Digital Marketing

March 9 – Lecture 3

TODAY we’re still going over Module 2 which I continued on Lecture 2

Module 3 – Search Engine Marketing Definition starts on page 6

CONTINUATION ON WEBSITE STRATEGY (Google Analytics)

Home Page
- Most Valuable Real Estate on a Website
o Will likely act as the primary landing page
- One thing with the home page is we WANT it to be known as our home page. It has to
be crystal clear. The home page is always treated differently than the other pages in
your site
- Behaviour  Site Content  Landing Page
o Pretty much every website’s #1 page is their /home page
o This is where you can find your primary landing page
- If you look at the Bounce Rate  you want 30% or less for your home page. If you have
a bounce rate on your home page for 30% or less than you’re good. If you’re in the 30-
50% you’re okay, and if it’s higher than that than you have a problem
o An exception? NUDE VODKA website… it’s a one page site (and bounce rate
doesn’t count the first page)
- Considerations
o Explain “Who You Are and What You Do”
o People can relevant content quickly
o Emphasize high-priority tasks
o Be unique from other internal pages
- Examples: on Module

Other Landing Pages

- Internal pages can act as landing pages too!
o Check analytics – you might be surprised
o Ensure that they’re doing a good job of directing people
- Custom landing pages
o Used for specific marketing purposes (e.g. Conversion-Centered Design)
o i.e. www.shopify.com/free-trial (so it’s not the home page but the /free-trial 
this is a custom landing page that you get sent to when clicking the ad)
- CCD – Conversion-Centered Design
o A formula that gets people to do things on your page
- Considerations
o Align copy with marketing initiative
 o Avoid distractions (3 seconds)
o Include calls to action
- Examples on Module 2

An Example of a CCD (conversion-centered design) page below:

Headline
Benefit Statement

Features/Benefits (rule of three) shown above

Social Proof (quotes)

Supporting Proof (quotes)

Call to Action

Content
- Readability (scannable) vs Variability
- Key is to think of macro and micro conversions
- Static vs. Dynamic content
o Static Content – rarely changes (i.e. product pages)
o Dynamic Content – updated frequently (i.e. blog)
- Content Formats vs Content Types
o Content formats – refers to manner of distribution (pictures, video)
o Content Types – refers to structure and theme
- When analyzing – do not forget content gaps!
o How do you look for these things??
 Look at competitors homepages! And what they are offering
 Get an auditor
 Talk to your sales people what kind of inquiries they get from customers
 Look at your livechat if you have that
 You can also always sit down with customers and set up a structured
interview and ask them about your site
 USERS are the ones to tell you this, not Analytics Tools.

Analyzing data is really good at telling us how certain content is doing, because it’s THERE. GA
can’t tell you how well something is doing if it’s nOT THERE – again, WHEN ANALYZING, DO NOT
FORGET CONTENT GAPS. i.e. if you look at Sparkling Hills homepage it doesn’t have SPA listed
anywhere on the home page…so we can’t analyze this data b/c they’re missing this important
information on their website…

Content Formats
- Manner in which content is distributed
- Common content formats
o Articles (i.e. news stories, blog posts)
o Images (i.e. photos foundo n Instagram)
o Infographics (i.e. a graphical image that represents a particular topic or data set,
such as these)
o Podcasts (i.e. audio recordings on particular topics, such as this)
o Presentations (i.e. slideshows like those found on slideshare.net)
o Videos (i.e. content found on YouTube)

Content Types
- Structure and theme
- Common content types
o Articles (thought-leadership, interviews, news items, opinions)
o Case studies
o E-books and guides
o Lists
o Polls (i.e. on a fun, relevant topic – they can be valuable)
o Quizzes (i.e. Imagine the Possibilities Telus example) … quizzes DO make a
difference
o Research (consider course examples)
o Webinars
o White papers

Look & Feel (we’re not designers but we can still learn a bit)
- Design
o Shopify is one of the leads to creating Design Systems
o Consistent with brand (use web styleguide)
o Large companies are moving to design systems (i.e. Shopify)
o A good/bad comparison
- Images/multimedia
o ONLY USE AN IMAGE IF IT SERVES A PURPOSE
o A lot of people use images for the sake of images—don’t do this. It requires a
purpose
o Each serves a clear purpose
o Animated images do not distract (cool way to show a product)
- Font
o Brand consistency – can be viewed
o Consider embedded fonts (max 2-3)
 o There are certain custom fonts we might choose from a brand perspective that
may not be in someone’s computer – i.e. Helvetica comes with Apple, but not
Windows
o There are like 6 default fonts (Times New Roman, Arial, Geniva, etc.)

