Week Five: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Week five learning objectives:

Distinguish between SEO, SEM, PPC, search marketing, and online advertising
Understand the breadth of online advertising channels
Know the steps in creating a successful online advertising campaign
Understand the principles of Google AdWords and Google AdSense
List the 5 pillars of Google AdWords success and explain the importance of each pillar
Explain the drivers of Google’s Quality Score measure
List key ways to monetize traffic

Week Four: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Week four learning objectives:

Define search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
Explain why SEO matters
Understand the basics of how search engines work
How a search engine “reads” a website
Know your SEO jargon: SERPs, PageRank, longtail, back link, PPC, algorithms, spiders, crawling, indexing
Learn the key factors in optimizing a website for search

SEO Basic Definition:

SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. Check out SEOMoz's The Beginners Guide to SEO for an indepth look at all aspects of SEO including:

• terms and phrases (keywords) that generate traffic
• how to make a site search engine friendly
• how to build links
• marketing the unique value of your site/organization's offerings

Do you have to win the jackpot to afford an SEO specialist?

Aaron Franklin, a Los Angeles-based internet marketing specialist and owner of SEOkiwi.com tackles why SEO matters, who should be in charge of your SEO, and the cost of SEO with wit and humour in this post. When it comes to the cost related to SEO, Mr. Franklin believes, "what you pay for is not what it costs you. That is defined by the return you get on your investment. If an SEO consultant delivers a boost in sales and profit that’s 5, 10 or 25 times what you paid, it didn’t cost you anything!"

Search Engine Basic Definition:

Search engines are like answer machines, providing answers to user queries, most frequently through lists of relevant pages, through retrieval and rankings.

These four women were probably searching for the lowest price on a designer pair of shoes.
Isn't that what every woman uses search engjnes for?

SEM Basic Definition:

SocialMediaToday.com describes SEM is the process of gaining traffic from search engines and uses tool such as paid inclusion and trusted feed programs, pay-for-placement management (includes pay-per-click), link popularity / reputation development

Rating 5

Week Three: Website Marketing

Week three learning objectives:

Explain the importance of websites for marketing
Evaluate planning, information architecture, web design, and usability experience, and web standards best practices for marketing
Explain the importance of landing pages and outline landing page best practices
Describe the process of A/B and multivariate testing for website optimization
Discuss aligning website functionality with purchase decision making process (B2C) or sales funnel (B2B)
Identify unique features of business-to-business websites
Define web marketing acronyms like IA, UX, TOFU, MOFU, BOFU

Week Two: Content Strategy & Content Marketing Learning Objectives

Week two learning objectives:

Define content and list content types
Define meta content
Discuss the key issues with content for marketing: ownership, creation, and effectiveness
Discriminate between content strategy and content marketing
Discuss storytelling as an online content strategy
Define inbound and outbound marketing
Describe the use of content management systems (CMS)
Explain the basic use and benefits of marketing automation software for content marketing

 

Content strategy is:

• A field of practice

• planning

• creating

• evaluating

Kristina Havorson, US-based author of Content Strategy for the Web, and founder of  Brain Traffic specializes in content development for interactive media (websites, social and mobile). Her blog is a great place to learn more about content strategy. Amazon.ca offers a preview of Content Strategy for the Web (2nd Edition).

Take a look at all the employment opportunties related to content management here in Vancouver, BC found on Indeed.com

Content marketing is:

• Content for marketing, such as:

• Branded content

• Advertising

• Support/customer service content

• Content as a product, such as:

• advertising-driven (such as an ad-supported blog)

• subscription-based (like the New York Times)

Hubspot Marketing, a Cambridge, MA  inbound marketing pioneer, published HubSpot's A Practical Guide to Killer Marketing Content. Take-away of the day? Think like a publisher and create an editorial calander. Use it to determine when and where content should be shared.

If I had more knowledge of HTML, I would have tried to upload a PDF document to this blog. Which brings me to this handy, dandy video I found on YouTube when I searched for "content strategy for the web". From the sounds of it, HTML and content creation enjoy a relationship. Neat!

Rating 5

 

 

Week One: Introduction to E-Marketing

Week One Learning Objectives:

Define e-marketing and explain how it relates to and affects traditional marketing
Discriminate between e-business and e-marketing
Explain the development of e-marketing
Outline the role of strategic planning, strategy, and e-marketing strategy
Discuss key e-marketing objectives and metrics
List the steps in creating an e-marketing plan

 
The Best Job in the World, a marketing campaign created by Tourism Queensland to boost international awareness of the islands and increase tourism, illustrates how e-marketing can be used to successfully deliver a brand message and create ROI.

Examples of four of the 10 e-marketing distinctions can be found in this campaign including:

#3 not restricted by place; disintermediation

#4 Global reach - borders to not exist

#5 24/7; time zones disappear

#10 intellectual capital rules--imagination, creativity, entrepreneurship

 

A number of e-marketing tactics were used throughout this campaign including:

Engaging website

Online recruitment listings

User-generated content (60-second videos via YouTube)

Presence on social networking sites

 
Rating: 5