Shaw Academy Digital Marketing

built for new users, not for returning visitors at all. So they're actually excluded in those
campaigns. This is also a really good way to see if there are specific demographics that
perform better for you than others. If it's anything different to what you believe your target
market to be, then it's really an opportunity.

Time On Site, you could serve a different ad copy based on the assumption that more time
on site equals more interest. It's a pretty valid assumption if you think about it. If you're on a
site and you're interested in something, you're going to spend more time on it. Whereas if
you're struggling to find something, then you'd exit the site quite quickly.

Social Engagers, this is specifically an audience for social media channels. You could target
different ad copy to encourage site visits and sales. And it's really good in terms of creating
and maintaining brand affinity. If people are seeing your content and it's relevant, then there
is definitely a chance that they will convert at a later stage if they haven't already.

Challenge:

Using a brand or your own brand, please choose a goal that you would like to achieve. For
example, signing up for a newsletter or purchasing something, you obviously don't have to
purchase something. Just note that you weren't able to complete the whole process. Visit the
website or search for the brand and list all the touchpoints you experienced to get to the end
goal, list the problems you encountered and what you would do to improve on them. Send
your work in any format and any queries you have to ​[email protected].​ I am
really looking forward to seeing some of this work. I hope you do it. It's not compulsory,
doesn't contribute to any of your marks or anything like that, but it does give you a bit more
experience or just kind of applying the knowledge which I find - for me anyway - helps my
brain retain it. So it's for your benefit, but not something that you have to do.

16

Professional Diploma in
DIGITAL MARKETING

1

SUMMARY ​NOTES - LESSON FOUR
The Importance of Mobile and User Experience

2

Table of Contents: 2
4
SUMMARY NOTES - LESSON FOUR 4
DID YOU KNOW? 4
THE FOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS LESSON ARE TO UNDERSTAND: 4
WHAT WOULD PEOPLE GIVE UP INSTEAD OF THEIR SMARTPHONES? 6
MOBILE INTERNET USAGE 2014 - 2019 7
CORE RESPONSIVE SITE FEATURES 8
CORE MOBILE FRIENDLY FEATURES: 8
WHICH IS BEST FOR YOU? 9
MOBILE-FRIENDLY: 9
WEBSITE SPEED AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOU: 10
FIND YOUR MOBILE SITE SPEED: 11
COMMON WEBSITE ISSUES 11
ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES (AMPS): 14
WHAT MAKES A GOOD MOBILE SITE? 14
MOBILE APP STATS 14
DIFFERENT APP TYPES: 15
BENEFITS OF A MOBILE APP:
MOBILE MARKETING STRATEGIES

Did you know?
● Spend on mobile marketing in one year equalled $138.1 billion
● Google drives 59.16% of all mobile search traffic
● 92% of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile

The four learning objectives for this lesson are to understand:
● Why mobile is important
● Mobile speed and do’s and don’ts for different sites
● Mobile Apps
● Mobile marketing options

What would people give up instead of their smartphones?
According to a study from Boston Consulting Group:

● More than 3 in 10 people would stop seeing their friends in person instead of giving
up their smartphones.

● 45% said they would delay going on vacation.
● 46% would be willing to give up a day off per week.
● More than 55% would rather stop dining out for twelve months.
What would it take for you to give up your smartphone?
Mobile Internet usage 2014 - 2019

4

From 2014 - 2019, in 2014, it started off with just 26% of total mobile Internet of total Internet
usage and in 2019. We're not even done yet. It's on 48%. And as you can see, it's just
increasing year on year.

No one can afford to ignore mobile

● Nearly 80% of Internet usage is expected to be mobile by the end of 2019.

● The average conversion rates are up 64% compared to desktop. 40% of people
search solely on a smartphone.

● 62% of organic searches provide different results. And this is because Google
algorithms prefer sites that are either more mobile friendly or responsive. We're going
into that just now.

● Global projections are that traffic will increase nearly three times between 2018 and
2021.

Desktop vs Mobile

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The mobile user context changes frequently. What I mean by that is their location, their
attention span, their connectivity and how people even use their devices. It changes so
much more than it does than the behavior on a desktop.

Mobile users prefer short, simple interactions. No one's writing an essay on a mobile phone.
They'd rather do that on desktop.

Mobile offers a huge source of personal data, more so than desktop. Things like messaging,
galleries, location, accuracy profile, photos, app data. It sounds pretty scary, but marketing
platforms, and I assure you of this, aren't allowed to gather any personal data without your
prior permission and your name will never be attached to it.

Mobile provides different forms of input vs. a desktop mouse. On mobile, you can make a
phone call, you can use a touch screen, there are keypads, so there are many different
forms of input.

What is a responsive mobile site?

A responsive website changes based on the device that you are using.

Layouts change from multiple columns to a single one to make it easier to use on mobile.
Unnecessary images are hidden. And on desktop, you can actually tell if a website is
responsive by reducing the size of your browser window. Try it now, go into a site, any site,
and just reduce the size of your window ever so slightly. And if you see the content and
images changing, adjusting essentially to the new site, then it's responsive.

Core responsive site features

The core responsive site features are that it has dynamic content, so it means it's changing.
It's not static.

Condensed menus or navigation, essentially making it easier or making it take up less space
on your mobile screen.

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Optimized images - they would either change sides or they would disappear completely
depending on how usable it would make the website experience.

Correct spacing is applied, so there's never an instance where it will look like something
weird is happening on the site. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

And finally, it relies on mobile operating systems to function. It needs to be aware of the
operating system so that it can respond accordingly.

