Digital Marketing Full Course - 10 Hours [2024] | Digital Marketing Tutorial for Beginners | Edureka

[Music] The future of digital marketing seems to be bright and secure as the online world continues to evolve. Nearly 77 percent of global organizations have already used digital marketing, which is among the top 10 most in-demand skills. More are expected to join the list in order to carve out a position in the digital world.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the session. You are currently watching an Edureka digital marketing full course video. By the end of this video, you will have a thorough understanding of digital marketing, all the way from theory to practical applications.

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Now, let's begin with our agenda, where we'll have a brief overview of what we'll cover in this digital marketing full course video. We'll start by seeing what digital marketing is, what exactly it is used for, and why do we use digital marketing. So, these are some of the concepts that will be covered over here. Next, we will see how to create a digital marketing plan, followed by different types of digital marketing.

Now, it's time to deep dive into the core concepts used in digital marketing. We'll start with search engine optimization. Here, we'll also cover off-page SEO and on-page SEO, and we will then compare off-page SEO to on-page SEO techniques. After which, we will see Yoast SEO.

Now, once this is done, we will then understand paid marketing with Google Ads tool, followed by content marketing and social media marketing. We can then see some more concepts in digital marketing like affiliate marketing, email marketing, and integrated digital marketing campaigns.

Now, after all these, we will head over to data-driven marketing. We truly hope that this session assists you in getting jobs in the industry. In order to accomplish so, we will look at how a career in digital marketing works and how to become a digital marketer, followed by some essential digital marketing interview questions with answers. So, stick till the end.

Now, let's get started with our first topic, that is, what is digital marketing.

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In this world, where we have more than 100 million people who use social media on a regular basis, are expected to be at least familiar with the core topics of digital marketing. In simple terms, I would say digital marketing is the promoting of products over the internet or any form of electronic media. Now, people consume digital content on a daily basis. The like, for example, in the beginning, we would read all the news or the day-to-day news over the newspaper. But ever since we've got smartphones, we've got tablets, everything is bound to the online activity. So, very soon, the traditional marketing platforms will disappear by replacing it with a digital market, which will completely take over the industry. There are so many advantages which you cannot even count, guys.

Now, if we talk about the history or the evolution behind the growth of digital marketing, this was first used in the early 1970s, where a programmer called Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, and through this, it was established that you can communicate using machines. But this was just the beginning. The lesser did they know that digital marketing would create a revolutionary in the field of marketing. As the number of users increased, the landscape evolved from email to search engines like Archie, Yahoo, Google, e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, and many more. And also, the better starting point for the history of digital marketing was in the year 1990. This was when the term digital marketing was first used in the launch of Archie, the first search engine.

Now, what is Archie? Archie is a tool for indexing FTP activities, allowing people to find specific fake files. Most of you might not know that Archie is the very first internet search engine. This is when the digital marketing term was first used. Then, in the year 1993, the first clickable web advertisement banner was released. So, this is also another added wing for digital marketing. Followed by which, in the year 1994, Yahoo was launched, which was the first e-commerce transaction over NetMarket. And also, in the year 1996, smaller search engines like HotBot and Alexa were released.

Next, in the year 1998, Yahoo launches Yahoo Web Search. So, in this case, digital marketing has already been grown to one extent, and this was also the birth of Google. Microsoft also launched MSN. And also, in the year 2001, the first mobile marketing campaign took place. Next, in the year 2003, WordPress was released. I think most of you know how WordPress works. Any of the content creators would know how a WordPress is used. And also, in the year 2004, Gmail, Facebook, and Google go live. These are the milestones which digital marketing has achieved.

2005, you have YouTube being launched, and in the year 2006, Twitter was launched. And also, in the year 2007, Spotify was launched in the year 2008, and Google launches its first real-time search engine results. In the year 2009, and WhatsApp was also launched in the year 2010, which I think this application is used by most of them. WhatsApp is also a platform for digital marketing. In the year 2011, Google Plus and Google Panda were launched. 2012, Knowledge Graph was launched by Google. And also, in the year 2013, Facebook Messenger app was launched. And also, this is the year where Facebook took over WhatsApp. Also, in the year 2015, there was Snapchat.

So, this is exactly how digital marketing took the mainstream, one by one, year by year. You can see that they've come across so many challenges, and they've discovered so many new things. The mass adoption of the internet into everyday life is the single biggest event that has affected marketing over the last few decades. Although early desktop publishing software and the first PCs caused search in print marketing in the year 1980s, the computers were a little more than glorified typewriters. And also, in the coming few years, the number of people using the web soared from 16 to 70 million. So, this is a very huge number. You can say that this is exactly how digital marketing was in play ever since the beginning.

Now, let's move ahead and understand this concept in depth. So, what, according to you, is digital marketing? So, it is just a platform or it is just a medium through which you can get a lot of followers or you can promote your product. But that's not it. Digital marketing is one of those fancy new buzzwords that is used in the recent days. It encompasses all marketing efforts that promote your product or brand using electronic devices or the internet. It leverages online marketing tactics such as mainly search marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and mobile marketing in order to connect with current and prospective customers.

So, if you go by the definition, digital marketing is basically internet marketing. It is also referred to as advertising and delivering through digital channels. The channels can be social media platforms, mobile platforms, email, or web applications. Search engines and websites make it simple for you guys. Digital marketing is any form of marketing product or services that involves electronic devices. So, this is a major reason why it's been around for more than decades.

Okay, so now that you've understood what is digital marketing, let's move on and understand why exactly do you need to master digital marketing. What's the need? What is the necessity for you to learn digital marketing? The major reason would be, marketing has a lot of options, guys. It is always related to the strategies associated with it, and also you can get creative and experiment with every little aspect of the marketing campaign. But when you compare this with the traditional way of marketing, this is impossible, guys. The tasks that you can complete online cannot be done with the help of traditional marketing. So, the traditional marketing forms would be printing ads, phone communication, and also physical marketing.

Now, say if you want to start off your business and you want to promote them, you cannot go to everybody's house, knock on their doors and tell, "I'm going to start this project or I'm going to work on this. Would you please help me do it?" No. Nobody in the recent days does that. So, one platform where you can actually put across your views, put across your ideas about what you're going to be doing is digital marketing. So, you can actually get a lot of support from the other people who are already working on it, and also you can get a lot of guidance. So, this is exactly why you need to master digital marketing.

Now that you guys have understood why this is required, let's move ahead and take a look at the scope of digital marketing. Digital marketing has several smaller divisions that work in different directions, yet contributing to the overall growth of the firm. Basically, digital marketing is considered as an umbrella term, which is also known as data-driven marketing, and operates over the digital platform, that is, the internet, for the introduction and promotion of various goods and services. The future of digital marketing is booming, not just in one particular country, but all parts of the world. In the year 2016, the industry was taken by surprise with over 1.5 lakh job opportunities in the digital marketing domain. Well, what followed this was an even bigger surprise when the only first quarter of 2017 marked close to 8 lakh job opportunities. The surveys were conducted by various forums, which have predicted this number to grow with digitalization in the nation.

Now, digital marketing industry is at its peak and the moment due to many reasons. These are the points: it is flexible, since the entire work can be done on the internet. There is no restriction of a particular place. It doesn't matter if you are at office, or you are at home, even if you are at your native or any place. All you need to do is have a device that is connected to the internet, and then you are sorted. And it is very easy. Accessing the digital media is no rocket science, guys. It is just a piece of cake. The newest of all the users used to take a minimum of few days to learn how to operate the digital media. This is purely a user-friendly medium.

It also has high engagement ratio. This is also considered to be true because the traditional media are being completely overshadowed by the internet-led digital marketing. Due to the high engagement factors, the brands and companies have begun to give extra emphasis to the ad campaigns run on the internet or over the television advertisements. And the next, we have the job opportunities. Like I mentioned, the number of job opportunities in the field of digital marketing is very massive. The more user engagement, the more job opportunities. The employment sector has seen a major share of jobs generated by the digital marketing domain. The career scope in digital marketing seems very attractive to masses, and that is one of the major reasons why the professionals are learning this course to enter the industry. So, you will for sure get a promising job if you take up digital marketing course from Edureka.

And also, it helps in getting immediate results. An advertiser running a social media campaign can easily measure the performance of the campaign in real-time without waiting for long intervals. You don't have to wait for any of the results that you're looking for. The result generation is very easy. So, these are the major reasons or the scope where digital marketing is required.

