

Audience: Nº of monthly active users: 2 billion. Largest age group: 15–25. Gender: 72% of all
female internet users and 72% of all male internet users. Time spent per day: 41.9 minutes among
viewers 18 and older. Tactics that work/best practices:

● Capture attention with a channel trailer: If you upload a channel trailer, when someone
lands on your channel's page it will automatically play for the viewer. This video is a perfect
opportunity to show off your personality and highlight the value of the channel.
● Be helpful: Many YouTube users visit the site for how-to content. What can you teach that
relates to your brand and product? These videos can then become helpful, entertaining pieces
of content that stand on their own and build trust and engagement with your organization.
● Consider SEO: YouTube is not only a repository of video, but the second largest search
engine on the planet. Use the descriptions of your videos, add hashtags where appropriate,
and link back to your own site to make your videos as rich as possible and build credibility
with your followers.

Examples: CHANEL - YouTube

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TikTok

Audience: Nº of monthly active users: 100 million. Largest age group: 18–24. Gender: 59%
female, 41% male. Time spent per day: 45+ minutes. Tactics that work/best practices

● Create for TikTok, share everywhere: Part of what makes TikTok content go viral so quickly
is the fact that sharing outside of TikTok is easy and encouraged. Once you’ve created a piece
for TikTok, don’t hesitate to post it to other social channels, especially YouTube, Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram.
● Keep up with trends: Trends sweep across TikTok in all kinds of different ways: dances,
specific songs, filters and effects for videos. Keep an eye on what’s resonating for your
audience, and experiment with how those trends might align with your brand.
● Connect with microcommunities: TikTok’s unique algorithm makes it easy to find and
connect with very specific microcommunities. Think about your target audience, get a sense
of what they’re posting on TikTok, and consider ways you can contribute to the conversation
that’s already happening.

Example: “As lockdowns halted tourism, employees of Madgas Hotel, a small boutique hotel in
Vienna that originally made headlines for employing mostly refugees, put the time to good use by
creating a series of entertaining videos, one of which ended up reaching two million people around
the globe.” (Reitere 2021). Magdas Hotel (@magdashotel) TikTok | Watch Magdas Hotel's
Newest TikTok Videos

Snapchat

Audience: Nº of monthly active users: 265 million. Largest age group: 13–34 (75%). Gender:
58% female, 40% male. Time spent per day: 26 minutes. Tactics that work/best practices

● Create Snapchat-specific content: A big part of Snapchat’s appeal is the limited lifetime of
content. Take advantage of this angle and be creative and experimental, sharing content,
such as behind-the-scenes peeks, that fans and followers won’t see anywhere else.
● Use the code: Snapchat creates custom branded QR codes for each profile, which can be
scanned to access and follow your account. Use this code on your website and in printed
materials to build your following.
● Host contests: If you want to drive more engagement with your brand on Snapchat, try a
contest or giveaway to get people talking.

Examples: This LA art museum is pretty great at Snapchat - The Verg

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Pinterest

Audience: # of monthly active users: 400+ millions. Largest age group: 30–49. Gender: 78%
female, 22% male. Time spent per day: 14.2 minutes. Tactics that work/best practices:

● Focus on eye-catching graphics: What do your users see when they land on your Pinterest
page? Using a consistent, branded approach to your graphics makes the page feel more
appealing and inviting, and helps visitors quickly understand who you are and what you have
to offer.
● Use the “shop” tab: For retail brands in particular, Pinterest offers opportunities to drive
customers directly to purchase.
● Consider SEO: Consistently posting to Pinterest can improve your rankings in search
engines. Think about how your Pins can play into your SEO strategy to increase visibility and
drive more organic traffic to your website.

Examples: HonestlyWTF on Pinterest

2. Ethics

What happens when the policies and practices of a particular digital channel don’t align
with your organization’s values? A number of companies have found themselves in this
position, for many reasons (Lock 2021). Cosmetics company Lush recently announced that it
would be leaving Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, in light of the insights that social media use
can be highly detrimental to mental health, especially among young women. CEO Mark
Constantine shared that he would be happy to lose the money from the reduced exposure that
comes with pulling their brand from the platforms.

We're talking about suicide here, not spots or whether someone should dye their hair blonde [...]
How could we possibly suggest we're a caring business if we look at that and don't care? (Mark
Constantine - LUSH CEO, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GUARDIAN).

Nonprofits too, struggled with the decision to stay or to go, especially since Facebook introduced
tools making it significantly easier for donors to contribute to nonprofit causes directly through the
platform. Amy Sample Ward, Executive Director of NTEN, shared her organization’s reasoning
for leaving the platform, and the struggles of the nonprofit community when potentially making the
same move (Ward 2020).

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 Essay

A. In digital marketing, we select platforms based on where our audience is. Should we
also select them based on what their values are?

Given the fact that in digital marketing, we select platforms based on where our audience is,
we must also select the platform based on the values1 of the customers who use a specific
platform. For instance, if we are a brainhunter company, we know that linkedin users give
importance to their professional career, ergo, we would be able to find our target audience among
the users of such a platform. 1. Beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that
control their behaviour (source).

B. How do we evaluate where we spend our time and resources?

In order to decide where to spend our time and resources on Social Media, it is necessary to: (1)
conduct an audience analysis: This involves researching the demographics and interests of the
target audience, as well as the platforms they use and their engagement levels. This data can
then be used to determine which platforms and strategies are most likely to reach and engage
the target audience. Additionally, digital marketers should also consider the cost of each platform
and the return on investment (ROI) it may provide. By evaluating the cost-benefit of each platform,
marketers can make informed decisions on where to allocate resources. (2) Conduct an analysis
of the values and tools of each Social Media. In instance, we have a task which is to communicate
a political campaign message, and we already have female support, our target audience are
mainly males. We know that almost 70% of twitter users are males and that the platform works
well for showing ideas and connect with people using short messages. Then, twitter would be a
good option for our task.

3. Email Marketing and Mobile/SMS Marketing

Email and SMS advertising is about communicating to your current consumer base. Especially
in a world in which digital marketers can’t rely on tracking cookies to provide a personalized
experience for their customers, capturing first-person data like emails and phone numbers is
increasingly important. Nurturing those relationships is critical.

CONSIDER
● List opt-ins are highly regulated
● Consumers can opt out easily
● Frequency of messages also might be regulated
● Make sure you do A/B Testing—testing different elements of ads to find the winning
combination
● You will be reaching almost exclusively consumers who already know you

31
32
4. Affiliate Marketing vs. Influencer Marketing

Let's now look into the similarities and differences between affiliate and influencer marketing.

Show influencers love, they’ll show it back. Ask for love, they’ll ask for money. (Peter Rahal - CEO
RXBAR).

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is an approach typically used in e-commerce in which an

affiliate is given a unique link to sell a particular product or service. That individual then earns a
commission every time someone uses that unique link to make a purchase. For instance, online
course platform Skillshare offers an affiliate program that encourages users to make referrals:

Influencer Marketing: is a strategy in which a brand partners with a digital creator who already
has a significant following in order to create unique content and campaigns. Bedrock Real Estate

33
hit all the right notes with this campaign, “Anthem of Us,” in 2016. In an effort to encourage real
estate purchases in Detroit, the company worked with Detroit-born rapper Big Sean to do the
voice-over for a celebration of the city, its businesses, and people. The video was successful not
only because it utilized influencer marketing well, but because it featured, and resonated with, the
local community, instilling a sense of pride that resulted in social sharing. Before you consider
influencer marketing make sure that your team can handle nurturing the relationship, you have
content worth sharing. Your KPIs 1 will be different depending on the goal of your engagement.
Be ready to give away your content and share influencer’s content without asking anything in
return.

Anthem of Us | A Short Film About Detroit | Presented by Bedrock: The core message of the
video is that hard work, dedication, and perseverance are necessary to achieve one's dreams. It
also emphasizes the importance of appreciating where one comes from and the lessons that can
be learned from life's experiences. Finally, the text conveys a sense of pride and joy in being able
to make one's dreams come true.

The Poetic Justice of Amanda Gorman’s Estée Lauder Contract - The inside story of how it
happened and why it matters. How brands choose influencers and why it is important: In
today’s digital age, brands are increasingly looking to influencers to help promote their
products. Influencers are people who have a large online presence and can influence the opinion
of their followers. Brands are increasingly turning to influencers to help them reach a larger
audience and to create an emotional connection with their consumers. The decision of which
influencer to partner with is a critical one for brands. They must consider the influencer’s
reach, their audience, their values, and their content. Brands must also consider how the
influencer’s message will align with their own brand values. It is important for brands to choose
influencers who are authentic and who will be able to effectively communicate their message to
their followers. The choice of influencers is also important for brands because it can help
them reach a larger, more diverse audience. Brands should look for influencers who have a
wide reach, but who also represent the values of the brand. For example, if a brand is trying to
reach a younger audience, they might look for influencers who have a large following of young
people. Similarly, if a brand is trying to reach a more diverse audience, they should look for
influencers who represent multiple cultures and backgrounds. In addition to considering the
influencer’s reach and audience, brands should also consider the influencer’s content.
Brands should look for influencers who create content that is in line with their own values and
mission. This can help ensure that the brand’s message is communicated in a way that resonates
with the influencer’s followers. The right influencer can help brands reach a larger, more diverse
audience and create an emotional connection with their consumers. Brands should consider
the influencer’s reach, audience, values, and content when selecting an influencer to partner
with. By doing so, brands can ensure that their message is effectively communicated to their
target audience.

1
A performance indicator or key performance indicator is a type of performance measurement. KPIs
evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages.

34
35
5. Future-proofing

In much of this module, we’ve discussed best practices for a variety of digital channels. But
as with any creative work, sometimes the point is to learn the rules in order to break them
better. For instance, think of a press release. It has a very specific format, and it takes time,
skill, and lots of practice to be able to develop an effective release. That’s why it was so surprising
when, in 2015, Chevy puts out a press release entirely in emoji. As the Business Insider article
stated, this was “an appeal to a younger generation of buyers.” (Green, 2015) To attract this age
group, Chevy first sent the emoji press release, and challenged its readers to decipher the
message before sending the translated release a few days later. The press release was the
centerpiece of a bigger campaign, #ChevyGoesEmoji, which followed the announcement from
Oxford Languages that 2015’s “Word of the Year” was, in fact, an emoji. Chevy knew the rules of
a press release. The emoji press release got attention because it broke those rules in a fun,
engaging way that captured people’s attention.

CONSIDER: How might you turn the rules of digital platforms on their head to capture the hearts
and minds of your audience?

6. Point/Counterpoint on Shiny Object Syndrome

Digital marketers are often accused of having “shiny object syndrome”: an insatiable attraction
to cool new tools and technology. For many, this is seen as a sign of lost focus and it takes away
from the need for strategic decision-making.

“If you’re constantly chasing new ideas and being distracted by the latest strategy, you’ll find
yourself hopping around from one method to another and never really focusing on your core
content marketing strategy.” (Brenner 2019)

On the other hand, the digital marketing world moves quickly, and it’s a marketer’s job to
stay on top of new trends: “I see a lot of posts about how marketers shouldn’t get distracted by
“shiny new things” in marketing. That tried and true is always better. I disagree. I think looking into
“shiny new things” is actually a core part of the job. How will you ever know if there’s a new tool
or platform that will work well for your business if you aren’t testing the latest tech? At one point
Google AdWords was a shiny new thing that marketers were skeptical of. The same can be said
for WordPress, marketing automation, SEO, and pretty much every social media network. Sure,
tried and true approaches shouldn’t be discounted, but sometimes the shiny new thing is exactly
what you need. #marketing”. Statement from Matt Chiera of Ice Nine Online

CONSIDER: Is shiny object syndrome detrimental or necessary?

36
 Glossary

● PESO: Paid Earned Shared Owned media

● POST: People, Objectives, Strategy & Story, Tools/Technology
● PPC: Pay-per click, also called CPC (cost per click), paid search, and search advertising
● SEM: Search Engine Marketing—focused on paid placements
● SEO: Search Engine Optimization—focused on organic traffic
● SERP: Search Engine Results Page
● WebAIM: Web Accessibility in Mind
● Affiliate Marketing: An approach in e-commerce where an affiliate (individual) is provided
with a unique link to sell a product or service. The individual earns a commission each time
someone uses the link to make a purchase.
● Bandwagon Effect: The idea that it is good to do something that everyone else is doing. Also
known as social proof.
● Benefits: Aspects of life that will be different after the consumer uses the product or service.
● Display Ad: A type of online advertising in which an image or video is used to draw a user to
click through to another site.
● Earned Media: Related to others talking about the product or service and public relations.
● Features: The components and functions of a product.
● Influencer Marketing: When a brand partners with a digital creator with a significant following
to create compelling content and campaigns.
● Multichannel Marketing: Various, disconnected channels for customers to use
independently. (Kaushik 2017.)
● Native Advertising: A form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form
and function of the user experience.
● Omnichannel Marketing: An integrated, seamless experience across multiple devices and
touchpoints (Kaushik 2021).
● Owned Media: Channels that belong to the company, such as the website and email list.
● Paid Media: All advertising regardless of the channel.
● Product Placement: When a product or service gains exposure by paying to be featured in
movies, television programs, video games, and other forms of visual entertainment.
● Retargeting: The practice of focusing your advertising on those people who have already
indicated their interest by visiting your website.
● Social Proof: The idea that it is good to do something that everyone else is doing. Also known
as bandwagon effect.
● Shared Media: Shared media platforms allow brands and individuals alike to post their
content; the platform itself is not owned by the brand, but by a third party. Social media is
shared media.
● User Generated Content (UGC): Content that is created and shared by customers.

37
 References and Resources

The content of this module was informed by the sources listed in the References section. Please
consult the Resources section for a complete list of required and recommended materials as well
as additional resources.

References
● Abramovich, Giselle. 2012. "Why Retargeting Is The Hottest Area Of Ad Tech -
Digiday". Digiday. URL.
● AirBnB (@airbnb). 2021. " ¡Oye! @Daddyyankee, Recibe A Sus Fans En Su Casa
De Retiro En Puerto Rico...". Instagram. URL.
● Anderson, Kare. 2021. "Why Some Things Catch On And Get Shared".
Linkedin.Com. URL.
● AnswerThePublic. 2021. "Search Listening Tool For Market, Customer & Content
Research". Answerthepublic.Com. URL.
● Bedrock Detroit. 2016. “Anthem Of Us | A Short Film About Detroit | Presented By
Bedrock”. Filmed May 2016. Video, 4:01. URL.
● Brenner, Michael. 2019. "5 Ways For Content Marketers To Avoid Shiny Object
Syndrome". Marketing Insider Group. URL.
● BroadbandSearch. 2021. "Average Time Spent Daily On Social Media (Latest 2020
Data)". Broadbandsearch.Net. URL.
● Byford, Sam. 2014. "This LA Art Museum Is Pretty Great At Snapchat". The Verge.
URL.
● Ceci, L. 2021a. "Most Popular Social Media Apps In The U.S. 2019, By Session
Length". Statista. URL.
● Ceci, L. 2021b. "Youtube Usage Penetration In The United States 2020, By Age
Group". Statista. URL.
● Ceci, L. 2021c. "Youtube Usage Penetration In The United States 2020, By Gender".
Statista. URL.
● CHANEL. 2021. "CHANEL - Youtube". YouTube.com. URL.
● Clark, Kimberly. 2017. "No Baby Unhugged". Dandad.Org. URL.
● Conick, Hal. 2019. "Retargeted Ads Work". American Marketing Association. URL.
● Decker, Allie. 2021. "The Ultimate Guide To Emotional Marketing (Blog)". Hubspot.
URL.
● DeMers, Jayson. 2016. "8 Ways SEO Has Changed In The Past 10 Years". Search
Engine Land. URL.
● Devos, Eva. 2021. "New Work. Simple And Powerful. The Idea And The Act.".
Linkedin.Com. URL.
● Dopson, Elise. 2021. "Multi-Channel Retail: How To Decide On Sales Channels For
Your Business". Shopify Plus. URL.
● Enberg, Jasmine. 2020. "Global Instagram Users 2020". Insider Intelligence. URL.

38
● Fitbit (@fitbit). 2021. "After Bringing Her New Baby Home From The Hospital,
Rachael Got Another Surprise". Instagram. URL.
● Friedman, Vanessa. 2021. "The Poetic Justice Of Amanda Gorman’S Estée Lauder
Contract". Www-Nytimes-Com.Cdn.Ampproject.Org. URL.
● Google for Retail. 2021. "Get Started". Google. URL.
● Google My Business. 2021. "Manage Your Business Profile". Google.Com. URL.
● Green, Dennis. 2015. "Chevy Put Out A Press Release Entirely In Emoji — And Now
We Know What It Means". Business Insider. URL.
● Harvard Business Review. 2014. "Science Shows Why Marketers Are Right To Use
Nostalgia". Harvard Business Review. URL.
● Hollingsworth, Sam. 2019. "SEM Vs. SEO Vs. PPC Defined: What's The
Difference?". Search Engine Journal. URL.
● Holmes, Ryan. 2019. "Is Tiktok A Time Bomb?". Fast Company. URL.
● HonestlyWTF. 2021. "Honestlywtf". Pinterest. URL.
● Investor Relations. 2021. "Snap Inc. - Investor Relations". Investor.Snap.Com. URL.
● Jana - Natural Mineral Water (@ deepest_insta_profile). 2017. "Deepest Instagram
Profile By Jana". Instagram. URL.
● Jones, Ryan. 2021. "Top 8 Skills Every Great SEO Professional Needs To
Succeed". Search Engine Journal. URL.
● Kaushik, Ankita. 2017. "Omnichannel Marketing: A Complete Guide For 2021 And
Beyond". Moengage Blog. URL.
● Kearney, Meggin, Dave Gash, Alice Boxhall, and Rob Dodson. 2019. "Accessibility".
Google Developers. URL.
● LinkedIn Pressroom. 2021. "About Us". News.Linkedin.Com. URL.
● Lock, Samantha. 2021. "Every Major Company To Leave Facebook So Far".
Newsweek. URL.
● Magdas Hotel (@magdashotel). 2021. "Tiktok - For You". Tiktok.Com. URL.
● Make-A-Wish. 2021. "What Is The Impact Of Granting Wishes?". Wish.Org. URL.
● Mallard, Andréa. 2020. "Pinterest Tops 400 Million Monthly Active Users—With Gen
Z, Men And Millennials Driving Growth". Pinterest Newsroom. URL.
● Marketing Charts. 2021. "3 Interesting Study Findings About Tiktok’S Adult User
Demographics". Marketing Charts. URL.
● Meisenzahl, Mary. 2021. "Burger King's Nostalgic Rebrand Was A Huge Hit. 2
Designers Explain Why It Was A Success.". Business Insider. URL.
● MoonPie (@MoonPie). 2021. "Moonpie". Twitter. URL.
● MozPro. 2021. "Beginner's Guide To SEO [Search Engine Optimization]". Moz. URL.
● Murray, Peter Noel. 2013. "How Emotions Influence What We Buy". Psychology
Today. URL.
● OxfordLanguages. 2015. "Word Of The Year 2015". Languages.Oup.Com. URL.
● Pomranz, Mike. 2021. "Mccormick Is Hiring A 'Director Of Taco Relations' With A
$100,000 Paycheck". Food & Wine. URL.
● Reitere, Sarma. 2021. "10 Brands That Rule On Tiktok". Socialbakers.Com. URL.

39
● Sample Ward, Amy. 2020. "NTEN Says Goodbye To Facebook". NTEN. URL.
● Schneider, Andy. 2021. "Home". Chicken Whisperer. URL.
● Schomer, Audrey. 2020. "US Youtube Advertising 2020". Insider Intelligence. URL.
● Sherman, Alex. 2020. "Tiktok Reveals Detailed User Numbers For The First Time".
CNBC. URL.
● Slater, Jeff. 2021. "Publicity Stunts That You Can't Lick". The Marketing Sage. URL.
● Smith, Brad. 2020. "The 17 Best Display Ads Of 2020 (And Why They Work)".
Wordstream.Com. URL.
● Sonnemaker, Tyler. 2021. "The CEO Of Cosmetics Retailer Lush Says He's 'Happy
To Lose' $13 Million By Deleting Facebook, Tiktok, Snapchat Accounts Over Teen
Mental-Health Harms". Business Insider. URL.
● SpyFu. 2021. "Competitor Keyword Research Tools For Google Ads PPC & SEO".
Spyfu.Com. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021a. "Average Daily Time Spent On Social Media
By U.S. Adults 2017-2022". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021b. "Facebook User Share In The United States
2021, By Age Group". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021c. "Facebook: Distribution Of Global Audiences
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021d. "Facebook: Number Of Monthly Active Users
Worldwide 2008-2021". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021e. "Instagram User Share In The United States
2021, By Age Group". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021f. "Instagram User Share In The United States
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021g. "Linkedin Usage Frequency In The United
States 2020". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021h. "Linkedin Usage Penetration In The United
States 2020, By Age Group". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021i. "Linkedin: Distribution Of U.S. Audiences
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021j. "Mobile Pinterest MAU User Ratio In The U.S.
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021k. "Pinterest Usage Reach In The United States
2021, By Age Group". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021l. "Snapchat: Distribution Of Global Audiences
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021m. "Tiktok MAU User Ratio In The U.S. 2021,
By Gender". Statista. URL.
● Statista Research Department. 2021n. "Twitter: Distribution Of Global Audiences
2021, By Gender". Statista. URL.

