Professional Diploma in

DIGITAL MARKETING

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SUMMARY ​NOTES - LESSON TWO

Tracking and measuring your Digital Marketing efforts

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Table of Contents:
SUMMARY NOTES - LESSON TWO 2
DIGITAL MARKETING DISCLAIMER! 3
THE THREE LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS LESSON ARE TO UNDERSTAND: 4
CHALLENGE FROM LESSON ONE 4
WHAT IS A MARKETING SALES FUNNEL / CYCLE? 5
WHY DO YOU NEED ONE? 5
AIDA: 6
SIX-STAGE SALES FUNNEL 7
SEE, THINK, DO, CARE: 8
LIFECYCLE MARKETING: 9
VAC - A PERFORMANCE-FOCUSED MODEL: 10
WHICH IS BETTER? 11
FUNNEL EXAMPLES: 11
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CUSTOMER JOURNEY AND A MARKETING
FUNNEL 12
B2B VS B2C FUNNEL DIFFERENCES 12
HOW TO DETERMINE OBJECTIVES: 13
DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES: 13
RESOURCES FOR MARKET ANALYSIS & DETERMINING CLEAR OBJECTIVES: 14
LAST-CLICK ATTRIBUTION: 15
ANALYTICS DASHBOARD 16
CREATING A GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT: 17
CONCLUSION 18
WHAT ARE YOU GETTING OUT OF MODULE 1? 19
Digital Marketing Disclaimer!
Digital marketing is constantly evolving, at a much faster rate than its predecessors.
Algorithms, features, platforms and more are constantly changing, channels become
saturated as there are more advertisers, it is increasingly becoming more expensive to
advertise and therefore it is critical to get the “basics” right – an amazing site with great
usability and content, optimised landing pages, a good product/service that is competitively
priced, unparalleled customer service and more.

With that said, you don’t need to have a big budget to succeed in your digital marketing
efforts and one of the purposes of this course is to give you actionable skills and insights no
matter what you have to spend.

The three learning objectives for this lesson are to understand:

● Marketing funnels / cycles and how they assist with objectives and kpis
● The importance of tracking and an introduction to Google Analytics & UTMs
● Resources to help with research to determine if goals are realistic

Challenge from Lesson One

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Google Search​ has been given the bulk of the budget due to the higher cost but for
lead-gen in particular, lead-quality (as in, the likelihood that a person will convert) is much
higher due to the fact that people are actually searching for your business.

Display Text ads ​actually perform surprisingly well for lead gen. Quality is lower but so are
costs and it helps bring down the overall CPL.

Facebook​ - I have specifically excluded Instagram here as it does not really perform for
lead-gen. Like with Display, leads from FB will be of a lower quality but you can reach a
decent amount of people for a low cost, and there is the option of an in-platform lead form, or
a link to a landing page with a form. The latter is generally higher quality as they have had
the opportunity to see your site and your offering vs in-platform where they don’t see any of
that. Keep an eye out for lesson 7 for more in-depth info on social media.

The KPIs you would be looking at for this campaign would be:

● CPL - for obvious reasons. You might have a target volume or a target CPL - I didn’t
specify this in the challenge so don’t worry.
● Conversion rate - imperative to monitor. If it increases, why? Same with decreases.
You want to try and replicate the increase and get rid of the decrease.
● CTR - fluctuations are normal but if for example there is a high CTR but a low
conversion rate for an ad/campaign, it is worthwhile to check your ad text to ensure
that what it says, is what the user will experience.
● CPC - if your cpc goes up and conversion rate remains the same, you pay a higher
CPL. Simply reducing your CPC is not always the answer but is the easiest one.
Much more detail on this in lesson 6 and module 2.

What is a Marketing Sales Funnel / Cycle?

A collection of stages you ideally want potential customers to move through, towards your
key objective.

It’s called a funnel due to the volume of potential customers decreasing the further down a
funnel you go.
It’s important to remember that people won’t just do what you want them to do. There are
many different ways people browse and use the same site, and someone can convert
without going through all stages of the conversion funnel.

Why do you need one?

A sales funnel/cycle allows you to plan:

● How you will bring in website traffic

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 ● How you will manage and nurture leads
● How you will convert leads into customers

There are still many companies that don’t have a sales funnel or cycle in place and they are
still successful. However, as well as assisting with planning, it also assists with pinpointing
and solving issues (which will inevitably come).

AIDA:

Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

Traditional Sales Funnel

The AIDA concept was created in 1898 to describe the “theoretical journey” and assist in
targeting the right message to the right person at the right time.

Examples of what potential customers would do in each stage are:

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Awareness
● Seeing an ad, blog post, submitting a lead
Interest
● Looking up your brand, following social media pages
Desire
● Researching options, comparing against competitors
Action
● Making a purchase

Six-stage Sales Funnel

Here we have a six-stage funnel, which breaks down “Interest” into more stages.
Examples of marketing efforts or customer behavior would be:

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Awareness is at the top of the funnel, which we covered in AIDA. Marketing tactic examples
would be:
● Advertising, events, direct mail

In the interest phase, consumers learn about the company and its products. Tactics in this
stage include things like:
● targeted emails and encouraging newsletter signups

Consideration entails consumers who have become qualified leads (submitted during
Awareness or interest), which should be further nurtured with remarketing. More on
remarketing in the next lesson, lesson 3! In this phase you might offer:
● free trials, specials or a specific product push.

