A Comprehensive Complete Guide to Digital Marketing

                    Digital Marketing? 

Digital marketing is an essential aspect of any business. However, in today's rapidly evolving market, it can be unpredictable and challenging to keep up with the latest trends, tools, and tactics.
With so much information available, it's difficult to determine what works best and where to begin. This can make it daunting to develop a successful marketing strategy. But fear not, together we can overcome this challenge.
My name is Waqar Ali, and I have been working on digital marketing, freelancing, and content creation for several years.
In this course, I will help you cut through the noise and debunk the myths surrounding digital marketing. Instead, I will provide you with a proven step-by-step approach to develop your digital marketing strategy. This approach will not only grow your business but also enable you to adapt to the ever-changing market.
I will cover everything from developing your strategy, selecting the right marketing channels, and acquiring the necessary skills to succeed in this field. Whether you're looking to grow your own company or joining a new team, you'll find the skills and knowledge you need to feel confident in your digital marketing journey. Let's get started.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is all about promoting your business online using various channels. These channels can include your website, search engines, social media, online video, and paid ads.

The goal is to make your target audience aware of what you have to offer and engage with them at the right place and time.
But with so many channels and messages to choose from, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. 
That's why it's important to understand that marketing is an ongoing experiment. You need to try new things and continually adapt your strategies based on the data you collect.

The great thing about digital marketing is that it allows us to be both artistic and scientific. We can use data to make informed decisions and build predictions about our audience's behavior, interests, and preferences. 
By understanding our customers' needs and tailoring our messages to their interests, we can create powerful, persuasive campaigns that inspire action.

So, if you're ready to take your marketing game to the next level, it's time to start experimenting, testing, and adapting your strategies based on the data you collect. 

The possibilities are endless, and with the right approach, you can achieve remarkable success.

The Digital Marketing Framework



11. The building blocks of digital marketing

Let's dive into the foundations of digital marketing. It all starts with understanding the three types of media you'll be working with: paid, owned, and earned.

Paid media is any channel you pay for, like pay-per-click ads, affiliate marketing, and display marketing.

Owned media is the channels you have direct control over, such as your website, email list, and blog.

Earned media is the world of organic mentions, social media posts, and even articles written about you.

The beauty of digital marketing is that these channels can overlap and work together seamlessly. Plus, with the power of personalization, you can target your message to the people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

No more wasting money on ads in the local newspaper that go unseen by your target audience! Instead, you can deliver an ad specifically to those who are actively searching for what you offer.

By understanding and utilizing these three media types, you'll be able to effectively distribute your message across multiple channels and build a strong foundation for your digital marketing strategy.


1.   2. The marketing funnel

-o You'll hear a lot about funnels the more time you spend in the world of marketing. Purchase funnels, sales funnels, inbound funnels, regardless of the name, they're all ultimately describing the same concept. 

And I want you to get in the habit of visualizing funnels as you develop your marketing strategies. Here's how to think about a funnel. It's really just a way to represent the customer's journey as they move towards the purchase of your product or surface. 

 

At the top or the widest part of the funnel is where a buyer starts their journey. And the bottom, the narrowest part, is where you hope they end up. Your goal as a marketer is to funnel prospects into buyers, moving them from the top to the bottom of the funnel. 

 

The shape symbolizes the fact that a large number of people will never complete the journey through the funnel. You'll expose your product or service to a lot of people, but only a small fraction will actually convert. 

 

In reality, this funnel is rather leaky, as it has holes in the sides where people will fall out. Now, the marketing funnel is typically segmented into four phases: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. 

 




At the very top is Awareness. 

 

Someone has to become aware of not only what they want, but who's selling it. This is when a prospect is introduced to your brand. But they might also be introduced to the competition as well. 

 

Thus, the first hole or the exit from your funnel. Now, I know that I need a mattress, and I know that you sell one, but my initial exposure to your brand was uninteresting so I wandered off.

 

 Now, below Awareness, we have Interest. 

It's at this stage that a consumer will begin to explore the products or services available to them in more detail. Now, I'm wanting to know what feature that your mattress has compared to your competitor. If I'm not captivated, well, out the funnel I go.

 

 Next comes Desire, which we can also call Consideration. 

 

It's here that the prospect wants to make a purchase. They're in the final stages of evaluating whether or not to commit. 

 

And finally, Action. Your prospect is either going to buy or not.

 They may select you, someone else, or decide they're not buying at all. This is the foundational funnel. It's called the item model. 

 

You may also see it depicted with one last step known as Loyalty, which is the act of retaining your customer. 

Now, we often reference these different segments as top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. And this is important because how you manage your marketing will depend on where in the funnel your buyer is. 

 

Towards the bottom of the funnel, well, you have someone who is really close to making a purchase. Bottom funnel marketing focuses on identifying people who are in a buying decision and then converting them. 

 

They're right there. At the top of the funnel, you're focused on making people aware of your solution. You're trying to message to mostly the right people, but you know you can't be everything for everyone. But if there's zero top of the funnel marketing, well, there's nobody coming out the other side. So you have to get them in the door before you can start selling to them. 

 

And, as you might expect, middle of the funnel marketing is the nurturing process to keep the lead moving. It's giving them a great experience, and all the information they need at just the right time to make their decision. 