Look & Feel – Part 2

- Copy:
o Ensure it is current
o Write using a logical flow
o Write with a page goal in mind
o Use headings, bullet points, short sentences, short paragraphs, and spacing to
“chunk” content appropriately
- Screen Size:
o Avoid frozen layouts
- Page Alignment (Left Aligned is Best)
o Note that you have little control over browsers and zooming
- Scrolling
o Only if necessary, but avoid important CTAs (call to actions) at the bottom
o Only 15-20% of people actually scroll down to the bottom of the page

Side story from prof:

Content Consumption Test – Clayton did for Telus Campaign
3 x 3 x 3 (font size x # of paragraphs x character width/how wide certain sentences are)
Three variations of each ^

Font size: small, medium, large

# of paragraphs: 3, 5. 7
Width: short, medium, long

So they created 27 variations of these ^

Then they went ot usability hub to test these out

They found out that

Font size: small, medium, large

# of paragraphs: 3, 5, 7
Width: short, medium, long

This was the result.

They then set RULES for the Telus webpage that they had to adhere to this

Calls to Action (CTA)

- These are testable remember
- CTA’s matter
- Is our site driving people to do what we want them to do?
o Do not be passive!
 - Recommendations
o Start with an action term (If interested, sign up vs Sign up)
o Reduce obligation and Risk (i.e. ‘Try’ or ‘Free’)
o Consider counterarguments (i.e. why shouldn’t they?)
o Include benefits
o Make them prominent

Interactivity
- Are we encouraging our users to interact with the website
o Don’t have to be this interactive or this
- Examples
o Communication tools (i.e. Contact Form, Newsletter)
o Rating/polling/surveying
o Feedback tools (i.e. reviews)
o Quizzes/self-assesment tools

Missed some slides it’s on module

Google Optimize Tool  it does it all for you  gives a different homepage (homepage 1 and
homepage 2) so you can see which one is more successful  it does it all for you and you can
analyze this data  it will tell you which ones doing better and give you statistical significance
Of course to do this you need conversion set up etc. and that’s why it helps to know GA

What to Work on?

- A/B vs. Multivariate Testing
o Great article
- Website Optimization Testing
o Google Optimize (great for medium small companies)
o Visual website optimizer
o There are others!
- Let’s see how good you are… (on module)

WE ALWAYS. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. WANT TO TEST. BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO
WORK. Look at unbounce.com and it’ll show you Version A and Version B…and using your
intuition you’ll find out that you’re usually wrong with the version you picked. Intersting!

It’s never a bad thing if you’re wrong. As long as you’re learning from your failure.
You will always fail over and over again. But that’s what it means to be good at testing. To see
what works. Clayton says he is good at what he does because he can measure and can
experiment. The scientific method to Digital Marketing.

It’s easier said than done when creating tests, you need hypothesis etc but you can always try
changing the headline, etc.
 Module 3 – Search Engine Marketing Definition

[We’re using Google Ads Campaign to explain stuff. It’s free but you need to put in your credit card
information so prof said we don’t need to sign up. You don’t need to pay for it it just charges when you
actually MAKE a campaign.]

“The process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts”
- Includes:
o Organic search
o Paid search (addressed in later class)

Search Engine Considerations

- Importance
o Google has almost 1.2 trillion searches per year
o It’s important to rank highly
o 50% of all website visits are through Search Engines
- Device used will impact search behaviour
- Voice search is the next big thing – google home! Alexa! THIS IS THE NEXT BIG THING! If
you’re in an interview and they ask what you think is the next big thing, Clayton says you
can steal this lol

Top Search Engines

- There are a small number of search engines. This is a good thing. 18 years ago there
were so many search engines out there… you had to worry about which one processed
information.
- Google
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Ask
- There are many others, even some that crossover:
o Yahoo is powered by Bing
o AOL is powered by Google
o This is a good thing!!