Intent means someone is interested in buying. Examples of consumer behavior in this stage
would be:
● Requesting a demo, adding items to a cart

Evaluation – making a final decision. Working with marketing and sales is required here to
show that your product/service is the best choice. Marketing tactics here could be:
● Targeted campaigns (for example, based on what they put into their cart - similar
items) and pushing USPs which are unique selling propositions - what makes you
better / stand out from the crowd? Remind them why they want to buy from you.

Purchase - making a purchase

The fault with this funnel is that it does not include retention and advocacy. Advocacy is a
fancy word for word of mouth/ people sharing their experience of your business with friends.
You obviously want to make sure that experience is as positive as possible. It is also much
cheaper to inspire repeat purchases from existing customers than new ones, particularly in
ecommerce / FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) and subscription businesses. But even if
it’s something like buying a car, it is worth keeping that database of information because
very few people will buy just one car in their lifetime. Here, the conversion window would be
much longer (conversion window is the average number of days it takes someone to

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convert) but it would still be valuable, and cheaper to ensure your existing customers are
shown quality, targeted content or offers.

See, Think, Do, Care:

See, Think, Do and Care is a model pioneered by Avinash Kaushik and Mark Grehan.

Avinash and Mark both argue that businesses only spend money on the “Do” stage, which
they say is the hardest “place” to have a presence. This is where performance marketing
would come in. As an example, It’s been recommended to have different Display strategies
for the first two phases of this model. Content that introduces your brand “softly” as opposed
to getting spammed with “Buy Now Buy Now” messages.

Lifecycle Marketing:

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Now we have Lifecycle Marketing, a relatively newly coined term but the methodology
behind it isn’t new as some previous funnels have included everything you’re seeing now.

Instead of it being seen as a funnel, it’s cyclical. Unlike AIDA, it takes into account loyalty
and advocacy and existing customers feed into further strategies.

There are different “versions” of this but they are essentially the same, for example a shorter
version is ​Attract, Convert, Nurture, Keep

VAC - a performance-focused model:

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Just to show you the difference between a more traditional funnel (like AIDA) and confirm
how subjective digital marketing is, I’ve completely made up a funnel to illustrate what
“Performance-Based Marketing” means.

With something like VAC, All marketing efforts directed towards capturing the highest
percentage of qualified / high-intent users and driving them to convert

Which is better?
This is quite subjective as it depends on the product / service and what the long-term
implications are.

But let’s compare the more traditional funnel (AIDA) with a performance-focused one (VAC):

● Both traditional and performance-based models focus on conversion

● AIDA was too singular, assuming people take the same steps to get to the same
place. Here, VAC would try to control or at least limit the steps with specific landing
pages for campaigns.
● AIDA does not take retention into account
● VAC technically doesn’t either but with a performance-based approach you would
retarget existing customers / site visitors
● AIDA would measure some performance on impressions, engagements etc. whereas
VAC wouldn’t
● Conversions in AIDA would include newsletter sign-ups, clicking on “contact us” etc.
VAC would track these but purely for optimisation towards the final goal (ROI, ROAS)

Funnel examples:
Using car insurance as an example within the ​See, Think, Do, Care​ framework:

See
All eligible drivers with money

Think
People considering a car purchase
Existing car owners considering changing providers

Do
Take up car insurance / switch insurance providers

Care
Retention with good communication and content, upselling other products

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Comparing S,T,D,C to the VAC model:

View
People looking for car insurance
People “in-market” for buying a car

Act
Click on an ad and submit a lead

Convert
Take up car insurance / switch insurance providers

The main difference between the two is the targeting. STDC would target all eligible drivers
whereas VAC would target people looking for insurance or in-market for buying a car. These
are real targeting options and we will be covering these and more in lesson 3.

If the strategy you implement after determining your sales funnel/cycle is not producing the
desired results, then you need to look at your customer journey.

The difference between a customer journey and a marketing funnel

The ​customer journey​ is a detailed outline of every step a lead takes to become a paying
customer, while the ​marketing funnel​ is a model that businesses use to market
appropriately to leads at different stages of the buying cycle.

B2B vs B2C funnel differences

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How to determine objectives:
If starting a business or guiding someone who is, consider:

● Where do you want the business to be in 1 year and in 5 years?

● What is the purpose of your product / service and is there a market for it, or do you
need to “create” one?
● What does this market look like?
● How much money do you have to spend for marketing your business, and which
organic / free marketing can you benefit from? (free marketing options are covered in
lesson 5!)
● If working for an agency / client-side, you will likely be told which objectives to work
towards.