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So, as you can see in the television, a character is trying to distribute the pamphlets among the people, but they are simply ignoring it. This is how what used to happen during traditional marketing. We also know that time, we had no digitalization. But now, in this digital era, you can see that now you have so many platforms where you can just post or just advertise or brand with one click, and you can get n number of responses. So, no communication which increases the client happiness also increases the engagement between the both ends.

Next is investment returns. In traditional marketing, the returns on investments for traditional marketing is very challenging, and it's quite difficult to measure. Whereas in the case of digital marketing, it is very straightforward to calculate using different analytical tools. It makes it more simple to measure the investment returns.

Now, if we talk about the effectiveness, then in the traditional marketing is not as effective as digital marketing because in traditional marketing, you have a more expenditure, like you spend more money, like in TV advertisements, radio, banner ads, broadcasting, sponsorships, print ads, etc. So, it obviously takes a lot of effort and wealth, but it ends up showing less effectiveness because it is only one-way communication, plus there is no strong engagement in traditional marketing. Whereas in digital marketing, the expense is very less because nowadays we have search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertisements, web designs, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and all these are like open-source platforms where you can just easily like advertise your product, brands, anything. And here, you get a lot more effective results as you have good number of engagement and you get good responses from the customers or new clients.

If you talk about targets, in traditional marketing, there are standardized ways for targeting users. That means there are limited ways where you can target those many number of users. You can't customize it or you can't go ahead the standardized limits. Whereas in digital marketing, the targeting is totally customized and relies on the type of users. So, here, based on the requirement by the user, you can just customize your targets. Like you can either increase your targets or decrease your targets based on your requirements.

While talking about the reaches, here in traditional marketing, the reaches are local because, as I said, that you have a standardized limit, and you're only bounded with limited ways, like for example, TV advertisements, pamphlets, newspapers, which are like only within the locals, and you have no accuracy or you have no assurity that you will be getting the response at once. So, in digital marketing, it is totally global. Here, you don't have to roam around and look on to people. You just have to sit and just advertise, and people will come to you.

So, these were some of the key differences which let you know that how digital marketing is more better than traditional marketing.

Now, talking about the current digital marketing trends, digital marketing is all set to increase to a total of 118 billion dollars. Statistics also indicate that the Indian marketing traffic is expected to grow 291 times bigger than what it was in 2005. The digital marketing channels like SEO, content marketing, email marketing, and so on. 22 percent of the entire world's population is on Facebook, and close to 50 percent of Instagram users are on it every day. Now, you can imagine the scale at which digital marketing is growing right now.

Talking about the actual trends of the digital marketing industry, the first thing we have is the artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is considered as the biggest commercial opportunity for companies, industries, and countries, and will increase the global GDP by up to 14 percent by 2030. This means that AI latecomers will find serious competition within the next few years. So, start gearing up, guys, and have a look at how artificial intelligence works and how digital marketing plays a vital role in this. Now, artificial intelligence is actually considered as a cutting-edge technology and has numerous potential applications in marketing. It is also deployed for content marketing, advertising, and customer service. So, this is also considered as one of the hottest job trends in the market right now.

And the next current trend for digital marketing is the chatbots. Chatbots will power up to 85 percent by 2020. This AI-based technology uses instant messaging to chat in real-time with your website visitors or customers. I think most of you know how chatbots work. So, nowadays, almost 30 percent of the tasks are fulfilled by the chatbots. Companies use chatbots to provide services like customer support, generating information, and many more. With examples like Siri, Alexa, it becomes clear how chatbots can make a difference in our lives every day. And also, this chatbot is also known as a chatterbot, bot, artificial agent, and so on. And this is basically a software program driven by artificial intelligence, which serves the purpose of making a conversation with the user in the form of text or speech. So, many people across the globe prefer using chatbots as their responsive platform for 24/7 support. Like I mentioned, it is mainly for building a conversation with the user and responding to their queries. It mainly helps in answering, and it also helps in very accurately recalling your entire buying history. But most often, these are used to answer simple questions or help a user accomplish a simple task. So, this is also one of the latest trends at the market right now.

Now, talking about video marketing, video marketing is one of the most famous and most important market trends today, and is likely to continue for the next five to ten years. I think most of the viewers out there know the value of a video. Also, a notable fact is that 70 percent of the consumers say that they have known a brand by watching their brand promotional video on different marketing channels. The marketing channels will definitely include social media marketing, which is a very wide platform. Also, in addition to this, 52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos make them more confident in online purchase decisions. So, video plays an important role, guys. You know, you can read a lot about anything that is happening throughout the world, but watching a video is equivalent to reading 10 books. And also, the fun fact is that by 2020, just the marketing videos will make up to more than 85 percent of all the consumers over the internet traffic in the US. It's most of them, guys.

Now, when I say in video marketing, YouTube is not the only way to achieve traffic. So, when you're talking about video marketing in terms of digital marketing, YouTube is not the only way you can achieve traffic right there. There are plenty of ways to drive higher engagement ratio in terms of video marketing, as you have all the chances of making a small video post or start a live broadcast on either any social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or so on. So, this is also one of the latest trends of digital marketing right now.

And the next counts the biggest hit of the year: augmented and virtual reality marketing. Augmented reality advertisements rank among the top applications used by the marketers throughout the globe. Using this, you can bring static or unreal environments, something that would integrate the offer with the reality of the buyer. Now, what do I mean by offer and the reality of the buyer? It means to say that you can experience a lot of things right in front of your eyes, but just that there's a little difference between what is being offered to you and the reality. Reality is going to be completely different with the offer. Now, this trend is one of the top highlights of the year 2019, and according to Statista, AR and VR worldwide market size is expected to reach around 209.2 billion dollars in only five years. This is definitely a very huge amount, guys. So, augmented and virtual reality is going to be the future of digital marketing.

The next one that I have on the list is voice search. I think most of you use smartphones, and also everybody knows what our voice assistants. And when I say voice search, voice search or Google Voice Search is a Google product that allows your users to use Google search by speaking on your smartphone or your computer. That is, have the device search for data upon entering information on the what to search into the device by speaking. So, we have a lot of technologies intertwined for this. Also, there is something called as Alexa and Siri, right? These make our lives very easy. You can just find any of your restaurant or any of your queries, any of your doubts regarding any of the topic. You can just say, "Hello Google" or "OK Google," and just say, "Alexa, find me a best restaurant" or "find me something to wear," "find me a place which is very cozy," and all of these, right? So, this is how easy our lives are right now.

So, talking about the stats of voice search in the field of digital marketing, 111.8 million people in the US are using voice assistants in a week. And also, around 31 percent of smartphone users across the world will be using a voice-activated search like Siri, Alexa, and so on, by the end of 2020. And as a matter of fact, by 2020, that is, by the end of 2020, 50 percent of all the queries will be voice-based. So, you can see how drastically voice assistants or voice search is growing. Businesses must always focus on their marketing outreach efforts for using voice engine optimization. This helps in letting you know about your target audience who might use your keyword in their voice queries and so on. Also, do focus on long-tail keywords. This is because the searches are more likely to be more specific when it comes to asking a question. You can just ask, "What is digital marketing?" by just calling up Alexa. Just tell me, "What is digital marketing?" It'll give you the top search engine results. So, this is how easy it has become, guys. And also, you can make use of this to promote your product as well.

Now, talking about the importance of digital marketing, why exactly do we need digital marketing? Why is it so important in our day-to-day life basis? Technology well, continues to drive business in the 21st century, and mastery of digital marketing techniques is a must-known prerequisite. Well, I guess you guys are aware of the term digital marketing as a medium to promote your product and your business. That's absolutely right, guys. But why do we need digital marketing? What's so important or why do you think you need digital marketing for your business strategy? And also, how do you think digital marketing is important? So, let me just put out a few pointers to you guys. These are the major reasons why you should actually have digital marketing.

So, today's marketing strategy completely depends on digital marketing. So, when you're strategizing your business needs, digital marketing plays an important role here. So, how do you create a strategy in digital marketing? Each company has its specific set of goals, but the majority of them are only concentrating on driving sales to their organizations and finding new gateways to success. This is where the marketing strategy comes into the picture. To take your company's work more effective, you have to take advantage of all the most valuable marketing resources and technologies. When I say digital marketing strategy, it is basically a plan of action to achieve your marketing goals.

The next important thing which will lead to great success of your organization would be the increased number of sales. So, digital marketing helps in driving more sales to your organization, which in turn increases the revenue and also the pay scale.

Now, the next one is, it helps you brand your company. Branding your company is a must, guys. You should be very confident about what your company is dealing with, and also you should know how to promote your product. Promoting your product and planning your product is a little different. So, please note, guys, branding your product is making people know that your product is worth buying and also gaining the customers' trust.