What is a mobile friendly site?

A mobile friendly site is designed to work the same way across devices.

Nothing is unusable, but usable does not translate to optimized. Features like menu drop
downs and small buttons aren't used generally because they're really hard to get working
correctly across every single device.

Core mobile friendly features:

it has static content so it doesn't move. So if you were to take another site and move your
browser window and nothing changed or changes, that would be - well, it might not even be
a mobile friendly site - but it's definitely not responsive.

Simple navigation. As I mentioned just now, it just makes it easier to manage across all the
devices that the site is being used on because it's not responsive and therefore you don't
want any kind of complex things getting in the way and making it appear strangely.

It doesn't rely on a mobile operating system to function because at its core, it's one program,
let's say, designed to work across multiple devices. It's not like a responsive site, which is
almost designed for each device.

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Which is best for you?

Responsive

If you're looking at responsive, this is the superior of the two for user experience, but it does
require a lot of expertise, planning and a larger budget. If you aren't a seasoned developer,
then I would definitely recommend outsourcing something like this.

If most of your site is being viewed from a mobile device, you have complex content and
website features that are tough to use on mobile, you don't want to have to deal with
frequent updates, and you want your site to remain modern for longer.

On those last two points, the reason why you wouldn't have to update them and why it would
look modern for longer is purely because of the fact that it is responsive and the design does
change based on the device that it's being used on.

Mobile-friendly:

You can achieve consistency across devices, but you may not be able to add sophisticated
features and functionality. If you add strange menus or images that are too large or buttons
that are actually hard to click with a thumb versus a mouse, then responsive is something
that you should consider.

You can choose this option if you don't have a lot of volume to your site, your site is
simple,you have a small budget or a smaller budget, and your site does not have many
pages. What businesses or brands often do is they first go with a mobile friendly site and
then opt for the responsive site.

At the end of the day, as long as your site is one or the other, then you won't be penalized or
un-favored by Google's algorithms.

8

Website Speed and how it affects you:
A one second delay in response time can result in a 7% loss in conversions.
In 2000, our attention spans were about 12 seconds. They are now less than 8 seconds.
And scientists believe smartphones to be a contributor to this.
Poorly optimized sites can increase your PPC costs as speed contributes to ad rank, which
affects your PPCs.
E-commerce sites can see up to a 20% drop in conversion rates.
Find your mobile site speed:

Link
What this tool does is it allows you to see the average number of seconds it takes for the
page to load.
It's the page URL that you insert into the tool. You can benchmark your site speed against
competitors and again, competitors is something that you can input yourself. You can

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evaluate the impact a faster site could have on your business. And here you would put in
your advertising details and costs and it would give you an estimation. It also gives you a
great breakdown of what you need to do to optimize pages on your site in terms of speed. All
of the above information can be generated into a report based on Google's analysis and your
inputs.

Common website issues

Inefficient JavaScript​ - if you don't know what this means, that's absolutely fine. At the end
of the day, this is not a web dev or web design course, but JavaScript is a kind of language
that certain websites or many websites are written in. If you have inefficient javascript, you
need to reduce this time spent parsing, compiling and executing the code of your site. If you
are not actually developing your site, then this is something you would send on to your
developer. The word parse means to analyze an object, specifically web scripts written in
languages such as Perl or PHP need to be parsed on the web server so that they can output
the correct page.

HTML is another kind of code or language that a website is written in. Parsing can also refer
to breaking up ordinary text. If this is the kind of thing that interests you as then you would
like to be able to do this as opposed to sending it off to a developer, then I would highly
recommend that you do the website design and development courses at Shaw Academy.

Large image sizes - If you don't compress your site images, this will result in longer load
times as larger files naturally take longer to load. You are trying to load an image, whether
it's on a website or not, if it's big then it will take forever to load. Especially if you're on a slow
machine or there's something wrong with your phone. So this is why it's very important not to
have large image sizes on your site. You would compress them.

Inefficient cache policy. I'm sure this image looks familiar to you. You can increase your
cache lifetime to speed up your load time for returning users. So let's say that your cache is
set to 30 days, meaning that you can keep track of someone visiting your site for the next 30
days. If you increase that to, let's say, 180 days, then for that period of time, whenever they
go to your site, it will load a lot faster.

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Caching means storing recently used info for quick access at a later time. Most Web
browsers cache website data by default. But you can have an effect on how long this cache
is saved. As I mentioned in my example earlier, if you changed it from, let's say, 30 days to
180 days, then it will load faster for that amount of time. What I'd recommend here is actually
also looking at your conversion window if you're aware of what that is. Just to give you a
quick reminder, a conversion window is the average number of days it takes for someone to
convert. This differs hugely depending on the offering that you have the product or service.

So those are generally the top issues that mobile websites have. Again, it's something that
the Google tool can pick up for you, whether or not it makes sense to you is another story.
And that's when you need to get somewhere like a web developer involved.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs):

According to Google, it's an open source HTML framework that provides a straightforward
way to create web pages that are fast, smooth loading and prioritize the user experience.

HTML, because I've now mentioned it for the second time, is a standardized system for
tagging text files to achieve things like font color, graphic and hyperlink effects. So even if
you aren't a developer, which I certainly am not, it is quite simple to understand. And if you
actually visit the URL ​amp.dev​, you can play around with some live code that changes the
demos as you make changes.

What makes a good mobile site?