40
 ● Taylor, Kate. 2017. "Instagram Powers Taco Bell's Innovation Machine — And It's
Completely Changing The Fast-Food Menu As We Know It". Business Insider. URL.
● The World Bank. 2021. "Disability Inclusion". The World Bank. URL.
● Topkin, Dayne. 2021. "8 Of The Best Facebook Groups We've Ever Seen (Blog)".
Hubspot. URL.
● Twitter Investor Relations. 2020. "Investor Fact Sheet". S22.Q4cdn.Com. URL.
● Walansky, Aly. 2020. "Kraft Removes 'Send Noods' Campaign After Backlash:
'Listen To All Of These Moms!!'". TODAY.Com. URL.
● WebAIM. 2020. "WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool". Wave.Webaim.Org.
URL.
● WebAIM. 2021. "Webaim: Webaim's WCAG 2 Checklist". Webaim.Org. URL.
● Wiers, Ahsley. 2019. "How One CPG Brand Turned Search Into A Useful Dialogue".
Think With Google. URL.
● Wojcik, Stefan, and Adam Hughes. 2019. "Sizing Up Twitter Users". Pew Research
Center. URL.
● World Wildlife Fund. 2021. "World Wildlife Fund: Overview". Linkedin. URL.
● YouTube Official Blog. 2021. "Youtube For Press". YouTube Official Blog. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media

● Anderson, Kare. 2021. "Why Some Things Catch On And Get Shared".
Linkedin.Com. URL.
● Bedrock Detroit. 2016. “Anthem Of Us | A Short Film About Detroit | Presented By
Bedrock”. Filmed May 2016. Video, 4:01. URL.
● DeMers, Jayson. 2016. "8 Ways SEO Has Changed In The Past 10 Years". Search
Engine Land. URL.
● Friedman, Vanessa. 2021. "The Poetic Justice Of Amanda Gorman’s Estée Lauder
Contract". Www-Nytimes-Com.Cdn.Ampproject.Org. URL.

Additional Resources

● CHANEL. 2021. "CHANEL - Youtube". Youtube.Com. URL.

● Google for Retail. 2021. "Get Started". Google. URL.
● Google My Business. 2021. "Manage Your Business Profile". Google.Com. URL.
● HonestlyWTF. 2021. "Honestlywtf". Pinterest. URL.
● Investor Relations. 2021. "Snap Inc. - Investor Relations". Investor.Snap.Com. URL.
● LinkedIn Pressroom. 2021. "About Us". News.Linkedin.Com. URL.
● MoonPie (@MoonPie). 2021. "Moonpie". Twitter. URL.

41
 ● SpyFu. 2021. "Competitor Keyword Research Tools For Google Ads PPC & SEO".
Spyfu.Com. URL.
● World Wildlife Fund. 2021. "World Wildlife Fund: Overview". Linkedin. URL.
● YouTube Official Blog. 2021. "Youtube For Press". Youtube Official Blog. URL.

ANNEX 1

An anger-evoking true story that spread quickly, “Exec loses job after allegedly slapping toddler
on plane,” quickly moved Dan Schawbel to write on Facebook, “The headline should read ‘Exec
gets deported from America after being a complete ass on a plane.’” That response wouldn’t
surprise Jonah Berger, author of Contagious, who discovered that “high arousal” negative
emotions like anger or anxiety spur us to share messages with others.

1. Surprisingly Some Emotions Stifle Our Desire to Share: “A healthy attitude is contagious but
don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier,” suggests Tom Stoppard, yet not all positive
emotions that we feel actually motivate us to share ideas with others, Berger discovered. “Low
arousal” positive emotions in response to a message, such as contentment, actually stop us from
passing them along.

2. Tie Your Product to Familiar and Frequent Situations: What’s more valuable than clever
slogans to spur sales? “Kit Kat and coffee” is a rather bland brand message. Yet sales
skyrocketed. Why? Because the company tied its ad campaign to a frequent habit for many
people: drinking coffee. Anyone who sees the spots with the companion message, “a break’s best
friend,” may be triggered to think about eating a Kit Kat bar whenever they take a coffee break.
Conversely, GEICO’s attention-grabbing TV ads, suggesting that switching over to their auto
insurance was so simple that even a caveman could do it, were not as successful. As Contagious
author, Jonah Berger points out, “We don’t see many cavemen in our daily lives. The
advertisement is unlikely to come to mind often, making it less likely to be talked about,” writes
Berger.

Hint: Connect your message to a situation that your kind of customer frequently experiences so
it triggers them to think of your brand whenever they are in that situation. As Berger notes, “a
strong trigger can be much more effective than a catchy slogan.” I wonder what contagious
campaigns he’ll use to spur sales of his book.

3. Use Some of the STEPPS Elements in Contagious Messages: Berger wrote Contagious as a
follow-up to Made to Stick, which provided a method for getting people to remember ideas: Berger
offers six key STEPPS to making “products and ideas spread, or getting people to pass them on.”
Here are his principles of contagiousness:

42
Social Currency — We share things that make us look good: Can we look good (smart, rich,
wise, helpful, kind, hip, in-the-know, etc.) insiders…) when we share your message?

Triggers — Top of mind, tip of tongue: Does your message relate to something familiar, or
frequent situation for them?

Emotion — When we care we share: Will your message evoke a visceral reaction, so we can
deepen our bond with those with whom we share it?

Public — Built to show, built to grow: Will others see us in a becoming way, when using your
product or adopt the behavior you seek to encourage?

Practical Value — News you can use: Will sharing your message enable us to give specific,
perhaps also timely help that they will appreciate us more for sharing it?”

Stories — Information travels under the guise of idle chatter: Like a Trojan horse, can your story
get others to open the “gate” of their mind to hear it, share it, buy it or take another action to
spreads it?

4. An Emotional Story Can Carry the Benefits You Want Them to Feel Good About: Peel away
the layers of the onion — the features that a company often cites to sell something. Look for the
underlying emotional need or desire that people could have for your product so you can start the
conversation about them. Craft a story to wrap around that desire so we get an emotional
experience of using the benefits you want to tout. That’s why Google’s Creative Labs member,
Anthony Cafaro, resisted creating the usual, pithy and factual description. Instead he concocted
a romance story, Parisian Love. We get pulled into the unfolding romance, voyeuristically
watching the search unfold as the characters use the tools the project was supposed to tout. They
represented the expanded functionality in Google’s new search interface. “Features like finding
flights, autocorrect, and language translation,” cites Berger who goes on to describe how the story
unfolds and triggers us to share. Side story: When you experience success in creating a
contagious story you are sometimes tempted to seek more work independence to create others.

5. Look Out for Others’ Successful Triggers to Which You Can Attach

There’s a contagious story that triggers me to think about REI when I am outdoors, hiking on Mt.
Tamalpais or taking walk/talks with friends up and down the steps of Sausalito. I wonder how
many people have stepped inside an REI store for the first time after reading Wild. In that popular
book about personal salvation, Cheryl Strayed describes her naïve, courageous 1,100 mile hike
on the rugged Pacific Crest Trail, a story that evoked in me, the emotion of awe about which
Berger writes.

Soon, her feet become bloody, crammed as they were in the boots she bought at REI, one size
too small. Six of her toenails gradually blackened and fell off, an image that I cannot get out of my

43
head. When she worked up the gumption to buy new ones with her meager remaining money,
she called REI to order them to be sent to the next stop on her trail.

To her surprise, she was told that their policy, in such situations, was to provide replacement
boots for free, which they did. REI smartly piggybacked on her story, to highlight a customer-
delighting policy, hosting her to speak about her book at their flagship store. Being reminded of
REI’s generous policy did trigger me to return to the store sooner than I otherwise might have, to
purchase durable hiking shorts.

Hint: Stories sometimes contain situational triggering incidents, causing us to remember the story
and thus the product whenever we are in that situation. It pays to look out for a well-known story
to which you can attach your message. That story may be in a book, trending news or other
brand’s popular ad campaign. Attaching to a story with a trigger gives you two of the STEPP
elements Berger describes.

After moving from California to the East Coast, Berger’s cousin buys a winter jacket from Lands’
End that he is gratified to find, keeps him warm in the freezing weather. Mid-winter, he breaks the
zipper. As you’ve probably anticipated, his cousin’s story, like Strayed’s has an unexpectedly (to
him) happy ending when he calls in to ask if he can mail the coat in to be repaired. Land’s End
could piggyback on that story, as REI did. The retailer could also reach out to columnists and
reporters that cover retail or books, sharing a description of the book, including the winter coat
story. Lands’ End could also highlight Berger’s cousin and his story on their web site, Facebook,
Twitter, and in their print catalogue, with an invitation for other customers to share their Lands’
End stories.

Hint: Berger adeptly describes how the Land’s End story has five elements of Practical Information
— one of the elements of STEPPS that makes the true story contagious.

6. Danger: Don’t Do This. Translation: But Many Others Are.

Some widely visible “anti” campaigns that attempt to stop certain behaviors, such as kids using
drugs, actually evoke the opposite reaction because they give the habit more visibility, thus social
currency. Public service announcements that warn of such dangers, actually evoke “social proof”
that many people appear to be doing it, so it must be ok, thus encouraging young people to use
marijuana.

7. Focus on Real Life Exposure to Transport Your Message

Most people believe that at least 50 percent of word of mouth messages happen online. “The
actual number is 7 percent,” writes Berger, citing Keller Fay Group research. That may be
because, “it is easier to see,” adds Berger. “Social media sites provide a handy record of all the
clips, comments, and other content we share online. But we don’t think as much about all the
offline conversation we had over the same time period because we can’t actually see them.”

44
Honest Tea launched an eye-catching, offline “experiment” in several U.S. cities, tying their
unusual brand name and the action of consumers choosing the bottle with the flavor they most
wanted, to two familiar triggers: city sidewalks and store shelves. It also created a real life multiple
story-generator, with consumers as the actors in it, capturing our voyeuristic interest in others’
honesty. Each incident in each experiment became a vessel to carry a story that featured all kinds
of people picking up Honest Tea bottles, imprinting that action in the views’ minds. Here’s the
experiment. The company created unstaffed, pop-up sidewalk stands where passersby could pick
up as many bottles as they wanted — and pay by the honor system. People anywhere in the world
could watch how people responded to the tempting opportunity to cheat. That’s because of live
streaming, broadcast quality video snooping, via hidden cameras, in the cities where the
experiment was held. Quirky, admittedly unscientific story angles abounded. What city has the
most honest people? Are blondes more honest that bald people?

8. We Don’t Need to be Famous or Rich to Instigate a Contagious Idea

It is exciting and gratifying to know that each of us can spark an idea that catches fire and spreads,
as Berger demonstrates in this book. “Some forest fires are bigger than others, but no one would
claim that the size of the fire depends on the exceptional nature o the initial spark. Big forest fires
aren’t caused by big sparks. Lots of individual trees have to catch fire and carry the flames.
Contagious products and ideas are like forest fires. They can’t happen without hundreds, if not
thousands, of regular Joes and Janes passing the product or message along.”

What contagious message have you concocted or heard about that you’d like to share here? Or
care to suggest a “what-if” scenario that would spur others’ desire to share or buy something?

ANNEX 2

Few marketing channels have evolved as quickly or as dramatically as search engine

optimization (SEO). In its infancy, SEO was the shady practice of stuffing keywords, tweaking
back-end code and spamming links until you started ranking well for the keywords you wanted.
Thankfully, Google stamped out those practices pretty quickly, and its search algorithm has
never really stopped evolving.

Much of Google’s foundation was in place by the mid-2000s, but how has its algorithm — and
as a result, our approach to SEO — changed in the past 10 years?

1. The rise of content

First, there’s the rise of content marketing as part of a successful SEO strategy. Google has
steadily refined what it considers to be “good” content over the years, but it was the Panda
update in 2011 that served as the death blow to spammy content and keyword stuffing.

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After Panda, it was virtually impossible to get away with any gimmicky content-based tactics,
such as favoring a high quantity of content while forgoing quality and substance. Instead, the
search engine winners were ones who produced the best, most valuable content, spawning the
adoption of content marketing among SEOs — and content is still king today.

2. The death of link schemes

Google has provided its own definition of what a “link scheme” actually is, along with some
examples. Many find the guidelines here somewhat ambiguous, but the simplest explanation is
this: Any attempt to deliberately influence your ranking with links could qualify as a scheme.

By the late 2000s, Google had worked hard to stamp out most black-hat and spam-based link-
building practices, penalizing participants in link wheels and exchanges and paid linkers. But it
was in 2012, with the Penguin update, that link building really became what it is today. Now,
only natural link attraction and valuable link building with guest posts will earn you the authority
you need to rank higher.

3. The reshaping of local

Compared to 2006, local SEO today is a totally different animal. There have been dozens of
small iterations and changes to the layout (such as the local carousel, and today’s modern “3-
pack” layout), but the biggest recent change to ranking factors was in 2014, with the Pigeon
update.

With this update, Google more heavily incorporated traditional web ranking signals into its
ranking algorithm, giving well-optimized websites a major edge in local search. Google also
boosted the visibility of high-authority directory websites in its search results.

More generally, local searches have become more common — and more location-specific —
over the last few years, thanks to mobile devices.

4. SERP overhauls
I can’t tell you how many times the search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed, and
not many people could; some of these changes are so small, it’s debatable whether to even
count them. But take a look at a SERP screen shot from 2006 and compare it to today, and
you’ll see how different your considerations must be.

5. The rise of the Knowledge Graph

Another major influencer in modern SEO has been Google’s Knowledge Graph, which first
emerged on the scene in 2012. The Knowledge Graph attempts to give users direct, concise
answers to their queries, often presenting them with a box of information about a general
subject or a succinct answer to a straightforward query. This is great for the user but often takes
precedence over organic search results.

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Accordingly, optimizers have had to compensate for this, either by avoiding generally
answerable keyword targets altogether or by using Schema.org microformatting to make their
on-site content more easily deliverable to the system.

6. Mobile prioritization
Mobile devices have exploded in popularity since the iPhone first emerged back in 2007, and
Google has done everything it can to emphasize the importance of optimizing websites for those
mobile users. Indeed, in 2015, mobile queries officially surpassed desktop queries in Google
search.

Optimizing for mobile has become not only common, but downright required these days, in no
small part due to Google’s continuing and escalating insistence. Its mobile-friendly update,
which occurred in two separate phases, has been a major enforcer of this new standard.

7. The soft death of keywords

Panda and Penguin killed off the practice of keyword stuffing, but a smaller, more curious
update in 2013 spelled the “soft” death of keyword optimization altogether. Hummingbird is the
name of the update that introduced semantic search, Google’s way of deciphering user intent
rather than mapping out individual keywords and phrases.

Today, Google attempts to understand meaning rather than matching keywords, so keyword-
centric optimization doesn’t work the same way. However, keyword research is still relevant, as
it can help guide your strategic focus and provide you with ranking opportunities.

8. Update pacing and impact

It’s also worth noting that for a time — in the few years following Panda — Google stressed out
search optimizers by releasing seemingly random, major updates to its search algorithm that
fundamentally changed how rankings were calculated. However, now that the search engine
has reached a strong foundation, the significance and pacing of these updates have declined.
Today, updates are smaller, less noticeable, and roll out gradually, giving them a much less
dramatic impact on the industry.

Final thoughts
Understanding where SEO has come from and where SEO stands today will help you become a
better online marketer. Hopefully, by now you’ve long ago eliminated any black-hat techniques
in your strategy.

Google — and we, as marketers alongside it — are constantly pushing this now-fundamental
element of our lives forward, so if you want to stay relevant, you’ll need to keep focused on the
next 10 years of search engine updates.

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 MODULE 4: MEASUREMENT, ANALYSIS, AND OPTIMIZATION

The learning objectives of module 4 are: (1) Recognize the role of data and analytics in digital marketing; (2)
Demonstrate data analysis and storytelling skills; and (3) Predict how emerging trends in data collection and
analysis will impact the field.

INDEX

1. Fit: Are you a numbers person? (Pag 2)

1. Interview with Nick Lees

2. Measurement: Metrics that Matter (Pag 4opt)

1. A Differentiation: Marketing vs. Sales

2. What Are You Trying to Accomplish? How Will You Know If You've Done It?

3. Which Metrics Matter

4. Listening to Your Customers

3. Analysis: Testing (Pag 9)

1. What Should You Test?

2. What Test Should You Run?

4. Optimization: Making the Most of Your Learning (Pag 19)

1. Pre-Mortems and Post-Mortems

2. Ethics

3. Future-proofing

Introduction: One of the most important distinguishing factors between the age of broadcast marketing and
the world of digital marketing is the ability to measure almost everything. Our challenge as digital marketers
is not only to know what data is available and how to access it, but also what information is important, and how
to act on it. How do we measure what matters? Module 4 answers core questions of Digital Marketing. In a world
where we can measure almost anything, what should we measure? Once we have those metrics, how do
we draw insights from them? How do we translate those insights into action so that we can continually
learn and improve the results for our customers and our organizations? Acting ethically and being future-
oriented to understand where the field is going and how we might get there in an intentional, humane way. This
module provides an introduction to all of these ideas, so you can continue to navigate these big questions and
make smart strategic decisions as a digital marketer. The numbers side of this work is not intuitive. If data
analysis is intimidating, learn what you can to be able to speak the language and contribute to your team. But
there’s no need to be an expert on all fields. The point is to be able to get actionable insights from the numbers
we draw.

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 1. Fit: Are you a numbers person?

1. Interview with Nick Lees

Digital Marketing is a field where many different talents and skills are used, therefore there is great variety of
professionals working in this sector. It is important to know where you fit in and what you bring to the table.
Understanding this is a process that comes from experience. As you will see in the following interview, knowing
what you are good at comes both from success and failure, which helps you learn who you are as a Digital
Marketer.

Interview with Nick Lees

Nick Lees works in the marketing field, primarily in the area of Google ads. As a professional with over a decade
of experience in this industry, Lees offers his perspective on his own “zone of genius”. This is the place where
he really shines, or the aspect he loves most about working in Digital Marketing. In the following audio clip, Lees
specifically defines these areas in which he excels.

I've had a hard time narrowing it down to just one, so, I'm going to give you two. The first one is creativity, you
need to be quick on your feet and be able to think of new ideas. And the other one is adaptability:. Things change,
they're new features, new platforms to try new policies and regulations, and you have to just be very able to go
with the flow and adapt to changes as they arise.

How has your skill set led you to success in your work? So success I've had, there's a client that I've been
working with now for four years. And when they hired me, they were a relatively small team. And I began running
Google ads for them. They'd never run anything before. They're a startup, and for a medical device. And they
were really pleased with the leads that started coming in, not only with the quantity of leads, but the quality. And
they basically gave me an open book to increase the budgets as needed, as long as results continued to improve.
And I brought them to a place where they've had to triple their sales team, their revenue has gone through the
roof, and now their IPO-ing, they're going public for $120 million. And again, this was like a small company, when
I joined it was doing like a million dollars in revenue. So that's been very exciting for me, because I know that
they've told me that I've made the work that I'm doing, it makes up for about 40% of their sales revenue. So, I
mean, it's incredible for me to see that I'm having that sort of impact.

How has failure helped you to hone in on your “zone of genius”? There are a lot of failures in digital
marketing as a career, I can tell you about a lot of clients that I've worked with, you know, the results were not
great. By that, I mean, they're not profitable. And when that happens, looking bac there, there are usually two
reasons. One, the project was not a good fit. In the beginning, it was something that was just not a good fit for
my skills. And I've learned over time, what I'm really good at what niches... For instance, I specialize in lead
generation, that's just an area that I've had the most success in, I feel the most comfortable, I have the most
creative ideas, I really like it. When it comes to e-commerce or fundraising or other types of niches. That's, that's
less my forte. And so I've learned to really focus on what I'm good at and not take on projects that play to those
weaknesses of mine. The other the other thing, I suppose would be setting unrealistically high expectations. So,
when a client is expecting super quick and fantastic results when they've never run a campaign before that's,
that's a recipe for disaster. So what I've learned from that is not set expectations low, but to make them realistic.
For instance, I explain to clients that, especially if you've never run campaigns before that were, there's a testing
period, and I do not guarantee results. But we're going to need, you know, several months, one or two months
just to test things and see what's working, see what's will likely not be profitable. And once that's understood

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once that's the expectation, and the clients are okay with that, it makes it a lot smoother. And so yeah, there you
go.

Besides thinking about whether you are more of a creative or analytical type, it is also important to understand
which skills are the most valuable in the Digital Marketing field. Your zone of genius may lie more within one
area than another, but as Lees advises in the audio clip below, there are certain abilities that are particularly
useful in the industry. Therefore, you should try and add these skills to your tool box, regardless of which way
your talents naturally lean.

Piece of advice, two skills to work on that will if you want to go into this as a career and stay relevant, and kind
of be ahead of the competition. So when you're interviewing for jobs that you'll stand out, two skills that I think
are very relevant. One copywriting, you're able to write well. That will set you above competitors. And two,
technical skill sets. If you are able and interested in learning, Google Tag Manager, basic coding, HTML, CSS,
even JavaScript. Those are things that will serve you well, will open a lot of doors and will, whether you're doing
Google ads or SEO or really anything in digital marketing will serve you well.

Conclusions:

• Nick Lees has achieved success in his work by increasing leads and revenue for a client
• Failure has helped him to hone in on his “zone of genius”
• Creativity and adaptability are the most valuable / key skills in the marketing field
• Copywriting and technical skill sets are useful and should be added to one's toolbox

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 2. MEASUREMENT: METRICS THAT MATTER

1. A Differentiation: Marketing vs. Sales

Let’s take a moment and go back to what Digital Marketing is meant to do. Specifically, how to distinguish it from sales.
They both emphasize creating a customer, and the exchange of value. But, what are the differences? Sales is focused on
relationships, which requires deep, long-term effort, especially in B2B settings and nonprofits. Marketing’s job is to bring
in qualified leads—customers who are the most primed and ready to buy. The marketing department needs to:

● Research the target audience by beginning the conversation where they are, and constantly monitoring their
feedback.
● Establish and enforce a brand that communicates the company's values, promise, and positioning.
● Define strategic marketing plans that help the company achieve their overall goals

CONSIDER: In a nonprofit setting, fundraising plays the equivalent role of sales, and one of the most important jobs
marketing can do is to invite the best potential donors to get involved in the mission.

2. What Are You Trying to Accomplish? How Will You Know If You've Done It?

The data you collect and analyze should tell you whether you are reaching your goals. Marketing is sometimes maligned
as the “make-it-pretty department.” But marketing is a core business function and should be treated and measured as
such. We have more opportunities to measure at our fingertips than ever before, so the challenge is not whether to
measure, but to decide:

● What metrics matter

● What insights you can draw from those metrics
● How you can turn those insights into action

There are three methods for establishing business goals and marketing objectives. Among the strategies outlined
throughout this course POST and SMART objectives are highlighted as a means to accomplish objectives. In addition, OKR
is introduced, which stands for objectives and key results and is a process used to establish a pathway to a desired result.

