This document provides an overview of digital marketing best practices. It discusses understanding the customer journey, focusing on various media types including owned, paid and earned media. It also covers best practices for content marketing, marketing automation, information architecture and developing a mobile content strategy. The key recommendations are to understand the customer, focus on compelling content across owned channels, and integrate paid and earned media to drive engagement throughout the customer journey.

1. Digital Marketing Best Practices
Thomas Robbins, Chief Evangelist, Kentico CMS

2. Have you seen DMU?
Check out Digital Marketing University for more great content!

3. Agenda
• What is digital marketing?
• Best practice areas
– Media
– Content
– Technology
– Automation
– Mobile
• Wrap up

4. Let’s ask the analysts..
“Overlapping or related terms and concepts include "Web experience management (WEM)"
and "customer experience management/platform (CEM and CXM)."
Source: Hype Cycle for Web Computing, 2013
Source: Hype Cycle for Content Management, 2013
Source: Hype Cycle for Web Computing, 2013

5. Does this sound familiar?
With the constant growth of the web, and more and more people getting connected every
day, Content Management System (CMS), Web Engagement Management (WEM), Customer
Experience Management (CXM) digital marketing has become a necessity for many
organizations. This also includes small businesses that want to foster customer loyalty and
increase their customer base.
• Consumers want..
– Products, service or local
information
– Answers to questions
– More information
about…
• CMO needs…
–
–
–
–
Data driven marketing
Marketing relevance
Channel integration
Consistent personalized
customer centric
marketing

6. What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the process of building and maintaining customer relationships
through online activities to facilitate the exchange of ideas products, and services
that satisfy the goals of both parties.
• Common Benefits
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–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Puts the consumer in more control
Provides convenience
Increases satisfaction
Drives brand loyalty
Reduces the selling cycle
Reduce the cost of sales
Builds your brand
Provides targeted results
It’s measurable/repeatable
Cost effective
• Common Components
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
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Website design (user experience)
Content marketing features
Marketing automation
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Pay per click (PPC) campaigns
Social marketing
Email marketing
Display advertising (banner ads)
And more…

7. Best practice: understand your customer
journey
• The first step for any successful digital marketing
strategy
– How well do you understand your customer?
– What channels are customers using for research?
– What channels are customers using for purchase?
– How does the
experience in one
channel affect the
behavior of another?
Source: Heart of the customer

8. Focus Areas for today…
Media
Content
Automation
Technology
Mobile

9. Understanding media types
Media type
Definition
Examples
Usage
Benefits
Challenges
Owned media
Channel a brand
controls
•
•
•
•
•
Web site
Mobile site
Blog
Twitter
Account
Built for long term
relationships with
potential customers and
earned media
•
Company
control
Cost efficiency
Longevity
Versatility
Niche audience
•
•
•
•
•
Display ads
Paid search
Sponsorships
Shift from foundation to
a catalyst that feeds
owned and created
earned media
•
•
•
•
In demand
Immediacy
Scale
Company
control
•
•
•
Lots of clutter
Declining response
rates
Poor credibility
Listen and respond –
earned media is the
result of well executed
and coordinated owned
and paid media
•
•
Most credible
Key role in
most sales
Transparent
and lives on
•
•
•
•
No control
Can be negative
Hard to scale
Hard to measure
Paid media
Earned Media
Brand pays to
leverage a
channel
When customers
become the
channel
•
•
Buzz
Viral
•
•
•
•
•
•
No guarantees
Company
communications not
always trusted
Takes time to scale

10. Best Practice: Owned media
Goal: Create Compelling Corporate Content
Build a buyer
persona
Conduct a
content audit
Map content to
the buying cycle
• What are the biggest problems they are trying to solve?
• What information are they typically searching for?
• What trends are influencing their business and personal
success?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Type of content
Topic covered
Date created
Buyer persona
Download/Views/Leads
Awareness -> Company/Website/Blog post/Social
Research ->Whitepapers/Webinars/Industry reports
Action -> Analyst reports/Product sheets
Personalize the experience
Test….test…test… and test even more…

11. Paid media: Understanding the channel mix
Role
Tactics
Paid search
Capture immediate demand
in market and capture leads
Targeted keyword,
contextual text ads, mobile
search
Display banners
Deliver contextual relevance
and drive engagements
Target relevant publishers,
re-targeting of micro-site,
audience buying
Email
Research specific audiences
in a one to one environment
Direct publishers, list buyers,
newsletters, rich media
email
Content syndication
Connect target with relevant
content and capture lead
information
Whitepaper downloads,
online webinars, cost per
lead buys

12. Best Practice: Paid media
Goal: Get best ROI
Know your area
• Lots of places to buy ads and each has their strength and
weakness
• Use the banners module and sell your own ads
Create a content
led approach
• Drive traffic to the landing page/website/microsite where
content is available for download
• Segment content and target based on priority, business
needs, etc. (conversions/lead scoring)
• Have clear calls to action
• Test (A/B or MVT)
Continually
analyze results
• Set attainable goals
• Review results regularly and adjust
• Be merciless with non-performance

13. Best Practice: Earned media
Goal: Bring brand fan advocate stages to scale
Invisible
Ease of Understanding
Collective intelligence
Community
Collaboration
Conversation
Consumer generated content
Visible
Easy
Ease of Implementation
Difficult

14. Best Practice: Earned media
Goal: Enable others to tell your story
Identify your
evangelists
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Present or past customers
End customers
Analysts
Influencers
Partners
Employees
Enthusiasts
Create a
social object
• Identify the passion
• Deliver content and technologies to help them tell the story