Now, the next one is, it is easy to get familiar with the marketing channels. So, there are close to six to seven or seven to eight marketing channels available, and getting along with these marketing channels is very easy. Well, you guys know about SEO, search engine optimization, which is basically used for blogs or articles that you write. And email marketing is for prospective customers. Send out a professional email to them and get a proper response. Social media marketing mainly deals with promoting your product on the social media platform, and so on. So, getting along with these marketing channels is very easy. And also, digital marketing helps build a better relationship with your customers or prospects. So, this is actually why we take up digital marketing. Getting people's trust, building a good relationship with them, eventually leads to the growth of your organization. Digital marketing is one such platform which helps you build a better relationship with your customers.

Now, the next one is better ROI. Return on investment is also an important factor that influences the profit of your company. So, the amount which you invest in the marketing channel or marketing medium is going to be really very high. But by using digital marketing, you're going to be getting a lot back. The money which you're going to be investing on a digital campaign or a digital marketing campaign is definitely going to be coming back with better interest. And also, digital marketing has a wider and dynamic career opportunities. You can be hired as a digital marketer, as per the role of SEO manager, content manager, SEM specialist, and so on. Okay, so these are the hottest job roles in the market right now, guys. So, grab the opportunity and seize the day.

And also, the important factor which influences your company's growth would be appearing on the search engine result pages, that is, on the front page of Google. So, making a company appear on the search engine result pages is a tedious task in hand. But by using digital marketing and the techniques, you'll be able to make this task easy. So, these are some notable benefits or I would say importance of having a digital marketing team in your organization.

So, now that you've understood what are the latest trends in the market, and also the importance of having a digital marketing team or importance of having a digital marketing campaign in your company, now moving on to the next reason why you should actually learn digital marketing is, it has a variety of career opportunities. Digital marketing gives you a huge scope and a multitude of job options right in front of you. A recent report also states that there are over 75,000 job listings on the very famous job portal, that is, Indeed.com. Also, do note, guys, this field is in high demand, as many digital marketers start with a salary range of 45,000 US dollars. Unlike other fields, digital marketing has a lot of opportunities for freshers as well as experienced candidates. Not only in terms of jobs, but also you can earn as a freelancer digital marketer and make some awesome amount out of it. This field is actually evolving, and hence it creates a lot of opportunities for freshers and experienced professionals. If you are out there looking for a job in the field of digital marketing, now is the right time to start preparing yourself.

And also, the most important part is, it is easy to start a new creative business project. You can easily create your own project by making use of very commonly used platforms such as YouTube, blog creation, and affiliate marketing. These are actually a part of digital marketing, guys. So, once you understand how this works, you know where to put in more effort, which marketing channel you should prefer to reach your target audience, and so on. And also, in addition to this, you'll also have enough knowledge about optimizing your blog and the marketing channel of your choice, so your audience can find you. So, this is like you do something for recognition, but in return, you get a lot of trust. So, this is like a chain reaction.

Now, once people know about your project, and also have a variety of career opportunities, it is easy to generate results and the digital sales funnel. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more are responsible for driving good traffic onto your website. These applications even involve advertising your product. When a user lands onto your website, many tend to browse more than just the web page that you land them on. Once they click out the web page that you land them on, you probably lost the potential customer lead that you could have to follow upon. Generating leads from the sales funnel is actually a very difficult task. Keep a hold of how your customer is going through your videos or blogs or your content that you create, and also do answer all the queries that they have about any of the problem that they're facing. It is easy to drive traffic to your website from digital markets. Once they shift their focus to digital marketing, there is no turning back, guys. The reason behind this is having a website and letting the audience know about your product or service is a very difficult task, and with digital marketing, this is definitely made easy, as this plays a major role in generating good traffic to your website. You'll have all the opportunities to convert them into sales.

Now, the next is digital skills gap. There's an enormous demand for people with digital skills, especially the soft skills for those under the income bracket. So, sticking with ongoing scope in this area, even if you're not a complete techie, you'll have to look at the foreseeable future of digital marketing. The skill gap actually refers to the difference between the skills required for a particular job and the skills the person actually possesses. The skill gap is responsible for not being able to perform a complete job. So, using digital marketing, you can upskill your learning or knowledge about the trending technology.

The next major reason is the versatility. Once you master the top skills for the role of a digital marketer, you'll have a lot of exposure to the broad set of skills. This makes it easy to change your focus later if you decide to switch to a different specialization. The actual fact is, if you choose a career path or specialization in the field of digital marketing and then decide to pivot later, you're likely to need a little training in order to make the switch. Also, you could work under any specific domain of digital marketing. This can keep your skills sharp and your work very interesting. In this sense, you can upgrade existing skills while still learning new ones, but also stay in the same field. In digital marketing, there are plenty of choices and ongoing learning opportunities where different skills fit together in different ways.

And the next factor which influences the need for digital marketing is, this field is evolving. This is an evergreen field which is always evolving. Digital marketing is one such field where you'll find something new to learn and follow. You'll find it interesting and gives you freedom to be more creative in terms of creating a master plan, that is, a master digital marketing plan. It is going to help whether you're taking the lead on the initiatives or not. Since there are a variety of specialists working on a given agency, you'll also be working alongside professionals with a variety of backgrounds and new strategies. So, get your hands dirty with this amazing digital marketing field right now.

One major factor which always people look for is how to stay updated with the current trends and how to stay ahead of our competitors. Adapting digital marketing to your organization is a must, guys. By doing this, it lets you know your own company and also your prospects' interest. Even though you make good content and beautifully design your website, you might still end up not getting enough leads. This is possible. This is like the reality, right? This might also be because you don't know about the current market trends. So, unless you're up to date with the current market trends and also try to adapt them in your company, you'll have a rough time planning your strategy. So, digital marketing is one such way through which you can always be one step ahead of your competitors.

Now, the next major factor which eventually increases the growth rate and also the job opportunity would be having a good certification course. Having a digital marketing certificate is definitely going to help you get better job opportunities in this domain. Also, 60 percent of the professionals feel that online certifications have helped them a lot in mastering these amazing technologies.

You need to know how to learn digital marketing. Jane was aspiring to learn digital marketing. She's enthusiastic about web development, so she thought of starting off by making a website. Once it was ready, she realized that it didn't look appealing. So, then she started learning design. But even after making her website very appealing, she was not able to reach a large audience. So, then she started learning about SEO. Now, getting a hand in digital marketing, she wanted to promote her content further, hence she started learning about social media marketing. She then found out about the various algorithms used in social media platforms for targeting audience. To overcome the algorithms, she then discovered and started learning about email marketing. So, you see, Jane learned as she practiced, and there's now a successful digital marketer.

Now, with Jane's success story, let's have a look at the steps to take in learning digital marketing to build your success story. Digital marketing is very wide. Once one starts, they might get lost in the wide pool of options, but trying to learn everything at once is a wrong approach. Take into account all the branches and consider your interests. For beginners, I suggest you start with SEO. Now that you know that you are supposed to start with one particular branch, next you need to decide on the strategy and tactics you are going to implement. At first, you need to pick your strategy. Now that you know that you are supposed to start with one particular branch, next you need to decide on the strategy and tactics you are going to implement. At first, you need to pick your strategy. These are the big picture stuff where you want to focus your efforts first, because this is the foundation where all your future marketing tools and softwares are going to be built on. If you get this wrong, nothing else will work.

There are many different strategies and methods to digital marketing, but I suggest you take into account the core four to determine your strategy first. You need to pick your model. This is about what business you are promoting or what service is available. With that, also determine what package or price to set based on what's profitable and in demand. Next, know your market, that is, the people you are going to serve. Focus on the ideal customer base, taking into account their demographic, geographic, and psychographic details. Next is the message. When marketing, you need to connect with customers and their problems and deliver how your model helps solve their issue. For this, you need to understand the market, chat with customers to figure out your message. And finally, the media. This is the center of digital marketing. This is where you are going to do your marketing, such as to Facebook ads, Google ads, or anything else. A lot of people make the mistake of starting with the media, like when they hear about, let's say, Instagram ads or so. But without figuring out your model or knowing your market, don't start with this. Go in the right order and pick your media based on your ideal target market.

So, once you have figured all the major stuff, move to the tactics. Tactics define how you are going to execute the strategy. These are actionable steps to take, such as what frequency to post in, or what kind of content to post, or the level of consistency that you are going to maintain. A tactical question would be, "What's the best time to post on social media?" whereas a strategic question would be, "Which social media platform should we post on?"