Business Goals and Marketing Objectives

In all industries or organizations, there is a business with certain goals like:

● increase revenues by X %
● maintain a particular profit margin
● Tapping into a new market
● Cross-selling products with existing customers
● Building a community outreach efforts
● Recruit donors
● Many more…

Digital marketers must understand what the company wants to achieve overall and set objectives that align with and
advance the bigger goals of the business. As you develop your marketing strategy, you should dig into those business goals
and consider how your marketing efforts can advance each one. This process fits into “People” and “Objectives” of the

4
POST planning process. Ask yourself if you know the business wants to achieve X goal, who is the best audience to target,
and how might you define the specific objectives you want to hit within that group?

A helpful framework you may already be familiar with to set meaningful objectives is the acronym SMART:

● Specific
● Measurable
● Actionable
● Relevant
● Time Bound

Setting SMART objectives helps to get more focused and efficient in your efforts.

For instance, an objective of “increase customer retention” is good, but “increase customer retention by 10% in the next
three months” is better, because it tells you precisely what increase means 10%. After that set period of time, 3 months,
you will be able to look back and know precisely wether you hit that goal or not and adjust accordingly.

Another helpful process to name and track your progress is setting OKRs.

● Objectives
● Key results

Setting OKRs is a process used by some of the biggest brands in the world to outline a particular team´s objectives and the
measurable stops you will take along the way to reach those objectives. It is often used to mark the completion of a specific
activity, such as developing a strategy, launching an event or establishing a presence on a new social media platform. OKRs
are typically aggressive and ambitious, so they build momentum within the team.

Let´s consider an example that pulls this all together: An organization overall business goals is to increase brand awareness.
One of the digital marketing objectives might then be to increase engagement on instagram by 25% in the next quarter.
A key result from that objective may be that relationships have been established with three key Instagram influencer by a
certain date. Aligning with business goals, setting smart objectives and understanding the key results that will help show
that the work is happening, all level up to an effective, efficient digital marketing program.

3. Which Metrics Matter

The data you collect and analyze should tell you whether you are reaching your goals. Meaningful metrics help you ensure
your marketing efforts are aligned with the goals of the company and are helping drive success.

What goals and metrics make the most sense for your company or organization, at its particular stage, in the current
market environment? For example: The right metrics to track will be different for an early-stage startup company focused
on rapid growth vs. an established nonprofit organization looking to re-engage its lapsed supporters vs. a large company
working to retain its current customer base.

Tracking your metrics helps you continuously learn what’s working, and what’s not— the goal is to always be learning!

As the figure below illustrates, we start by learning about our (potential) customers. We then draw insights from that
learning to plan our digital marketing efforts. We want to apply that learning and execute our plans. Finally, we assess the
results of our work, and the process begins again. Drawing insight from your metrics to share with the rest of your team
helps you make the case for your marketing efforts, and the changes you might want to make.

5
KPIs - key performance indicators - are the specific metrics you decide to track to get the best sense of whether your
digital marketing efforts are headed in the right direction.

How to set KPIs nd how KPIs work together to evaluate your marketing efforts

We have already discussed the importance of OKRs, objectives and key results. Now lets talk about a related term that
helps you track your progress from a different angle, KPIs. The Key performance indicators are metrics that act as clues to
tell us how are doing our digital marketing efforts.

● OKRs are about the performance of the team and the process itself.
● KPIs are about the outputs, the performance of the content and campaigns we do.

There are a few especially important ideas to remember about KPIs:

1º Individual KPIs are not particularly valuable, because they work as a team. Its necessary to decide which metrics matter
and which combinations of metrics work best together to tell your organization´s story. For example: If you invest in
advertising and your website views increases month to month. That alone, could be seen as a success.

● But if the time spent on the website is going down, bounce rates are high and conversions aren't increasing. The
number of website hits suddenly becomes part of a very different story. You might not be getting the right people
to your website or that the user experience is not effective.
● On the other hand, quality of traffic is also important: if the total number of hits to the website is going down,
but all those metrics are increasing or staying the same. That combination tells you that while the traffic may be
lower, the quality of the traffic is higher. Which means you are getting in front of the right people. What can you
do to find more of the right people?

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2º Vanity Metrics are measurements that make you feel good about your marketing efforts, but don't actually translate
into measurable results. For instance: The number of views on a particular video. It may be great to see that number
increase into the tens of thousands or more. But how much of that video are people actually watching? Are they
commenting? Sharing? Subscribing? Liking? Or clicking in your website link? If you can not demonstrate the role that the
metric plays in moving towards your goals, you have to make the call as to whether it is worth tracking at all. Or, as our
previous point illustrated, if it is only useful in combination with other metrics.

3º The Key is to set KPIs that give you actionable insight. This means, you should choose the KPIs that both have an impact
on the success of your organization and over which you have some control.

● If you can not exert any meaningful control over the number of times a particular # is used, and the use of that #
does not correlate to more people visiting your website or showing interest in your product, there is no actionable
insight there, and it may not be a metric worth tracking.
● On the other hand, if the number of positive Google reviews is driving more traffic to your website, which is then
translating to more sales, then it is something to track, learn from and build into your strategy.

When it comes to KPIs, less is often more. Take the necessary time to figure out which metrics are most useful in
determining your success. Keep a pulse on them and always be willing to learn, iterate and improve.

4. Listening to Your Customers

We use data to help us listen to what our customers are saying and be more responsive and able to predict outcomes. As
we learned in the section on market research, listening to and understanding your customers is best done through
multiple channels. Social media listening is one way of gathering important information about your customers that you
can combine with other kinds of market research and data analysis to ultimately drive better business decisions.

Examples of Social Listening

ROI: the hardest simple formula out there. ROI stands for “return on investment.” ROI answers the question of whether
the money and resources an organization is putting into its marketing is paying off. Knowing the ROI of your marketing
efforts is crucial to making the case for your strategy, and ensuring that your marketing is making an impact.

ROE: Return on Engagement (or, some say Return on Emotion, or Return on Experience), is a more qualitative approach
to understanding how customers interact with a brand, and what might come of those interactions. (AMA New York 2021)
Though some marketers think that ROE is beside the point and that ROI is the bottom-line goal in any job. (Harris 2020)

Benchmarking: It is the practice of objectively evaluating your organization’s current performance in order to create a
snapshot, or tell a story, of where your efforts stand today. The article, "Essential 7-Step Guide on How to Benchmark
Marketing Activities" (ANNEX 1) provides additional information about the practice of benchmarking (Rooke 2020):

• Benchmarking is a method of objectively evaluating your digital marketing activities.

• Choose between one and three marketing activities to focus on, and between three and five metrics to measure.
• Use powerful tools such as Google Analytics, MailChimp and Twitter Analytics to carry out your benchmarking.
• Carry out competitor analysis too.
• Create a report summarizing your benchmarking and use it to create a Dig-Mark strategy to improve your metrics.
• Review your benchmarking on a regular basis to measure the impact of your strategy.

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Attribution: It is the science of using advanced analytics to allocate proportional credit to each marketing touch point
across all online and offline channels, leading to a desired customer action. Things to note: Although the industry has
made significant advances in using analytics to determine attribution, it is not completely there yet. Owners of media
vehicles have vested interest in advancing ROI to their media... so, trust them but verify first. The level of sophistication
of attribution and ROI calculation depends on the capabilities of your business and available affordable tools.

Drawing Actionable Insights from Testing

With over fifteen years of experience working in nonprofit advocacy, fundraising, and marketing, Emily P. Goodstein has
worked with an extensive portfolio of clients to help them achieve their fundraising and advocacy goals. Goodstein worked
in the public sector as Director of Student Outreach for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), and the
Tzedek Fellow at Hillel’s international offices in Washington, DC, prior to moving into the private sector. (Goodstein 2021).
She has been featured on National Public Radio and WTOP, in the Washington Post, the Washington Jewish Week and
Washingtonian and on DCist, Apartment Therapy, and the Huffington Post. She is a graduate of Selah, the Rockwood
Leadership Training Program’s collaboration with Bend the Arc, an active member of the Women’s Information Network,
Sixth & I Synagogue, and the Jewish Democratic Council’s NextGen Leadership Council. In 2021, she became a founding
member of the Statecraft Collective. (Goodstein 2021). Goodstein explains the truth behind failing and succeeding in the
field of Digital Marketing and how this is linked to the area of testing:

“So, one quality that I think successful digital marketers have is that they're willing to fail. And the truth is
that when you are a digital marketer, you actually have all these mini opportunities to fail and succeed.
And that's what I love about digital marketing is that we have so much data associated with the work that
we do. And we can do kind of small inconsequential tests to figure out what's going to perform well and
what's gonna not perform well. And the fear of failure, I think, is what actually gets in the way of thinking
big and thinking creatively, and trying new things. And so we really do have to be comfortable with the
possibility of a failure in an effort to grow and learn and thrive and then succeed. So, in general, I actually
love digital marketing specifically because we can kind of fail safely, and fail fast, and fail smart, and we
don't to be scared of failing”.

In summary: 1. Digital marketers need to be willing to fail in order to succeed; 2. Digital marketing offers the opportunity
to test and learn from failures. 3. Fear of failure can prevent digital marketers from thinking creatively and trying new
things. 4. Digital marketing allows for "safe" failures, which can help marketers grow and learn.

Setting smart goals is key to successful Digital Marketing. But if you’re a brand new organization, or are taking your efforts
in an entirely new direction, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s where benchmarking, attribution, testing, and
optimization come in.

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 3. ANALYSIS: TESTING

Testing is about using those benchmarks to form a hypothesis, and learn from the results. Testing in digital marketing can
happen at many levels, from the strategic (we want to test how this new audience responds to our messaging), to the
very tactical (we want to know which color button works best, the red or the green). Testing is a way of constantly learning,
adjusting, and improving your digital strategy.

1. What Should You Test?

Karen J. Marchetti offers three simple guidelines for deciding what to test in her book, The Results Obsession:

1. Test your biggest questions. Which elements are you most unsure about? Are you having disagreements about which
offer to use, or can’t decide which headline is better? Test to find out.
2. Test the big things. For each media channel, certain elements have the most impact on response. These are where
you should focus your testing.
3. Test significant differences. For the biggest change in results, test completely different layouts or creative approaches.
Or, test single elements for example, and even completely different offers.

2. What Test Should You Run?

You can have data without information, but you can’t have information without data. (Daniel Keys Moran, AMERICAN
COMPUTER PROGRAMMER). There are many kinds of tests we can run. Here are a few of the most important ones:

1. A/B Testing:

A/B testing is the easiest and most important kind of testing for digital marketers to become familiar with. Essentially, it’s
taking two versions of the same thing, and pitting them against one another to see which performs better, and then going
forward with whichever option is best. There are lots of things marketers may test, such as:

● Subject lines, such as for an email

● Website copy
● Calls-to-action (CTAs)
● Colors
● Fields in a form
● ...and much more

The key is to choose one thing to test, and ensure that all the other variables in the test remain the same. Let’s say you
are putting together a marketing campaign for a new office space, and you decide to run ads on LinkedIn targeting small
business owners in the area. You may decide to test two images to see which performs better in the ad. The target
audience, headline, copy, link, and CTA would all remain the same in both versions of the ad, but perhaps one ad features
a sleek office space with one person, while another features the same office space with several people. You would launch
the ads, watch the performances (the click-through rate would be the most important KPI), and after a predetermined
amount of time, evaluate the performance of one ad over the other. If, for instance, the ad with a single person performs
better, you would then move the ad dollars from the overall spend into that version. Neil Patel offers an easy A/B testing
checklist:

1. Decide what feature you want to test.

2. Create two versions of the same ad, landing page, app, etc.

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3. Decide how long your test will run. I suggest at least two weeks, but it may be longer or slightly shorter depending on
your traffic and industry.
4. Choose a testing tool to help you run your test.
5. Launch!
6. After a couple of weeks, take a look at the results. Which version won?
7. Rinse and repeat. A/B testing is most effective when done continually.

Point 1 is actually the hardest aspect of the A/B test, because, first, you have limited capacity as a digital marketer and
can’t possibly test everything—so you need to be strategic and selective. Second, your test has to be grounded in a theory
with a developed hypothesis that comes from your knowledge of the audience.

For instance, consider the example of the hypothetical LinkedIn ad above. Based on your audience research, you may have
learned that the kind of business owners you are targeting are self-directed and value their independence. Because of
that, you may believe that the image with the single person would perform better. The test can be used to confirm, or
challenge, that hypothesis.

2. Multivariate Testing:

Multivariate testing, a process of testing out multiple elements of your content at the same time. It operates on the same
principles as A/B testing, but incorporates a higher number of variables, and can help you see how those variables interact
with each other. Whereas A/B testing tests individual components, multivariate testing test combinations. It’s a more
complex, but ultimately more powerful approach to testing.

Let’s go back to the LinkedIn example. Say you want to test not only the image, but the headline as well. You would need
to then develop four versions of the ad instead of two: Picture 1 + Headline A; Picture 1 + Headline B; Picture 2 + Headline
A; Picture 2 + Headline B. Here is a comparison of A/B testing and multivariate testing for a website:

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1. The above example is testing the impact of the color of the “buy now” button. 2. The above example is testing
combinations of images and headlines on a web page.

3. User (or Usability) Testing:

User testing comes from the world of User Experience Design (UXD or UED), a design process devoted to making individual
experiences in websites and other digital applications as pleasant and efficient as possible. User testing, then, is the
process of understanding the roadblocks to that excellent experience, and naming the tasks needed to improve it. A single
facilitator often works with a single user to uncover these roadblocks, as in the image below, and this can be done live or
remotely for quantitative or qualitative results.

4. Incrementality Testing:

In the course of a digital marketing campaign, it’s important to understand the real value of your ad dollars. It would be
helpful to know how well this campaign would have performed without the ad boost. Incrementality is a term that refers
to understanding which elements of your media are actually driving the conversion.

Imagine a relay race in which each runner takes a quarter of the track, then passes the baton to their teammate, with the
last runner bringing the baton over the finish line. Was it only the last runner who won the race? No, the entire team was
needed. Incrementality testing is the equivalent of understanding how much each runner contributed to the win.

In digital marketing, we can easily see our customers’ last clicks before the conversion. This leads us to put too much
emphasis on certain marketing efforts, while discounting others. Incrementality testing helps adjust for that.

4.1. Google Marketing proposes a helpful analogy for understanding incremental testing

Erin Clement and Tom Garvey are Performance Media Manager and Incrementality Lead, respectively, for Media Lab
within Google Marketing.

Defining what incrementality and attribution are: Incrementality is the answer to the question, "How many sales, leads,
sign-ups, etcetera would have happened even if I hadn’t spent a penny on media?" In other words, it is the benefit that
can be definitively proven to have been driven by marketing budget. Attribution is how credit is assigned for sales and
conversions across different touchpoints in a conversion path. There are rules-based models, such as last click, first click,
and time decay, as well as data-driven models that use machine learning to assign fractional credit to various touchpoints.

Why attribution and incrementality are in the same presentation: they are two separate marketing buzzwords describing
two different problems, but both are integral parts of an effective performance media plan. Most marketers are relying
on outdated metrics to make decisions, such as the last click model, which assigns 100% of the credit to the last interaction
a user had with an ad, even if they saw other touchpoints before converting.

The difference between incrementality and attribution. In a 4x100 relay race, where each member of the team runs a
quarter of the way around the track and passes the baton between them. Usain Bolt as an example: someone who ran
only one quarter of the race, but still received a medal for his contribution. He then asked why marketers would optimize
their media like the last step is all that matters.

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Incrementality and attribution are two separate problems that require different solutions, but both are necessary for
an effective performance media plan. How outdated metrics, such as the last click model, can devalue upper funnel
tactics. To illustrate the difference between the two, Tom used an analogy of a 4x100 relay race. At this point, I think
you’ve decoded our very heavy-handed analogy. The baton? That’s your sale, lead, install, or whatever is key to your
business. Usain Bolt? He’s the last interaction your media had with that customer before they converted. And his
teammates are all those channels that rarely get the credit they deserve for nurturing that sale. Sure, Usain Bolt may have
mattered more than literally any other sprinter ever has during the final leg, but to prove it, Jamaica would have to be
willing to conduct a control race with Bolt as a holdout. I don’t think we’re going to see that. And even if they did, I still
wouldn’t be giving him 4 medals for his team’s race.

Fortunately, you can do a test like this with your media and not cost yourself the race, or the sale. So what part of your
media “matters”? That’s where incrementality comes in. You probably know what that means at this point, but you might
not actually know how to measure it. Measuring incrementality can be done in a few ways, starting off with measuring
channel silos. Google offers Conversion Lifts studies, or you could do these on your own with well-controlled experiments.
But, what the key is here is understanding the data you will get as a result, leading to better in-flight optimizations and
better spending decisions for your business.

Let’s say your investment appears to be 20% incremental. You know what the positive side means. But, does this mean
80% was wasted? Very importantly, no. It simply means that you really don’t know much about the other 80%. That 80%
may have been the reason someone’s coworker told their mother-in-law about a great product they saw in a video that
they eventually went home 3 states away and bought 6 months later. You just don’t know these things when you’re
measuring in channel silos. That’s where much more complex solutions come into play.

So, if there’s one takeaway here, it’s simply that you need to understand the right questions to ask when talking about
incrementality, and that they should be related to “How can I make sure that I’m putting more of my marketing budget
behind media that I can prove is driving impact that I would not have gotten otherwise?”

All of this incrementality work Tom talked about is a huge step in the right direction. Now that we know which channels
and tactics are driving incremental value, we’re left with the challenge of translating that insight into action. There are a
number of tools available today that we use to help us get closer, but no 1 solution checks all the boxes on our criteria for
data coverage and actionability.

At a macro level, we use Ads Data Hub or Google Analytics to help us make decisions around how we allocate budget
across channels and tactics. But these high-level insights are incredibly challenging to translate into real-time, granular
optimizations. At a micro level, we’re leaning into data-driven attribution models within Google Ads or SA360, which allow
us to make smarter real-time bidding decisions and move us a little bit further away from giving Mr. Bolt 100% of the
credit.

As we look to the future of attribution and incrementality in a postcookie, privacy-safe world, we are using attribution
reporting in the new Google Analytics Advertising Workspace. In this new workspace, we’re able to compare attribution
models and forecast cross-channel or platform-specific media budgets and use real-time data to take action. Google
Analytics 4 will also bring our measurement workstreams closer together, with attribution models that are trained on and
validated against incrementality experiments.

We recommend getting started today with a dual setup. This means setting up a new Google Analytics 4 property alongside

12
your existing Analytics implementation. This approach will allow you to use your existing Analytics as your source of truth,
build data history in Google Analytics 4, and take advantage of new features and functionality as they become available.
Eventually Google Analytics 4 will become your new source of truth.

I hope you aren’t tired of this analogy yet, because I can’t let it go without a good one-liner. Don’t forget who deserves
the medals: everybody on the team, not just the one who crosses the finish line.

4.2. Five Ways to Do Incrementality Testing with Digital Ads

Considering the challenges that all marketers face with accurately measuring the impact each channel has on overall
business revenue, especially as purchase paths become increasingly complex, measuring ad performance by
incrementality is one way to get closer to understanding the true performance lift a given tactic contributes to your
business. Our CMO even noted it to be one of the most important tools in a digital marketer’s toolbox in 2020 as cookie-
based tracking becomes harder to rely on.

There are a lot of ways you could measure incrementality, but we’ve rounded up five of the ways we’ve done it to
summarize how you can set up a test, how measurement will work, and the pros and cons of each approach.

Important notes: With all incrementality testing, you must put enough spend behind the test to get meaningful insights.
It may seem like you can do a small-scale test, but you likely won’t get enough data to develop actionable learnings. Some
tests will require more spend to get the level of result you need than others, but be prepared to invest. Secondly, you
might notice that it’s nearly impossible to design tests that don’t have some level of potential bias or externality involved.
Don’t let that deter you! There is still great insight to be gained, but maybe just know that this data should be used
directionally and not as a direct statement of exact return.

Geographical Split Testing

How it’s set up: Geographical split tests are set up by choosing a subset of geographies (states, cities, etc.) to show ads to,
and a set of geographies with similar characteristics to the test group (size, region, demographics, behavior, market
density, etc.) where you won’t show ads. When selecting what geographies to use, it’s important to make sure you are
selecting places where no other tests will be running and where you will be able to hold other marketing efforts relatively
steady to get the cleanest possible results.

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to measure changes in metrics like new site visitors from Direct
and Organic channels, as well as brand searches and revenue in the exposed areas compared to the control areas. From
there, you can calculate the incremental lift that your ads drove.

Pros:

· Easy to set up for almost every channel

· Can concentrate spend in a few areas to stretch a relatively small incrementality testing budget

Cons:

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· Data sets can easily get muddy if other marketing efforts change in test markets mid-test
· Geographical locations don’t create truly randomized groups – there will always be natural variances in behavior
between states

Customer List Segmentation

How it’s set up: Customer list segmentation takes customer lists and splits them into different segments to serve on
different channels to measure the incremental impact each additional channel has on performance.

For example, if you have five segments of your list, the set up might look like this:

· Segment 1: No marketing
· Segment 2: Only email
· Segment 3: Email + Facebook/GDN retargeting
· Segment 4: Email + Facebook/GDN retargeting + YouTube retargeting

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to compare overall revenue for each segment to determine the
incremental revenue driven by each additional channel

Pros:

· Reliable and clean measurement

· Easy to set up once audience segments are created
· Can help to measure incrementality across various channels with one test

Cons:

· Requires upfront time investment to create audience segments

· Can be difficult to control for unintended bias in audience sets
· Audience is limited to current customers or email lists – in most cases not possible to use this method with prospecting
efforts

“Dummy Ad” Holdout Testing

How it’s set up: “Dummy Ad” holdout tests are set up by choosing a percentage of your traffic to receive an ad for your
company and serving the rest of the traffic an ad for something completely unrelated to your business, typically a public
service ad or nonprofit cause. This will allow you to measure conversions for both sets of ads and compare conversion
rates for each just like you would do between two standard campaigns.

Measurement: After running your test, you will be able to compare the performance between the two groups and
determine the incremental lift in conversion rate, conversions and revenue that seeing your ad drove.