Paid Search

Yahoo also uses paid search and it’s just like google pretty much

Paid Search Engine Marketing

- Platform
o Each major search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) offers the opportunity to use
paid search campaigns
- Use
 o Can be applied to any stage of the customer journey (b/c search is used across
multiple customer journey stages)
- Measurement
o You will be able to get metrics on performance through these platforms
o Ad platforms provide performance metrics
o Google Ads will integrate directly with Google Analytics
- Note
o When using Google Ads, other types of advertising formats are available, such as
Display Ads & Video Ads

Weird eye opener: San Antonio car wreck lawyer ad on google costs $650 PER CLICK. But the
ROI checks out but still holy

Ad groups to reiterate are key words in ads

Paid Search Engine Marketing

- Campaign-Level Decisions:
o Set daily budget (note that there is some error margin allowed)
o Choose targeting options
o Choose bid strategy
- Ad group decisions
o Choose keywords
o Create ads
- Extensions
o Can be applied at an Account, Campaign, or Ad Group Level
Google Ads works as an Auctioning Process.
You tell Google how much you’re willing to spend for the ad (interesting :o)

Clayton is using Google Ads Campaign to show us how these Ads work btw

Key Campaign Decisions

- Budget
o Daily budget – google can go up to twice the amount (more explained below)
o Google CAN go up to double your daily budget. Be warned…it ONLY does this
though if it thinks its in your best interest…however Google will never go over
your average monthly value. So if it increases your daily budget for one day, it
will not surpass the monthly budget. Interesting! It has some flexibility
o The thing about budget that’s important to know, once your campaign budget is
done for the day, your ads STOP RUNNING for that entire day. When midnight
hits your ads start running again. Daily budget is a very important consideration
o Averages over a month however
o Also consider how often do you need to appear?
- Targeting
o Targeting is fun apparently
o Primary consideration – location
o Multiple levels – national, City wide, all the way down to forward station
acquisition (FSA)
 Google ads example: People in your targeted location – all people in your
area… People in, or who are interested in, your targeted location – even
people who are from Chilliwack who are visiting Vancouver will see these
ads
 Your ads might appear in India or China if they’re looking up Volvo
Vancouver, if you set your setting to: People in, or who are interested in,
your targeted location. THIS COULD CAUSE POSSIBLE PROBLEMS THAT
AREN’T ACTUALLY PROBLEMS BECAUSE THEY’RE (clients) LIKE WHY ARE
YOUR ADS SHOWING IN INDIA (I.E. CAR DEALERSHIP IN VANCOUVER) but
it’s not being advertised ALL over India ya know
o Also never target EVERYONE in the world. That’s dumb
o Looking for or within
- Bid strategy
o You pay based on a click
 Like he said earlier, advertising on google is an AUCTION. You tell google
the max you are willing to pay per click
 So in here for instance in BIDDING (in Google Ads New Campaign) you tell
them how much you are willing to pay,
 The higher you’re willing to pay does not move you up and down on the
google search page**********
o Multiple bid strategies available – manual or google automation
How Bids Impact Placement
- How rankings are determined
o Combination of maximum bid and quality score (THIS. Is what determines how
high up your ad on google shows)
o Quality Score – helps to ensure relevancy
o Simple formulate: Bid * Quality Score
- Quality score
o Score out of 10 (possible to identify within Google Ads Platform)
o Historical click-through rate of URLs
o Account history
o Relevance of keywords in ad and on landing page
o Landing page performance

Intuitively the person who pays the highest amount in the bid for ad space their ad would be at
the top. But this isn’t the case.

Here’s an example: If you want to dominate the search “shoe” on google

(clown) shoes – you pay $20.00 x 2 (2/10 stands for your QS) = 40
(normal shoe company) shoes – you pay $5.00 x 9 (9/10 stands for your QS) = 45
So the normal shoe company will be ABOVE the clown shoe
7/10 and above  you get DISCOUNTS on your ad because you are RELEVANT

QUALITY SCORE IS VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND.

Getting a 8-9/10 score is very very hard btw.
If you have a high bounce rate google will lower your QS too.

