Hubspot Digital Marketing Certification

Digital Marketing

Any kind of marketing that happens on a digital platform

inbound marketing

a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them

Inbound Methodology

a method for growing an organization by building lasting relationships with people and helping them reach their goals.
- Because when your customers succeed, you succeed.

Does Digital Marketing only consist of inbound or outbound marketing strategy?

No, it encompasses all marketing strategies as long as they're digital.

Outbound marketing

aim to put marketing messages in front of as many people as possible in the online space, regardless of whether it's relevant or welcome.

Ex: Banner ads

What sets inbound marketing apart?

Marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customer to their websites by providing information that's helpful to them.
Ex: blogs
-- allows your website to capitalize on the key terms your ideal customers are searching for.

Differentiating Inbound marking and Digital marketing

-inbound is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online
-digital marketing is a term used to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they're considered inbound or outbound.

Importance of Channels

-Limiting your reach can have consequences
-Focusing on a single channel can create a poor customer experience and prevent you from successfully nurturing your leads
-Making a positive impression
-Creating different strategies for each channel and focusing on how they work together to impact your customers
-- your customers receive the content that is most relevant to their needs across a variety of channels

An example of digital marketing in action

-A lead reads a blog post about an issue
-The marketing email they may receive later might showcase a customer testimonial
-Later, the they use social media they'll see a retargeted ad about your products or services.

--exemplifies the best in digital marketing today
--each focusing around the issue and how it was solved.
--customers receive the most relevant content to their needs across various channels
-- provides a clear brand impression for your leads and makes their experience as seamless and direct as possible

Content Marketing

a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing content that is valuable, relevant and consistent

-content that populates your website, blogs, ebooks, guides, etc.
-fits your ta's needs, answers their questions, and educates them (will attract high-quality leads naturally as they search topics related to your business)

SEO

Search Engine Optimization.
The process of improving a page's organic page rankings (rank in search results).

-optimizing your website and its content to increase your chances of appearing in search engine results

Social Media Marketing

utilization of social media or social networks to market a product, company, or brand

-marketers use a combination of social media channels to drive traffic to their websites by promoting their content
-also used to engage/communicate with current and prospective customers

native advertising

Digital advertising that matches the appearance and purpose of the content in which it is embedded
-often refers to boosted social media posts on platforms like twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram

Ad Retargeting (Remarketing)

-digital marketing provides marketers w/ data to better target customers
-use retargeting technologies to deliver ads directly to individuals who have previously visited your website
-It's important to deliver contented that provides value to people you hope will become your loyal customers

email marketing

sending highly targeted, highly personalized, relationship-building marketing messages via email to prospects or customers

Buyer Persona

a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
-research pool should include a mixture of current customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target audience

B2B digital marketing

-digital marketing efforts are likely to focus on online lead generation, with a goal of connecting your leads with a salesperson directly
-strategy should aim to attract and convert the highest quality leads through your website, and supporting digital channels
-focus your marketing efforts on business related channels like LinkedIn, where your ta is spending their time online

B2C digital marketing

-goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract potential leads to your website and have them become customers without needing to speak to a salesperson
-more likely to focus on buyer's journey
-key features of your products or services are highlighted closer to the beginning of the customer's buyer's journey then they would be for a B2B business
-type of content depends on consumer needs at the different stages in the buyer's journey
-content should aim to help you audience meet their goals and overcome those challenges

Content Mapping

target content according to two factors
-The characteristics of the person who will be consuming it (buyer persona)
-How close that individual is to making a purchase

Content forming in Awareness Stage

-infographics
-short videos

Content forming in Consideration Stage

-ebooks
-free samples
-webinars

Content forming in Decision Stage

-case studies
-testimonials

Creating a digital marketing strategy

-Build your buyer personas
-Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need
-Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets
-Plan your campaigns.

Owned Media

digital assets your brand or company owns
--website, social media profiles, blog content, or imagery

owned channels

digital assets your business has complete control over
--can include offsite media
--blog posts

earned media

exposure for a company or brand that it did not have to pay for and is generated by outside entities such as the media or the general public
-word of mouth
-recognition your receive as a result of these efforts

paid media

any vehicle or channel you finance money on to catch the attention of your buyer personas
-Google ad, paid social media posts, native advertising, any medium through which you pay in exchange for increased visibility

Content creation plan

Based on your findings and the gaps you've identified, make an outline of the content that's necessary to help you hit your goals

Content creation plans include:

-title
-content format
-goal
-promotional channels
-why you're creating the channels
-priority level of the content
--should also include budget information if you're planning to outsource the content creation or a time estimate if you're producing it yourself

content creation framework (CCF)

a structure of processes for publishing content, from the beginning stages to post-publication
-should be a process that's clear, repeatable, and organized
-should be evaluated every now and then to see how it can improve

Why plan your content in advance? (one month to two years)

You need to serve your audience's needs and educate them over time depending on what they're looking for.