Now, you know about the strategy and tactics. If you are new to digital marketing, SEO is a good way to start off with. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to our website or a web page from search engines. It can be broadly classified into three categories: technical SEO comprises of anything technical undertaken to improve search rankings, on-page SEO can be anything on your web pages such as blogs, product copy, web copy, etc., and off-page SEO is anything which happens away from your website that helps with your SEO strategy, such as backlinks.

Next, have an understanding of organic and paid content. Organic content is what you create for free, such as an Instagram ad or Facebook ad or YouTube video. I wouldn't call it free content because you put effort or maybe money to put it forward. It is simply organic because you are not paying to promote it. Paid marketing is to distribute through media by paying them. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or YouTube ads are examples. Organic content shows up in the news feeds of the people who are following you. Organic is free to promote but limited in reach, and paid content costs money, of course, but reaches a lot of people and also ideal people quickly. Hence, select your content based on your resources.

Once you have your content, get acquainted with the free tools. You do not want to start with digital marketing and go into debt already. Hence, familiarity with tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Canva, or SEMrush, among others, comes handy. As you go on, eventually you can learn about the paid tools too.

Next, let's have an understanding of direct response and brand awareness. Direct response marketing is direct in its goals to get response. You can create a piece of content, and you're focused on getting an immediate and tangible return, like a sale, a phone call, or subscription. For example, run a Google ad and expect to generate a lead. This is easy to track and measure. Whereas brand awareness is long-term. It's about building trust and authority and brand name in the market. It's harder to quantify. Branding is useful to build a sustainable business for your business. You can use a mix of both, but be careful. Don't conduct brand awareness marketing and expect direct response. Have a good understanding of each.

Once you have learned enough about a certain branch, it's time to start executing. Theoretical learning is not an ideal approach to digital marketing. You need to execute it in action. For instance, you may help out your friend with an existing business or apply for an internship. Freelancing as a digital marketer is also a good option. Once you are well-versed and experienced in a particular branch, it's time for you to move to other branches such as video marketing, website optimization, social media, or email marketing. There is no set order for the branches. It's all up to your own interest.

Still confused if you shouldn't on digital marketing? Let's see why it's better than traditional marketing. First of all, digital marketing helps you reach a much larger audience. Not only is your audience larger, but also more targeted and ideal. It's cost-effective compared to, let's say, putting up an ad on the TV, and you receive immediate feedback for your work, which makes it easier to track the result.

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So, the first topic is, why a digital marketing plan is necessary. A digital marketing plan is a document that mainly includes the details of your marketing campaigns, short and long-term business goals, and so on. It is also sometimes called a digital marketing strategy. Now, when I say digital marketing strategy, what do I refer to or what do I mean? A digital marketing strategy is a plan of action to achieve your marketing goals. So, when I say strategy, I think most of you know that strategy means planning and at once, right? So, it is a plan of action which is achieved by a particular goal, and you can achieve this by using channels like paid, earned, social media, and all of it, which come under the strategy. And also, depending on your job scale, the strategy might involve planning each with a different agenda and the end result. So, in this session, we are going to be focusing on the planning aspect, and strategy mainly involves more creative thinking, and also it is difficult to create one. So, let's see how to get started with real advertising your strategy or your planning for your business operation. And also, planning is basically for maximizing your business benefits and the goals associated with it.

So, why do you think planning is required? What does it mean? Agenda or the main goal of having a plan? Undoubtedly, digital marketing is becoming an integral part of our lives, and also our business as well. So, without this added to your plan structure, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to connect with your customer base. So, the main goal is to connect your customers and then move forward to how you can improvise yourself or improvise your method of dealing with your customers. However, you can actually make your strategy work, but you should have some clarity in it. This clarity can be got by proper planning. So, some major reasons that you should consider having a perfect digital marketing plan will be: you'll be easily able to attract viewers to your website, and also you'll be converting. So, if you get viewers on your website who are actually looking out for something which they need, and you're giving out something which they want, so it is going to be becoming a proper conversion rate there. You can actually get a sale out of it, and also they will become your loyal customers. And create a marketing strategy that helps in planning all the actions on how to reach your target customer. Target customer is something which you should analyze or research about, guys. Target customers are those who actually want something from you, and you're giving something to them, and they might have some issues or they might have some queries related to what they're going to be paying for. So, this is how you should make a strategy to reach them in a way that they will find it easier to interact with you and also have trust in you.

You'll also gain a lot of in-depth knowledge of the market and your target audience. So, when you do a proper research, proper homework on how you can analyze your viewers, how you can work your way around the target audience, you're good to go, guys. And this lets you use all the resources that are available in an effective and unorganized way. So, when I say planning, it is pretty sure or pretty obvious that it should be an effective plan where you can utilize all your resources, and also you should do it in a perfect way. So, these are some major reasons why you should take up digital marketing planning. And also, if you talk about the scale in which marketing or digital marketing is growing, you should start planning your business strategy in a way that you shouldn't try to copy other business strategies and try to implement your business plans accordingly. So, you should be unique in that week.

Okay, now moving on to the next topic. So, what is the structure of a good marketing plan? Have you guys ever wondered if there can be a structure to a marketing plan? Well, there is. A good marketing plan or a good digital marketing plan is a key to all your strategies that will give you a foundation for all key online marketing activities. So, we have PRAISE to the rescue. What is PRAISE? What am I talking about when I say PRAISE? PRAISE is nothing but Plan, Reach, Act, Conversion, Engagement. So, these five put together will make your good digital marketing plan.

Now, planning or consider using the data-driven approach to review your current digital marketing effectiveness, custom analysis, KPI, that is, Key Performance Indicator dashboards, SMART objectives, and helps you create a strategy of prioritized improvements on how you can deploy your digital marketing media, technology, and everything. All these come under the plan part of digital marketing planning. So, planning is very important. It will eventually help you guys in conversion also.

And talking about reach, you should be able to build awareness using online marketing channels or mediums like social media marketing, SEO, that is, search engine optimization, content marketing, and so on. And this will drive more visits to your website.

And talking about act, the next following step would be act. You should know how to act when you get a lead or when you get a feedback regarding whatever you've done or whatever plan that you've been taking part in. Always encourage interactions on your website or sometimes social media, which will help you generate more leads. You should actually involve in more and more interactions with your customers.

And talking about conversion, the superlative goal is to generate revenue by retargeting, nurturing, and conversion rate optimization or CRO. This is used in order to remind and persuade your audience or customers to buy any of your product via one of the marketing channels. So, this is how the conversion takes place, guys. You have a viewer on your website, he tries to reach you, he tries to go through the website, what you provide, what services you provide, what your products are, up to, and so on. So, this involves planning. Here, you should know how to target your customers, you should know how exactly they'll stay, if you're going to be giving them discounts on any of the course or any of the product that you're going to be interested in.

And the next one is engagement. Increase the number of sales from existing customers by improvising personalized communication using web, email, and social media marketing. I think most of you get emails regarding any of the new product launch on Amazon or Flipkart, right? This is how you build customer engagement. So, this is how you have PRAISE to the rescue.

And once you know your way around this, let's give you a breakdown of a step-by-step structure of a digital marketing plan. First thing you should know is, list your business goals. You should know what your business

Goals are you should know how to define your business goals. So the very first thing to do when you are developing your digital marketing plan is to carry out an internal and external analysis of your firm. They need to be so important to brand your business, but it'll definitely help on your final marketing plan document that sets the stage for everything to come.

Also, to do this, we have some useful framework called SWOT analysis. So this is going to be helping you in looking into matters like strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and the market. So what is a SWOT analysis? Something familiar? Something new? All right, so let me just not beat around the bush and let me give you a proper definition to what a SWOT analysis is.

So, SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique used to help an organization identify its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and everything related to business competition or project planning. Once you have everything in place, strive hard to put up some goals related to your domain. Also, the wonderful part is you can work on developing your digital marketing plan with SMART goals.

Now, the question is, what does SMART stand for? Is it a full form? Is it an abbreviation? Is it just saying SMART goals in general? Let me help you guys. SMART goals are nothing but the abbreviation for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. SMART goals help in analyzing your business venture.

Now, when I say specific, it deals with leads, the number of visits that you get on your website, and so on. Measurable helps in providing a specific number of those leads and visits. Attainable deals with analyzing the benchmarks that you've set, and Relevant helps in relating back to the overall end goal. And last but not the least, Timely. So you should know how to finish everything within the time frame. So this is how SMART comes into picture, and SMART goals are very essential if you're going to be starting a business venture of your own.