Pros:

· Allows you to measure lift in conversions and/or revenue in-channel, which can be preferable when you don’t see a

14
lot of direct conversions in your web analytics software for the channel you want to measure (YouTube is a good example)
· You can choose to serve dummy ads to a small subset of the audience to mitigate wasted spend and then scale up
the results to be similar volume to the control group

Cons:

· Spend is going to serving the “dummy ads,” rather than your business

YouTube Brand Lift Studies

How it’s set up: YouTube Brand Lift Studies are set upright in the Google Ads platform. They are survey-based studies, and
the metrics that the advertiser chooses to measure determine what survey questions are asked. For example, if an
advertiser chooses to measure brand awareness, viewers would receive a survey question asking something like “which
of the following brands have you heard of?” with options for that advertiser and their competitors.

After selecting which metrics you’d like to measure from Brand Awareness, Brand Recall, Brand Consideration, Brand
Favorability, and Purchase Intent and setting up the study, Google will automatically hold out half of your chosen audience
from seeing your ads in order to be able to measure the difference in responses between the exposed and holdout groups.

There is also an option to measure Brand Interest, which looks at the increase in brand searches across Google and
YouTube from people that see the ads vs. people that don’t. However, this metric requires a higher level of spend to get
statistically significant data.

This is different than the other tests noted above. It’s much more useful for understanding the power of the creative you
use in capturing your audience’s attention or moving them to act than it will be to gain insight on incremental conversions
or purchases.

Measurement: Google will calculate the difference in “positive” responses (meaning that people selected your brand from
the list of options) between the exposed and holdout groups to calculate lift. You can see metrics directly in the Google
Ads interface for relative lift, absolute lift, lifted users and cost per lifted user.

Pros:

· Relatively easy to set up in the Google Ads interface

· Multiple lift metrics to choose from
· Can customize what competitors you want to show alongside your brand
· The test setup is one of the most controllable available

Cons:

· Can only be used with YouTube campaigns

· No metric that measures conversion lift
· Minimum spend requirements that need to be met to use the tool (currently a minimum of $5,000 in the first seven
days for one question)
Facebook Lift Studies

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How it’s set up: Similar to Google’s Brand Lift Study, Facebook Lift Studies are set up in the Facebook platform and are
specific to Facebook and Instagram campaigns. However, instead of being survey based, Facebook Lift Studies
automatically split your audience into two groups (one that receives ads and one that doesn’t). Also, unlike YouTube Brand
Lift, Facebook will measure incremental conversions and revenue driven by the exposed group compared to the control
group.

Measurement: Facebook automatically calculates the lift driven by users exposed to the ad compared to users that didn’t
see an ad.

Pros:

· Easy to set up in the Facebook platform

· Allows us to measure conversion lift and determine true incrementality

Cons:

· Only works for Facebook & Instagram

There you have it! Those are five methods available to any digital marketer now to start gaining an understanding of the
incrementality of running ads on any number of popular channels. We hope it makes you feel incrementally more in
control of your ad budgets!

5. Optimization:

This process of incremental improvement in order to maximize your desired business results, in digital marketing, is called
optimization. It’s really about making the most of your efforts to meet your goals. So, everything we’ve discussed up to
this point: Understanding your customer, researching your competition, choosing the right channels, developing powerful
messaging, and, of course, testing, all play a part in optimization.

Optimization is all about making your marketing as effective as possible, which means speaking to the customer, but also
understanding the algorithms that drive engagement online. Optimizing your Facebook presence means taking into
account the kinds of content and behaviors the Facebook algorithm prioritizes. Optimizing your brand for searches means
having a clear understanding of what your customers are looking for, and how different keywords perform in Google
search.

Any and every aspect of your digital marketing can be optimized through smart strategy and consistent testing. Your job
is to decide where the most potential for improvement lies; focus your efforts and continue to learn every day.

5.1. Data, Storytelling, and Strategy

We have already learned the importance of storytelling in conveying information—both when it comes to sharing the
findings of market research, and also in terms of the marketing efforts themselves. Let’s briefly revisit this and add some

16
new tools to our toolbox to ensure that we are equipped to share the results of our marketing efforts in a way that can
be heard and understood.

Data storytelling couples data visualization with compelling narratives that help audiences better comprehend and take
action based on data analysis. While effective data visualization helps people grasp and remember key takeaways, data
storytelling is essential for helping them understand why those takeaways matter. (Lydia Hopper - DATA VISUALIZATION
EXPERT AND INFORMATION DESIGN WRITER).

We have already emphasized how important it is to choose the most important KPIs (measure what matters), to draw
insight from that data, and make adjustments accordingly. When you need to explain your insights and the actions you
choose to take because of them, data storytelling is a powerful tool.

5.2. What Sort of Data Do Marketers Communicate?

Maybe stories are just data with a soul. (Brene Brown, AMERICAN RESEARCHER AND AUTHOR OF DARE TO LEAD).

What kind of data do digital marketers need to communicate through stories to their leadership and teams? Research
tells us that sales data tops the list, followed by stories of customer success and market research.

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5.3. Example of Effective Data Storytelling

In the figure below, we see the increase of interest in online education opportunities, classified into “virtual field trips,”
“virtual classrooms,” and “virtual learning.”.

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 4. OPTIMIZATION: MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR LEARNING

1. Pre-Mortems and Post-Mortems

Trying your hand at a “pre-mortem” at the beginning of your project? Gamestorming.com offers a template for creating
yours, and a process for conducting a pre-mortem with your team.

2. Ethics

This module focuses on measurement, analysis, and optimization; which is essentially data and how to use it to create
value for your organization. When discussing data and analytics, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the data points are
describing real people and their actions. The moment we lose sight of this is the moment we not only lose our connection
to our customers, but also our ethical grounding. There have been some important recent efforts to help consumers
maintain control of their data. In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)–the world’s strongest set of data
protection rules–came into effect across the European Union. (Burgess 2020). The State of California, which happens to
be the fifth largest economy in the world on its own, followed suit with the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA)
which took effect in 2020. (Edelman 2020). Data rights and consumer protection should be on every digital marketer’s
radar. Ignoring or exploiting data is not only unethical, it can also have significant consequences for businesses.

RECOMMENDED READING: Read the following article about privacy and data protection Ethical data usage in an era of
digital technology and regulation to learn more about how organizations are responding to the pressure of improving their
use of their customers’ data. In addition, you may be interested in the following articles about data management, Ethical
data management is a win for marketers, which argues that ethical data use goes beyond legal data use.

3. Future-proofing

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Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to
gaming. (Chris Lynch, AMERICAN VENTURE CAPITALIST).

Big Data: Large data sets that are used by organizations to find patterns, trends, and associations, typically related to our
behavior or interactions.

3.1. The Four V’s of Big Data

1. Volume - Big data can be drawn from:

● Point-of-sale data
● Social media platforms
● e-commerce sites
● “Internet of Things” devices

2. Variety - Big data comes in a variety of formats, including:

● Ad responses
● Social media sentiment
● Email actions

3. Velocity- Big data statistics can be delivered much faster than conventional data thanks to:
● Internet of Things technology
● 5G data streaming
● RFID chips (radio frequency identification tags)

4. Veracity - This refers to the accuracy and trustworthiness of big data thanks to:
● Large sample sizes
● Real-time collection

Audience Segmentation: Big data allows marketers to compile, explore, and analyze various aspects of behavioral
criteria—how people use their products and services—as well as social and demographic factors. The findings can help
determine consumer personas and preferences more efficiently so marketing messages can be enhanced and optimized.

Sentiment Analysis: By analyzing social media posts, reviews, and search queries, marketers can better understand how
consumers feel about their brand.

Targeted Marketing: Product recommendations, social media advertising, and email drip campaigns use big data analytics
to deliver more relevant content to consumers.

Predictive and Prescriptive Analysis: Marketers can work with the supply chain to help ensure more adequate production
of goods based on demand forecasting that is driven by big data.

Result Measurement: Campaigns can be measured and adjusted in real time for budget optimization.

Sales Growth: The factors above could potentially drive increased sales.

In the age of digital marketing, organizations are inundated with data. And, as we’ve discussed, the real challenge is not
in accessing that data, but in deciding what data to analyze in order to make the best decisions for your business.

20
The Streetlight Effect: Unfortunately, many organizations tend to fall prey to what’s called “the streetlight effect,” or an
overreliance on the most readily available and easily accessible data. We look at what’s in the "light" by measuring what’s
most convenient, not necessarily what’s most useful, important, or what will genuinely help us grow our organizations.

One secret to success in the age of big data is ensuring that data isn’t sequestered into a single department. Especially
when the market is uncertain, it’s important to ensure decision-makers can all access important data, and take an
integrated approach to translating insights into action.

Barkha Saxena, chief data officer for social commerce site Poshmark, uses a simple framework: evaluate the data, execute
the plan, learn what worked and what didn’t, then repeat. “We have the foundation of very centralized, reliable, and easy-
to-access data, but then it’s delivered to all the teams" which "...allows for the data to be accessible to all the business
users at the time of the decision.” This, she argues, is how you turn data into an operating tool. (Wharton 2020)

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who see organizations relying too much on data. Big data is a huge
industry, but can become a crutch —especially when combined with the streetlight effect.

Big data, says Abe Kasbo, CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, is only as good as the insights that come from it. We stick to the
saying, “Not everything that’s worthy is measurable and not every measurable is worthy.” And because there is no
shortage of analytics, we’re cautious about data "rabbit holes"; data that leads you astray from your original goal. Our
guidelines for data must always have two fundamental elements: relevant and actionable, meaning any data we collect
and use must lead to productive action.” (Conick 2019)

The real connection with customers, though, comes from something much more basic—and perhaps more elusive:
creativity grounded in understanding. He argues, “Companies who have a fundamental understanding of their brand and
their customers are usually more comfortable with using creativity to create new products, meaningful campaigns, and
venture into new markets. Ideally, insights should inform strategy and creative aspects, but creativity is what gets people
to buy. It’s what connects brands to consumers." (Conick 2019)

RECOMMENDED READINGS: If you would like to learn more about the future of data in the world of Digital Marketing, you
may explore the following articles:

● Big Data and Digital Marketing: How Are They Connected?

● What is Real-Time Marketing? (In 300 Words or Less)
● Real-time data: The 8 Best Examples Of Real-Time Data Analytics
● Person-level data and unified measurement: New Research Shows Person-Level Data Measurement Critical for
Marketers to Reach Their Key Objectives

Glossary

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Attribution: Attribution is advanced analytics using online and offline channels to adhere a certain set of user actions that
lead to desired customer action.
Benchmarking: The practice of objectively evaluating the performance of an organization by marking current progress.
Big Data: Large sets of data used by organizations to identify patterns, trends, and associations related to behavior or
interactions.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Measurements used to evaluate an organization’s targets and pathways to
achievements.
Return on Engagement (ROE): Return on Engagment (ROE) is also known as Return on Emotion or Return on Experience.
An approach that seeks to understand how customers currently interact with a brand and how this may evolve over time.
Return on Investment (ROI): A metric used to determine the performance of an investment.
Social Listening: Ways of gathering information about a customer base to combine with other types of market research
and data analysis.
Vanity Metrics: Measurements that boost morale but do not result in any advancement towards the intended target.

Forum

Netflix Case Study

Netflix is one of the biggest on-demand video streaming services today with over 200 million subscribers. It leans heavily
on big data derived from its users to make smart decisions.

Consider the following challenge: While on any streaming platform that offers tons of content, viewers typically lose
interest altogether after 60 to 90 seconds of choosing something to watch. This happens a lot, especially when the choice
of watching material is vast. Users ultimately give up and exit the platform altogether after browsing its selection with no
hope of finding something of interest to them.

How would you frame the problem Netflix has to solve? What is the problem from the point of view of the user?
How might Netflix solve this problem? What other data would you want to collect and analyze in order to make the right
move(s)?
If you are familiar with streaming platforms, what are some ways you’ve noticed that they use to combat this problem?
Based on your experience and what you’ve learned so far in this course about digital marketing, what else might you
suggest?
What do you think digital marketers can learn from Netflix that could be applied to other industries and organizations?
The Problem: Netflix has a problem of viewers losing interest after 60-90 seconds of choosing something to watch. This
leads to users giving up and exiting the platform altogether.

The Problem from the Point of View of the User: From the user's point of view, the problem is that they are
overwhelmed with the amount of content available, and can't find something of interest to watch in a reasonable
amount of time.

How Netflix Might Solve This Problem: Netflix could solve this problem by collecting and analyzing more data on user
preferences and behavior. This could include data on what types of content the user has watched in the past, what
content they have skipped, how long they have watched certain types of content, and what content they have liked or
disliked. This data can then be used to create personalized recommendations for each user, tailored to their interests
and preferences.

22
Other Data to Collect and Analyze: In addition to collecting data on user preferences and behavior, Netflix could also
collect and analyze data on user demographics, such as gender, age, and location. This data could be used to create
more targeted content recommendations and tailor the user experience to better meet the needs of different types of
users.

Ways Streaming Platforms Combat This Problem: Streaming platforms typically use algorithms to generate personalized
recommendations for each user, based on their past viewing habits and preferences. They also use a variety of
techniques to reduce the amount of time it takes for a user to find something to watch, such as providing curated lists of
content, or allowing users to quickly search for content by genre or keyword.

Suggestions for Digital Marketers: Digital marketers should focus on personalizing the user experience and making it as
easy as possible for users to find the content they are looking for. This could include providing personalized
recommendations, curating content, and allowing users to quickly search for content. Additionally, digital marketers
should collect and analyze data on user preferences and behavior in order to better understand their target audience
and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.

What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Netflix: Digital marketers can learn from Netflix that collecting and analyzing
data on user preferences and behavior is essential for creating a personalized experience for users. Additionally, digital
marketers can learn from Netflix that providing personalized recommendations, curating content, and allowing users to
quickly search for content can help reduce the amount of time it takes for users to find something to watch. Finally,
digital marketers can learn from Netflix that understanding user demographics and tailoring marketing strategies
accordingly is important for creating a successful user experience.

Forum

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1. How would you frame the problem Netflix has to solve? What is the problem from the point of view of the user?

Problem Framing: After browsing the movies/series for a while, Netflix users lose their interest and exit the platform,
due to the lack of hope of finding interesting content. This is a major problem because it results in users not engaging
and leaving the platform.

From the point of view of the users, the problem consists of the inability to find interesting content on the platform.
They are overwhelmed with the vast selection of content and unable to find something that they are interested in
watching.

2. How might Netflix solve this problem? What other data would you want to collect and analyze in order to make the
right move(s)?

Potential measures to solve/mitigate the issue:

According to Netflix Help Center and Privacy (Source):

● Netflix estimates the likelihood of the user engagement to a particular title in their catalog based (but not
limited) to:

○ your interactions with our service (I guess this would be the viewing and search history as well as rated
and reviewed titles).
○ other members with similar tastes and preferences on our service.
○ information about the titles, such as their genre, categories, actors, release year, etc.
○ the time of day you watch.
○ the devices you are watching Netflix on.
○ how long you watch.

● Netflix does not use demographic information (such as age or gender) to estimate the likelihood of the user
engagement.

● Regarding what they do with the data: “We take feedback from every visit to the Netflix service and continually
re-train our algorithms with those signals to improve the accuracy of their prediction of what you’re most likely
to watch. Our data, algorithms, and computation systems continue to feed into each other to produce fresh
recommendations to provide you with a product that brings you joy”.

Potential measures

Netflix could solve this problem by collecting and analyzing more and better data on user preferences and behavior,
which can be used to create more accurate personalized recommendations for each user, better tailored to their
interests and preferences. In order to better understand user preferences and recommend content that is more likely to
be of interest, Netflix could collect and analyze data on user demographics as well as data from 3rd parties (HBO, HULU,
PRIME, Youtube, etc):
● Analyzing the competitors and what measures they implement on this issue.
● Implement cookies using their information, like user behavior, time spent on searching for content,

24
 methodologies to provide accurate content, among others.
● A/B and/or Multivariate testing on thumbnails, searching results and content categories.
● User testing (getting feedback).
● The product itself: If netflix continues its focus on exclusive content, the engagement of users will increase, since
the content they look for, could be only found in netflix catalog.

3. What are some ways you’ve noticed that streaming platforms use to combat this problem? Based on your
experience and what you’ve learned so far in this course about digital marketing, what else might you suggest?

As I already mentioned in the second answer, streaming platforms combat this problem by using algorithms to
recommend content to users based on their past viewing habits and preferences. They also use personalization
techniques to tailor the user experience, such as offering curated content lists and suggesting content that is similar to
what the user has previously watched.

I think digital marketers can learn from Netflix that data strategy is key to understanding user preferences and
behaviors. By collecting and analyzing data, digital marketers can better understand the expectations of the target
audience, create more personalized results for them, and track the success of their efforts.

QUIZ

Question 1

25
1 / 1 pts
How would you describe the relationship between marketing and sales?
Marketing and sales work separately
Correct!
Marketing and sales work closely; the job of marketing is to bring in qualified leads for sales
Marketing and sales are essentially the same function
None of the above

Question 2
1 / 1 pts
Put the following practices in the correct order for a digital marketer looking to make the most of their metrics:
Correct!
Learn
1
Correct!
Plan
2
Correct!
Apply
3
Correct!
Assess
4

Question 3
1 / 1 pts
A gym creates a series of TikToks teaching followers about their unique approach to fitness, with the goal of bringing in
new members. All of the metrics below may be important for them to track. Which KPI (key performance indicator) will
be the most important in determining the success of the series?
Video views
Comments
New followers
Correct!
New member inquiries

Question 4
1 / 1 pts
Which of the following is true of A/B testing for a digital ad?
It allows you to test the effectiveness of one element of the ad campaign at a time
Everything but the specific element being tested (say, an image or a subject line) should remain the same
Once a “winner” has been determined in the test, the ad spend should be directed toward the more effective ad
It is best practice to test often and continually improve
Correct!
All of the above

Question 5
1 / 1 pts
Match the terms with their definitions

26
Correct!
Benchmarking
The practice of objectively evaluating the performance of an organization by marking current progress.
Correct!
The Streetlight Effect
An overreliance on the most readily available and easily accessible data.
Correct!
Vanity Metrics
Measurements that boost morale but do not result in any advancement towards the intended target.
Correct!
ROI
A metric used to determine the performance of an investment.
Correct!
ROE
An approach that seeks to understand how customers currently interact with a brand and how this may evolve over time.

ANNEX 1

7-Step guide on how to benchmark your marketing activities

27
Want to evaluate your company’s digital marketing activities? This guide will teach you how to benchmark marketing
activities. What do running a successful sports team and managing a B2B marketing department have in common? Quite
a lot, in fact – if you know the value of digital benchmarking.

Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball is the famous story of how Oakland Athletics – a small and relatively poor baseball team
– went on to have huge success in the 2002/2003 Major League Baseball season. Their achievements are widely credited
to manager Billy Beane. Beane introduced the (then unheard-of) sabermetric approach – which involves using intensive
objective benchmarking to understand performance.

Moneyball has been heralded as a ‘business bible’; and when it comes to knowing how to benchmark marketing, the
book’s themes offer a lot of inspiration to digital marketers. Let’s look at how B2B technology marketers can benefit from
digital benchmarking.

How to benchmark marketing?

Benchmarking is a method of objectively evaluating your company’s digital marketing activities. You need to carry out an
assessment of your existing digital marketing activities, tracking how often they are carried out, how much they are
engaged with and what effect they have. Once you have a snapshot of the quality of your digital marketing today, the next
step is to use this information as a reference to help you keep on improving. Let’s explore some of the best methods of
gathering the objective data that can give you a snapshot of your digital marketing efforts. Below are seven steps to take
that will ensure you can effectively benchmark marketing activities at your organisation.

1. Narrow down the digital marketing activities you want to focus on

There are countless variables that you could use when you benchmark marketing – from email open rates, to the length
of time customers spend reading your blogs, to how many times your latest whitepaper has been downloaded. So, how
do you decide what you’re going to benchmark?

We recommend choosing between one and three marketing activities you carry out – be that your blog, social media,
emails, website analytics or anything else. Deciding which activity to focus on ultimately depends on your wider marketing
goals. Do you want to increase the number of visitors to your website? Or the amount of engagement your tweets receive?

2. Choose the right metrics

There are thousands of potential data points you could choose when measuring your digital marketing. Don’t be tempted
to go overboard! Your benchmarking needs to be detailed, yet also provide you with enough clarity and simplicity to
support action. We’d recommend choosing between three and five metrics to monitor. Examples would include: How
often do you tweet/blog/send emails? How many people react/read/open your content? What do people do once they
see your content? Where do readers come from? How long do people interact with your digital marketing content? How
often do people click on your call to action (CTA)?

3. Do your initial benchmarking against these metrics

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Once you have the focus for your analysis, plus a selection of metrics you want to measure, now’s the time to use powerful
tools to carry out your digital benchmarking.

You also need to choose a reasonable time period in which you are going to review your digital marketing. Most companies
carry out their analysis based on the three previous months.

You might begin your analysis by simply tallying up numbers – of blogs, of tweets, of emails sent, etc. But, for more detail,
the following four tools give you a lot of powerful extra detail for digital benchmarking.

Google Analytics: Analyse visitor traffic and paint a picture of your audience. Discover the routes they take and devices
they use to reach your site, and track what they do while on there. Reporting features display this in a clear and actionable
manner.

MailChimp: MailChimp lets you build your email campaigns with ease and monitor their effectiveness. Features such
as A/B testing and campaign reporting help you get an understanding of what’s drawing your audience in, and what’s
getting ignored.

Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics help you understand how the content you share on Twitter is being received. Month-
by-month statistics on the ‘success’ of your tweets and audience insights give you better knowledge of your audience and
how best to attract their attention. Read our exclusive free eBook about the three tools that can boost your Twitter
presence here.

4. Carry out competitor analysis too

Of course, you can’t use Google Analytics on your competitor’s website (although the Partner Benchmarking Tool does let
you test any website you like). Nonetheless, you should carry out a basic analysis of your competitors’ digital marketing
in the areas you focus on. Compare how often they blog, tweet or otherwise promote themselves during the same time
period.

5. Create a report that summarises your marketing benchmarking

Once you have completed your first round of analysis, you are now able to take stock of where you are objectively. Create
a report that gives an honest view of where you are today and include comparable data from your competitors.

6. Create a digital marketing strategy to improve your metrics

Now you have your digital benchmark, the next natural step is to create a strategy which will help you improve on those
metrics. Now’s the time to aim high:

Double click-through-rate from your emails

Treble inbound web traffic

Increase leads from your blog by 50%

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At Fifty Five and Five, we know how important creating a B2B marketing strategy is. Learn how we work with clients on
campaign strategy here.