Five steps to building a content framework

conceptualize content
planning a timeline
creating a workflow
reviewing and editing content
organizing and storing content

Content offer

something you create and publish in exchange for personal information like an name & address (email)

conceptualizing content

-coming up with appropriate ideas for your content offers
-write down faqs about sales or important industry knowledge that would be helpful for your target market to know
-focus on creating content for every stage of the buyer's journey

Planning a timeline

-maintain agility while still having time to execute on your initiatives
-have 2-3 offers a quarter you want to create
-organize your content by journey stage
-use your goals to determine what content you need to focus on
-- map from there what content you need and when it needs to be live
-Identify any company-wide initiatives that will need support from content over the next quarter

Creating a Workflow

An intuitive breakdown of the content creation process, consisting of the sequence of steps a piece of content moves through from its initial creation to publication.
-clearly identifies who will do what & if outside influencers or freelancers are contributing and in what capacity
-outline each step: outline completed, finally draft completed, etc.
-consider how you created content before implementing your format and consider what worked and what didn't to avoid those roadblocks in the future.

Reviewing and Editing Content

-Set up a review system so you're sure that your content is accurate, well written, and aligned with your brand
-there are seven best practices
--set clear expectations
--define roles in the reviewal process
-- determine a timeline
-- use a style guide
-- track edits
--manage progress
-- SEO

R&E: set clear expectations

reviewer should know what they're looking for
-grammar errors, fact checking, story gaps, word-smithing, etc.

R&E: define roles

each person should know what they need to do and when
-developmental editor may look at your content's overall focus and structure
-a copy editor may go for more detailed edits
-or maybe there is only one editor looking over everything

R&E: use a style guide

your content needs to be consistently authentic, well-written, and aligned with your company's brand, even among various writers with different writing styles, skill levels, and voices

R&E: Track edits

have content reviewers make suggestions by tracking changes as opposed to making edits directly
-creator knows where to make changes rather than figuring out what what altered

R&E: manage progress

use some sort of document, like a project management software to track progress (like Trello)
-document should reflect the roles, timeline, and deadlines you've determined for your reviewal process

R&E: SEO

Do some spot edits to search engine optimize your content

Organizing and Storing content

once content is completed, store it in a centralized location where your team can access it. (Google drive or dropbox)
-develop a clear naming system
-Keep in mind that your CCF should always be evolving

5 primary types of responsibilities in content creation

content management and strategy
writing
editing
designing
distributing

content management and strategy

involves creating a long term content plan, mapping it to your business needs, ensuring other responsibilities are met, and analyzing the reports
-leader of the group works with everyone
--content marketing manager or CM strategists usually fill this role

Writing

typically a content writer or marketer will do the writing (not all writers have to be subject matter experts)
-- companies can often use in house or contracted workers to do their writing (Scripted or Upwork)

Editing

Just because the content is written doesn't mean it's ready for publication
-ensures alignment w/ company messaging, target market needs, and the goals the content is meant to solve for
-- if you don't have an editor have a peer with a knack for communication review your content

designing

Once the content is written and edited, it needs to be made appealing to readers
-structure and format info in a way that's simple to understand and digest
--pass the blink test (3-5 seconds before a viewer decides to look further through your website)

Distributing

A content distributor is responsible or bringing the content to market through a strategic promotion plan
--social media coordinator/strategist
--create/coordinate content creation (promotional), map it to the available channels, and schedule for publication
--also responsible for analyzing campaign results

How do search engines rank your content?

build discovery (crawling) and relevance (indexing) by creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to be known for
-build authority (ranking) by getting lots of high quality links to your website

Discovery stage (crawling)

search engine bots discover your content by crawling it
-discovers and takes notes of the content within it

Relevance stage (indexing)

search engine bots decide how relevant your content is by indexing it
-based on signals like keywords

Authority stage (ranking)

search engine bots rank your content in search results based on your site's SEO authority
--building credibility through backlinks and other factors that search engines consider your site authoritative enough to rank high in search results

How do you determine authority?

the content is talked about often
the content is referred to often
the content is cited in other works (similar to getting backlinks)

Which SEO approach fits your business?

-not a one-size fits all solution; every business is different as is their SEO approach
-Balance creating relevance and authority to boost your SEO needs
-create compelling, unique, high quality content that people naturally want to link to
-tell people about your content so they can find it and want to link to it

Can you build authority through content volume ?