Key Ad Group Decisions – Keywords

- Use keyword data
o Google Ads has its own Keyword Tool
- Keyword match types
o Broad Match: red shoes
 You could type in red boots, red fruit, red or shoes or whatever
 Clayton says don’t use this because it’s way too broad…but if you’re JUST
starting out and don’t know anything you can use it…it’s just a lot of
wasted money possibly/most likely
 Google will always suggest this b/c they get the most money from it 
but it is NOT SMART
 Never use broad match
o Broad Match Modifier: +red+shoes
 Means anything with a + in front of it must be present in a person’s
search in order for your ad to appear
 If you type in blue shoes, this won’t appear. But if you type in red clown
shoes it will appear because it has red and shoes in it
  Not as wide, but still somewhat wide
o Phrase match: “red shoes”
 Narrowing our scope of possible search phrases
 The PHRASE must appear in someone’s search for it to appear…
“women’s red shoes” will appear. “red shoes for children” will appear.
But if someone types “shoes red”, your ad will not appear
o Exact match: [red shoes]
 The final one. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Red Shoes is the only way
this ad will appear. If you type in women’s red shoes, your ad will not
appear.
 It really limits the scope (to be exact lol)
 There are some variances…if you type in red shos, red shoe, your ad still
might appear but again this is super exact either way
 You don’t typically use exact match but who knows
- Which match type to use?
o It’s a strategic
o Try to avoid broad match as much as possible
o If little knowledge of how people actually search – start with Broad Match
Modifier and analyze over time

Key Ad Group Decisions – Ads

- You should have multiple ad groups in a campaign…because what if one key word
search eats up your budget and the other three key word searches don’t get picked. You
need to make different groups so you have a diverse spread does that make sense sorry
if it doesn’t
- Minimum Number of Ads
o Will want to include at least 3 ads
- Three Key Considerations
o Headlines – allowed 3 per ad
o Description lines – allowed 2 per ad
o Final URL – where an ad takes a user
o Display URL – URL a user sees
 GOOGLE LET’S YOU CUSTOMIZE YOUR DISPLAY URL… for example you
can write /final-clearance instead of the actual URL which they are being
taken too called /promotions-new. FINAL CLEARANCE sounds better so
people want to see that
- Character Limits
o Headlines: 30 characters per headline
o Descriptions: 90 characters per description (characters include spacing)
o Display URL: 15 characters per section (there are two sections)
- Interesting notes: BMW shows up when you type “Audi Vancouver” … because they put
Audi in THEIR key ad group words… evil
Ad Headline Themes
Examples Headlines:
- Use questions that arouse curiosity
o i.e. “Want to quit smoking?”
- Offer instructions
o i.e. “Cure a cold in five steps”
- Tell a story
o i.e. “The mystery of SEO”
- Make a claim
o i.e. “Save on designer clothes”
- If you’re a local business, state your location:
o i.e. “Vancouver Ad Agency”
If you have 4 ad groups you are creating 12 ads. For every ad group, you make 3 ads.
You always want to be testing, so you run multiple ads in an ad group and you let google decide
which one to display

Ad Copy Tips – Not Exhaustive

- Tip #1: use keywords in your advertisement
- Tip #2: always include calls to action (i.e. “Order now and get free shipping!”)
- Tip #3: when possible – include incentives (must be displayed on website)
- Tip #4: consider F.A.B. selling copy – people buy into benefits
o Fab selling is a sales technique that refers to copy in this case.
o FAB: Features, Advantages, Benefits
o Example below:
o Features  Fast spin cycle (this has)
o Advantages  dry clothes faster (so this)
o Benefits  save time (to you)
o People buy into BENEFITS. Not features and advantages.
- Tip #5: use emotional appeals – especially those that create urgency

Ad Extensions
- Don’t ignore this (we’re not really going over it) but it can greatly benefit user
experience
- Add extra content to your ad
o Sitelink extensions
o Call extensions
o Callout extensions
o Structured snippet extensions
o Location extensions
o Price extensions
o There are others
- Note:
o Google will decide if and when they appear
 o Rule of thumb – if your ad is placed at the top of a search results page, more are
likely to appear in an ad

Other Strategic Considerations

- Testing
o Always be testing
o Headlines, descriptions, calls to action
o Not just about words – also about structure
- Landing Pages
o Really important from a relevancy perspective – why you’d put a paid ad above
your organic ad when you google search  b/c you want them to go to a
different (landing) page rather than your home screen
o Serious consideration
o Consider relevancy with ad – impacts QS
o Also a point of testing – mix ad copy with landing page design

Paid Search Strategy Assignment

Nude Vodka

1) Strategy  Goal
2) They want to see examples of TWO Ad Groups
a. and in each of the ad groups they want 5 keywords and 3 example ads
3) Landing page overview
a. A discussion on what we would include in our landing page, don’t need to draw
anything
We have to do this on POWERPOINT and

WORD TRACKER KEYBOARD TOOL – to find keyword tools