Next is research your target audience. This is important for focusing on trying to get the traffic and reaching the right audience. If you don't research your audience before creating your content, you might end up creating something really useless, so which is definitely not recommended or which is not appreciated. So you shouldn't actually do it. You need to first analyze their interests and plan accordingly.

There are so many ways where you can collect prospect's information to create a good persona, such as we have web analytics data, web-based surveys, focus groups, and blog post comments. So these are some mediums through which you can get some information regarding your prospects and also their interests.

Next on the list is design your persona. You should design your persona in such a way that people cannot find a single fault in your product. If you have the required customer data in hand, you're good to create a good buyer persona, guys. You can't create an effective digital marketing plan without knowing who you want to reach. A buyer persona is important in this case.

Generally, a buyer persona is a fictional thing, guys. It is people that represent the traits of people you're trying to target to buy your products or services. So it's like a robot in between you and the customer. So how does this buyer persona help in digital marketing? What does it have to do with anything that is related to the marketing field?

So, buyer personas help you know who to target when you're running your campaign. In many cases, there might be a chance that you might have more than one buyer persona whom you'd be targeting. So creating these personas helps you market to different types of buyers based on their interests and needs. So a buyer persona is important in digital marketing planning.

Next is define your marketing strategy. Once you're done with defining your business goals, personalizing your strategy, and helping in planning the major things that affect these would be the strategy, the entire strategy on how you're going to be building up your plan. So the first thing would be the audience. You should know what to focus on, whom to focus on, and how to focus on.

So what gives you the answer to what kind of content you should create? Whom gives you the answer to who to target, that is the prospects that you should consider focusing on? And how to target are the mediums, the channels, or the marketing channels which you can go for to reach the audience. Ranking plays a major role, guys. You need to know how you're going to be communicating with a unique value proposition and how to do so appropriately in terms of channels.

So ranking plays a vital role because you'll be having your page or your website rank on Google, which will eventually drive more traffic to your website. And the next is content strategy. Know how to create informative content, keyword research, social posting, and so on.

So now that you know how to define your goals, how to create your strategy, how to create a buyer persona, let's take a look at the last thing that you should do after creating an effective strategy, that is, choose the right marketing platform. It doesn't matter if you're new to digital marketing or have enough experience in this field, but what matters is your idea about marketing it via the right channels.

There are a few marketing channels or mediums through which you can let people know about your product. So utilize this knowledge and market it in the right way. So the first thing is you cannot stick to one digital marketing channel. You need to be well-versed in all channels, starting from SEO, with over 2.7 million blog posts getting published every other day and more than 500 million tweets per day. You have no choice but to enhance your knowledge in a particular marketing channel. So choose the right marketing platform for your business, and your planning is done right, and it will eventually lead to more revenue generation as well.

Now, moving on to the next topic, we have how to make an effective digital marketing plan. So follow these instructions to have an effective digital marketing plan. So the first thing you should do is brand yourself. The very first thing leading to the success of your digital marketing plan is defining your brand. It is important to analyze your company's growth, your ins and outs of your brand, so that you can easily sell your product. In addition to this, create unique selling points or USPs in general to give proper insights about your brand to the audience. Also, even here, focus on the SMART goals, which is namely Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. So focus on these goals, you'll be branding yourself as a trustworthy company.

So in order to try to increase your audience base, follow these instructions. So first thing is launch your product. So this is more important, guys. Launching your product which is error-free, bug-free, and so on. So you should focus on creating a product first and reach out to new markets. If you're very confident about your product, just reach out to new markets, and it can vary depending on your location or the type of audience. And also try to promote your product. Promotion is a must. Even if it's a very minute thing that you've done, you've achieved something, you've created something on your own, try to promote it.

And also, you can improve your ROI, that is, return on investment. Usually, when I say marketing, it costs you a lot of money, guys. But using digital marketing, the cost that you're going to be spending on marketing campaigns or soon will be less. Even if it's more, you're gonna be getting more back in return, that is the improvement in the ROI.

And next, analyze the market growth and expand your market share with respect to the competition. Try to optimize your conversion funnel. So when I say conversion funnel, conversion funnel is something where you will know the exact ratio of how many people are landing onto your website and how many people are actually buying your product. So the number of people landing on your page and the number of people who are actually going to be buying your product is very less because the number of viewers will be very more. They'll be interested to see how your product will work, what you guys are into, and so on. But eventually, when the process takes place, they will not be much interested in your product. They'll try to say that I found another one which is more interesting, which is more nice, or very better compared to whatever you are selling. So I'm going to be going to that, and no, I don't want this. So these are a few ways where you can try to optimize your marketing funnel and try to attract new customers and increase the number of sales.

Attracting new customers wouldn't be easy if your product is performing well. So make sure that your product is right. So these are a few important points you should note for having a perfect digital marketing plan.

Now, moving on to creating an effective marketing plan, we have choose the right marketing platform. If you're creating an effective digital marketing plan, you need to choose the right marketing platform. There are several marketing channels through which you can easily promote your content and get good leads from it. Some major channels include search engine optimization, content marketing, social media marketing, pay-per-click, email marketing, and so on. So choose the right one for your business.

Now, measure the business. Once everything is in place, you need to know how to measure goals, not just create a plan in such a way that it will help users, it will help you gain more profit. It is not like that. You should know how to measure your goals. You should know how to analyze where you're losing traffic or where you're gaining interest of people. So a strategy or a plan will always yield results, and you should always have a strategy to measure the results.

So this is a crucial phase of digital marketing, guys. It determines whether your business was successful with the efforts that you put in or not. You will be done with your marketing plan only if you will be able to analyze and measure the corresponding results. And you can measure your marketing strategy results using KPIs, like I mentioned. They are Key Performance Indicators. These help in determining your campaign success and also it helps in showing you if you've got an expected ROI or not.

Also, in addition to this, you should have a real-time data visualization system. Why do you need a data visualization system? This is because the world is evolving towards digitalization, and there is much more to explore in this field. So be up to date with the current market trends, identify opportunities, and room for improvement in an instant. So these are the ways you can actually improve your marketing campaign, or these are the effective ways which you can design your marketing plan.

Now, moving on to the next topic, we have the best practices for a better digital marketing plan. So in order to increase or improve your digital marketing plan, you should follow some guidelines or some practices, right? So the first one would be prioritize your customer's needs and plan accordingly. So when you are into marketing, you should always prioritize your customer's needs first. This is because you'll be giving more and more time to your customers. You should know what their thought process about your product is. You should know how to analyze the situation, give them proper guidelines, provide help when they need it, and so on.

And also, audit your SEO on a regular basis. SEO is mainly into blogs and articles, like I mentioned. So audit your SEO in such a way that it will help your website rank first on the search engine result pages. Conduct webinars and live events. Webinars actually help in improving your knowledge about the subject, and also this will eventually help the customers who are looking for an answer. So under webinars and live events, live events basically deals with you being there in person and explaining about the product.

Next is prioritize blog as your primary lead generation media. This is because organic traffic drives more traffic to your website, guys. So focus on creating more blogs or more videos regarding any of your product generation, any of your marketing plan. Make organic traffic your priority. Like I mentioned, blogging, video making, all of it come under organic traffic generation. So give more importance to organic traffic.

Distribute your content on the marketing channels we have. So many social media marketing mediums or marketing channels through which you can promote your product. We have social media, which is like a boon to us and which is helping us in all ways that we need. So these are some best practices that you should consider while taking up or while creating a proper digital marketing plan.

Let's take a look at the components or sometimes which is referred to as the channels or types of digital marketing. But before you can actually start your selection process to identify the best digital marketing tools, you must always be familiar with the various channels that are available. So like I mentioned, there are mainly five to six channels of digital marketing.

So the first one on the list that we are going to be discussing would be Search Engine Optimization, or say SEO. So almost all people using the internet are familiar and are making use of search engines to look for anything that is promising and worth searching for. In fact, up to 93% of online experiences happening to people usually begin by using a simple search engine. People use search engines to look for information regarding a product, a brand, or service. It is also stated that 60% of search engine users find a local business to satisfy a particular need.

So SEO is basically the process of optimizing content, technical setup, and the reach of your website so that your pages appear on the top of the search engine result pages for any specific keyword. The major goal is to attract visitors to your website when they search for products or services related to your business. This is going to profit the visitor as well as the business because the number of views that you get is directly proportional to the number of revenue or the number of sales that your company deals with.