When it comes to content, menus should be short. You need to make returning to the home
page easy. For example, include a link with Go Back to Home, and hyperlink your logo as
well. It's also a good idea to make it easier for people to jump to the top of your site,
especially if you have blogs or long content on your site. If someone's scrolling down forever
while they're reading and then they have to do the same thing just to get back up to get
somewhere else, that would be quite frustrating.

Calls to action need to be front and center - you wouldn't want to put them below the fold.
What I mean by below the fold is that it's the part of your website that you can't see when
you're loading your home page. What you're looking at is above the fold. As soon as you
scroll down, whatever's below that is below the fold.

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No pop ups, also known as interstitials, if you can't get rid of them all, at least limit them. But
ideally exclude them completely. There are definitely other ways of getting people to pay
attention in a good way, not in an annoying way.

If you have site search functionality, so within your site, people can search, you should
ensure that the search bar is visible. I can't tell you how many times I've gone on to a site
and the search bar has been on a white background with like a little grey magnifying glass
and I haven't been able to find it. And I've gotten so frustrated because of that. And, well, it
was right there. Had it been made more visible it would have saved me a lot of frustration.
You need to make sure that the search results are relevant to what someone is searching
for. If someone's searching for peaches, you don't want apples to come up. Include filters so
that visitors can utilize them to make their search results more granular. Let's say if you're
looking at a real estate site, you would want to have filters with price range, number of
bedrooms, area, etc.

So that sort of thing that can be applied across across any website. If a search receives no
results, it's a good idea to guide them back to something useful as opposed to returning a
not found page. You can link back to the search function, you can recommend trying
something else, you can provide contact details etc. Essentially just making the user
experience a lot better.

For retail sites,​ you need to enable them to explore your site without constantly being
attacked by "buy now buy now" messages. Allow them to look around and see what you
have available. It's very good overall for the user experience. Allow a guest sign in for a
purchase, so don't make it compulsory for someone to create a profile. Not many people are
comfortable with that and would definitely choose a voluntary option versus a compulsory
one. If you look at your competitors, for example, that could be the deciding factor between
choosing you and choosing them.

Pricing and stock - you need to make sure that your pricing is very clear as well as your
stock availability. Again, nothing more frustrating than ordering something, only to hear that
it's out of stock. Make that information very visible from the get go.

High quality images - goes without saying if you're in retail. You need to make sure that your
website has the highest quality images while being compressed so that it's mobile friendly.

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Include a click to call - If someone has an issue or they're not sure of something, then to be
able for them to just click a button and call someone and have a supportive person on the
other side of the phone. You need to try and make it easy for people to complete
cross-device purchases. And what I mean here is that many people will start to purchase on
their mobile phones, but then want to finish it on their desktops. So if you can allow that
functionality or that feature to take place more smoothly, then that's fantastic. A client of
mine had a page on desktop and mobile and basically it would say "you were busy doing this
thing 30 minutes ago, would you like to continue?" And then you could. And if it was a
purchase, you could carry on. And that was very smooth.

Moving on to ​lead-gen recommendations,​ first would be streamlining. Essentially from your
landing page to the submission of the form, it needs to be a smooth experience. A good lead
or a hot lead can very quickly become a cold.

Simple input - so don't make them click lots of buttons or check other things to just complete
one form. Keep it as simple as you can.

It would make your lives easier if you implemented real-time validation. So what I mean by
that is when they put their email address in, it checks that it's a valid email address. When
they put their contact number in, it checks that it is the right amount of digits and so on.

If you have quite a few questions on your form and not all of them are compulsory, then it's a
good idea to mark the ones that are, so that your potential customer is aware of them.

Auto complete should be enabled. Someone who is filling out multiple forms, which they
generally would be if they're on the hunt for something, they can just easily input their
information by choosing it from a drop-down.

If you have a lead form with quite a lot of information, it would be a good idea to split that into
different steps. So instead of having all your questions on one page, which could very easily
put someone off, you would actually break that down and say, okay, step one is fill in your
name, email address and contact number, and then I'd have to select something to go to the
next stage and the next stage, etc.

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until it's done. It's less overwhelming. And also, if you're telling them how far in they are to
the process, then they're less likely to leave, so you should include step one of five, step two
of four, etc..

Mobile App stats

● Apps are expected to generate 189 billion dollars in revenue by 2020.
● There are more than 2.2 million apps on the Apple app store, and there are more

than 2.8 million apps on the Google Play store.
● 21% of millennials open an app more than 50 times a day.
● The average smartphone owner uses 30 apps each month.

Different App types:

Native
Apps that have been developed for a single mobile operating system. So for example, it
would be coded differently on an Android phone vs an iPhone and it would possibly look
quite different as well, depending on the functionality of the mobile operating system.

Hybrid
Apps that are built the same way for multiple operating systems. It's almost like the
difference between mobile friendly and responsive mobile sites. So the native one in this
case, if we translate it to the website, would be responsive and hybrid would be mobile
friendly.

In-browser
Web apps which are in-browser apps and installing this really means bookmarking it.

Benefits of a mobile app:

You would have increased visibility due to the fact that people can access your information
at any time and with more convenience.
There is more data to improve your marketing efforts. You can accrue demographic data as
well as create lists based on when customers last logged in, last engaged and more.

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It provides value more so if you introduce something like a loyalty program, but value can
also be provided with relevant content.

Building on brand loyalty. If someone has been having a good customer experience across
all of your channels, they're more likely to remain loyal. So if you've got an app which can be
accessed at any time, which provides value, then of course you're going to see a big spike in
brand loyalty.