7. Review then repeat

A one-off benchmark is pretty pointless. To get real value from digital benchmarking, you need to carry out regular analysis
to get a feel for how you are improving and to get a taste of the impact your strategy is having. If you use our Partner
Benchmarking Tool for digital benchmarking, you can track and record all your analyses over time.

Don’t wait to get started

When you benchmark marketing activities, you get a transparent and objective way of tracking the effects and impacts of
your work. This should help you develop your marketing strategy and generate more leads.

And remember: once you have an idea of where you are, it’s a lot easier to plan where you’re going.

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 MODULE 5: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

INDEX

1. Fit: Roles in Digital Marketing (Pag 3)

• Interview with a Digital Marketing Coach

• Entry-level and Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

• Building a Marketing Team

2. Strategy: Digital Leadership Lessons from COVID (Pag 6)

• Potbelly Case Study

• The Role of Risk and Failure

• Buy-in

3. Digital Project Management (Pag 11)

• Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

• Your (Digital) Leadership Style

• Pivots and Course Corrections

4. Ethics: Bias and Diversity (Pag 18)

• Interview with Amy Johnson

• Diverse Teams

5. Future-proofing: Technology That Helps Us Lead - Emerging Tech and Trends (Pag 21)

Learning Objectives: (1) Deduce the relationship between internal communication and
leadership and digital marketing effectiveness; (2) Discover their digital leadership style; (3) Plan
to navigate the balance between the fast pace of digital marketing and the ethical considerations
of effective digital leadership.

1
INTRODUCTION: Leadership is the act of influencing and inspiring others to be their best in
service of a goal. Regardless of the role you play or your title in an organization, honing your
leadership skills will help you succeed. In this module, we'll uncover what it looks like and what it
takes, to be a forward-thinking, ethical, and effective digital marketing leader so you can do your
best work, and ensure that those around you can do the same.

We already study principles, strategies and tools of digital marketing, but in this module, we will
focus on a critical behind the scenes component: Leadership in the digital realm. As we have
already discussed, this field is one that requires many talents, where teams are diverse and
dynamic, where new jobs and skills are created as the field evolves. In this setting, a leader needs
to be able to stay nimble, humble and create an environment that brings out the best in their team,
because that is the only way to carry out a vision that takes full advantage of resource and
opportunities, and creates value for the organization.

Beyond this, we will also explore the role of leadership in the success or failure of a company´s
strategy, and in the ability to change course when needed. In order to do this, a leader should be
able to learn from failing, take smart risks, and know how to get others to believe in and get behind
their ideas.

If your stakeholders buy into your strategy, your project is much more likely to succeed. So, we
will discuss the importance of communication to achieve this.

Finally, we will explore some of the intricacies of digital project management and discuss the
importance of staying on top of new trends and innovations that could have important implications
for your work.

2
 1. FIT: ROLES IN DIGITAL MARKETING

1. Interview with a Digital Marketing Coach

Not everyone is trained in marketing, and not every executive is going to feel comfortable in the
digital world. But digital marketing is a critical function of businesses today, and that function
requires leadership.

The need to understand the leadership role was so great that digital marketing coach Shaily
Hakimian built this service into an entire consulting business (her website).

“I am the bridge between a social media marketer and the business owner who hired them to be
a part of their team. I am the person that can help translate the tools of the web, things that are
very complicated and cumbersome to someone who is not a tech genius. Someone who doesn't
actually understand kind of how social media plays into their business goals. This is oftentimes
business owners who hear that social media is a very, very big deal and they should get on it, but
they don't actually know how to do that. And they just hire someone in hopes that it will work. But
oftentimes, a social media manager isn't administrator, someone who's there to do tasks that they
are assigned to do. But if the person who hires them doesn't understand what tasks are going to
be fruitful for their business, everyone ends up losing and that just makes the industry bad. And
it makes the fruitfulness of this amazing medium more complicated. So I created Shaily, or I'm
Shaily Hakimian, and I created Your Social Media Sherpa.com to help these business owners get
clarity and accountability to their own marketing”.

What quality guarantees success in Digital Marketing?

The one quality is human connection and understanding the power of relationships. A lot of times
there's plenty of tools, like you can get ads, SEO and all that stuff. There's a lot of technical
knowledge and get you a lot of bang for your buck. But the one thing I say, is most people that I
serve, they're not going to figure that out. They're not going to do it themselves. But the one thing
I say is that if you can understand your relationship with humans and individuals, you can get
more and almost guarantee your success, right? If every single person that sees your post, if
every single person that sees your content feels cared about as an individual, you can guarantee
success if you keep those people in mind. So that's one of the things that I work on. I work on the
things that I know can be impactful. I don't touch the the details of the ads. But there's plenty of
people who are awesome at that. But if you do know who you're talking to, and you can really
speak to them and what they need and you can really cultivate that community that will always
always win for the kinds of people that I serve, and it'll always help you guide what decisions you
need to make for the marketing

3
2. Entry-level and Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

As you’re just getting started in the world of digital marketing, look out for these roles: 7 of the
Best Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs – Skillcrush (ANNEX 1)

What happens when you need to fill one of these roles?

First, you must consider the type of content you are producing. Let’s take a look at an example of
a diagram called the content marketing village. The figure below represents the critical roles a
business may need to fill if their strategy entails new and on-going content creation that is done
in-house, is subscription-based, and presented across multiple channels. How might this village
look different if the business were heavily reliant on video or live-streaming events? What about
influencer and affiliate marketing? Or if the strategy relied on digital advertising? The roles you
create and hire for should reflect the needs and strategy of the business.

4
3. Building a Marketing Team

It's important to focus on who you bring on board to execute your marketing strategy. Like so
much else in marketing, this all depends on your goals. You have limited resources - time and
money alike - and need to ensure that they are being used as efficiently as possible. Determining
the right roles, and finding the right people to fill them, is an important aspect of digital leadership.

Prioritizing Job Openings

· How critical is the job to the company’s success?

· What happens if this job is not filled? What are the tangible consequences?

· Can these tasks be performed by anybody else in the organization? If so, what sacrifices
need to be made?

· How quickly can this job be filled?

· Do we have the capacity to correctly onboard this person?

· What are the “success criteria” after 90 days of employment?

5
 2. STRATEGY: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM COVID

1. Potbelly Case Study

Moments of crisis, such as a global pandemic, are times that result in change. Due to the extreme
conditions a crisis can produce, we can either endure and persevere through it, or fail to adapt
and sink. In these difficult situations, businesses that survive have to be resilient and rethink their
strategy in order to meet the changing needs of their consumers. One such example of adapting
during the COVID pandemic is the American sandwich company, Potbelly. Watch the following
video to learn how this company, whose customer base prior to this time was white collar office
workers, found new strategies to reinvent itself in the face of the radical changes brought on by
this difficult time.

Digital Leadership lessons from COVID: Potbelly Case Study

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, individuals and businesses alike scrambled to adjust.
The ongoing impact has been huge and some companies have adapted more effectively than
others. The ones that did the best were those who empathized with their customers, tested new
approaches, and found ways to learn and adjust quickly in a volatile environment.

In instance: The case of one company that managed to navigate this new environment. “Potbelly”
is a sandwich company, whose customer base has a slightly higher income. They are white collar
workers in downtown offices who are looking for a break from work. This set them apart from
competitors, but also made it really difficult to shift when the pandemic hit and everyone stayed
home.

For Potbelly´s core audience, home was often in the suburbs, as 70% of their traffic consisted of
dine-in customers who went to a local Potbelly that was often housed inside a larger office
complex. With the onset of lockdowns, Potbelly´s sales dropped by 68%, which set them into
survival mode, initially leading them to close 100 locations. At first, the company decided to pull
back on its marketing efforts, but the crisis also spurred the need for reinvention, creativity and
innovation. The team launched several creative offerings to speak to their customers in the
moment.

For instance, Potbelly launched a campaign specifically speaking to parents. A few Potbelly
locations do have parking lots, and the company noticed that parents would often come out for a
sandwich and eat it in their car as a way to get a brief respite and get out of the house. Potbelly,
followed their customers lead and leaned into this practice, designing signs that dedicated specific
parking spaces for stressed out parents to get alone time.

Customer research also told them taht it was not just the human members of the family that
needed a break, but also their dogs! The team offered a special promotion throught their app, so
you could order in advance and get the option to add on a small dish of whipped cream for your
dog to enjoy. This drive orders through digital channels and encourage instagrammable moments.

Potbelly also repositioned its other offerings, with family packages and leaning into its loyalty
programs in an effor to keep existing customers and win back those they lost.

6
Ultimately, Potbelly has brought their sales back up by at least 50% through these efforts. The
future is uncertain but thanks to empathy, creativity and work, its looking a lot brighter.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Get the inside scoop on Potbelly’s marketing efforts straight from
the mouth of the CMO, Brandon Rhoten, in this podcast from Clicks 2 Bricks, A podcast about
multi-location marketing. Here you can view a summary and read the key points of the episode,
and listen to the interview itself.

EP 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich Works CMO Brandon Rhoten.

2. The Role of Risk and Failure

As the saying goes, “no risk, no reward.” Risk is critical to success in digital marketing, but also
brings with it the chance of failure. We can learn to take smart risks while bringing a high potential
payoff for our organizations. We can also learn while making sure that when we do inevitably fail,
that we fail fast, fail forward, and learn along the way. “Take a risk and keep testing, because
what works today won’t work tomorrow, but what worked yesterday may work again” (Amrita
Sahasrabudhe - VP MARKETING, FASTMED UREGENT CARE).

View the highlighted companies below for examples of risk-taking:

Whole Foods: Whole Foods’ co-founders left their already-successful grocery store businesses
in the 1970s to invest in a market devoted to natural foods, when all-natural and organic foods
were taboo.

Pinterest: Pinterest failed to generate a critical mass after its launch in 2010, so the founder and
a few programmers ran the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011.

Charmin: Charmin decided to use toilet humor to engage its audience in 2014. It's continued to
enjoy marketing success by using comic relief when addressing an awkward topic.

We’ve already learned about the importance of risk-taking and learning from failure. But we
cannot simply try everything - resources are limited, and not every risk is worth taking. The key is
to take smart risks.

“To measure risk, I do a lot of research on subjects to make sure I have enough knowledge to
understand all of the risk factors. I also believe in my gut feeling sometimes. Risks are not all bad
and can be an opportunity for individuals and organizations to grow. They also force you to reflect
on your current status, assess your risk tolerance and build strength for the future” (Vivian Zhang
- FOUNDER, CTO, NYC DATA SCIENCE ACADEMY).

One way to take smart risks is to use the Pre-Mortem framework we introduced in a previous
module.

There is also a 2x2 matrix you can use to map out the risk and reward of certain choices, and
decide where to focus your efforts:

7
I think the most important thing, obviously, is to start at the top and to get buy-in and to really
explain what you're doing, I never want to do something for just a stunt. We don't want to do things
that feel like they aren't authentic to the brand, all of the risks I've taken have been in service to
the brand. And so when you can sit with the CEO, and the executive team and explain why this
is important, and why what you're doing will cut through the clutter. That's I really think the most
important thing here is cutting through the clutter. That's what we need to do with risky marketing.
(Christy Raedeke - CMO OF CHARGUERS PPC).

3. Buy-in

Whether we’re talking about your overall digital marketing strategy or a small test, a major
component of success has little to do with the technology you use or the colors and fonts you
choose. It really consists of getting the people around you to know, like, and trust your plan—this
means getting buy-in.

Ensuring Alignment and Buy-In is Critical for Success

As you’re developing your marketing plan, you want to make sure that you identify the key
stakeholders inside and outside of the company or organization who will need to know,
understand, and trust what you’d like to do. Please know that the role of these stakeholders is not
just to sign off on whatever you have planned. Their position in the company and the insight and
experience they bring can help you improve your own work, and ensure that all elements of your
digital marketing strategy are aligned with the company as a whole.

8
Three Types of Stakeholder Responses

As you share your digital marketing strategy with internal and external stakeholders, there are
typically three types of responses you may get.

● Partners use their knowledge, power, resources, and connections to ensure project
success. It is important to invest in these relationships.
● Resources share their knowledge and deliver on commitments: Make sure to keep these
people informed, and consider their interests. Can you turn them into partners?
● Roadblocks hinder a project’s success: Consider what kind of roadblock stands in your
way, how you might speak to this person’s interests to help them overcome their
resistance, and what you can learn from the pushback you’re presented with—is there an
element of truth in what they’re saying?

How to Ensure Buy-In

Sometimes it takes the same kind of thoughtful, “customer-centric" approach to ensure buy-in for
your marketing strategy as it takes to develop the strategy itself. To make sure your key
stakeholders feel invested in your approach, you need to know your audience and share a
message that will
resonate with them
based on their needs and
interests—not (just)
yours. One process for
approaching buy-in is
illustrated below.

1. Identify
Competent
Experienced
Good communicator

2. Assess
Partner resource or
roadblock?
Why?
What can change their
mind?

3. Develop
What value add is
important?
What language to use?

4. Communicate
Best way to
communicate
Best frequency

9
 5. Measure
Is the stakeholder on track to becoming a partner?
Should tactics be adjusted?

Key to Successful Project Planning is Stakeholder Buy-In

Pivots in your marketing strategy are necessary and inevitable, and it’s important to continue to
ensure stakeholder buy-in as your strategy evolves. Additionally, conditions may change for your
stakeholders that cause them to reconsider their investment in your approach. Consider the steps
below as the environment changes in order to keep your most important people informed,
involved, and invested.

1. Knowing priorities: Why it is important → Project priority/risk → True project value →

Identify all stakeholders

2. Learning about changes in priorities: Why it is important → Changes in project

priority/risk → New potential stakeholder → New expectations of delivered value
3. Understanding what changes mean for marketing plan: Why it is important → Changes
in resource requirements, cost, and timing

4. Communicating plan changes to stakeholders: Why it is important → Pivoting

messaging of value → Ask/release resources → Stakeholder expectation management

10
 3. DIGITAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

1. Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

Digital marketing projects can be massive undertakings that involve large teams of people with
different perspectives and skill sets. Aligning the people, technology, content, and resources
needed to bring your strategy to life requires thoughtful planning and coordination.

Digital leadership: Setting the vision, determining the strategy, and inspiring the team. Leadership
is a response to change.

Digital project management: Ensuring the elements of the strategy are executed on time, on
budget, and to the highest standards. Management is a response to complexity.

To effectively manage a digital marketing project, it is important to:

Define your project requirements

These are all the things that need to be done in order to consider the project completed.

● Assess Your Resources: What do you need in order to make this project happen?
Consider human resources, tools/technologies, budget, etc. Don’t skip doing something
because you don’t have the resources in-house—get creative!
● Work backwards from the end to schedule your project, breaking it down into milestones:
How often will you meet? With whom? What needs to be covered in those meetings? How
will you capture and share your learning and progress along the way? Consider time off,
holidays, other capacity issues. Assume the timeline will be pushed. Leave room in the
schedule for flexibility wherever possible. This is a good time in the project to conduct a
pre-mortem with your team as well.
● Break those milestones into tasks that can be assigned to specific team members: There
are a number of ways project tasks can be broken down. One popular method is to develop
a RACI chart in which roles are defined by the following four categories: Responsible,
Accountable, Consulted, or Informed (Khinda 2014).
● Execute the project!: You’re ready to put your plan into action! Celebrate your launch and
dive in.
● Monitor and control along the way: Keep track of how things are progressing and make
adjustments as needed. Be sure you consider personalities and buy-in—monitoring your
project is as much about relationships as it is about technical execution.
● Close, measure, and learn: Once the project is completed, gather your team and your
learnings and hold your post-mortem. Celebrate your wins, learn from your mistakes, and
keep the momentum going for the next project!

Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

Psychological safety

Even the best project management plans can fall apart if the team is having trouble understanding
one another or working together. That is where attention to digital body language comes into play,
according to Erica Dhawan, a leading expert on digital teamwork, digital language is the cues and
11
signals we send in our digital communication that make up the subtext of our messages. Getting
digital body language wrong can have a startling impact on your team´s efficiency and
effectiveness. Poor digital communication costs the average office worker four hours per week.
So, what do we do about it? As a leader, you need to add visible value, that is, to show
appreciation through our everyday actions, such as being mindful of other people´s time, publicly
sharing positive feedback and using digital signals of respect. You also need to communicate
carefully. Digital marketing is very fast paced, so we should always make an extra effort to reduce
the risk of misunderstanding that could slow things down and cause confusion, and work to keep
our messaging clear and direct. Strive to create an environment of psychological safety. Meeting
a professional environment in which your team knows that they wont be punished or humiliated
for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. Psychological safety is a relatively
new term, but a very important one. A 2016 study by google, found that psychological safety was
the single most important factor in determining team effectiveness. Being empathetic, and
attentive to your digital body language is one way you can show up for the people around you
and help everyone feel trusted to do their best work.

What are the tactics you can use as an individual to improve your digital body language?

First: you should know when to pick up the phone. “I am such a fan of the lost art of the phone
call and how it can solve problems that are wasting so much time in texts, email, chat tools, slack
tools, you name it”.

Second: After a team meeting, make it a priority to send a quick recap email summarizing the key
points, insights and confirming next steps within 30 minutes of a meeting. It is like a “new virtual
handshake”.

Third: Do not forget to put your phone on Do not disturb mode when you are in a face-to-face
meeting, so you are not looking down at your screen when someone is trying to make eye contact
with you. Focus on the human connection first.

Even the best project management plans can fall apart if the team is having trouble understanding
one another or working together. That’s where attention to digital body language comes into play.

“Digital body language is the cues and signals we send in our digital communication that make
up the subtext of our messages”. (Erica Dhawan - FOUNDER AND CEO OF COTENTIAL).

Getting digital body language wrong can have a startling impact on your team’s efficiency and
effectiveness. Poor digital communication costs the average office worker four hours per week.

12
2. Your (Digital) Leadership Style

As a strategic, ethical digital marketer, you are a leader influencing the mindset and behaviors of
your team, your organization, your customers, and beyond. So regardless of where you sit in your
organization, or the specific role you hold, your leadership style will come into play. Knowing what
kind of leader you are—and the kind of leader you aspire to be—will help you make better
decisions and be a more effective colleague.

There are ten common leadership styles:

To determine which style is best for you, consider first which come naturally to you, and which
align best with your values.

You can also consider the following questions:

● Do you prefer making decisions alone, or as a collective?

● Are you focused on short or long-term goals?
● Are you motivated by empowerment or by the direction you take?
● What are the key features of a strong team dynamic?

13
3. Pivots and Course Corrections

What happens when you realize your digital marketing strategy is not working as well as you'd
hoped? Whether a campaign has only small glitches or is simply ineffective, every digital marketer
will come up against this moment at some point. Every team, and every digital leader, is going to
have to deal with change because sometimes life throws a curveball.

In today’s dynamic environment, course correction is almost a guarantee

If you built a series of great KPIs to measure success, the need to course correct should not be
a surprise
It’s easier to correct small things than wait until the issue gets bigger and more disruptive
Transparency goes a long way to quickly building and maintaining trust; share changes with your
team early

Signs That You Need Course Correction

● You are not hitting your sales goals
● You are not hitting your profit goals
● You are losing customers/clients
● You have negative sentiment about your service/product
● Your marketing is not yielding necessary topline results
● Your marketing ROI is lower than projected

Most Common Organizational Causes

● Unclear goals
● Poor strategy and execution
● Poor communication
● Wrong resources
● Low employee morale
→
● Lack of buy-in
● Lack of resources
● Lack of follow-through

14
There are a number of possible issues that could be contributing to your digital strategy's poor
performance. Click through the following categories to learn about some of these issues. As you
look through each problem, remember that yellow means the element is slowed down by the
issue, red means it is halted, and gray means that it becomes null and void.

Poor Product Quality

Lack of innovation

Wrong Marketing Tactics

Wrong image

15
 Wrong Target

Wrong Go-To-Market Strategy

When your marketing strategy goes off course, always look to internal issues first. You cannot
control the market, your customers, or other outside forces, but you can make change from within;
so, that's the place to start. Once you've examined what internal challenges may have kept your
strategy from reaching its full potential, then it's worth looking outward to other factors.

Identify external issues

When it becomes clear that it is not internal issues standing in the way of success, it is time to
turn your focus outward. At that point, here is a process to consider to help identify the issue and
set your plan back on course.

A feedback loop provides a methodology for taking issues that come from an external source
(your customer) and using this insight to measure, learn, and build from this data that helps us
continuously improve based on what we hear from the consumer (Rusche 2016). The figure below
illustrates this cyclical process.

16
 ● Build robust dashboards
● Drive transparency in the organization
● Question status quo
● Pay attention to internal and external conditions equally
● Set up periodic reviews
● Correct early and often

CONSIDER: Remember, the only entity you can control in the marketplace is your own company.

17
 4. ETHICS: BIAS AND DIVERSITY

1. Interview with Amy Johnson

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we all carry around bias for, or against, certain kinds of people.
Those biases can affect how we make decisions, including who we target in our marketing
campaigns, who we hire, and much more. Working in marketing, as we've learned, is
fundamentally about centering people, so it's important for us to be aware of the assumptions we
carry around with us - whether we are aware of them or not - about the people we work with and
serve. Now, let’s listen to this interview with Amy Johnson, ED of Project Implicit, on how we
assess implicit bias:

“So the implicit association test or IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts
and evaluations or stereotypes. The main idea here is that making a response is easier when
closely related items share the same response key. So things that are more familiar, are more
automatic in terms of association, will have a shorter response time.

When you're taking an IAT, you're asked to sort words or pictures into categories that appear on
the left or right hand side of your computer screen, by pressing the E for the left or the eye for the
right keys as quickly as you can.

So let's say you're taking the race it in the first part of the it, you would be asked to sort photos of
white and black people into categories. So if the category Black was on the left, and a picture of
a black person appeared on the screen, you would press the E key, if a picture of a white person
appeared, you would press the I key.

In the second part of the IAT, you sort words relating to evaluation, so things like good and bad.
So if the category good was on the left to start, and a pleasant word, or good word appeared on
the screen, you would then press the E key. If an unpleasant or a bad word appeared on the
screen, you would press the I key.