Different Objectives:

Market Share
Increasing your market share, thereby decreasing competitors

Differentiation
Creating a bespoke identity in a competitive market

Customer reviews
Improving service or product ratings

Market Development
Expanding into a new market to increase revenue

Reputation
Establishing or building on a brand’s reputation

Brand engagement
Increasing the interaction rate with customers / potential customers

Margins
Improving margins, thereby increasing revenue at a lower cost

Retention
Increasing customer retention rate

Promotion
Reaching your target with marketing comms like promos, coupons

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Price Discrimination
Finding methods to charge varying prices based on target market/s

Resources for market analysis and determining clear objectives:

● Google Trends - ​https://trends.google.com/trends/​ - a search feature that shows how
frequently a given search term or topic has been entered over different periods.
● Keyword research - ​http://isearchfrom.com/​ - see who is bidding on your relevant
keywords. If covering multiple stages of your conversion funnel, split the keywords by
each stage as results (competitors you see) will vary.
● Social Media presence - visit a page and on the right side of the page you should
see:

When clicking on “See More”:

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Select “Go to Ad Library to view live ads from the chosen page:

These steps would fall under market analysis. The ​difference between market analysis
and market research​ – research is analysis of target markets and customers. Analysis is of
an industry. You need to know what’s happening in your industry in order to see if your
objectives are realistic.

Tracking beyond the “Nice to Know” metrics

What I mean by “nice to know” is that I’m not referring to the standard in-platform metrics for
example E.g. impressions, ctr, etc – those are available without any tracking. Here I’m
referring to tracking the actions beyond these metrics – tracking your
goals/conversions/objectives

Google Analytics
A free service that provides statistics and analytical tools for marketing and SEO purposes.

There are other analytics tools out there but Google Analytics is the most widely used.

Last-click attribution:

An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and
conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.

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Analytics has a last-click attribution model, meaning:

● All credit for the tracked conversion / interaction is given to the final click
● The results you see in in-platform reporting (e.g. Facebook Business Manager) might
differ slightly due to this
● If there is a big difference, installation of tracking needs to be checked, as well as
conversion setup

Analytics Dashboard

Analytics defaults to the Home “page”, which is a dashboard of the top metrics. You can
customise this dashboard depending on the metrics that are most important to you.

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The audience overview gives you information on demographics of your site visitors. Here
you can segment by goal, device and many other different metrics. We have more info on
Analytics in lesson 6 of module 1 and in module 2.

Creating A Google Analytics Account:

It requires a Google account (Gmail address or other). I recommend creating a business

account instead of your personal email.
1. Navigate to analytics.google.com
2. Click on “Start for free” on the top right of the page
3. Fill in your Account Name, using your business name
4. Website name can be the same as your business URL
5. When inserting your URL, be sure to select https from the dropdown if you have a
security certificate.
6. Choose your industry from the dropdown and select the correct time zone (where
your business operates or where you are, if different)
7. Select “Create”, accept the terms and conditions and there you have it, your Analytics
account is ready
8. Under admin, locate “tracking info” which is where you will find the Analytics script
which needs to be on every page of your site
9. The script needs to be placed in the head section of your site between <head>
(opening tag) and before </head> (closing tag). It can be placed anywhere in this
section. but it is best to add it before anything like an image / other script fires.
10. If you have a Wordpress site you don’t need to install the script. Login to WordPress,
go to “Plugins”, search for ​Google Analytics by Monster Insights, ​select “Install”
and when asked for your Google Analytics ID, copy it from the tracking section of
Analytics.

What is a UTM?

Urchin Tracking Software

UTM codes are one of the easiest ways to track performance from any digital marketing
campaign.

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You could even track offline tactics by creating online landing pages specifically for that
campaign.

There are other, more advanced ways to track offline activity which is something we will be
covering in module 2.

The Elements of a UTM tag

Website URL - the page/s on your site where your advertising directs potential customers to
Source - the platform where your campaigns are (e.g. Google Search, Facebook)
Medium - the category of the campaign from your source (e.g. PPC, CPM, Mailer)
Name - the name of your campaign (e.g. summer_mailer)

Tool to create UTMs (not good for bulk creation) -

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Naming conventions
Naming conventions are important to stick to as it allows for easier management of tracking.
Let’s say you decide to go with:
www.mywebsite.com?utm_source=search&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=digital_marke
ting
(all lower case, _ between words)

Consistent naming conventions shouldn’t just be applied to UTMs, consistency across ad

names, campaigns, targeting info etc will make your life much easier.

Conclusion
Digital Marketing is very subjective, but you now have an understanding of various sales
funnels that are all still in use, as well as knowing the difference between a traditional funnel
and a performance-focused one. You also have some free tools to flesh out your market
analysis to determine whether your objectives are realistic, and you’ve been introduced to
tracking and analysis tools - Google Analytics and UTMs.

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What are you getting out of Module 1?
By the end of this module, you will have a solid foundation of what you need to create and
implement effective performance-based digital marketing strategies.

References

● En.wikipedia.org, 2019
● History Cooperative, 2019
● Ardath Albee, 2019
● John Spacey, 2019
● BrightLocal, 2019
● Support.google.com, 2019

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