Increased engagement, you can push this through ads, but you can also offer something like
a support desk where they could direct any queries.

Social features like in-app messaging, comments and sharing options can be implemented
within apps.

And finally, it complements your website. While both apps and websites attract new
customers, a mobile app is more likely to create customer loyalty. So if recurring revenue is
one of your main goals, you essentially don't have a choice in the matter.

Mobile marketing strategies

SMS Marketing​ - one of the main benefits of SMS marketing is that you can reach anyone
no matter what device they have. They don't have to have a smartphone in order to get
advertising from you. If you're targeting low-income households, for example, SMS
marketing should be part of your strategy, without a doubt. The average open rate of an
SMS is 90%, and they are generally read within 90 seconds of receiving them.

RCS​ is "rich communication services". It's something to keep an eye on. It's an advanced
form of SMS in that it allows users to group chat, video, see and send high res images and
essentially act like a messaging app. For example, WhatsApp. RCS has been around since
2008 but has not yet been widely used. However, it's definitely seeing some increase in
popularity. Google has just gotten onto it, so it's something to keep an eye out for. And if you
jump on the bandwagon early, then you could actually be seeing lower costs.

Vanity URLs​ are shortened URLs generally with a keyword or a brand name, tiny.cc is a
free option, obviously with some constraints as it is free. If you have UTMs embedded in
your URL, then any clicks as a result of that SMS are tracked back to the SMS, which is
fantastic. If you're a little bit unsure, go to Tiny.cc and put in any URL just so that you can
see what it changes to and it will still direct to the same thing. People are less likely to click
on very long, weird looking URLs, they prefer short and sweet ones. And this solves that
problem.

App-based marketing.​ 90% of time on a smartphone is within an app. You can benefit from
app install campaigns, which are essentially options across all the channels that I'm aware
of. Or the top ones at least.

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Push notifications.​ These are different to campaigns as the notifications are sent through
the app's server. So it's not an additional cost, it's just additional dev time.
Engagement campaigns,​ which are available across quite a few channels, they are
essentially campaigns which encourage engagement. For someone that's already
downloaded the app that perhaps is not logged in for a certain amount of days or any kind of
criteria that you specify.
QR codes,​ the QR stands for "quick response". They were declared dead five or so years
ago, but their usage has not decreased, in fact, it has increased. Apple releasing an update
in 2017 that allowed in camera QR scanning totally changed the game in terms of QR codes
and their decline. If you search for QR code generators, you'll most likely see a bunch of
options. So go and have a look. 5.3 billion QR code coupons will be redeemed by 2022. 1
billion smartphones will access QR codes.
Offline to online tracking.​ As an example, if you are at a restaurant, then you can have
various things directing to online pages but that are being accessed offline. And again, this is
trackable and measurable.
Location-based marketing​. This is particularly effective for brick and mortar stores. You
can target areas within a certain radius if you have created and claimed your businesses. If
you are a brick and mortar store on Google Maps, for example, you can take that information
or that location and you can target it very specifically to within the radius or I think the
minimum radius is one kilometer. And what you can do then is whenever someone is in your
area, you could target them messages with promotions or specials or just getting to know
your brand. And it's incredibly effective. It also complements your app based marketing. So if
you could have a campaign where it's targeting all your app engagers within specific areas
around your businesses. If you're a brick and mortar store and they will then be served
promotions or whatever content you've decided as soon as they are within your area.

16

Professional Diploma in
DIGITAL MARKETING

1

SUMMARY ​NOTES - LESSON FIVE
Free Marketing Options

2

Table of Contents: 2
4
SUMMARY NOTES - LESSON FIVE 4
THE FOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS LESSON ARE TO UNDERSTAND: 5
CREATING A FACEBOOK PAGE 10
FACEBOOK INSIGHTS 11
SEO 12
CONTENT: 12
TITLE TAGS 13
META-TAGS: 14
URLS: 15
ALT-TEXT: 16
OFF-PAGE SEO 17
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE: 18
GOOGLE BOTS 19
HOW DO BOTS KNOW WHERE TO LOOK? 21
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: 22
POINTS TO REMEMBER
OTHER FREE MARKETING OPTIONS

The four learning objectives for this lesson are to understand:
● How to create Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages
● SEO and the Google Search Console
● Google My Business creation and benefits
● Free tools and options available to you

Creating a Facebook page

Once you have logged into your profile – you can use your personal profile, or create
another profile (with a different email address) for business use, you’ll see a create button on
the top right.

● You would choose Page from the dropdown.
● Choose the option that is relevant to you – Business and Brand, or Community and

Public Figure.
● You’ll then be asked to give your page a name – this is the name that will appear on

your page – and choose a category. Once you start typing, categories will appear.
● Literally after selecting continue, you have your own Facebook page!

The page will look blank as you still need to add all your info but I’ll take you through some of
the features. The best way to learn is to try it yourself, in my opinion. Create a test page – in
the settings you can leave it as unpublished so it isn’t visible or searchable by anyone else.
And then, as I think I have said before, play around. See what you can do. Something else I
love to say is try and break it!

4

Once on your new page, you’ll see @username under your page name. Your user-name is
what will be added to your custom FB page URL, so it would be facebook.com/username. I
recommend it’s closely related to your page name but it doesn’t have to be exactly the same.
Short and sweet is best!

You can add a button to your page which appears on the right side, under your cover photo.
There are 5 categories to choose from and in this image I am showing you the various
“Contact you” options as this category has the most variety. This is essentially a call to
action, so think carefully about the action you would like people to take when on your page.