Also, a fun fact to note here is WordPress users alone publish over 2 million posts every day. This comes out to approximately 32 blogs every second. So this means that the users are publishing over 216 blog posts while you're still watching this video. Also, even in this blog creation sector, I would say we spend around two to three hours, and it might go up to a maximum of five hours when you're writing a blog. This is because we are well aware of the fact that I should make content appropriate and very appealing. It takes time to make it good, make it promising, and also give a sales pitch.

So in order to understand what exactly is Search Engine Optimization, let's take a look at a few key points to note while you're optimizing your content. So firstly, that I have on the list is optimizing your content. So try to target business analysis here. You need to be sure about whom to target and how to target. You might find people with relevant taste and thirst, but they wouldn't be convinced with the type of content you create. So try to target the right audience.

The keyword also plays a major role in better content creation, guys. This is basically the development of a prioritized list of target search items that is related to your customer base and market segment. So do note that, guys, keywords are also important for search engine optimization.

Now, the next thing is web analysis. Web analysis helps in analyzing visible text and code to determine how well you're positioned for search engines. All right. Now, the next way to optimize your content is keyword research. As I mentioned, keywords play a major role in better content creation. Keywords are the targeted list of topics that are related to your customer base. Do review competitive lists and other pertinent industry sources to get a hold of what are the keywords which are ranking. Also, check for how many websites are competing for each keyword. Prioritize the keywords and phrases, plurals, singulars, and misspellings. Okay, so keep a note of these, guys. And also, long keywords will help you rank more. And do check for search volume, guys. This helps if you want to know how many people are looking for the content based on your business.

Now, once you know this, you should know how to rank your keyword. So Google ranking plays a major role in creating traffic and generating possible leads. So check for your content every month to see where exactly it is positioned. So this was about keyword research.

Now, the next way to optimize your SEO is by optimizing your content. Create a proper title. Also, it should be keyword-based, as these establish page theme and direction for your keywords. Use meta descriptions or meta tags that help in providing the user the gist of what the article is about. So these are the ways you can optimize your content using SEO.

So now that you've understood the different ways to increase traffic, pay-per-click, which is also called PPC for short, refers to the sponsored results on the search engine result pages or SERP. PPC ads are visible, flexible, and effective for many different types of organizations. With paid search, you only pay when your ad is clicked. So these are basically the ads that are present on top whenever you search for a particular keyword. So essentially, this is the way of buying visits to your website rather than attempting to earn those visits organically. SEO is organic marketing, and pay-per-click is your spending money on that ad to get a click or to get people to buy your product.

Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. Now, you must have had this thought, when I say ads, what kind of ads am I going to be seeing? These are nothing but Google Ads, formerly called as Google AdWords. PPC is commonly associated with the first-tier search engines like Google AdWords. So let me show you guys how exactly these ads look like. So if I search "edureka" over here, you can see I'm getting an ad over here. It says "ad edureka.com". So this is a paid ad or PPC. So this is exactly how Google Ads looks like. It is going to be on the top rank when you search for a particular keyword. So the keyword here is "edureka". If I'm going to be searching for "edureka", this thing pops up, which is PPC. You'll normally find shopping ads and text ads.

Now, why do you need PPC? How does it help your business? It's just spending so much money on something people would not prefer investing on. So firstly, you need PPC to generate more traffic to your website, and as the link stands on the first position, the possibility of people landing on your website actually increases. And another major reason why you should opt for PPC in your business is the speed, precision, and the agility. Speed, as in the advertisers can quickly drive a significant amount of traffic to their website. Precision is for creating a highly targeted audience to show your ads, and it is straightforward. Agility refers to the performance measurement data which is available pretty quickly. So for all these reasons, you should go for PPC for your business.

Now, there must be some downfall if there are so many noted advantages for a business strategy, right? So what are the drawbacks of using PPC and how you should be aware of the malfunction? So the major drawbacks of PPC would be the cost and the volume. Cost is one major pitfall of using PPC marketing because the amount of money you spend on each ad is very high. So depending on your competition and the business requirement, PPC will benefit your organization, but you'll have to spend more on it. And the volume, if the users aren't searching for products or services that you offer, search and shopping ads won't generate much traffic, thus leading to the downfall of your business.

Okay, so what sort of PPC ad should you go for? Are there any types or so on? So the types of PPC ads completely depend on your marketing strategy and goals. So you should always be aware of the ads that you want to promote. Trust the interest of the viewer by making it more appealing. Decide to promote your product. This is a must, guys, because until and unless you like the product that you're promoting, nobody would actually go for it, right? And always be ready to take action on any of the activities that might lead to revenue generation. So you should be well aware of what you're doing.

So what are the notable things that you should know before going for PPC? You should know about digital ad strategy, digital advertisement design, ad landing page, ad targeting, and pricing. Ad strategy, or the digital ad strategy, is the important part of PPC. Do you know how to develop the foundation of your business with the step-by-step process to create goals and persona segments for your campaigns? Also, the cross-channel methods for acquisition, nurturing, building customer loyalty, and branding are very important in this phase.

Next one is digital ad design. If you break down the differences between PPC, display, and social ads, you know that the benefits and the best practices for each. Find out how to write relevant ad copy, headlines, lead generation forms, and CTAs, that is, call to actions. Also, learn about relevant imagery content, including cinematography, video, flash banners, pop-ups, and so on. Okay.

Now, talking about the ad landing page, no matter how much time or money you spend on a digital advertising campaign, it will all go in vain if your landing page doesn't resonate with your audience. Optimize your forms, ads, and landing page design by platform and set lead generation and social media goals to ensure a seamless and personalized experience for every visitor.

And how does ad targeting work? You need to discover various ways to reach your target customers, including ad content, geographic location, behavioral and buying patterns, audience behaviors, specific demographics, and many more. And at the end, pricing. You can develop a comprehensive understanding of what the models mean for your business strategy, and also do cover the manual and automatic bidding and many more. So this was everything that you need to know about PPC marketing.

So let's move ahead and take a look at content marketing. So this is actually considered as the key to success of your organization. So there is a famous saying, "Content is anything that adds value to the reader's life." And also, there is another saying which says, "Content is the king." This saying had created a lot of buzz amongst the online marketers, and this is a different area of marketing like social media and SEO marketing, guys. So content is the heart of what we do as marketers. You talk to the customers, clients, and the viewers, and whomever you want, regardless of what form it takes of the content.

Content marketing is the use of that content, any of it, to help meet a marketing goal of your organization. That could be the acquisition of potential customers, retention of existing ones, reach more people with your brand or your product, and really anything else, guys. So what do you understand by the word content? Content actually means something that has valuable information. In terms of business, it is related to data and strategy of how to deliver your product to the audience.

And the standard definition of content marketing goes something like this: It is a strategic marketing approach that is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. It ultimately helps drive profitable customer action. So what are the major reasons do you think would help you consider content marketing as a career opportunity or for your business aspect as well?

So content marketing helps increase the sales, which in turn increases the revenue. You'll be saving yourself from spending more, guys. The amount you spend on content creating and marketing is less compared to what all the other people do. The major reason to shift your focus to content is that you'll gain a lot of loyal and good customers.

Now, what exactly is the history behind the growth of content marketing? Now, you'll wonder why the word content marketing comes into picture. Was it there since the beginning, or was it named recently? The answer to this is, it was used in the year 1732 by a man called Benjamin Franklin, who published the first version of his annual Poor Richard's Almanac. He did this because he wanted to advertise the new printing business that he had created. So this very event laid a proper foundation for what we are today.

So why content marketing? Why not any other field? No doubt that content marketing these days is very popular, and many short-scale industries are used in content marketing for the growth of their business organization. But you can't do something just because it worked for early adopters. And just because massive B2B and B2C businesses are using it today doesn't mean that YouTube is right even for you. Choose a domain that you are comfortable with working, and then strive to reach your target. And also categorize your agenda as to what part you have to put in more effort. This will eventually start giving you convenient results.

Okay, you will find a lot of people using social media applications like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and all these applications are actually considered as a platform for distributing the content that you create, hence resulting in a lot of traffic onto your website.

So let's take a look at the sales funnel, guys. The main reason, or the actual reason, for you to work on content marketing is to sell your product. So the outlook of a content marketing sales funnel looks something like this. Here you can see that the number of viewers are high. This is the double number of people who are actually purchasing your product, guys. So stay close to 75% of people are looking for information about the content that you already have. And the next phase is the one where the users show some interest in your website or your content and has thought about going further with it. Here, he or she has to decide if he wants to invest money on your product or not. This is close to 23%. So these many people are actually looking forward to taking up your product. In this phase, he or she actually wants to look into more further information regarding your product and has related queries regarding the same. So this is also a crucial phase for customers as well as the organizations because there is a chance that the customer might end up not buying or demands a lot of discounts. So this is the most important phase of content marketing. Okay, so here you can add in, or you can talk about your blogs, or your videos, or your guest blogging, and all the achievements of your company as well.