 

In many ways, this is the hardest part of marketing, figuring out how to keep that person in the funnel and not spilling out. Marketing works best when you understand which stage your customers in so you can tailor your messaging to move them to that next stage.


3.   The buyer journey.

 


The marketing funnel is really just a way of evaluating a buyer's journey. We understand a buyer will go through the stages from awareness to action, but is that journey ever perfectly straightforward? 

 

The buyer may be moving up and down the funnel, exiting and reentering. There's so many variables that we as marketers are working to account for. And I want to put this into perspective. 

 

Think for a minute about all of the questions you might have regarding how someone came to buy a product. 

 

Where did they find this product? 

 

Was it research in advance or did they find it on a shelf?

 

 And if they found it on a shelf, what jumped out, the price, the label?

 

Did they look at other products on the shelf next to it? 

 

Did they search the brand on their phone? 

 

Did they text a picture to a friend?

 

 Was the checkout process easy? 

 

Did a coupon motivate them to buy?

 

 And so on. I want you to try something, take out a pen and paper and write down all the steps you took when you made a recent purchase. The more you think about it, the more steps I imagine that you'll identify. And every time you go to buy something, at least in the next short future, keep a journal of your process. 

 

In fact, you can oftentimes realize that some purchases have been a brand that's been slowly chipping away at that awareness stage with you for ages. At each step, buyers are going to define their own path. 

 

So as you develop a digital marketing strategy, you'll need an idea of how a buyer will navigate your funnel. And this can feel like a rather robust undertaking. So I want you to treat this in an agile manner, be ready to iterate on your buyer's journey. 

 

You can't conceivably map out every step, every touchpoint and every interaction. What you want to do is define the most common paths a prospective buyer will take. 

 

So start by coming up with three to five answers for each of these questions. 

 

How will my buyer become aware of their problem? 

 

How might they become aware of a solution? 

 

Why would they become interested in my solution? 

 

Why would they pick my brand over another brand?

 

 What would motivate them to convert? 

 

What would be a hurdle to getting them to decide to buy? 

 

And what might they need to move down the funnel? 

 

Understanding your customer's journey helps you to develop the right messaging for the stage that they're in. It's key to the decisions that you'll be making across all of your digital marketing.


4.   Create a buyer journey map 


One of the greatest challenges in marketing is knowing what to say and when. And I'll let you in on a little secret: you'll never get it 100% right. But with enough time and enough iterations, you'll get it really close. 

But that doesn't mean your first endeavor can't or won't be incredibly effective. So to help you land close to the target, I want you to build and maintain a buyer journey map. 
It is a fantastic tool for taking some of the mystery out of what a buyer needs to hear and when. 

Now there's no set form for this, but you can create a very simple template to get you started. Here's how I do it: I'll make a quick spreadsheet of sorts and you can do this in Excel or Google Sheets or whatever tool lets you evolve it and add to it as you go. 

Along the top as column headers, I list out the funnel stages: awareness, interest, desire, action, and loyalty. 

Then I'll create rows for the following: activities, goals, thoughts, emotional state, touchpoints and channels, and finally, objectives. Let's go through this together. 



Start with Activities. Moving left to right for each funnel stage, call out what your consumer is doing. 

Are they searching Google? 

Waiting for the bus? 

Listening to music? 

Reading a marketing email from you? And so on.


Then Goals. This is what your customer wants to achieve during this phase. This is their goal, not yours. It could be to get more information, find a discount, and so on. 

Next: Thoughts. What are some questions or thoughts that customer might have that correspond with that stage?
Maybe they're curious about your return policy for example. 

Now: Emotional state. Is the customer happy, excited, sad, frustrated? 

Are they interested or curious? 

Describe how they're feeling during this portion of their journey. I like to use a one to five scale of smiley faces and then I put a small quote that symbolizes what the customer might be feeling, such as, "This seems interesting." 

Okay. Touchpoints and channels. Where will the customer interact with your brand? 

Is it your website, social media, an email, a specific ad? And so on. 

Objectives. Here, you'll craft a few bullet points about what you need to do to move your prospective buyer to the next stage of the funnel. Now you may have multiple responses for each funnel stage, but this format will help you map out your fundamental buyer journey.  

The goal is to keep it simple and lean. Don't fill out pages and pages. Let's fill out one column together. Let's say we have a pet grooming business and we're working on the awareness stage. 
For Activities, well, let's say the consumer is searching Google for "pet groomer near me". 

Goals: Well, they want to see what local businesses offer this service. 

For Thoughts, maybe it's "I hope I can book this online." And "I've never taken Fido anywhere before." 

I'll give their Emotional State a neutral smiley face. 

Touchpoints: Let's say Google map listings and website. 

Objectives: Make the customer aware of the business, most notably, how to book an appointment and how well reviewed our business is. With this first piece of the journey built, I can move through the columns, and once I'm done, I'll have a good picture of all the marketing activities I need to complete to have a full, funnel marketing strategy. 

It also helps me think through what information is most important or might even be missing from my strategy. Consider the journey that your customers experience and build a map. 

This way you can make the process more delightful, less frustrating, and ultimately, successful. Continue.....