Once you’ve clicked on settings, you’ll see all the options available on the left. Here is where
you can connect your Instagram account to Facebook, and you can also choose whether
your updates on either platform are also posted to the other.

If you go to the published posts section, you can view all your posts as well as create a new
one. You can schedule your post for a future date – very handy if you don’t want to be
posting every day – create a week’s worth or more and schedule them. You can also
backdate your post or save it as a draft if you aren’t quite finished with it.

Here is where you can also create a lead-gen form. You don’t need to have paid advertising
to create a lead form which you can share organically. As you include info, the preview on
the right will populate it.
You can also see that you have two options here – more volume or higher intent.
You do need to link to a privacy policy, so make sure you have one on your site.

Facebook Insights

If you select the insights tab, this is where you will see metrics on your posts and followers.
It’s a rabbit hole that can suck you in for hours, so go in with a clear goal and find the data
you need.
The overview section gives a high-level breakdown of various metrics. If you click on one of
the overview sections, you’ll see more info.

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Post Insights
Looking at the post insights tab, you can see when your fans are online as well as other
useful insights. But as an example, looking at the times when your followers are online, you
could use this to test when you should schedule your posts – an example of this could be -
when the time peaks, do your posts garner higher reach or more engagement?
Below this you can see reach and engagements on your posts. A good thing to do is divide
your engagement by your reach to determine your engagement rate. You can then analyse
your posts to see if you can improve engagement rate. Was it a case of missing a call to
action? Was the image perhaps not relevant to the copy? Etc.

6

Creating an Instagram Professional account
There are two ways to switch your account to a professional one. Once you’re logged into
your profile, select “Account” and at the bottom you will see “switch to Professional account”
These social media channels update little things constantly and while I do update the
lessons, I might miss something. If something has drastically changed though, please email
me on [email protected]
You can also switch to a professional account if you go to “edit profile”.
If you don’t have an Instagram account or you want to have another account for business
purposes, create a profile / another profile with a different email address. If you’re also
setting up Facebook, I’d recommend using the same email.
Once you have chosen to switch accounts, you’ll need to decide whether “Business” or
“Creator” fits you best.

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I’ve chosen creator here just to show you the options but with either creator or business, you
need to choose a category.

This image is under the Business category – you would include your email, contact and
business address.
And there we go! You now have a professional Instagram account with the main difference
being that you can receive more insights on your posts and of course include all your contact
info.

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Creating a LinkedIn page

Finally, in terms of page creation in this lesson, we have LinkedIn. It’s an exceptional B2B
platform and unlike Facebook, it isn’t suitable for all businesses.

It starts off the same as the previous channels – log in to your profile, or create a new
business one.

On the top right of the page you will see something called “Work”. Select this and you will
see these options. At the bottom you can see “create a company page”. Select this will will
lead you to (scroll) this page. There are various options, from small to large businesses and
educational institutions.
Select the option that best suits your business.

I’ve chosen small business, and here you would start off with your company name. Then you
have the public url which works the same as Facebook. Include your website and company
details from the dropdowns. As you fill in this info, (scroll) the preview on the right will
populate.

A responsive website changes based on the device that you are using.

Layouts change from multiple columns to a single one to make it easier to use on mobile.
Unnecessary images are hidden. And on desktop, you can actually tell if a website is
responsive by reducing the size of your browser window. Try it now, go into a site, any site,
and just reduce the size of your window ever so slightly. And if you see the content and
images changing, adjusting essentially to the new site, then it's responsive.

LinkedIn really is all about quality, informative content. This content suggestions tool tells
you what content your followers are engaging with, so of course you first need to have
followers. Posting content, commenting on relevant posts, encouraging people to follow your
profile on other channels etc.

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SEO
Like digital marketing, SEO changes all the time. Google releases new updates often,
sometimes with little impact and sometimes with game-changing impact. If you are in a
competitive space and you want to grow fast, or branding is your goal, hiring a quality SEO
professional or company is going to be one of your most important investments.
Before approaching this, it’s always a good idea to do your research. Which keywords do
you want to rank for? Is this realistic?
You also need to understand that where you appear on the search results page could
change every day - there is no guarantee.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and
earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML
source code of a page that can be optimized

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Mobile user context changes frequently – location, attention span, connectivity, how people
use their device
Mobile users prefer short, simple interactions.
There’s a huge source of personal data on mobile, more so than desktop due to apps,
messaging, galleries, location accuracy, profile photos etc. Sounds pretty scary but
marketing platforms aren’t allowed to gather any personal data without prior permission and
your name will never be attached to it.
Mobile provides different forms of input – call, touch screen, keypads, etc

Content:

Content must be relevant any clear
Unique and regular - If you have duplicate content on your site or from another site, you will
be penalized. Updating your site regularly signals to google that you have a quality website.

It needs to be content that supplies a demand - remember when we were looking at target
markets and the elements of a target market statement? Similarly, ask yourself what is the
“problem” your content is solving? Does your “supply” meet the demand?

And then it needs to be linkable – you want other publishers to link to your content. This is
even more of a signal that your site is relevant.

Your content needs to include SOME strategic keywords. On-page keyword optimization all
boils down to researching, choosing and including keywords that you can easily rank for.
You don’t want to compete with top brands with higher and stronger authority.

Long-tail keywords, for example “local red summer dresses” are better than short ones like
“dresses” – you will never rank highly for this keyword unless you are a retail giant.