15. Best Practice: 4 Ps of content marketing
Positioning
Passion
Paid media
Perseverance
• Content positioning no different than marketing your
product
• Pay attention to personality and tone
• Drive your content with passion
• Share that passion with your audience
• Paid media is essential for created content
• Paid media should integrate with your own media assets
• It takes time to build a strong community
• Continually optimize and refine content
• Research

16. Best Practice: Content marketing lifecycle
Planning
Optimization
Creation
Measurement
Approval
Publishing
For more information: Content marketing quick start guide

17. Best Practice: Multilingual content marketing
strategy
• Be able to articulate
the core brand essence
Develop a compelling
core message
Translate and localize
the message
• Consider everything –
start with tone of voice
• Translation is only the
beginning of
localization
• Why not automate?
• Focus on content
Simplify content
management
Develop and integrate
into strategy
• Begin with multiple
channels and paid
advertising
• Don’t neglect mobile

18. Best Practice – Increasing CTA
• Adapt to different devices
– Test to make sure they render correctly on different mobile devices and
consider different options for different devices.
• Make it colorful
– Use a color that ensures it
doesn’t blend or match with
other buttons.
• Make it massive
– CTA’s should be the biggest link
on the page to reduce frustration
and abandonment rate.
• Create a sense of urgency
– Test different tactics to see what
works.
• Test..test.. and test
– Testing will ensure that you have the best CTA (A/B and MVT testing is your
friend)

19. Best practice: Embrace integration
• Build the technical infrastructure to support dynamic,
cross channel conversations with customers
– Why it’s important
• Data integration, technology integration is part of the new world
– What does Kentico CMS 7 offer
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
HTML 5
Salesforce integration
Data.com integration (aka Jigsaw)
MAXMind GEOIP database
Cookie levels and Cookie consent web parts
Translation services (XLIFF)
REST
Integration Bus

20. Can you say Information Architecture?
Business models &
goals, corporate
culture, resources
Document
types, objects,
structure,
attributes,
meta-information
Information
needs, audience
types, expertise,
tasks
• The art and science of structuring and organizing information
systems to help people achieve their goals.
• Information architects organize content and design navigation
systems to help people find and manage information.

21. A visual definition…
Users
• audience types
• information needs
questions
Business
Context
Info. Architecture
• org, label, nav, &
searching systems
Content
• scope and volume
• structure
• metadata
IA
answers
• strategy
• resources
• culture / politics
• workflow

22. Why is IA Difficult?
Use rs
Example
Pe rsonal Digital Assistant
Communication Chasm
Docume nts and Applications
Synonyms
Handheld Computer
"Alte rnate " Spe llings
Persenal Digitel Asistent
Abbre v iations / Acronyms
PDA
Broade r Te rms
Wireless, Computers
Narrowe r Te rms
PalmPilot, PocketPC
Re late d Te rms
WindowsCE, Cell Phones

23. Best Practice: Use IA metrics…
• Cost of finding
(time, clicks, frustration,
precision)
• Cost of not finding
(success, recall, frustration, alter
natives)
• Cost of development
(time, budget, staff, frust
ration)
• Value of learning (related
products, services, proje
cts, people)

24. Best Practices: Marketing automation
Goal: Deliver the right message at the right time in the right location
You can’t automate a
process that doesn’t
exist
Map your lead flow
Leverage buyers
personas
Understand your email
reputation
Eliminate extra work
later – define a master
labeling system
Design lead capture
forms as short as
possible
Data should drive lead
scoring, lead conversions
and decisions – keep it
simple and objective
Align sales and
marketing – hands leads
on a silver platter
Provide a human touch
when validating digital
behavior
Keep lead nurturing as
dynamic as possible

25. A new world…

26. What’s your mobile content strategy?
Getting started with a mobile content
strategy
1. What’s your current mobile
statistics?
2. What’s your timeline and budget?
3. Who is your target audience?
4. Is there a target platform?
5. What are the application features
and functionality?
6. What are the developer skills?

27. The rest of the story…
Solution
Time to build
solution
Ease of delivery
Mobile Sub Site
Typically less than a
day
Simple to test using
existing processes
and environment
Responsive Design
Upfront planning/
Variable depending
on complexity of
site
Modification to
testing processes
and environment
essential
Application stores
Typically more than
2 weeks
New testing
infrastructure and
processes required
Cost
Summary

28. So many devices…
3 Layouts
4 Layouts
6 Layouts
Source:
http://www.metaltoad.com/blog/simple-device-diagram-responsive-design-planning

29. Application platforms
Native
Application
Hybrid
Application
• Stored and run locally on the device and have
full access to the platform and hardware
• Obtained from application stored that includes
a lead time and approval process before
deployment
• Developed on the default language of their
respective platform
• Largely based on web technologies running
within a native application mimicking the look
and feel of a native app.
• Leverage the device feature to run a web
application locally

30. Short list recommendations…
Native applications
• Performance intensive applications
• Marquee applications that can’t compromise on user experience or performance
• Applications for offline or disconnected requirements
• Games or applications with rich visuals
• Applications that require background processing
• Applications requiring heavy interaction with local data or device hardware
• Where cost savings and cross platform code sharing is not a goal
• Where a single device or platform is targeted
Hybrid applications
• Work well for business and content applications with a basic user interface and
functionality requirements
• Targeting multiple platforms
• Adding native functionality to existing web applications or creating a native wrapper
around a mobile web site
• Work well for creating a simple mobile optimized version of an existing site

31. Wrap up…
• Think customer first
• Think strategy first
• Personas required

32. Questions
Thanks!
Thomas Robbins, Chief Evangelist
thomasr@kentico.com
@trobbins