In the third part of the IAT, the categories are combined, and you were asked to sort both concept
and evaluation words one at a time. So the categories on the left side would be black and good.
And the categories on the right hand side would be white and bad. It's worth noting here that on
our demonstration site, the order in which these blocks are presented varies across participants,
so that half of the participants who come to the site will see black good and white bad paired first,
and the other half will see black bad white good paired first.

In the fourth part of the IAT, the placement of the concept switches. So if the category Black was
previously on the left, now it appears on the right, the number of trials in this part of the IAT is
increased in order to minimize the effects of having taken the test already.

And then in the final part of the IAT the fifth part, the categories are combined in the opposite to
what they were before. So if the category on the left had previously been black, good, now it will
be black bad. So that IAT score is based on how long it takes a person on average, to sort the
words in the third part of the IAT, versus the fifth part of the IAT. We would say that someone has
an implicit preference or automatic association for black people relative to white people, if they
are faster to categorize words when black people in good share response key and white and bad
share response key relative to the reverse pairing.
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So when we're thinking about how folks should consider their results, or what they should do with
the results that they're shown, we know that the the IAT is an effective education tool for raising
awareness about implicit bias, but it shouldn't be and cannot be used for diagnostic or selection
purposes. So things like hiring, qualification, promotion, evaluation, we we strongly suggest or
strongly recommend that we don't use the it for those purposes. So for example, using the IAT to
choose jurors is not an intended use of the test. But it would be appropriate to use the IAT to
teach jurors about implicit bias.

It's also important to note that the IAT does not meet standards of measurement reliability for
diagnostic use. So think about it like a blood pressure reading or a blood pressure cuff. Your
reading might change from one doctor's visit to another depending on how stressed or how tired
you might be, or even how much coffee you had that morning. The IAT can also change from one
time to another depending on where you currently are, if you've taken the study recently, your
recent thoughts or experiences, or deliberate strategies you might use to influence test results.

If you've taken an IAT and you have questions about your results, we have some information on
our site at implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs or FAQs, to read some frequently asked questions
about how they test and how it's scored. And I just wanted to say thank you all for your
participation. Projects Implicit couldn't do our work without participants like you being curious
about implicit bias and volunteering your time to take the tests. Thank you”

Taking an implicit bias test gives you a snapshot of yourself in the moment. Think of it like taking
your blood pressure. It may be higher one day, lower the next, but it gives you a sense of where
you are and what you can improve upon.

Check your “pulse”: get a snapshot of your implicit biases on race, religion, or gender, by taking
an implicit association test: Take a Test

Implicit bias often plays out in who we end up hiring. Many marketing departments are run by one
kind of person, who then hire people who look, think, and believe like they do. The results are
clear. In the U.S., at least, there is a considerable lack of diversity in marketing departments.

19
According to the Spencer Stuart CMO Tenure Study, released in April, 2021:
In 2020, almost half (47%) of all CMOs in our study were women, up from 43% in 2019 and
36% in 2018. Women represented more than half (52%) of the incoming class of CMOs in
2020, an increase from the previous year. Unfortunately, there was a slight drop in
racial/ethnic diversity among all CMOs: To 13% in 2020 from 14% in 2019. Among the
incoming CMOs in 2020, only 12% were racially or ethnically diverse—a steep drop from 19%
in 2019. While more progress undoubtedly needs to be made, there has been some positive
movement in this space. Some CMOs with diverse backgrounds have been promoted to other
roles, such as Rick Gomez to EVP and chief food and beverage officer at Target, with Cara
Sylvester assuming the chief marketing position. Others, such as Citi CMO Carla Zakhem-
Hassan, were promoted internally. Additionally, advancements are being made beyond the
100 companies in our study. For example, Deirdre Findlay was named global CMO of Condé
Nast and Dara Treseder joined Peloton as SVP and head of global marketing and
communications. (Welch 2021)

2. Diverse Teams

But diverse teams have been proven to perform better. Diverse teams are better positioned to
unlock innovation that drives market growth. Diversity further enables nonlinear novel thinking
and adaptability that innovation requires. Moreover, those companies with the highest levels of
digital investment exhibited the strongest link between diversity and innovation revenue. Diverse
management teams were more innovative than less diverse teams, confirmed BCG after
surveying 1700 companies of varying sizes and differing country locations. BCG used the
indicator of innovation for the portion of revenue from products and services launched within the
last 3 years. Companies with above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue
from innovation (45% of total) than from companies with below average diversity (26%). This 19%
innovation-related advantage translated into overall better financial performance. (Levine 2020)

Diverse teams may also perform better because they focus more on facts, and process those
facts more carefully, than more homogenous teams. (Rock and Grant 2016). The status quo is
holding too many organizations back. Our challenge as digital marketers and leaders who want
to deliver for our companies is to consider how we can build diverse, effective teams that
understand and speak to, the people we seek to serve. If you seek to enter diverse markets, you
must become the market you seek. (Del Johnson - PRINCIPAL, BACKSTAGE CAPITAL)

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 5. FUTURE-PROOFING: TECHNOLOGY THAT HELPS US LEAD

Emerging Tech and Trends

As a Digital Marketing leader it is important to stay on top of emerging trends and to understand
how technological advances could impact your profession. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality,
automation, the internet of things, and gamification are some of the technology that is getting
attention in the field and is expected to have an impact on the industry. Look at the definitions
below followed by a video to provide context on how exactly these emerging trends and
technology impact you as a digital marketer.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is described as the theory and development of computer systems
able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. For example: Alexa or Siri. Chat
Bots. Autocorrect. It is an opportunity to automate jobs and are already implementing AI based
approaches to refine target market, develop copy and content for campaigns,

Virtual Reality (VR): VR is an artificial environment created through software that simulates a
'real' environment and allows the user to navigate through this through sight and sound.

Augmented Reality (AR): AR is an artificial sensory components created through software that
enhances our experience of the 'real' environment.

Automation: Automation is defined as the concept of making a process or a system happen

automatically.

The Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT includes devices which are internet connected which use
information from the environment to make intelligent decisions. We can collect a lot of data,
regarding customer behavior.

Gamification: Gamification is the use of techniques commonly associated with games in order
to encourage engagement. Gamified elements are seen on social media, like when you click on
a notification.

Glossary
For your convenience, here is a list of the key terms presented in this module.

Chief Listening Officer: A chief listening officer supervises internal and external communications
to gain insight on consumer wants and needs, and build a strategy based on this information to
keep and gain back clients.

Data Scientist: A data scientist is responsible for translating data sets into valuable insight that
is then used to learn about consumers and their relationship to the brand.

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Digital Marketing Specialist
A digital marketing specialist focuses on digital campaigns and messaging

SEO Analyst: A search engine optimization (SEO) analyst improves a brand's visibility through
strategies that help improve their search engine ranking

Social Media Manager: A social media manager is responsible for handling strategy and
maintenance of social networks to ensure consistency with the business' brand, and to address
consumer feedback.

UX Designer: A user experience (UX) designer, as the name itself indicates, is responsible for
optimizing a customer's experience. They do this through various forms of testing that determine
what is the most effective path forward for items such as landing pages, calls to action, and so
on.

Vlogger: Vloggers today are also commonly referred to as "influencers." In this role, their main
source of income is product sponsorship, reviews, and advertising through video content.

22
 References and Resources
The content of this module was informed by the sources listed in the References section.
Please consult the Resources section for a complete list of required and recommended
materials as well as additional resources.

References
● AESC. "Communicating In the New Normal: Digital Body Language with Erica Dhawan."
AESC. Accessed March 14, 2022. URL.
● Association of National Advertisers (ANA). "US Marketing and Advertising Industry Still
Lacks Racial and Ethnic Diversity." Marketing Charts. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Dhawan, Erica, and Quester. 2021. The Digital Communication Crisis. Ebook. URL.
● Gray, Dave."Pre-Mortem." Gamestorming. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Indeed Editorial Team. "10 Common Leadership Styles (Plus How to Find Your Own)."
Indeed Career Guide. Updated December 8, 2021 URL.
● Khinda, Baz. "Quick Tips the RACI Matrix - Surely CARS Is Better?" Wellingtone. Updated
June 10, 2014.URL.
● Levine, Stuart. "Diversity Confirmed to Boost Innovation and Financial Results." Forbes.
Updated Jan 15, 2020. URL.
● Martin, Nicole, and OFFEO Team. "7 Digital Marketing Jobs That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago."
Offeo. Updated November 11, 2021. URL.
● NYC Data Science Academy. "About Us." nycdatascience.com. Accessed October 7, 2022.
URL.
● Project Implicit. "Take A Test." Implicit.Harvard.Edu. Updated 2011. URL.
● Raedeke, Christy. “Redefining risk - how to make bold moves as a CMO.” Interview by Will
Whitman. CMO Alliance, June 9, 2021. Spotify audio, 38:07. URL.
● Reed, Rob. "Ep 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich Works CMO Brandon Rhoten."
Clicks 2 Bricks, 2020. Podcast, Spotify audio, 49:24. URL.
● Rock, David, and Heidi Grant. "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter." Harvard Business
Review. Updated November 04, 2016.URL.
● Royse, Matt. "How To Take Smart and Calculated Risks [Infographic]." Knowledge
Enthusiast. Updated February 28, 2019. URL.
● Rusche, Bryan. "Customer Feedback Loop: Why It’S Critical". Business 2 Community.
Updated April 13, 2016. URL.
● Sahasrabudhe, Amrita. 2020. "Amrita Sahasrabudhe.". Amazing Marketer Quotes. Updated
2020. URL.
● Skillcrush. "7 Of the Best Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs” – Skillcrush (blog). Updated
2021. URL.
● Webb, John. "10 Principles of Successful Risk Taking." The Intrapreneur (blog). Published
September 20, 2011. URL.
● Welch, Greg. "CMO Tenure Study: Progress for Women, Less for Racial Diversity." Spencer
Stuart. Updated April 2021. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media: Reed, Rob. "Ep 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich
Works CMO Brandon Rhoten." Clicks 2 Bricks, 2020. Podcast, Spotify audio, 49:24. URL.
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24
 MODULE 6: POSITIONING YOURSELF FOR SUCCESS

INDEX

1. Positioning Yourself as a Digital Marketer (Pag 2)

1. Advice From Audrey Boyle: On Her Work And The Role of Personal Branding
2. Personal Branding Starts with Telling Your Story: Telling Our Leadership Origin Stories
3. Personal Branding for Professional Success
4. Taking Control of Your Personal Brand as a Digital Marketer

2. Finding the Role for You in Digital Marketing (Pag 13)

1. Advice from Hassan Ali, Creative Director of Potbelly

2. Advice from Shaily Hakimian
3. Creating a New Role for Yourself
4. Tapping into the Power of LinkedIn
5. Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

3. Networks and Networking → What Kind of Networker Are You? (Pag 20)

4. MIRIAM BROSSEAU MASTERCLASS (Pag 23)

Introduction

As an aspiring digital marketer, you’ve learned—or know intrinsically—how important it is to

present your brand well online. You know the value of thinking strategically, and have the POST
mnemonic to help guide you with that thinking. The tools and technologies you use are only as
good as the insights they offer, and as a result, affect the actions and connections you are able
to produce. Now, let’s think about how to use a similar approach to position you as a digital
marketer.

We already analyzed Digital Marketing through the lens of the needs, goals and purpose of the
profession. Now, let's apply these valuable tools to yourself. This module is about how to position
yourself and set your own path for success. We will study techniques and approaches. Where
and how do I fit in? What ethics do I want to uphold? What are the ways in which I can reach my
audience? Where is the field headed and what role is best for me to play? Through the advice of
working professionals and personal branding strategy, we will explore how to position yourself,
find your role and network effectively to grow in the field.

Learning Objectives: (1) Synthesize personal learning insights from previous modules; (2)
Discover possible career paths in digital marketing; (3) Develop a personal branding statement
and accountability plan to position themselves as an emerging digital marketer

1
 1. POSITIONING YOURSELF AS A DIGITAL MARKETER

1. Advice From Audrey Boyle: On Her Work And The Role of Personal Branding

Audrey Boyle is a lecturer with the University of Arizona in their Global Campus, a c-suite
consultant within the world of social media, and a creative director on a project called “How Men
Cry.” Her sphere of genius within the digital marketing arena is that she is a flow catcher. She
captures when people are in their flow, when they’re having a conversation, because she
understands very well how people learn. She does this with images, video, and audio too.

In the following audio clips, we will hear about one quality that every successful digital marketer
has, and some advice that Audrey has for digital marketers.

Learn all the time

I think that one quality that every successful digital marketer has is... I recently learned of a phrase
called the Philomath, and the Philomath is that you love to learn new things because I think digital
media changes so often. So you're naturally a curious person and different styles of learning as
well, so you present things in visual, in auditory or kinesthetic. Like there's the various ways that
you can present the information too, which is digital marketing. But it's all about being curious, it's
all about learning new things because the industry changes so much and you do so many different
things that there's always like a new shiny. Second to that, I would probably say, strategy or be
able to see the bigger picture.

The importance of personal branding

I would say some advice that I would share with a new digital marketer is personal branding. You
know, put on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others. The case is really the same
when it comes to your brand. Understand what your brand is, survey your friends, talk to your
colleagues, and then get a hold of your brand and put your brand out there. I think that then you
can create a foundation of things that you really like doing and that you're good at doing, much
faster.

Another piece of advice that I would say is self-curiosity. You are actually in control in the long
run, of your career, of your life. So self-curiosity, when you're doing something you really like and,
you think in your head, it pops in your head, like, “Oh, this is so fun” What is the action that you're
taking? And so looking at it as an action and not like, oh, “I'm going to do this specific job title.”
So strip the job title away from it and start looking at the specific actions you're taking every day.
I think that that is the way to do it.

If you are going to organize your closet, when it comes to like the KonMari method, the joy of
tidying up. If you're going to organize your closet, the first thing you do is you get all your clothes
out and you throw it in the middle of the room. I think that that's what it's like when it comes to
what you do for a living. It's like get all the stuff that you're doing, throw it on some type of piece

2
of paper, and then start to put what you like doing, what you don't like doing. At least you will have
more clarity around what you don't like doing and you can work towards possibly not doing that
in the future. But you will at least have a lot more information and then you will be able to do more
of what you like doing from a future standpoint when it comes to your career. That's my advice.

2. Personal Branding Starts with Telling Your Story: Telling Our Leadership Origin Stories

Definition of Public Narrative: A framework of telling the stories of Self, Us, and Now that
creates shared understanding and investment in the cause or movement, based on the work of
Dr. Marshall Ganz.

Story of Self

When we talk about personal branding, the first thing that we discuss is telling our story—being
able to share who we are, what we're all about, and where we want to go, with the rest of the
world. One really powerful framework that helps us tell our stories is the “Story of Self,” which
helps us to invite others to see and understand what we are trying to achieve as digital marketers.
It is part of a bigger framework pioneered by Dr. Marshall Ganz of Harvard University called
"Public Narrative," in which he posits that there are three core stories that any leader needs to be
able to tell if they would like to make a change in the world.

Those components of a “story of self” are a challenge, a choice, and an outcome:

Challenge: The challenge is something that you came up against. It is an obstacle, something
that stood in the way of what you wanted to do, be, or achieve. Keep in mind that the challenge

3
doesn't have to be something dire and terrible. It can be something relatively minor, but it has to
be meaningful to where you land in your outcome. It has to be the root of what got you to where
you are today.

Choice: The choice can come in the form of several paths, possible opportunities, or options
ahead of you of which you decided to take one over another. A choice is a key aspect because
when we show that we had to make a decision in terms of our own stories and our narratives, we
are letting our listeners and our audience know that they too have that same agency. They can
also make a choice. As digital marketers, we are asking them to choose things—to make a
purchase and to make a decision. Therefore, emphasizing choice in the stories that we tell is vital.

Outcome: The outcome is the result of what happened when you faced that challenge and made
that choice. What does that mean for where you are now and what you are doing? The outcome
doesn't have to be perfect and all sunshine, rainbows, and roses. It can be more like saying: "And
that's why I'm here today." It can be a description of what brought you to a particular space, where
you are now, and how you learned new things. It doesn't have to be a perfect culmination; it can
be the beginning of a new story.

CONSIDER: As digital marketers, we are trying to change behaviors and beliefs, and encourage
people to take different actions. We are trying to influence the buying of a product whether that
be buying a product or service, signing onto a petition, or being part of a larger nonprofit mission.
We are marketing leaders who are asking people to make changes so we need to be able to tell
compelling stories about ourselves, our organizations, our companies, and our products.

Story of Self: Leah Neaderthal

Dr. Marshall Ganz, is a Harvard Professor and social activist who posited that there are three
stories every leader should be able to tell if they want to make a change. (1) The story of self; (2)
The story of us (3) The story of Now. He also developed the theory of “Public Narrative”.

Regarding the story of self and how it can help to position yourself as a leader. It is made up of
three parts: The challenge, the choice and the outcome. For example, Leah Neaderthal, coach
and consult businesses of their own to help them make more sales. It is not a resume, it is her
story and it begins with a challenge “When I left my corporate marketing career and started my
first consulting business, I learned three things very quickly. It is harder to sell your own stuff than
someone else´s; Marketing is not selling, and I had no idea how to sell. Her challenge was learning
how to sell. After the challenge comes the choice, so she teached herself how to sell. Now Leah
has hooked us, and we finally see the outcome that emerges from that challenge and the choice
that she made. She says: “Now I am here doing this work with people just like me. Now I teach
what took me years to learn to other entrepreneurs in weeks”. She gave examples of the clients
that she worked with and how she helped implement this version of what she learned for herself.

Opening with the challenge makes Leah relatable (maybe to our own experience). We see her
choice and that this choice is what she presents to her audience.

4
The outcome explains who she is and what is she doing.

Ask to yourself:

1. What is the challenge that lead you where you are today? What led you to explore more
about digital marketing and made you consider a career in this wild and varied field?
2. What is the choice that you ultimately made?
3. What is the outcome? How did that land you from where you were to where you find
yourself now?

Personal stories are the emotional glue that connects your audience to your message.

RECOMMENDED video (from 26:10-29:50). Bozoma Saint John (@badassboz on Instagram)

talks about personal branding and showing up exactly as you are:

- I see your intention and approach to your personal brand. You have an incredibly
influential personal brand and that includes your amazing style and strong physical
presence. It's not just about surface-level things like hair, nails and clothing. These things
can be powerful psychological expressions, especially for those who help others. Could
you tell us more about the choices you've made when it comes to presenting yourself in
the workplace and beyond?

- Yes, it really frustrates me when people say that it's superficial. Who is it superficial for?
We just passed the CROWN Act, which allows people to wear their hair in its natural
textures at work without fear of being fired. It's only superficial for those who have always
had it. So yes, I make a conscious choice to be very black, very fem all the time because
that's who I am. I hope that by doing this, it allows others to be themselves too. I'm not
saying everyone has to dress in multi-colored leopard print or have their nails done or
wear a full face of makeup. But I hope that everyone feels free to express themselves
however they want. When you don't have that freedom, it's hard to do good work.

- I remember when I used to have to conform to a certain way of looking. Sometimes I still
have to do that. There are people who don't think I should show up the way I do now.
There were people who said in August when I was announced for this job that I should do
something differently. But no, I don't think so. The global CMO of Netflix looks like this and
twerks when she wants to, wears a bathing suit when she wants to, reads a ton of books
when she wants to, and listens to R.I.P. DMX when she wants to. That's the freedom to
be able to be as I am, so that all of my energy can be put into my brilliance.

- For me, it's very important that I can show up exactly as I am. It does take a bit of energy
to do that, but in the long run it's so much better. I used to have to be careful about my
tone because sometimes my passion would come off sounding like anger. But sometimes
I'm right and I need to let people know. The ability to be able to be who I am is such a
privilege. For those who are uncomfortable with that privilege, it's time for them to step

5
 aside. I'm going to be who I am and I hope we all are.

- My next feat is publishing a book, which is taking my authenticity a step further.

3. Personal Branding for Professional Success

The idea of personal branding is believed to have been first introduced by Tom Peters in a Fast
Company article called “The Brand Called You” back in 1997 (ANNEX 1). In this article, Peters
says, “Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in,
all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies:
Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand
called You. It’s that simple —and that hard. And that inescapable.”

The main core concepts of the article:

- Branding is essential in the modern age, especially in the business world.

- Everyone needs to understand the importance of branding and act as the CEO of their own
company, “Me Inc.”
- Big companies understand the importance of brands and use them to their advantage.
- The Web and email have made branding even more important, as people rely on brand names
to decide which sites and emails are worth visiting.
- Professional services firms are a great example of how to use branding to one’s advantage.
-You are a brand, not just an employee
-Identify what makes you different from your competitors
-Identify your strongest qualities and traits
-Create a feature-benefit model of yourself
-Forget job titles and descriptions
-Focus on what you do that adds value
-Take credit for your accomplishments
-Ask yourself what you want to be famous for
- Visibility is essential to marketing your personal brand
- Enhance your profile by taking on freelance projects, teaching classes, writing articles, and
speaking on panels
- Everything you do and don't do communicates the value and character of your brand
- Word-of-mouth marketing is key to building your brand, so nurture your network of colleagues
consciously
- Power is not a dirty word and is not just about ladder power or who has the biggest office/title
- Power is about influence, reputational power and making a significant contribution
- Consumers are attracted to powerful brands and the same is true in the workplace
- Power can be used responsibly and intelligently in small, slow, and subtle ways
- Power is largely a matter of perception and brand You can be grown through projects and
creating a marketing brochure for yourself

6
- Projects create measurables, deliverables and braggables which can be used to boost the
power of brand You
- Loyalty is more important than ever, but it is not blind loyalty to the company.
- Treat your résumé as a marketing brochure and regularly check the market to have a reliable
read on your brand’s value.
- A career is now a checkerboard or a maze of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the
diagonal, and even go backward when that makes sense.
- Reinvent yourself on a semiregular basis by writing your own mission statement.
- Measure yourself against being a great teammate, an exceptional expert, a broad-gauged
visionary, and a businessperson.
- You are a brand and you are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success.

A personal brand is what people feel, think and say about you when you are not around. It has to
do with your skills, the impression you leave, how you treat people, how you talk about who you
are, the actions you take as a professional and the way you market yourself.

