Digital Marketing and Web Development Fundamentals

Digital Marketing (DM)

Overview

DM promotes brands through digital channels globally, offering targeted, personalized, cost-effective, and measurable marketing solutions.

Changes in E-commerce

Before

• Audience and medium-centered
• Periodic updates
• Scarcity of information
• Stages & consent-driven interactions
• Unidirectional communication
• Focus on information dissemination

Now

• User-centered
• Multimedia content
• Content-centered
• Real-time updates
• Abundance of information
• Hypertext navigation
• Knowledge sharing
• Two-way communication

Four DM Strategies

1. Database Marketing (DB): Designing and communicating the brand (e.g., Coca-Cola) to increase engagement, enhance customer experience, and cater to both old and new customers.
2. Customer Experience Design (CXD): Providing the best customer experience (e.g., Virgin Airlines) by gathering data and optimizing touchpoints.
3. Demand Generation (DG): Increasing web traffic and focusing on sales (e.g., Lidl chatbot, social media price drops).
4. Product Innovation (PI): Innovating and creating new products, analyzing revenue, and understanding user interactions.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Traditional Marketing (TV, door-to-door, telephone, radio) is not cost-effective, difficult to measure, and less effective for brand building.

Digital Marketing (SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing) is cost-effective, measurable, efficient, and contributes significantly to brand building.

The 5 Ds of Digital Marketing

• Digital Devices (DD): Smartphones, etc.
• Digital Platforms (DP): Instagram, Facebook, etc.
• Digital Media (DM): Owned, paid, and earned media.
• Digital Data (DD): Collected data (e.g., emails).
• Digital Technology (DT): Required technology for digital marketing efforts.

Web Evolution

Web 1.0 (Informative Internet): Read-only content, limited user input and interaction, unidirectional communication, infrequent updates.

Web 2.0 (Collaborative Internet): Read and write access, based on user input and interaction, examples include wikis and social networking sites.

Web 3.0 (Semantic Internet): Decentralized, read, write, and own data, user control over data, blockchain technology.

Business Goals and User Understanding

Key Business Goals

• Engagement: Comments, clicks, shares.
• Influence: Reviews, relevance to the community.
• Visibility: Followers, search engine ranking, website visits.
• Conversion: Convincing users to take desired actions, measurable through surveys, sales, and downloads.

Empathy Map

Understanding the user's perspective through their thoughts, feelings, what they see and hear, what they say and do, their pains, and gains.

Customer Journey Map

Mapping the customer's journey from identifying a need to awareness, consideration, decision, acquisition, retention, potential abandonment, and reacquisition.

Humans vs. Computers

Computers

• Fast and error-free
• Rule-based and unemotional
• Sequenced and predictable
• Lacking morality

Humans

• Slower and prone to errors
• Unpredictable and emotional
• Intelligent and creative
• Ethical and unpredictable

Web Development Process

Key Steps

1. Empathize: Understand users through surveys and research.
2. Define: Create user personas based on research.
3. Ideate: Sketch and brainstorm potential solutions.
4. Prototype: Develop a working prototype.
5. Test: Gather feedback and iterate on the design.

Types of Web Content

• Main Content: Helps the website achieve its goals.
• Supplementary Content: Enhances the user experience.
• Ads/Monetization: Generates revenue.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEM

Increases visibility and positioning in search results through paid advertisements. Provides immediate results, increased awareness, traffic, and views.

SEO

Improves organic search ranking based on website content and is a long-term strategy.

SEO Triangle

Focuses on content, technical aspects, and link building.

Why People Search

• Informational: Seeking information.
• Navigational: Finding a specific page.
• Commercial: Exploring options.
• Transactional: Ready to purchase.

How Websites Get Ranked

Crawling: Search engine bots discover and revisit web pages.

Indexing: Organizing web pages for quick access.

Serving: Presenting relevant pages to users based on their search queries.

Ranking Factors

• Meaning and Intent: Understanding the user's search query (language, scope, synonyms, local context).
• Relevance: How well the content matches the search query.
• Quality: Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the content.

How Ads Get Ranked

Based on quality (keyword relevance, brand keywords, competitor keywords) and bidding strategy.

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI)

UX

Focuses on the overall experience and usability of a website, encompassing interaction design and user research.

UI

Deals with the visual and interactive elements of a website, including colors, visual design, and typography.