Digital Marketing is one of the most needed skills of today’s time. With increasing internet penetration and reduction in data rates, more and more Indians are coming online and consuming more content online than ever. This has unfolded the all new opportunities for businesses to draw these people towards their brand, services, and products.
Every business right from retail to movies travel to events etc. nowadays have a dedicated budget and team for digital marketing.
While there are more resources for learning digital marketing available on the internet than you can ever imagine, it has become easier to get overwhelmed by them.
With the right amount of hard work, creativity, planning and genuine resources, anyone can start in this field and gain knowledge to take his or her business or career to the next level. I had penned down this plan to help everyone get started in this field. I wish I had a plan like this while I was starting out in this field some years back.
Day 1: Researching your customers
Everything about the business should begin from the customer or the end user. In marketing understanding the needs, wants, motivations and problems of your customers are the absolutely critical and first step. We call this research as building user persona or buyer persona. There are a lot of good resources online to learn this, one of them is listed here:
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/2017-4-27-the-beginners-guide-to-defining-buyer-personas
Day 2: Basic of HTML and WordPress
Basic knowledge of HTML and WordPress will add to your skills as a digital marketer and will make your life easier. You should have the basic understanding of common HTML tags, how a web page is treated by the browser, usability best practices. In WordPress, you should be able to make forms, install plugins and make landing pages. Keep in mind that you do not need to learn these things like a pro and there are a lot of services and products available in the market which can help you crack your job with basic knowledge.
Here are some resources to help you
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/wordpress/
https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/how-to-create-a-landing-page-in-wordpress/
Day 3 – 4: Search Engine Optimization
SEO is one of the main techniques of digital marketers. While it is not essential that SEO can work for every business but it can prove to be an edge for many of them. You should have an understanding of Keyword Research, On page optimization, Off page optimization, building backlinks and Google’s webmaster tools. Don’t jump in and try to learn every bit of it at the start, learn others methods as well and choose in the end where you want to go deep.
Some proven resources to learn exactly this:
https://backlinko.com/keyword-research
https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
https://backlinko.com/link-building
Day 5: Copywriting
Copywriting is one of the critical skills for any digital marketers if you aren’t a good copywriter you should definitely hire one. You should learn about how to create engaging copies on your website, your ads, your landing pages, use prompting call to actions and write good emails to convert influencers and customers to help you build your brand.
Here are some resources to help you in this section.
https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-copywriting/
https://klientboost.com/ppc/ad-copy/
https://blogs.constantcontact.com/marketing-email/
Day 6 – 7: Social Media Marketing
Although there are a lot of social marketing channels, you need to focus on the top six, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google Plus (just because you don’t want Google to hate you!). Initially, you should limit yourself to building profile pages, understanding how each network works and what are best practices. Every platform is unique in some way and following guides will be a good start.
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-marketing-strategy/
https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/07/free-twitter-marketing.html
https://sysomos.com/2017/05/17/marketing-tips-for-the-new-linkedin/
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-to-improve-your-pinterest-marketing/
Day 8: Discussion forums and Influencer marketing
While learning about persona, you will get to know about various places on the internet your audience hangs out at. You can get business advice on clarity, personal advice on Quora and views for politics from Reddit. Learn about the forums your audience is a part of. Identify key influencers in your industry and pull them in to talk about your products, nowadays there are various agencies also which help you in getting these influencers and manage your campaign for you. Here are resources to understand this in detail:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/influencer-marketing/
https://sumo.com/stories/quora-traffic
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/reddit-quora-marketing/
Day 9: Paid Marketing – Adwords and Display
Google and other search engines give you a way to promote your business to someone who is looking exactly for the kind of solutions your business provides through a google search. In this section, you need to focus on How to choose keywords, How bidding and auction works, How to create clear and concise ads, conversion optimisation and how to perform competitor research.
Google also gives access to a large number of sites to put your ad on, these ads are not keyword based but intent and interest based. For example, you can place an ad for your furniture shop on a blog which writes about ideas on homemaking and interior decoration. Here you need to learn about ad placements, choosing websites, bidding, writing correct and engaging copies of your ads, designing good ads and designing landing pages.