How you craft your perception? Personal branding is how you intentionally craft the perception
online and offline. Personal branding is an important part of positioning yourself for professional
success.

Regarding the PIE model, only 10% of career advancement can be attributed to performance, the
other 90& comes from image and exposure, both of which can be advanced through creating and
managing your personal brand. Research shows that personal branding helps individuals, attain
positive career outcomes through increasing social capital, which is basically all the good that
comes from our networks of relationships with other people, financial rewards and career
opportunities. But as with any kind of marketing, we need to be careful.

There is a fine line between effective personal branding and fluffy self-promotion. Tom Fishburn,
also known as the Marketoonist, reminds us that thinking of ourselves too much as brands can
take away from what is human and real. If everyone acts too much like a personal brand manager,
all communication can start to feel like marketing. So consider what makes you different. What
excites you or what you would like to be known for and talk about that consistently online and off.
But keep it real along the way. Do not let the talking and creating get in the way of the listening.
Show your authentic self and you will draw in the people who will most appreciate who you really
are.
CONSIDER: What types of personal brands do you already see out in the world, and which are
the most inspiring and appealing to you? As we consider your personal brand, it’s helpful to reflect
on the ones that have most resonated with you, and what it was about them that made them
appealing. Think about how you might replicate that for yourself, in your own way.

Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your
heroes, you want to see like your heroes. (Austin Kleon - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING
AUTHOR)

7
What Is Your Current Personal Brand? How to Find Out and Start Taking Control.

The first step in taking control of your personal brand is to understand what’s already out there—
that means conducting an audit. There are five steps to conducting an audit of your personal
brand online:

1. Google your name.

Do this at least three times a year. You may want to consider setting up a Google Alert for
your name as well, which you can do here: Google Alerts -Monitor the Web for interesting
new content. Be sure to check out image results as well, and look 5–10 pages deep.

Ask: Do I “own” the first page—are the most prominent results all me? Are the results
representative of who I am and how I want to be seen? If you find anything negative, can
it be removed?

You may have to reach out to the person who posted it originally to request its removal.
The other strategy for finding unwanted results is simply to share more current, positive
information, more frequently, so that is what rises to the top of the search results.

Tip: Consider searching for your: first and last name, name and town/city, your name and
current and past email addresses, as well as your current and past usernames to be sure
you’re catching all results.

2. Audit your social media.

Review your accounts, including pics, videos, and comments. Picture yourself in the shoes
of a potential client or employer; what does your online presence say about who you are,
and what you value?

3. Do damage control as needed.

At some point, most of us have posted something online that we later regretted. If those
posts are still lingering, now is the time to address them. There are a few possible steps
you can take:

● Delete photos, videos, and comments, and untag yourself where needed.
● Review your friends/connections, and consider which relationships are most
important to keep up online, and which may be unhelpful.
● In some cases, it may be appropriate to simply close an old account altogether
and open a new one to start fresh. Start with a new email address and consider
adjusting your name as it appears on your profile (add a middle initial, for instance).

4. Improve your profile’s first impression.

8
 Choose a current proline picture that represents how you want to be seen. Rewrite your
tagline or bio to reflect the kind of work/role(s) you hope to find in digital marketing. Make
sure that your contact information is up-to-date.

5. Adjust your privacy settings and set up a monitoring schedule.

Review the settings for each platform where you are active. Who can see what you post?
Make sure you know how they are set, and adjust them to fit your need. Then make a plan
to come back and review them again in a set period of time—in, say, three months.

What Sets You Apart? Your Zone of Genius

In his book “The Big Leap,” psychologist Gay Hendricks coined the term “the zone of genius” and
addresses it from a personal, as well as a professional, perspective. Hendricks posits that there
are four “zones of competence”: The zone of incompetence, the zone of competence, the zone
of excellence and the zone of genius. The zone of genius is where we realize our full potential.
Recognizing yours can not only help you stand out from the crowd, but feel more confident as you
do so.

Zones of Competence

1. Genius

Activity in which I excel and keep developing. Time flies and I feel energized when I’m engaged
in it. It brings me personal satisfaction.
Positive Ratio Satisfaction/ Time

2. Excellence

Activity in which I excel, for which I’m recognised as an expert, it does not challenge me
intellectually and delivers little to no satisfaction.
Neutral Ratio Satisfaction/ Time

3. Incompetence

Activity in which I struggle to accomplish and which I do not like. I receive negative feedback.
Negative Ratio Satisfaction/ Time

4. Competence

Activity in which I achieve to a reasonable standard and that others can do just as well. It brings
me little to no satisfaction.
Negative to Neutral Ratio Satisfaction/ Time

9
To find your zone of genius, Hendricks proposes asking yourself the following questions:

● “What do I most love to do?" (I love it so much I can do it for long periods without getting
tired or bored)
● “What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work?”
● “In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to the amount
of time spent?”
● “What is my unique ability?” (What can I do which others are unlikely to be able to do at
this level?)

Finding Ikigai

Another useful framework to think about your professional aspirations, personal fulfillment, and
how that all comes together as you craft your personal brand is the Japanese technique of ikigai.
Ikigai is intended to help you identify what brings you meaning—what gets you out of bed in the
morning. Take some time to review the graphic and consider what might fall into each area for
you. How might you share these aspects of yourself online to help ensure that the brand you’re
crafting on the outside reflects who you are on the inside?

10
4. Taking Control of Your Personal Brand as a Digital Marketer

Five Elements of a Personal Brand

Your personal brand already exists—not only on Google, but in the minds of the people you’ve
interacted with. The question is not whether you have one or not; rather, it’s the extent to which
you take control of that brand. There are many ways to approach personal branding. For all of
them, it comes down to finding the best of what’s inside a person, and making sure that it’s
reflected clearly and consistently on the outside. Executive coach and author Heather Backstrom
proposes that there are five core elements of a personal brand: Values, vision, purpose,
authenticity, and perception.

1. Values: What are the values that drive who you are and what you do? There may be a
lot. Consider the ones you will prioritize with the framework below.

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2. Vision: What kind of world do you envision, and what kind of future do you imagine for
yourself? Where are you now, and where do you want to be? This is your vision, which
helps you get clarity on what you’re working towards.

Here’s an exercise to help you think about your own vision: Imagine it’s exactly one year
from today, and you’re looking back on everything that’s happened. Consider questions
like: Where are you? Who are you with? What have you accomplished? What have you
learned? What are you proud of? What changed? Once you’ve thought about it a bit,
complete the sentence, “It’s [the date of one year from today], and it’s been an amazing
year.” Then describe the highlights of that year in one minute. Try it again, testing out
some different ideas. Try it with a friend. As you repeat this exercise you’ll get clarity on
what you really want to accomplish—this is your vision for yourself and the world. Take
this exercise to the next level. Visit this website, and send yourself a message about your
vision today to be delivered in one year. Then, when you receive it, you’ll have a chance
to look back and assess: FutureMe: Write a Letter to your Future Self.

3. Purpose: Your purpose is like your mission. It’s the strategy you take in order to reach
your vision. What do you do in order to get there? How do you treat people along the way?
Purpose is what keeps us focused on our goals, and not caught up in what others are
doing. Consider: What falls at the center of the Ikigai diagram for you? How does that
sense of purpose drive how you act in the world, and the choices you make?

4. Authenticity: When someone is authentic, we sense that the way they present
themselves on the outside is aligned with who they really are on the inside. When you
share your story with honesty and vulnerability, others will notice that, trust you, and have
more interest in joining you in that narrative. Authenticity drives entrepreneur Gary
Vaynerchuck’s advice to “document, don’t create.” He encourages anyone interested in
creating an influential presence online to show up regularly, and share the things that are
important to you (Vaynerchuck 2017). Read more about his ambitious approach here.

5. Perception: We define the world by how we perceive it, and by how others perceive us.
But we can also control that perception. Part of this means being intentional about our
external looks—but that is only our personal image, not our whole personal brand. More
importantly, we can use our language to influence the way people perceive us. Consider
the section on “digital body language” from the previous unit. For instance, what is the
language you use online that tells others about how you want to be seen?

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 2. FINDING THE ROLE FOR YOU IN DIGITAL MARKETING

You’ve learned a lot about the world of digital marketing—how to know your audience, set goals,
be strategic, measure your success, consider humanity and ethics, and stay attuned to the future
of digital marketing. Now the question is: What role(s) in the world of digital marketing will help
you feel fulfilled and successful, and make an impact?

Everyone’s career path is a little different. Let’s hear from a few people already working in the
field about what they have done, and would recommend.

1. Advice from Hassan Ali, Creative Director of Potbelly

Do an industry-relevant passion project: This is a turbo-boost for standing out in the job market.
(E.g. start a podcast, a blog like this, etc.)

Cold-approach a brand you want to work with: You could help them by proposing a solution to
one of their glaring problems—even prepare a PDF presentation.

Follow the money: Understand that #BecauseCOVID, brands will be VERY ROI-focused. For
every effort I'm working on (at least for ones that involve any considerable amount of the
organization's budget), I have to prove it'll bring in revenue on the back-end. If it doesn't directly
grow the business, it's not important. Brands can't explain vague stats like "brand awareness lift"
to their investors / board of directors / employees. It's about the money.

RECOMMENDED READING: Ali’s second suggestion (cold outreach) closely mirrors Ramit
Sethi’s approach to interviews called The Briefcase Technique. “The secret to selling yourself is
SHOW, DON’T TELL.” In this article, "How to Sell Yourself for More Money with the Briefcase
Technique," Ramit Sethi discusses what he recommends for job interviews, promotions, and
freelance negotiations.

2. Advice from Shaily Hakimian (Full interview in ANNEX 2)

• LinkedIn is a great way to show off your special skills and experiences.
• Don't be afraid to share what makes you special and unique.
• You are worth it and should be compensated fairly for your work.
• Leverage LinkedIn to your advantage and use it to make connections.
• Keep an eye out for those who will appreciate you and your work.
• Visit yoursocialmediasherpa.com for more resources.

13
3. Creating a New Role for Yourself

Bridgett Colling, a seasoned digital marketer and writer who is currently the Director of Marketing
and Communications at Figo, has carefully crafted every step of her career. In the sections that
follow, we'll learn a little bit about how Bridgett designed a new role for herself inside her previous
company, a digital consultancy. She pivoted from being the Marketing Manager to the Director of
Marketing and People Operations. Her path speaks not only to how you might effectively shift
roles within your own organization, but to the intrinsic link between marketing, customer-centricity,
and company culture.

In considering this shift, Bridgett had already learned from her colleague Lisa Colton that
marketing is all about people Communications, in general, is kind of like the nervous system of
an organization.

Communications is like the nervous system of your organization, coordinating functions internally,
picking up on influences from outside the organization to respond to, and intentionally crafting
how you engage with others. Communications is just as important for getting your internal team
in alignment as it is for activating your supporters and constituents. (Lisa Colton - FOUNDER AND
PRESIDENT, DARIM ONLINE).

Bridgett noticed that at her agency, they were excellent at what they offered, but that’s not what
drew clients to them and had them coming back for more. It was the customer service and the
interactions with the team. She concluded that, for professional services companies, doing good
work is table stakes, or the minimum requirement for a business arrangement. What gets clients
to buy (and keep buying) is the people who are involved in these interactions (Colling 2020).

This is how Zappos developed its whole business model, centered around customer care: “Our
number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most
of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will
just happen naturally on its own” (Tony Hsieh - CEO ZAPPOS)

What Bridget Did?

Creating a new role for myself

● Identified an unmet need within my organization
● Wrote a job description
● Talked to other folks in people operations
● Hired someone to help take on the work I wanted to delegate
● Waited...

It took a lot of conversations, but eventually the new role came to be. It was worth the work and
the wait.

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Bridgett's New Day-to-Day

The Marketing Side:

● Overseeing blog and social

● Writing email newsletters
● Organizing webinars
● Publishing Videos
● Creating and testing new marketing initiatives (podcasts, original research, online training
initiatives)
● Overseeing SEO vendor and online reviews
● Overseeing rebranding efforts

The People Ops Side.

● D&I work—Identifying gaps in our org chart

● Professional development pathing
● Manager accountability
● Team member recognition and engagement
● Conflict resolution and support

Bridgett has since found a new role, continually pushing herself and evolving her career, and
bringing the insight she gained from previous jobs into her current company.

RECOMMENDED READING: Here are Bridgett Colling's tips for finding a new job, even when
there’s a pandemic happening. In this article, "How I Landed a New Job in 3 Weeks During a
Pandemic Recession," she even includes a template for reaching out to your network to help you
find the perfect role, and specific suggestions for using LinkedIn to find close connections at
companies you’d like to work for.

1. Build your skills: What you know? Build the right kills
2. Leverage your points of difference: What difference you from the crowd? Passions.
3. Develop a narrative.
4. Reintroduce yourself.
5. Prove your worth.

Recommended: Taking Control of Your Personal Brand

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4. Tapping into the Power of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not the flashiest social network, but it has got significant power when it comes to
personal branding for professional success.

● There are 61 million senior-level influencers and 65 million decision-makers on LinkedIn.

● There are 17 million opinion leaders and 10 million C-Level executives on LinkedIn.
● 80% of people on LinkedIn drive business decisions.
● 6 out of 10 users actively look for industry insights on LinkedIn.
● Of the 756 million users on LinkedIn, only 3 million of them post content weekly. This
makes it a much less noisy, crowded social media platform, so it is an easier place to
stand out.

If you want to catch the attention of folks who are hiring, LinkedIn is an important place to be. To
stand out, try the following:

Update Your Headshot, Banner, And Headline

Update your headshot, banner, and headline to reflect the kind of value you offer. A LinkedIn
headline is often simply used for a job title; this is the place where you have your best opportunity
to introduce yourself. So instead of starting with the role you might hold, lead with what you do:
Start with why. What problem do you solve, and for whom? Name that in your headline, so your
audience can see themselves in what you have to offer. Are you great at helping local businesses
get their social media presence off the ground so they can wow their customers and make more
sales? Do you love helping restaurants make their digital menus look as good as the food tastes?
The sharper you are about what problem you solve, and who you solve it for, the more effective
your presence will be. Cher Hale’s headline below is a great example of leading with the value
she provides—and making it clear who her audience is.

Prune Your Network

Prune your network, then grow it with intention. If you have an existing LinkedIn profile, you’ve
likely connected with a lot of random people along the way. But who do you really want to be in
front of? By focusing your LinkedIn presence on only the people most likely to hire you, you make
it more likely that exactly those people will see the content you share, and you can engage with
theirs. Be brutally honest; cut out irrelevant connections, and seek out those folks you admire and
would like to work with.

Share Regularly

We'll share more about what content you can share that reflects your personal brand a bit later
on, but the rule here is to teach and add value. People on LinkedIn are looking for ideas and
insights, not sales pitches.

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Engage Authentically

Connect with and follow the kinds of people you’d like to learn from and work with. Make regular
time to ask them questions and share thoughtful responses to their posts.

Write and Request Recommendations

Write recommendations, and request them. Lead with generosity—has someone been
particularly influential to you as you navigate your career? Has a current or past co-worker
consistently left you grateful and impressed? Write them a recommendation! They’ll be inclined
to reciprocate. Don’t be afraid to ask a few select people who know you well to publicly share their
thoughts about you in a recommendation. LinkedIn also offers the opportunity to “endorse” people
for various skills, which is a lighter-touch way of recognizing someone’s aptitude.

5. Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

What are the skills and roles most in demand for up-and-coming marketers in 2022?

Fastest Growing Occupations (YoY Growth)

1. Media Coordinator

2. Search Manager

3. Social Media Coordinator

4. Search Engine Marketing Manager

5. Media Manager

6. Marketing Specialist

7. Search Specialist

8. Email Marketing Specialist

9. Search Engine Optimization Analyst

10. Digital Media Manager

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Most In-Demand Occupations (By Volume of Job postings)

1. Digital Marketing Specialist

2. Digital Account Executive

3. Social Media Manager

4. Digital Marketing Manager

5. Copywriter

6. Marketing Associate

7. Account Supervisor

8. Marketing Assistant

9. Digital Strategist

10. Marketing Manager

What are the skills in demand for top Marketing jobs? These roles reflect the talent and
skills in need in the current environment (last 6 months).

Roles with Highest Growth

● Media Coordinator
● Search Manager
● Social media Coordinator
● Search Engine Marketing Manager
● Media Manager

Skills in Demand

● Social Media Marketing

● Paid Search Strategy
● Social Media
● Search Engine Marketing
● Marketing

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Which of these roles holds the most appeal for you? Is there something not listed here that
sparks your interest more?

Regardless of whether you’re looking for a new position, want to move up in your current
company, or plan on working as a freelancer or consultant, the right relationships will help you
get there. That’s where networking comes in.

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 3. NETWORKS AND NETWORKING

Who’s in your network? Your network is made up of all the people with whom you are
connected. Our networks—our family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances—make our lives
richer and more meaningful, and can be enormously helpful as we begin to craft our careers in
digital marketing.

SELF-STUDY EXERCISE

To begin understanding your current network, try this exercise:

● Write down the names of people in your network who might be able to help you in finding
your next role in digital marketing, or generally in pursuing your career. Start with the
inner circle and move outwards.
● When you have described the network, choose the three most relevant people with
whom you would like to contact.
● Think about what you would like to ask them and why being contacted by you is
beneficial to them.

Who Is in Your Network? You can use the table to help your network mapping exercise.
Exercise and image adapted from: (Interaction Design Foundation 2022)

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→ What Kind of Networker Are You?

If networks are the connections we have with the people around us, networking is the act of
intentionally building and deepening those relationships.

No one does this in exactly the same way, so it’s helpful to understand your networking style.
Marissa King, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, argues
that there are three basic kinds of networkers:

Expansionists have very large networks and tend to be well known. They tend to be inspiring
in both social and professional settings. In their focus on growing their networks, expansionists
often have few really deep relationships and may often find they are lonely.

Brokers generate value by spanning boundaries and bringing together people from different
social spaces. Their networks tend to wield large information benefits and are great for seeding
innovation. Brokers tend to be adaptive and have a good work-life balance. Brokers, however,
struggle to find any one place where they feel as though they truly fit in.

Conveners build dense networks where all their friends are also friends. They enjoy deep trust
and reputation benefits. Conveners tend to be great listeners. Conveners run the risk of creating
an echo chamber of relationships, and of rarely leaving their bubble.

Learn more about each kind of networker, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach
on this article and podcast: How to Strengthen Your Network Coaching for Leaders: (podcast)

1. Expansionists have extraordinarily large networks and tend to be well known. They tend
to be inspiring in both social and professional settings.
2. Brokers generate value by bringing together from different social spaces. Their networks
have large information benefits and are innovative. They are adaptive and have better
work-life balance.
3. Conveners build dense networks where all theirs friends are also friends. They enjoy
deep trust and reputation benefits. Conveners tend to be great listeners.

● Maintaining great relationships with your existing network is often more productive than
attempting to grow entirely new relationships.
● Those with very close relationships have been able to weather the storm of the
pandemic with little impact on loneliness.
● We tend to underestimate both the strength of our networks and the willingness of others
to help us.
● A starting point to improve the strength of your exiting network is either to be generous
to someone by helping them in some way or to ask for support with something that might
be helpful to us.

21
Share What You’ve Learned, and Keep Learning

Where will your excitement about digital marketing take you next? The choice is up to you! Here
are a few ways you can use what you’ve learned in this course to help you find your fit and
become a leader in the digital marketing world:

● Share your favorite insights from the course: What's stuck with you? What are you
curious about? What questions are you still wrestling with? Share those thoughts online,
out loud, and see what conversations you can facilitate.

● Stay connected!: Reach out to the classmates who have inspired or challenged you.
Connect with them online. Support one another’s content.

● Follow people who inspire you: Look up the digital marketing leaders you’ve been
introduced to throughout this course. Follow them, and continue to learn with and from
them online. Seek out other leaders in the space whose voices and insights excite you,
and don’t be afraid to engage with them.

● Keep learning: You’ve already been introduced to many publications in the digital
marketing world. Subscribe to the ones that most speak to you. Seek out local networks
of digital marketers to connect and collaborate with. Pursue other opportunities for
formal and informal learning alike.

● Find your fit. Get strategic. Stick to your ethical grounding. Step up as a digital leader.
You're ready to start your journey today.

22
 4. MIRIAM BROSSEAU MASTERCLASS

The benefits are what make a product unique.

Check how they interact with the customers shows how their internal culture is.

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Benchmarks for non-profits in digital marketing

Industry standard to compare with the competitors.

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 Glossary

Ikigai: A Japanese framework used for identifying professional aspirations and personal
fulfillment.

The Zone of Genius: A term coined by Gay Hendricks that forms part of the four areas of
competence: genius, excellence, competence, and incompetence. Of all areas, the zone of genius
can be used to help realize one´s full potential.

Personal Branding: Personal branding is how you intentionally craft the perception of what
people feel, think and say about you both online and offline.

Public Narrative: A framework of telling the stories of Self, Us, and Now that creates shared
understanding and investment in the cause or movement, based on the work of Doctor Marshall
Ganz.

Story of Self: A framework that is part of the larger "Public Narrative" framework that helps us to
invite others to see and understand what we are trying to achieve as digital marketers.

References
● Abel, Jackie. "Hovering Art Directors." Hovering Art Directors (blog). Tumblr. May 12,
2011. URL.
● Blog Talk Radio. Shaily Hakimian. Photo. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Bradley, Mitchell. "The Core Values Bullseye Framework." W23 Labs (blog).
Medium. October 17, 2019. URL.
● Clark, Dorie. “Take Control of Your Personal Brand.” Harvard Business Review, April
9, 2013. Video, 3:08. URL.
● Colling, Bridgett. "How I Landed a New Job in 3 Weeks during a Pandemic
Recession." The Startup (blog). Medium. January 10, 2021. URL.
● Fishburne, Tom. "Personal Branding." Marketoonist (blog). September 6, 2021. URL.
● FutureMe. Write a Letter to the Future. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Google Alerts. Monitor the Web for Interesting New Content. Accessed October 7,
2022. URL.
● Gorbatov, Sergey, Svetlana N. Khapova, and Evgenia I. Lysova. 2019. "Get Noticed
to Get Ahead: The Impact of Personal Branding on Career Success."Frontiers in
Psychology 10 (December). URL.
● Hendricks, Gay. 2010. The Big Leap. New York, NY: HarperCollins e-Books. URL.
● Interaction Design Foundation. "Network Mapping Exercise." Accessed October 7,
2022. PDF.