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Title Tags

It’s an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. They are the clickable headlines
you see in organic SERPs. Recommended to be 50 or less characters so it isn’t cut off. If
your title tags are duplicated anywhere, this will affect your ranking as well.
Regardless of SEO, you should be paying attention to the titles of your pages as overall,
people will click on them more if they are clear and relevant. Pay attention to keywords but
don’t overdo it. Avoid the defaults like Home or Product Page - these reduce click-through
rates. Include your brand if it has a strong presence. Write them for your customers, not for
yourself. Think about the user experience.
Meta-Tags:

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Gives an explanation of what is on the page.
Search engines such as Google often display the meta description—typically up to 160
characters long—in search results. If you go longer than this, Google will truncate the
description (cutting it off)
Use some of the keywords you want to rank for in the meta tag, but don’t overdo it as it will
give you the opposite of your desired result. See this as writing an ad.
Google doesn’t take meta tags or keywords into account when ranking but as these have an
effect on your CTRs, by default it impacts your rankings.
URLs:

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This URL shows the hierarchy of the information on the page (history as it pertains to digital
marketing in the context of marketing). This information is used to determine the relevancy of
a given web page by the search engines. Due to the hierarchy, the engines can assume that
the page likely doesn’t pertain to history in general but rather to that of the history of digital
marketing.
On the other hand, this URL tells the user nothing and due to this, search engines won’t see
it as a relevant search result.
Alt-text:

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Alt text - describes the appearance of the images on your site. If someone is visually
impaired, this would be read out to them.
It will also be displayed in place of an image if it failed to load for whatever reason.
They also provide better image context to search engine crawlers, helping them to index it
properly.
A bad example of an alt tag – dress
A good example of an alt tag – beautiful woman wearing a red dress
Off-Page SEO
Refers to all the activities that you and your consumers do away from your website to
increase the ranking of a page within search engines. This is far more difficult to get right
than on-page SEO and is part of why SEO seems so mysterious.

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Links – referring to links to your site not on your site, so referrals, social media, other
publishers etc
Brand mentions without links also are a factor
Trust – this is to do with your reputation, and if you have a security certificate
Social – links, shares, reviews and other engagements
I think this is why SEO can be so hard to get right, as the influencing factors are not
technically all within your control. If you keep your brand clean, respond to criticism and
provide quality content then your chances are much higher for rankings.

Google Search Console:

The Google search console is where you can optimise content by finding out which queries
bring users to the site. You can also analyse site impressions, clicks and your position on
Google

GSC can be integrated with Google Ads, allowing you to see performance of paid vs organic
traffic.

To link it to your site, you need to login to Google Search Console with your Google account
details.
You’ll then be asked to select a property type – either a domain or a URL. You need to enter
that url and continue.

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You’ll be asked to verify the domain ownership by adding a piece of code in your DNS
configuration. You would find this within whatever CMS you are using to manage your site.

Optimise content – what I was talking about earlier, being able to see the queries that bring
people to your site – you would then make sure you include those keywords in your copy.
Organic metrics – you can view and analyse these.
Position on SERPS – straightforward. It’s not like Google Ads where there are only 8
positions.
You can integrate GSC and Google Ads to see performance of of organic vs paid traffic
Submit sitemaps and individual urls for crawling. You can review your index coverage to
make sure Google has the freshest view of your site. Receive alerts on issues - Google will
notify you with specific urls affected as well as other errors.
Google Bots

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So what are google bots and what do they do?
A bot is really a programme that can interact with different systems. The Google bots crawl
and index the internet, of which your site is a part.

Crawling​ is looking at and analysing all the content and code on your site.
Indexing​ it is seeing if the page is eligible to show up in search results.

It is estimated that Google bots take 3 months to index a new site (boostability.com, 2019). If
your site is older and is not experiencing crawling, your design could be an issue.
When bots can’t access your site, it decreases your ranking.

How do bots know where to look?

It’s something called a sitemap, which is essentially a list of the pages on your site in order
of importance. A sitemap tells Google’s bots which pages to index. They tell Google how
often you update content so it is recommended to submit your sitemap each time you
publish changes, this could lead to Google indexing your site faster.

Check whether your site has been indexed by typing site:etc in your browser. You will then
see a list of pages that have been indexed as well as any tags associated with them. If
nothing appears, your site has not yet been indexed.

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A noindex tag tells the bots not to include the page/s in search results. Unless you also
include nofollow, the bots can still follow links to that page from other pages. Using the
Disallow tag means you’re telling Search engines not to crawl it. It is not fool proof and if
implemented incorrectly you can still have unwanted pages appear on the search results.
Google My Business:
Something that is great for local SEO is a Google My Business page.
It is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and
maps. That includes adding your business name, location, and hours; monitoring and
replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching
for you, and more.

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Points to remember

Your profile photo is what appears when you upload new photos, videos, or review
responses.

Google My Business cover photo is one of the most important, as it shows up front and
center on your listing.

You can also add videos. Videos must be:

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30 seconds or shorter
100 MB or smaller
720p resolution or higher
Definitely recommend having a video as this is generally how people like to consume
content.

Reviews - encourage customers to review you on Google.

Facebook and other platform reviews do sometimes appear (e.g. Facebook, Trip advisor)
NB to respond to the good reviews as well as the bad ones - people will be more irked by the
negative review if the brand hasn’t responded. Responding shows that you care and want to
improve your service.

Suggest an edit – people can do this with certain businesses and sometimes they are
approved without you knowing, so it is important to login to your business profile regularly.