Here are following resources which can help you start with Adwords and display network
https://neilpatel.com/what-is-google-adwords/
https://www.hallaminternet.com/beginners-guide-adwords-display-advertising/
Day 10: Paid Marketing – Facebook ads and Remarketing
Facebook is world’s largest social network and is known to have about 3 billion active users. Facebook ads provide the best ad targeting and audience management settings possible. You can pinpoint your ads for honeymoon trips to people who have married in the last year. Its ad platform lets you define your audience by demographics, interest, behaviors etc. which helps you get your message across exactly the right set of audience. Here you should learn about:
- Defining your audience.
- Using various bidding settings [per click, conversion].
- Various promotion options [Lead ads, website clicks ads, page boost, post-boost etc.]
- Designing your ads for the audience.
- Creating landing pages in resonance with your ads.
Remarketing helps you reach out again to people who have visited your website or app. Facebook, Google display network, Google Adwords and almost every ad platform lets you to show your ads to people who have visited your website from any resource. If used intelligently remarketing can create wonders for your business.
Here are useful resources you should follow to cover this part:
https://adespresso.com/guides/facebook-ads-beginner/
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6354-digital-remarketing-tips.html
Day 11: Paid Marketing – Explore other options
There are many other networks like Quora, Linkedin, Quikr, Pinterest etc. which have their own ad bidding dashboards. You should definitely try these out if your target audience is on these networks. Keep in mind that all these networks are unique and solve different problems for their audience. If your target is people engaged in creative hobbies you can try Pinterest while if your target are business people you should try advertising on LinkedIn. You can start by reading case studies for ad clients on these platforms on their official websites. Here are some:
https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/quora-ads-guide
https://www.adpushup.com/blog/the-best-ad-networks-for-publishers/
https://www.lifewire.com/linkedin-advertising-guide-2654709
Day 12: Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most valuable tools for marketers and businesses to reach and engage their customers. A well thought off email marketing strategy is an integrated part of any digital marketing outreach. There are many tools available like MailChimp, sendgrid, convertkit which make email marketing easier for marketers. To get an overview of email marketing you should learn about:
- Getting more subscribers.
- Segmenting your email lists.
Here are resources to help you in your learning:
https://www.copyblogger.com/email-marketing-checklist/
Day 13: Video Marketing and YouTube
Videos are the big things in today’s digital world. Every brand is creating video campaigns on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. As a marketer, you should have an understanding of how the video marketing works, a content of viral and engaging videos and tools to create simple videos for your campaigns.
Youtube is world’s second largest search engine for content and has helped brands reach millions of customers daily. To understand how to shine on youtube and use it for your marketing campaign you should study:
- Youtube search optimization.
- How to make engaging videos.
- How to increase your subscribers.
- How to use youtube as a paid channel to bring more customers.
Here are resources to help you out:
https://backlinko.com/how-to-rank-youtube-videos
https://www.hubspot.com/youtube-marketing
Day 14: Google analytics
“If it cannot be measured, it cannot be improved”. Every marketer should understand the value of analytics, testing, and experimentation in digital marketing. You will have to test various version of ads, landing pages, copies, call to actions etc. to get everything right. Google analytics is a free service by Google which lets you measure how many people have come to your site/app, which page have they visited, where did they come from, how much time they spent etc. As a beginner you should focus on learning the following:
- Integrating GA in your website.
- Understanding Google analytics reporting dashboard.
- Setting up UTM parameters and using it to measure and test your results.
Here is a resource to help you learn Google analytics.
https://moz.com/blog/absolute-beginners-guide-to-google-analytics
Conclusion:
Going through this plan will help you get the overview of the digital marketing landscape. After this, you have to make a choice and learn to dive deeper into the ocean of digital marketing. Digital marketing is an ever-changing field, what works today may not work tomorrow and vice versa. To understand digital marketing is to understand the digital medium, to understand your users and to understand your company’s/client’s goal and fitting them together to create value for everyone. I have been into digital marketing for almost five years and I learn something new almost every day.
In case of any help and questions please feel free to reach out to me via comments or message.
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