The last phase is where the customer ends up enrolling or paying for your product. The density is very less compared to the number of visitors on your website. So this is what content marketing strives at. You are going to be striving hard to get the conversion rate to be equal because the number of viewers are very high, and the number of people who are actually ending up buying your product is very less. So we are trying to make it very equal so that the revenue or even the ROI is going to be equal. So this was about content marketing.

So let's move ahead and take a look at what exactly happens in social media marketing. Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach your prospects and customers. Great marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to your business, creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales. It is also defined as a form of digital marketing that involves creating and sharing content in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals. But before you consider social media for your business, you need to know the strategy behind it.

So starting off with a social media marketing campaign without a strategy in mind is like wandering around a forest without a map. It will be fun, but you will get lost in the process, guys. So have a look at how exactly you can build your career or know about social media marketing. How can social media help meeting your business goals? Is this even possible? Because when you log into any of your social media pages or accounts, all you can find is TikTok videos, any of the animal pictures or videos, or so. Is there anything that can help you promote your product?

That is, social media marketing increases the website traffic, helps build formal conversation with the clients, and also helps in raising brand awareness among the people on the social media platform because more than half of the entire world's population is on the internet, and also most of them are on social media. So creating a brand identity and a positive outlook for your organization is done using social media marketing. The bigger and the more engaged your audience are on social media networks, the easier it will be for you to achieve your marketing goals that is there on your list.

So to start off with a social media marketing campaign, I'll help you with some tips. So here are a few tips that you should follow or you should try to incorporate on your business sector as well. Content planning. So this is the first one on the list, guys. We have content planning. Building a social media marketing plan is very essential. Always consider keyword research, competitive research to help brainstorm content ideas that will interest your target audience.

Um, the next one is create great content. Always be consistent with other areas of online marketing, as the content draws supreme when it comes to social media marketing. Do make sure you post regularly and offer extremely valuable information that your ideal customers will find it helpful and interesting. Create a consistent brand image. Using social media for marketing enables your business to showcase your brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. So do use social media for promoting your product.

Now, the next one is promotion. Like I mentioned, social media is for promoting a product. Social media marketing is a perfect channel for sharing your best work with the readers by writing blogs. Once you gain a loyal fan following on social media, you'll be able to post all your new content and make sure your customer or your prospects can find it easily. Sharing appropriate links. Social media is a platform where you can leverage your own unique content to gain a lot of followers and fans. It is also the best platform to share links of your content that is relevant. If that corresponding content provides great and valuable information, your target audience will definitely enjoy. So don't forget to link them, guys.

Always keep a track of your competitors. This is a must, guys. It is always important to keep an eye on your competitors. If your competitors are using any certain social media tactics or any social media channel that seems to be working for them, do consider implementing the same, but do it in a better way. Okay.

Now, how should you choose the right social media platform for your business? There are so many mediums through which you can distribute your content, right? So a few of them prefer using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more. So let's see what suits the best for your organization. First on the list is Facebook. Facebook is a user-friendly, casual, and easy-to-use platform, and you can easily promote your product as well. You require an active social media marketing strategy for this. You will want to pay careful attention to the layout of your UI, as the visual component is a key aspect of your Facebook experience. So there are many groups that are already in use, and you can either join these groups or you can create your own group of your own and let people add on to it. So if you want to join the groups that are already existing, you just have to send them requests, post your content, and get a number of people to know about your organization. It's a simple way to promote your brand as well as your product or your content that you're creating. Facebook is just another medium through which you can communicate with people all around the globe. And also, edureka has a Facebook page where we keep sharing updates regarding any of the recent technologies that we are working on.

Now, Instagram is also another medium through which you can promote your product. So Instagram is also a growing social media platform, and the users use Instagram for promoting their business and product. This is a photo and video sharing social networking service created by Facebook. So sharing your content on Instagram is also going to benefit your organization and also make you a socially active person. I see most of the people try using Instagram for showing off their social life, but Instagram is also used for promoting the product. Accessible there are groups or there are websites which have the Instagram accounts, they keep posting updates regarding any of the new change which is there in their organization. Okay, so you can add stories about the quiz competition and the offers that you're going to offer your customers. You even have something called paid ads on Instagram. So when you open Instagram, you get ads which you don't want to view, but it is already present there. So you just have to scroll through it, and even in the stories, you get a sponsored promotion, guys. So you can look into it, and also, yeah, you can get paid on Instagram as well. It is just like PPC, guys. Okay.

So let's move ahead and understand how you can promote your product using LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile applications. It is mainly used for professional networking. By using LinkedIn, you can target your prospects and customers and post relevant content. You can join relevant groups on LinkedIn as well and share your content, or you can either build your connection by posting it on your timeline itself to let people know about the work you do. Okay, so LinkedIn is a professional way of promoting a product, guys. So encourage customers or clients to give your business a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile, and these recommendations make your business appear more credible and more reliable for new prospects.

Now, the next one is YouTube. YouTube is the number one place for creating and sharing video content, and it can also be an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool. It is now operating as one of Google's subsidiaries. So what is so fascinating about YouTube? YouTube allows users to upload, view, rate, share, report, or comment on videos and subscribe to channels to get more views and likes. Focus on creating useful, instructive videos, guys. This will help in gaining a lot of subscribers and also increase the chances of getting your video to rank on the first page on Google. So you can see edureka's posts coming up every now and then, right? So you can either check for any of the possible keywords by edureka, it will be ranking on the first page. So this is how you can create your content, create more important, instructive, and easy content so that people or the viewers will understand what you're trying to tell them. And also, it is a platform where you can earn a lot, guys. So YouTube marketing is like a boon to us.

Now, the next one is Twitter. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media marketing tools that let you broadcast your updates across the web. It is a microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as tweets. Follow tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you will gain a steady stream of followers in return. Always be active on Twitter and be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about your work, and don't forget to reply. I think I've come across a lot of people who just post something on social media and just forget about its existence. That shouldn't happen. If you're working constantly or focusing more on social media marketing, do reply to their queries, do ask for suggestions, do ask what they want from their end. All right, so doing this will make them feel that you are actually a person and not a bot. Using Twitter for social media marketing revolves around dialogue and communication. So always be confident and interact as much as possible to nurture and build your following.

So these are some major social media marketing platforms which will definitely benefit your business, guys. Moving on, let's take a look at how email marketing works. Email marketing is one of the oldest and the most professional way to communicate with your clients and prospects. It is the most direct and effective way of connecting with your leads, nurturing them, and turning them into customers, consistently winning out over all other marketing channels.

How did email marketing come into the bigger picture? The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in the year 1971. According to a few sources, what he sent was nothing really special, but it was just a series of numbers and letters that looked more like a password. The email was sent from one computer to another, traveling through a network of machines, unlike the internet we know today. This guy also introduced the symbol "@" in the email addresses to the entire world, and voila, we are here using emails on a daily basis in terms of work or promotional purposes. So email marketing actually helps you to connect with your audience and promote your brand.

So why do you need email marketing when you have social media marketing and other platforms where you can promote your business? For sure, even this will have its own reasons, right? Let's understand what those are. Apart from being a primary source of communication, there are a few more reasons why you should go for email marketing. The major reasons are listed here. So the first reason would be, it gives you a better ROI or high ROI. Email marketing returns close to $44 for every $1 that you're going to be spending. Also, it is an effective channel to reach your customers or prospects. Email marketing is close to 40 times more effective than Facebook, Twitter to gain a lot of new customers. And also, it is easy to integrate with other communication channels. And also, you can take this chance to enlarge your audience through emails and by blending these emails with your profiles on the social media platforms. In fact, a recent study shows that 72% of people prefer receiving promotional content through email compared to 17% who prefer getting notifications from social media. So this graph here shows the number of people who prefer using email over other mediums. So yeah, email also helps drive conversions. Most of the marketers are focused on driving more customers to their product, but regardless of whether they do so in the form of lead sales, membership, the ultimate goal for marketers is to turn potential customers into paying customers. This is the right platform because when you talk about conversions, there isn't a more powerful channel rather than email. In fact, the average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3%, and if you compare it with Twitter, the average click-through rate from a tweet is around 0.5%.