Other free marketing options

Influencer marketing​ is a tactic that brings together businesses with influencers who have a
loyal following who then promote your product, service, content, etc to their audience.
Not all influencers want cash in exchange for a review or promotion. Some are happy to do it
in exchange for a free license to your software for example, or a discount on your product or
service.
And by influencers I don’t mean the highest of celebs out there. In fact, according to a 2017
study, so-called smaller influencers drive 60% higher engagement. People with more than
1000 followers are generally seen as less relatable, so engagement drops.

Guest posting​ can further your reach and generate more leads by allowing you to tap into
other companies’ audiences. In addition, you’ll build backlinks (off-page SEO) to your
website, which search engines will use to rank you higher in search results

If using a free service and a database of email addresses, you can upload your list, segment
it in a way that suits your business and objectives and craft relevant, personalised content.
“Cold emailing” can generate some great leads. Reach out to your networks on social media,
like LinkedIn, reach out to any leads you have previously lost (things can change). Etc.

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Professional Diploma in
DIGITAL MARKETING

1

SUMMARY ​NOTES - LESSON SIX
An Introduction to Google Ads

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Table of Contents: 2
3
SUMMARY NOTES - LESSON SIX 4
THE FOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS LESSON ARE TO UNDERSTAND: 4
CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE 10
CONVERSION SETUP 13
SEARCH AD TYPES 14
EXTENSIONS: 15
URL TIPS 15
REMARKETING POLICIES: 17
REMARKETING SETUP: 18
GOOGLE DISPLAY CAMPAIGNS: 19
DISPLAY AD TYPES
BID STRATEGIES:

The four learning objectives for this lesson are to understand:
● Google Ads campaign structure
● Keyword match types and estimations
● Bid strategies

● Google Search and Display specs

Campaign structure

So what does a campaign look like? Firstly, a quick note on accounts - this is not the same
as a campaign. Your account is where you add your business name, timezone, billing details
and preferred currency.

A campaign houses adgroups which house your targeting and ads. Think of campaigns as
the “umbrella term” or main objective. For example, t-shirts. Your adgroups would be
segmented categories of your campaign. So in this example one adgroup would be
long-sleeved and another would be short-sleeved. This helps you split and determine your
targeting. If it’s keywords, then you would have long-sleeved related keywords and ads in
your long-sleeve adgroup. Same for short-sleeved. You shouldn’t have the same keyword in
different adgroups.

Here is what you can set at campaign-level:
Your location target
Language
Budget
Bid strategy
Network (either search or partners or both)
Dates of your campaign - either ongoing or with a set start and end date

At adgroup level, this would house your:
Ads
Targeting, as I mentioned earlier
Audiences - though you can target audiences on campaign level as well actually
Devices - your mobile, desktop, tablets

Conversion Setup

Before you launch any campaigns within Google Ads, you need to setup your conversions.

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Unless your only objective is traffic to site - this can be tracked with the standard metrics. I
am not going into this as it is not a performance-focused objective.

Once you are logged into your account - please email me if you would like a link on how to
create your account - you would see tools and settings at the top right of your screen.

When you have selected to create a new conversion, you would see this screen - asking you
whether you want to measure conversions from a website, app, phone call or import a
conversion action from another system - we are covering that in module 2.

I’m going with website for now. Once I have selected that option I need to choose which
action I would like to track. You have purchase, lead, page view, sign up and other.

A little tip - your life will be much easier when it comes to setup if you have a unique URL
you can track which signals that someone has completed a desired action. So if it’s a lead,
you would have a “thank you” page.

You then need to select what your conversion window will be - I mentioned this in previous
lessons, if you have an idea of how many days it takes for someone to convert after seeing /
clicking an ad, then this should be your conversion window as you don’t want google taking
more credit than it needs to. The standard is 30 days so if you aren’t sure, leave it at that.
Generally big purchases like cars should have a longer conversion window.

The view-through conversion window is referring to how many days after someone has s​een
your ad should Google Ads get credit for. It’s best to keep this low - it defaults to 1. Really
because a view is not always a view. Google may think it was seen but perhaps your ad was
lower on the page, perhaps they didn’t even read it if they did see it and more.

Include in conversions is set to Yes, meaning that in your metrics you will see conversion
numbers from that action. If you set it to no, you can still track it within the conversions tab
but it won’t be recorded with your campaign. An example of this could be a newsletter signup
- you might want to track this but you don’t necessarily want to include it with your other,
more important conversions as it would sway the metrics.

Attribution model defaults to last click, which we will go through now.

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Attribution Models

There are 6 different attribution models within Google Ads and an attribution model
essentially determines which clicks get the credit for the conversion.
There’s last-click, which gives all the credit to the last keyword that served an ad which was
clicked on.
There’s first-click, which gives all credit to the first keyword
Linear gives equal credit to all the keywords leading up to a conversion
Time-Decay assigns more credit to clicks that occurred recently and less to those “further
away” so to speak
Position based attribution gives 40% credit to the first and last clicks, and 20% to the clicks
in between
Data-driven is exactly that - it is driven by large amounts of data and assigns allegedly
assigns credit more accurately.

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Which model is best?

Last click is the default model and there is nothing so-called wrong with it. You can achieve
growth with this model but I would argue that there are better ones.

First-click is great for brands who are looking for growth and volume - they want to nurture
the keywords that first made their customers aware of them. It obviously ignores subsequent
clicks which is a potential issue if you don’t have a lot of volume to determine whether there
are other keywords people are converting on whether they did or didn’t on the first click.

Time-Decay starts to see things a little more comprehensively, as it takes into account the
first click and the “most nearby” clicks. If you have quite a long conversion window this could
work nicely.