No. You build authority through high quality backlinks

How to measure your website's SEO authority

-measuring authority comes down to link volume and quality
-analyze your backlink profile
-measuring your website's authority will help you improve your rank in search

Backlink profile

A list of all the sites currently linking to your site
--including how they're linking to it and which pages they're linking to
--it measures: the number of inbound links to your website, the number of unique domains that link to your website, and the quality of those links

Website Performance

the speed at which web pages are downloaded and displayed in a user's web browser
-- tells you how fast your website is
--impacts: rankings in organic search, visibility on Facebook, the user experience

How website performance impacts Facebook

If your post links to a slow website, it may not be displayed to people using the Facebook app

How quickly should a web page load?

best-in-class webpages should become interactive within 5.3 seconds
- any slower and visitors will abandon your site, reducing conversion and sales
-79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance say they're less likely to purchase from the same site again

Website performance affects

-accessibility of your site
-usability of your site
-web design
-- impacts the metrics marketers care about, like traffic, conversion rates, and revenue

Webpage accessibility

availability of a website and its contents to all people

webpage usability

how efficiently and easily visitors can see or examine your website

Webpage web design

process of planning, ideating, and organizing content for the internet

Performance budget

benchmarks for the performance metrics that you care about

load speed

time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page
-- should become interaction within 5.3 seconds

First Contentful Paint (FCP)

time it takes in seconds for text or images to be shown to users

time to interactive

when the page responds to user interaction with 50 milliseconds

minification

process of reducing resources size by removing unnecessary comments and spacing in the source code

components of a website

HTML provides the basic structure of sites
-- enhanced and modified by CSS and JavaScript
CSS is used to edit the presentation, formatting, and layout of a page
JavaScript is used to control the behavior of different elements

What does magnification do?

-HTML magnification removes all unnecessary characters from the HTML
-CSS minification removes all unnecessary characters and comments from your stylesheet file that contains font and layout rules
-JavaScript minification removes all unnecessary characters and comments from the JavaScript

Compression

replaces repetitive pieces of code with markets directing to the first instance of that code

Page size/page weight

the overall size of the bock of stored memory that makes up a page

optimizing webpage elements

-use google fonts instead of custom fonts
-use existing video hosting solutions
-compress your images
-make your images responsive

Google fonts

a collection of fonts that are hosted by Google and accessible to all web browsers

hosting videos on a webpage

use an existing hosting solution like Youtube, Vimeo, or Amazon

Image compression

groups part of an image together to reduce its size without visibly decreasing quality
-compress all images you use on your sites
-save illustrations as SVG files

Scalable Vector Graphic/SVG file

a graphic file that uses a two-dimensional vector graphic format designed specifically for the internet

how to make images responsive

add a CSS rule that sets all images to fill the width of the container the image is in

HTTP Request

an ask for information from the browser like Chrome or Firefox, to the server, the remote computer that fulfills that request
--styles, scripts, images, etc.
-- less frequent downloads means that a website can be displayed faster
--aim to have 30 requests maximum for a high performing page

how to reduce the number of HTTP requests

-combine text resources
-combine image resources
-move render-blocking JavaScript
-reduce redirects
--every file you eliminate is one less HTTP request required to load your page

how to combine text resources

use an open source bundler, like web pack or parcel, to combine JavaScript files

Image sprites

a group of small images that are included in one physical image instead of multiple
-icons

JavaScript block in page header

JavaScript enables your website to behave differently based on criteria you identify
-mover your JavaScript files to the bottom of your page for all nonessential functions

redirect

a way to send both people and search engines to a different URL from the one they originally requested

how many redirects can you have?

best practice is to limit the number of redirects on your webpage to a max of 1
-approved redirects:
303=moved permanently
302=moved temporarily

optimize website for mobile viewers

use a mobile responsive design
-this optimizes your site for all devices without any redirects

caching

process of saving resources to be reused

server side caching

server saves the result of a single render and serves that same result when it's requested again

client side caching

server tells a web browser to keep the files it downloads so that it doesn't have to download them again in the future

benefits of caching

-decrease network costs by reducing requests to your server
-improve responsiveness by making your website faster for browsers to retrieve
-content will be continuously available even if you experience server outages

wordpress super cache

this plugin generates static HTML files of your webpages which will be served tot eh majority of your users

why your blogpost needs structure

-gives you direction
-will make your content creation time more effective and efficient
-- using a template creates helpful guardrails
-you want your readers to easily comprehend what it is you're trying to tell them
-you want your reader to remember what you wrote about

determining direction for blog posts

choose a topic to write about
- at a high level, write educational content
- put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas
-write about your industry not yourself
-when picking a topic do keyword research
Focus on one long-tail keyword per post

long-tail keyword

a very targeted search phrase that contains three or more words

blog post formatting best practices

-mention your keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post
--include your keywords in your copy but only in a natural, reader-friendly way
--consider writing synonyms of your keyword as opposed to keyword stuffing
-whitespace is your friend
-use subheads and bullets or numbered lists
-bold important text
--one sentence per paragraph or one every few paragraphs
-use other forms of visuals and multimedia
--use mm content to break up the post
-don't forget about mobile

Areas to optimize in a blog post

-URL
-Image alt-text
-Meta description
-Links

Optimize blog post: URL

-make it best practice to shorten the URL without losing context to what the page is about
-don't include numbers in your URL like year or steps
-updating the URL causes a 301 redirect
--permanent redirect to another URL