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 ● Kimura, Johanna. "Reaching Your Audience on Linkedin with Precision: A Primer
[Infographic]." Linkedin Marketing Blog. October 6, 2020. URL.
● King, Marissa. "How to Strengthen Your Network." May 10, 2021. Coaching for
Leaders. Podcast, mp3 audio, 39:51. URL.
● LinkedIn. Audrey Boyle. Photo. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Lua, Alfred. "The Quick Guide to Linkedin Marketing: 9 Best Practices." Buffer
Library. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Neaderthal, Leah. "About Leah." Smart Gets Paid. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Netroots Nation. Bridgett Colling. Photo. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Omnicore Agency. "81 Linkedin Statistics You Need to Know in 2022." January 4,
2022. URL.
● Ontario Skills Passport. OSP Social Media Resource – Module 3: Building Your
Brand. Ontario, Canada. Ebook. Accessed October 7, 2022. PDF.
● Peters, Tom. "The Brand Called You." Fast Company. August 31, 1997. URL.
● Real Time Academy. Hassan Ali. Photo. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Saint John, Bozoma, and Jessica Lawson. "Bozoma Saint John, Global Chief
Marketing Officer, Netflix." Published April 13, 2021 by Stanford Graduate School of
Business. YouTube Video, 44:49. URL.
● Saint John, Bozoma (@badassboz). Instagram account. Accessed October 7, 2022.
URL.
● San Juan, Carine. "The Zone of Genius - The Leadership's Sweet Spot." CSJ
Consulting. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Sethi, Ramit. "How to Sell Yourself for More Money with the Briefcase Technique." I
Will Teach You To Be Rich. January 20, 2017. URL.
● Sy, Lisa. "Marketing’s Evolution: A Look at the Jobs and Training Skills in Highest
Demand." Linkedin Marketing Blog. June 8, 2021. URL.
● Zekluu. "Self-Development - Ikigai: The Meaning of Life." January 25, 2020. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media

● Clark, Dorie. “Take Control of Your Personal Brand.” Harvard Business Review, April
9, 2013. Video, 3:08. URL.
● Colling, Bridgett. "How I Landed a New Job in 3 Weeks during a Pandemic
Recession." The Startup (blog). Medium. January 10, 2021. URL.
● King, Marissa. "How to Strengthen Your Network." May 10, 2021. Coaching for
Leaders. Podcast, mp3 audio, 39:51. URL.
● Saint John, Bozoma, and Jessica Lawson. "Bozoma Saint John, Global Chief
Marketing Officer, Netflix." Published April 13, 2021 by Stanford Graduate School of
Business. YouTube Video, 44:49. URL.

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 ● Sethi, Ramit. "How to Sell Yourself for More Money with the Briefcase Technique." I
Will Teach You To Be Rich. January 20, 2017. URL.

Additional Resources

● Backstrom, Heather. "5 Elements of Your Personal Brand." March 2014. Coaching
for Leaders. Podcast, mp3 audio, 46:38. URL.
● Dixon, Abigail, and Burdett, Douglas. "The Whole Marketer: How to Become a
Successful and Fulfilled Marketer by Abigail Dixon." Sales Artillery: The Marketing
Book Podcast. Podcast, mp3 audio, August 13, 2021. URL.
● Kleon, Austin. 2012. Steal like an Artist. New York, NY: Workman Publishing. URL.

ANNEX 1: The Brand Called You

Big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you
have to be your own brand. Here’s what it takes to be the CEO of Me Inc.

It’s a new brand world.

That cross-trainer you’re wearing — one look at the distinctive swoosh on the side tells everyone
who’s got you branded. That coffee travel mug you’re carrying — ah, you’re a Starbucks woman!
Your T-shirt with the distinctive Champion “C” on the sleeve, the blue jeans with the prominent
Levi’s rivets, the watch with the hey-this-certifies-I-made-it icon on the face, your fountain pen
with the maker’s symbol crafted into the end …

You’re branded, branded, branded, branded.

It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone
who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of
us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc.
To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

Behemoth companies may take turns buying each other or acquiring every hot startup that
catches their eye — mergers in 1996 set records. Hollywood may be interested in only
blockbusters and book publishers may want to put out only guaranteed best-sellers. But don’t be
fooled by all the frenzy at the humongous end of the size spectrum.

37
The real action is at the other end: the main chance is becoming a free agent in an economy of
free agents, looking to have the best season you can imagine in your field, looking to do your best
work and chalk up a remarkable track record, and looking to establish your own micro equivalent
of the Nike swoosh. Because if you do, you’ll not only reach out toward every opportunity within
arm’s (or laptop’s) length, you’ll not only make a noteworthy contribution to your team’s success
— you’ll also put yourself in a great bargaining position for next season’s free-agency market.

The good news — and it is largely good news — is that everyone has a chance to stand out.
Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be
a brand worthy of remark.

Who understands this fundamental principle? The big companies do. They’ve come a long way
in a short time: it was just over four years ago, April 2, 1993 to be precise, when Philip Morris cut
the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 40 cents a pack. That was on a Friday. On Monday, the stock
market value of packaged goods companies fell by $25 billion. Everybody agreed: brands were
doomed.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services — from accounting firms to
sneaker makers to restaurants — are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their
categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.

Who else understands it? Every single Web site sponsor. In fact, the Web makes the case for
branding more directly than any packaged good or consumer product ever could. Here’s what the
Web says: Anyone can have a Web site. And today, because anyone can … anyone does! So
how do you know which sites are worth visiting, which sites to bookmark, which sites are worth
going to more than once? The answer: branding. The sites you go back to are the sites you trust.
They’re the sites where the brand name tells you that the visit will be worth your time — again
and again. The brand is a promise of the value you’ll receive.

The same holds true for that other killer app of the Net — email. When everybody has email and
anybody can send you email, how do you decide whose messages you’re going to read and
respond to first — and whose you’re going to send to the trash unread? The answer: personal
branding. The name of the email sender is every bit as important a brand — is a brand — as the
name of the Web site you visit. It’s a promise of the value you’ll receive for the time you spend
reading the message.

Nobody understands branding better than professional services firms. Look at McKinsey or Arthur
Andersen for a model of the new rules of branding at the company and personal level. Almost
every professional services firm works with the same business model. They have almost no hard
assets — my guess is that most probably go so far as to rent or lease every tangible item they
possibly can to keep from having to own anything. They have lots of soft assets — more
conventionally known as people, preferably smart, motivated, talented people. And they have
huge revenues — and astounding profits.

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They also have a very clear culture of work and life. You’re hired, you report to work, you join a
team — and you immediately start figuring out how to deliver value to the customer. Along the
way, you learn stuff, develop your skills, hone your abilities, move from project to project. And if
you’re really smart, you figure out how to distinguish yourself from all the other very smart people
walking around with $1,500 suits, high-powered laptops, and well-polished resumes. Along the
way, if you’re really smart, you figure out what it takes to create a distinctive role for yourself —
you create a message and a strategy to promote the brand called You.

What makes You different?

Start right now: as of this moment you’re going to think of yourself differently! You’re not an
“employee” of General Motors, you’re not a “staffer” at General Mills, you’re not a “worker” at
General Electric or a “human resource” at General Dynamics (ooops, it’s gone!). Forget the
Generals! You don’t “belong to” any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn’t to any particular
“function.” You’re not defined by your job title and you’re not confined by your job description.

Starting today you are a brand.

You’re every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start thinking like
your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike,
Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that
makes it different? Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge. Take the time
to write down your answer. And then take the time to read it. Several times.

If your answer wouldn’t light up the eyes of a prospective client or command a vote of confidence
from a satisfied past client, or — worst of all — if it doesn’t grab you, then you’ve got a big problem.
It’s time to give some serious thought and even more serious effort to imagining and developing
yourself as a brand.

Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors
— or your colleagues. What have you done lately — this week — to make yourself stand out?
What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your
most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?

Go back to the comparison between brand You and brand X — the approach the corporate biggies
take to creating a brand. The standard model they use is feature-benefit: every feature they offer
in their product or service yields an identifiable and distinguishable benefit for their customer or
client. A dominant feature of Nordstrom department stores is the personalized service it lavishes
on each and every customer. The customer benefit: a feeling of being accorded individualized
attention — along with all of the choice of a large department store.

So what is the “feature-benefit model” that the brand called You offers? Do you deliver your work
on time, every time? Your internal or external customer gets dependable, reliable service that
meets its strategic needs. Do you anticipate and solve problems before they become crises? Your

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client saves money and headaches just by having you on the team. Do you always complete your
projects within the allotted budget? I can’t name a single client of a professional services firm who
doesn’t go ballistic at cost overruns.

Your next step is to cast aside all the usual descriptors that employees and workers depend on
to locate themselves in the company structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do
that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description.
Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs
of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable “ladder” and ask
yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about? If you’re going to be a
brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you’re
proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take credit for.

What’s the pitch for You?

So it’s a cliché: don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle. it’s also a principle that every corporate brand
understands implicitly, from Omaha Steaks’s through-the-mail sales program to Wendy’s “we’re
just regular folks” ad campaign. No matter how beefy your set of skills, no matter how tasty you’ve
made that feature-benefit proposition, you still have to market the bejesus out of your brand — to
customers, colleagues, and your virtual network of associates.

For most branding campaigns, the first step is visibility. If you’re General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler,
that usually means a full flight of TV and print ads designed to get billions of “impressions” of your
brand in front of the consuming public. If you’re brand You, you’ve got the same need for visibility
— but no budget to buy it.

So how do you market brand You?

There’s literally no limit to the ways you can go about enhancing your profile. Try moonlighting!
Sign up for an extra project inside your organization, just to introduce yourself to new colleagues
and showcase your skills — or work on new ones. Or, if you can carve out the time, take on a
freelance project that gets you in touch with a totally novel group of people. If you can get them
singing your praises, they’ll help spread the word about what a remarkable contributor you are.

If those ideas don’t appeal, try teaching a class at a community college, in an adult education
program, or in your own company. You get credit for being an expert, you increase your standing
as a professional, and you increase the likelihood that people will come back to you with more
requests and more opportunities to stand out from the crowd.

If you’re a better writer than you are a teacher, try contributing a column or an opinion piece to
your local newspaper. And when I say local, I mean local. You don’t have to make the op-ed page
of the New York Times to make the grade. Community newspapers, professional newsletters,
even inhouse company publications have white space they need to fill. Once you get started,
you’ve got a track record — and clips that you can use to snatch more chances.

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And if you’re a better talker than you are teacher or writer, try to get yourself on a panel discussion
at a conference or sign up to make a presentation at a workshop. Visibility has a funny way of
multiplying; the hardest part is getting started. But a couple of good panel presentations can earn
you a chance to give a “little” solo speech — and from there it’s just a few jumps to a major
address at your industry’s annual convention.

The second important thing to remember about your personal visibility campaign is: it all matters.
When you’re promoting brand You, everything you do — and everything you choose not to do —
communicates the value and character of the brand. Everything from the way you handle phone
conversations to the email messages you send to the way you conduct business in a meeting is
part of the larger message you’re sending about your brand.

Partly it’s a matter of substance: what you have to say and how well you get it said. But it’s also
a matter of style. On the Net, do your communications demonstrate a command of the
technology? In meetings, do you keep your contributions short and to the point? It even gets down
to the level of your brand You business card: Have you designed a cool-looking logo for your own
card? Are you demonstrating an appreciation for design that shows you understand that
packaging counts — a lot — in a crowded world?

The key to any personal branding campaign is “word-of-mouth marketing.” Your network of
friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most important marketing vehicle you’ve got;
what they say about you and your contributions is what the market will ultimately gauge as the
value of your brand. So the big trick to building your brand is to find ways to nurture your network
of colleagues — consciously.

What’s the real power of You?

If you want to grow your brand, you’ve got to come to terms with power — your own. The key
lesson: power is not a dirty word!

In fact, power for the most part is a badly misunderstood term and a badly misused capability. I’m
talking about a different kind of power than we usually refer to. It’s not ladder power, as in who’s
best at climbing over the adjacent bods. It’s not who’s-got-the-biggest-office-by-six-square-inches
power or who’s-got-the-fanciest-title power.

It’s influence power.

It’s being known for making the most significant contribution in your particular area. It’s
reputational power. If you were a scholar, you’d measure it by the number of times your
publications get cited by other people. If you were a consultant, you’d measure it by the number
of CEOs who’ve got your business card in their Rolodexes. (And better yet, the number who know
your beeper number by heart.)

Getting and using power — intelligently, responsibly, and yes, powerfully — are essential skills
for growing your brand. One of the things that attracts us to certain brands is the power they

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project. As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a
halo effect that rubs off on you.

It’s the same in the workplace. There are power trips that are worth taking — and that you can
take without appearing to be a self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacal jerk. You can do
it in small, slow, and subtle ways. Is your team having a hard time organizing productive
meetings? Volunteer to write the agenda for the next meeting. You’re contributing to the team,
and you get to decide what’s on and off the agenda. When it’s time to write a post-project report,
does everyone on your team head for the door? Beg for the chance to write the report — because
the hand that holds the pen (or taps the keyboard) gets to write or at least shape the organization’s
history.

Most important, remember that power is largely a matter of perception. If you want people to see
you as a powerful brand, act like a credible leader. When you’re thinking like brand You, you don’t
need org-chart authority to be a leader. The fact is you are a leader. You’re leading You!

One key to growing your power is to recognize the simple fact that we now live in a project world.
Almost all work today is organized into bite-sized packets called projects. A project-based world
is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist around deliverables, they create measurables, and
they leave you with braggables. If you’re not spending at least 70% of your time working on
projects, creating projects, or organizing your (apparently mundane) tasks into projects, you are
sadly living in the past. Today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in projects.

Project World makes it easier for you to assess — and advertise — the strength of brand You.
Once again, think like the giants do. Imagine yourself a brand manager at Procter & Gamble:
When you look at your brand’s assets, what can you add to boost your power and felt presence?
Would you be better off with a simple line extension — taking on a project that adds incrementally
to your existing base of skills and accomplishments? Or would you be better off with a whole new
product line? Is it time to move overseas for a couple of years, venturing outside your comfort
zone (even taking a lateral move — damn the ladders), tackling something new and completely
different?

Whatever you decide, you should look at your brand’s power as an exercise in new-look résumé;
management — an exercise that you start by doing away once and for all with the word “résumé.”
You don’t have an old-fashioned résumé anymore! You’ve got a marketing brochure for brand
You. Instead of a static list of titles held and positions occupied, your marketing brochure brings
to life the skills you’ve mastered, the projects you’ve delivered, the braggables you can take credit
for. And like any good marketing brochure, yours needs constant updating to reflect the growth
— breadth and depth — of brand You.

What’s loyalty to You?

Everyone is saying that loyalty is gone; loyalty is dead; loyalty is over. I think that’s a bunch of
crap.

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I think loyalty is much more important than it ever was in the past. A 40-year career with the same
company once may have been called loyalty; from here it looks a lot like a work life with very few
options, very few opportunities, and very little individual power. That’s what we used to call
indentured servitude.

Today loyalty is the only thing that matters. But it isn’t blind loyalty to the company. It’s loyalty to
your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty
to yourself. I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty than mindless loyalty to the Company Z
logo.

I know this may sound like selfishness. But being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly —
to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself. Of course, the other
side of the selfish coin is that any company you work for ought to applaud every single one of the
efforts you make to develop yourself. After all, everything you do to grow Me Inc. is gravy for
them: the projects you lead, the networks you develop, the customers you delight, the braggables
you create generate credit for the firm. As long as you’re learning, growing, building relationships,
and delivering great results, it’s good for you and it’s great for the company.

That win-win logic holds for as long as you happen to be at that particular company. Which is
precisely where the age of free agency comes into play. If you’re treating your résumé as if it’s a
marketing brochure, you’ve learned the first lesson of free agency. The second lesson is one that
today’s professional athletes have all learned: you’ve got to check with the market on a regular
basis to have a reliable read on your brand’s value. You don’t have to be looking for a job to go
on a job interview. For that matter, you don’t even have to go on an actual job interview to get
useful, important feedback.

The real question is: How is brand You doing? Put together your own “user’s group” — the
personal brand You equivalent of a software review group. Ask for — insist on — honest, helpful
feedback on your performance, your growth, your value. It’s the only way to know what you would
be worth on the open market. It’s the only way to make sure that, when you declare your free
agency, you’ll be in a strong bargaining position. It’s not disloyalty to “them”; it’s responsible brand
management for brand You — which also generates credit for them.

What’s the future of You?

It’s over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That’s not the way careers work anymore. Linearity
is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways,
forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career
is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new
capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.

As you scope out the path your “career” will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is
become a manager. Like “résumé,” “manager” is an obsolete term. It’s practically synonymous
with “dead end job.” What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more

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provocative projects. When you look at the progression of a career constructed out of projects,
directionality is not only hard to track — Which way is up? — but it’s also totally irrelevant.

Instead of making yourself a slave to the concept of a career ladder, reinvent yourself on a
semiregular basis. Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc.
What turns you on? Learning something new? Gaining recognition for your skills as a technical
wizard? Shepherding new ideas from concept to market? What’s your personal definition of
success? Money? Power? Fame? Or doing what you love? However you answer these questions,
search relentlessly for job or project opportunities that fit your mission statement. And review that
mission statement every six months to make sure you still believe what you wrote.

No matter what you’re doing today, there are four things you’ve got to measure yourself against.
First, you’ve got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague. Second, you’ve got to be an
exceptional expert at something that has real value. Third, you’ve got to be a broad-gauged
visionary — a leader, a teacher, a farsighted “imagineer.” Fourth, you’ve got to be a
businessperson — you’ve got to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes.

It’s this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to
success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today.
Or else.

Tom Peters ([email protected]) is the world’s leading brand when it comes to writing, speaking,
or thinking about the new economy. He has just released a CD-ROM, “Tom Peters’ Career
Survival Guide” (Houghton Mifflin interactive). Rob Walker contributed the brand profile sidebars.

ANNEX 2

Find your magic

One of the areas that people know me for is LinkedIn, it's one of the things that I spend a lot of
time on. It's one of the things I should do all the time. One of my clients is a coach for helping
consultants get more business on LinkedIn. I've been coaching this program for two and a half
years, working with over 200 consultants on how to get more out of their network. But another
piece of this puzzle with LinkedIn is empowering people to really share what is wonderful, what is
special about them online. This is common not only for these consultants, but also teenagers and
college students that I've worked with. A lot of times, especially with young women, I find that
they're scared to say what makes them special, and they don't even know what they can say is
special.

One of the fun stories, I have a few fun stories that I can tell you here. One of them is an intern I
had, who really loved event planning, and she loved that kind of stuff. So one of the things I do
with every client, whether it's an adult, a student, or whatever, is figuring out what their magical
strengths are, things that are in their story that they never thought was special, but will make
someone understand exactly how awesome they are. So, I said, you know, I started asking her,

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“Oh, you like event planning? Tell me more like, how did you figure this out? What did you like
about all this stuff.” She eventually tells me that she almost liked, she probably actually end up
liking the planning of her sweet 16 more than actually the party. She loved planning the events,
the invitations, the décor. She loved doing that so much more and I was like, “Hey, why don't you
tell people that like, that's going to tell them how determined you are to be an event planner, how
much you really love it, the fact that you were doing it for your birthday, and it was a dream come
true. That was something special for you.” She had no idea that that was part of her like secret
sauce, right?

People always hear my origin story, in brief is that I learned to make friends on MySpace. I didn't
know that was valuable till I was applying for a position with your professor, with dear Miriam.
When the application said, “Have you ever managed online communities before?” I had said yes,
I had and I talked about this weird hobby community I had on MySpace. She said yes, and she
was the first person to ever pay me to do social media. So, that was a weird story I never thought
was valuable till I was filling out the application and realized how special it was.

The last thing is a LinkedIn training I did for high school students at my former high school. I asked
them, like, “Who do you look up to online?” One of the women just gave me a name. She's like
the person who runs House Party, which is like, the old platform isn't really a big thing anymore.
I was like, well, it wouldn't be cool if you got to talk to her. So, live in the class we looked up this
woman and she was kind of popular on LinkedIn. Then we looked her up on Twitter, nobody was
talking to her yet she was posting every single day. I told the student, everybody was watching,
don't you think she would, you know help you before she'd helped somebody else if you're the
one nice person that engages with her every single day and responds to her comments? They all
like kind of opened up their eyes to how accessible the world was to them. I'm glad that the tools
of the web has opened up the possibilities for the people I serve. That is my success.

Do not get exploited

One advice for you getting into the field. I live in a group called Freelancing Females where you
see a lot of people who are in social media and other fields related, getting exploited on a regular
basis for their skill set. That is something that happens all the time. I've had a few clients when I
was an early social media manager, really try to push the limits of what was expected of me, and
how many hours I worked. It was really, really complicated. I remember one client I had, had to
basically sort of be on reserve up to three hours a day, depending on how busy the social media
account was to respond to comments, kind of like what you know, the Wendy's account is known
for like the funny replies. Basically, if there was only two hours worth of work, I'd get paid for two
hours. But in theory, I was kind of on deck that if she did have all these hours, I would have to
allocate it to whatever her client needed. That felt really weird to me. I would always try to
renegotiate because I knew my worth. But I know for every one of me there was out there, like
there was somebody else who's also getting that very, very low Freelancer rate that I was getting
at the time. That's something that happens all the time, where it's like, oh, we don't have enough
money to pay you or we can't compensate you and all that kind of stuff. I would hate for you to
say no to income. Just keep in mind, you are worth it. Hopefully, you will have your eyes peeled

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for someone who appreciates you and is able to compensate you fairly and has the room and the
trust to grow with you, to appreciate what you have. Your time is valuable. Scope Creep is like a
real thing. That's something that I am always telling people to do. Also, LinkedIn is a huge thing.
It's your free, free platform to really help people see who you are and connect with you when you
don't necessarily have time for an interview. If they can fall in love with your profile, it's going to
make any conversation you have thereafter so so much easier. Those are my tips for now but I
have plenty of other resources at yoursocialmediasherpa.com. Look at the blogs. Have a good
everything. You got this.

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