For this week of the CXL growth marketing mini-degree, I was able to go through the ‘Identifying and amplifying growth channels.
To be completely transparent, this section was mostly information that I already knew. However, there was some new information that I came across and thought it was helpful.
I’ve decided to share my notes and ideas that I gathered from this section to help readers go through the information in a quick and digestible article.
Lesson 4.1: Major growth channels
- Five digital marketing channels for growth:
- SEM/PPC
- Google owns 60% of PPC market share
- Requires constant optimization to look at keyword traffic, search trends, and fluctuation on PPC cost.
- SEO
- SEO is the main driver for traffic and most qualified traffic
- Social/Display Ads
- Social gives you demographic data to hone on the target audience
- Email Marketing
- One of the best channels for growth
- Content channel
- SEM/PPC
Lesson 4.2 Identifying, testing, and measuring growth channels
- It’s rare for an early stage or late stage or enterprise company to be great at all channels
- The most important aspect is understanding who your customers are and where they are at
- How do you pick a channel to experiment with?
- You would need to take a look at all the channels and see if the audience is active? Are they engaging on these channels?
- First decide if your audience is even using the channel.
- Avoid channels that are misaligned or the most competitive
- SEO is often a safe channel to start with first
- How do we measure the results of the channels?
- Good channels have the ability to give High ROI and High ability to scale
- Bad channels can have High ROI but low ability to scale
- How do you know when your channel is failing
- Look at YOUR own data
- If the channel isn’t producing revenue or ROI is not good enough.
- If the ROI is low then it probably has a low ability to scale
- Identifying successful channels
- If it’s performing well, give it time to succeed. It can sometimes take up to six months to a year.
- Look at the data to find which channels are giving you positive results
Lesson 4.3 Emerging channels
- Early-stage startups and smaller companies have the advantage of making changes quickly and identify new channels and experiment, test
- When reviewing competitors, take a look at what they’re doing, take a look at their keywords, the articles they’re writing, the blog posts, etc.
- Example of emerging channels are augmented reality and VR tech
Lesson 4.4 Myths about Social Media Marketing
- Myth 1: ROI is not quantifiable
- Analytics nowadays are able to see the data
- Important to have UTMs and pixels on your website
- Myth 2: SMM is just branding
- Allows you to build, create, and develop deeper positions with customers
- SMM fits into the demand generation and drives leads
- It’s less about building impressions and likes
- Vanity metrics
- follower count
- likes
- Good SMM metrics to track will reflect your business objective
- You can A/B test social media posts to see which post leads to customers
- Test messaging, copy, and creative
Lesson 4.5 Developing a Coherent Message Strategy on Social Media
- As a brand, how do you speak to your customers across channels
- Good examples of social media marketing are GoPro
- Another good example was from Oreo when there was a blackout at the Superbowl, Oreo put out an ad with an Oreo in the dark with light shining on it saying ‘you can still dunk in the dark’
- They used the hashtag to achieve virality
- Using your brand to get your mission out there and associate how people want to feel with your brand
- Responding to people on social is the best.
- Bad social media marketing is responding too quickly without a strategy and responding reactively
- Another bad example is not taking advantage of the time that you’re given to create the hype or the virality that’s available to you
- Bad example was from Red Lobster when Beyonce mentioned them in a new song. They took days to respond and missed their moment
- Trending topics and hashtags are a great way for companies to leverage hype and build up the conversation that’s going on.
- Testing messaging strategies on social media
- The best to test is the time to message your audience
- Test the content: The photos, video, text, etc
- Test the CTA
- Test the length of the URL
- Test your offer: Is it a download or whitepaper
Lesson 4.7 Keyword Research & Content Gap
- Think about what content your users are going to want to see so they can share and help you reach virality
Lesson 4.11 Intro to PPC
- PPC can get expensive, you just need to find the right channels
- You also need to make sure your page converts better than your competitors and that would help lower your costs
- You should speak directly to your customer’s pain points
- Some goals for PPC is to ensure you have a high click-through rate and lower cost per click, CPC, and cost per lead CPL, and a higher conversion
- One strategy is to make sure your keyword and messaging is in line with your landing page
Lesson 4.12 Types of PPC campaigns
- Types of PPC campaigns
- Awareness campaigns – generate brand awareness and attention
- Lead Generation campaigns
- Subareas of PPC Campaigns
- Pre-awareness
- Awareness & trigger
- Consideration
- Engagement
- Pre-sales
- PPC Channels
- Adwords
- Bing
- Display
- Remarketing
- Variables to Test
- Content
- Image
- Copy
- Offer
- CTA
Lessons 4.13 How to build PPC funnels that convert
- For TOFU – you can use you less scary items like checklist, ebooks, download content to get their data and help push them down the funnel
- You need to tie in your ads to your landing page
- Create a holistic ad experience
Lesson 4.14 Content marketing
- 70% of customers would rather get to know a brand through articles than an ad
- Companies that blog get 5x more traffic compared to competitors
- Content marketing is about building a relationship with your audience, understanding their needs, and offering a solution in your products or services
- You need to talk to your customer in an understanding in a way that you understand their pain and you have a benefit to solving for that pain