Linear assigns equal credit to all the keywords, which one could argue is the most “fair”. If
you’re looking to protect and grow all your contributing keywords equally, this is the option
for you.

Position-Based, in my opinion, is the best model for growth, protection and accuracy. It
assigns most of the credit to the first and last clicks which are arguably the most important,
but it doesn’t ignore the clicks in between. You may decide to spend more on your first and
last clicks, and less in the middle. Perhaps the middle clicks need to be in a lower position,
for example.

I haven’t included data-driven here as this is only available for some advertisers. You need
to have a large amount of data for this attribution model to become available to you.

And I must mention here that if you are on an automated bid strategy, think very carefully
before switching attribution models. It can make or break your account if not handled
properly.

Also please remember that little disclaimer I have on this course. I am giving you the facts
but I am also giving you my opinion based on my experience - someone could disagree with

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this which doesn’t make me or them wrong, I would just ask to see the data behind their
decisions.

Google Search campaigns

Let’s recap the targeting options we went through in lesson 2. We obviously have keywords,
but there is also:
Remarketing
Demographics
Interests
Similar audiences and custom audiences
In-Market audiences
Device

Keyword Match Types
There are 4 different match types, some might say 3, but they are:
Exact
Phrase
Broad Match modifier
Broad
(this is where someone might say 3 as they combine these two broad terms)

Let’s break down each match type a bit:

Starting off with ​broad keywords,​ we have pure broad, which would be added to your
adgroup like this:
Broad keyword

And then there’s broad match modifier which includes a + before each word.

Broad keywords cast the widest net over your campaigns. It will pick up related terms but
without an extensive list of negatives you will end up showing your ads for irrelevant or at
least too generic searches. I literally saw the broad keyword “insurance” show up for “bike”
and it spent 8000 without converting. This is a lot of money.

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If you have a relatively old account with broad keywords, they seem to perform better, I
imagine due to the history of the account. Adding new broad keywords however, needs to be
approached with caution.

The plusses before each word in BMM keywords tells Google that those words have to be in
the search terms. Any other words can be before, after or in between. This provides some
more control over the terms your ads appear for but you still need to have a comprehensive
negative list.

Negatives are words that you don’t want to appear for. Using insurance as an example as it
is on my mind now, you would want to show up for “car insurance” but not necessarily
“cancel car insurance” - so you would add cancel as a negative. More on this in modules 2
and 3.

Phrase keywords​ are enclosed with quotation marks. It tells Google that the triggering
search terms for your ads need to include those words in the order you have specified them
in. Any terms can be included before or after your phrase but not in between.
There is some dispute about the value of phrase keywords as broad match modifier
keywords can cover those terms. My thoughts, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes they offer a cheaper cpc and a higher conversion rate, leading to lower
CPL/CPA than your BMM keywords. Other times they pick up lots of irrelevant traffic, have
higher cpc’s and lower conversion rates. So, like everything in this game - test.

Exact keywords​ are enclosed with square brackets. They serve ads when that exact term is
entered. Except they don’t anymore since Google announced that they can now match
“close variants” which is quite a generic thing to say. All keywords are meant to match “close
variants”, questioning the need for different match types, but for now there is still a lot of
value in including different match types.

All keywords, not just exact, pick up misspellings and plurals so you don’t need to worry
about adding those. Unless you already have them in your account and they perform.

Keyword Planner

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The keyword planner is available within the tools and settings tab that you find your
conversion settings in.

You have two options - you can either get new keyword ideas by adding your desired
keywords or website url - you’ll see the number of monthly searches, their competition and
avg CPC. I often find these CPC’s are incorrect, so don’t be scared to add one to your
account due to a high-looking CPC. It might not work for you, sure, but try it first.

You can also get volumes and forecasts on the existing keywords in the account. Again here
you get avg monthly searches and cpcs but you also get predictions of future performance.
I’d say be careful about taking these as “truth”, especially if you don’t have a lot of volume.

Search ad types

First we have ​Text ads​ - pretty straightforward. Here’s a desktop and a mobile example of
what they look like:

There are up to 3 headlines and 2 descriptions.
Headlines are a max of 30 characters each
Descriptions are a max of 90 characters

Display URL - is the URL you want to appear on the ad.

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The final URL is the URL people will be directed to after clicking your ad
Paths are optional keywords you can include in your Display URL

The third headline isn’t guaranteed to show, so don’t include your best USP or call to action
here. Likewise the 2nd description doesn’t always show.

Then we have r​esponsive search ads,​ which look the same as text ads but the difference
is you include more headlines and descriptions and then google switches these around
based on the top performers. Again, just because this is an option it doesn’t mean you can
leave Google to do what it pleases. Results vary a lot.

You can include 15 headlines, 4 descriptions (both with the same max character length as
the text ads). And then like text ads you have the display url, final url and paths.

Call-Only ads​ are exactly that - when someone clicks on them they are clicking to call you.
Obviously this is for mobile. The ad consists of your contact number, business name, 2
headlines, 2 descriptions (2nd one optional), a display url and verification url. The verification
url allows google to check whether the number displayed on your ad is the correct one. Both
the display and verification urls are optional.

Ad customisers

There are other, more complex ones available but let’s go through the two common ones -
keyword insertion and countdown.

A keyword insertion ad replaces the default keyword or words you have selected with
whatever the user has searched for.

It would look something like this - you start with curly brackets - in this case I have added it
to the first headline but it can be used anywhere in the ad.

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