So what are the best practices for email marketing? If you start with email marketing, you would definitely know the best tactics and some ways to improve your skills. So a few notable ones among them are: build your own list. Buying email lists is actually a waste of time, guys. You'll be turning off most of the people whom you're hoping to turn them into customers and run the risk of being labeled a spammer. So do not buy email lists, okay? And also, do not send out ads all the time. Use your emails to build rapport with customers by sharing your expertise, giving them tips and insights they can value. Also, establish your goals clearly. Check what you want to focus on and deliver it to the customers as it is required. And also, select the type of campaign that you want to send out. This lays a foundation of what kind of campaign you want to create on your own. So this was about email marketing, guys.

Now, moving ahead, let's take a look at Google Analytics. Google Analytics is basically a web analytics service offered by Google that helps in tracking and reporting website traffic. It is also one of the most powerful digital analytics software. This software provides valuable insights that help in shaping your business strategy. So what does it mean? What valuable insight do I need to build my business? All companies have an online presence, and therefore, it becomes very important for you to learn the inner structure of your website to see whether it is accomplishing its goals or not. Irrespective of the type of website, you should understand the study of the behavior of their visitors.

So why do you need Google Analytics? Google Analytics is free of cost. Google does not charge you for using Google Analytics, and you don't have to pay anything to use this product. Data collection is also automatic in Google Analytics, as this has a special feature that reduces the work that is required to put Google Analytics data into Google Docs, sites, or spreadsheets. And also, you can easily customize your results. You can create your own reports in Google Analytics. You can either choose one from all the reports that Google creates or even build your own customized report using a drag-and-drop mechanism. It also helps measure internal site search. Internal site basically reveals what potential customers are looking for after landing onto your website. You can track them using Google Analytics. Also, this helps you a lot with targeting the right platform. Social media platforms are a great way to drive a lot of traffic and engage potential customers, and using Google Analytics, you have access to view what catches the attention of the users and then place the ad accordingly. So this is a part of Google Analytics.

Moving ahead, let's take a look at CRO, or what we say is Conversion Rate Optimization. Conversion Rate Optimization is a systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who perform desired actions, like filling out a form, becoming customers, and so on. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through your site, what actions they perform, and what's the barrier that is stopping them to complete the task. For example, let's say you're purchasing a product online. Here, you first perform certain actions on the web page, and then ask for suggestions from your friends or relatives, and so on. And finally, when you want to decide to go ahead and buy this product, you'll have your own set of queries, right? And you want some assistance for it, and you'll go across and call the customer care as to how you can do it, why you should want this product, and all of it. And then finally, you decide to buy this product online. So this exact process is called Conversion Rate Optimization.

So how to calculate a conversion rate? Your site's conversion rate is the number of times a customer or the user completes a task divided by your site's traffic. If a user can convert in each visit, such as buying a product, divide the number of conversions by the number of sessions, that is, the number of different times a user came to your site. If you sell a subscription, divide the number of conversions by the number of users. So the conversion rate optimization takes place after the visitors make it to your website. This is different from conversion optimization for SEO or paid ads that focuses on who clicks through your site from the organic search results, how many clicks you get, and which keywords are driving traffic. Okay.

So what are the different ways in which CRO can benefit your business? While not necessarily directly related to attracting organic website traffic or ranking on a search engine result pages, conversion rate optimization has distinct benefits for SEO or your company's business. They majorly include: improved customer insights. CRO can help you with a better understanding of your key audience and find what language or messaging best opens up to their needs. CRO looks at finding the right customers for your business. Better ROI. Higher conversion rate means making more of the resources you have. By studying how you can get the most out of your acquisition efforts, you're getting more conversions without having to bring in more potential customers. It also increases scalability. While your audience size may not scale as your business grows, CRO lets you grow without running out of resources and prospective customers. Audiences aren't infinite. You can turn more browsers into buyers, and you'll be able to grow your business without running out of potential customers. Better user experience is also established. When users feel sophisticated on your website, they tend to stick around. CRO studies what works on your site by taking what works and expanding on it. You'll make a better user experience. And the last and most important benefit is the trust. So for a user to share their credit card, email, and any sort of personal information, they have to genuinely trust the site. Your website is your number one salesperson. Just like an internal sales team, your site needs to be professional, courageous, and ready to answer all your customers' questions. Okay.

So this was about CRO. But let's hop on to the next topic of this video on digital marketing tutorials. So let's understand how to become a digital marketer. So well.

In order to become a successful digital marketer, you need to possess some desired skill sets. Some of the top skills that you need to have in order to bag a role of digital marketer are: specific marketing channel expertise, should have worked on a marketing campaign, ability to execute and analyze marketing campaigns, should have the basic knowledge of WordPress, the working of it, and also should be able to sell the product. And the most important thing is, you should always be updated with the latest technology trends.

Okay, so this is exactly how you can start your quest to become a successful digital marketer. So, firstly, we'll see why do you need search engine optimization. Well, SEO is one of the top digital marketing channels used to generate traffic onto your website. This marketing channel is also very important because it is not only the search engines, but also it is about having a good SEO which improves the user experience and eventually the website traffic.

So, what does it have to do with your business? Imagine you have your own company and you're just surfing through the internet. What could be the best way to increase the traffic to your website? And the simple answer to this would be SEO. Almost all websites need optimization in order to rank on Google or SERP, that is, Search Engine Result Pages. So, in short, if I have to say about SEO, I would say that you need SEO services because it will help send the right signals to search engines and also push your website up the list of results, which helps in ranking in the first spot.

Well, lots and lots of people search for things, right? That traffic can be extremely powerful for a business, not only because there's a lot of traffic, but also there's a lot of very specific and high-intent traffic directed towards your website. Now, what exactly do you think works for driving traffic from search engines? Why are search engines very important? People are searching for any manner of things directly related to your business. Beyond that, your prospects are also searching for all kinds of things that are loosely related to your business. These represent even more opportunities to connect to those folks and help answer their query, solve their problems, and become a trusted resource for them.

Regardless of what search engines you use, search results are constantly changing. In recent days, so Google particularly has updated a lot of things surrounding how they rank websites by way of lots of different animal names recently, and a lot of the easiest and cheapest way to get your pages to rank in search results have become extremely risky in recent days. So, how does it work? How does Google determine which pages to return in response to what people search for? How do you get all these valuable traffic to your website?

If I have to say, Google's algorithm is extremely complex, guys. I'll share some views about anything that is related to this Google algorithm so you can dive deeper into how Google ranks its sites. At the end of each section, Google is looking for pages that contain high-quality, relevant information about the searcher's query. So, they determine relevance by crawling your website's content and evaluating whether that content is relevant to what that person is looking for, mostly based on the keywords it contains. And also, talking about the quality, it is determined by the number of means and also the quality of your websites that link to your page and the whole site as well.

Now, surprisingly, an additional number of elements are being weighed by Google's algorithm to determine where your site will rank. This basically depends on how people engage with your site, how long do they serve for, what action do they perform, and so many other things actually play a vital role in shaping your website's traffic. And also, there's another factor that is the speed of your site. How long does the loading speed take? And is it mobile-friendly? And how much unique content you possess? If it's a low-value content or it's a duplicate content, and so many other things. So, there are mainly hundreds of ranking factors that affect the Google's algorithm, considering the fact that you get the response searches, and also they're constantly being updated and refined by this process. And surprisingly, you don't have to be a search engine scholar to rank for valuable terms in search results. We'll walk you through the proven, repeatable, and best practices for optimizing your website for search that can help you drive traffic through your website.

So, this was about why you need search engine optimization for your website. Moving on, we'll see what exactly is search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization, which is often called as SEO, is basically a process of increasing the quality of your website traffic. The major search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing all have primary search results here. The web pages are displayed and ranked based on what the search engine selects as the most relevant in accordance with the context. SEO helps websites achieve a better ranking on the Search Engine Result Pages, that is, SERP, when prospects search for a particular keyword related to your products or services. Thus, this increases the quality and the quantity of traffic on your website through organic results. SEO is also the process that organizations go through to help make sure that their site ranks high in the search engines for relevant key phrases and keywords.

Now, let's say, for example, if you have an article on "What is Digital Marketing?" In order to get your content in front of the right people, you want to try to optimize your blog post so that it will show up on the top results for anyone who searches for the phrase or keyword "What is Digital Marketing?" or "Digital Marketing."

There are so many benefits of using SEO for your business. By improving your SEO, you can work to expand your visibility on search engines. This will eventually help you reach and engage more potential customers. And also, you can create more engaging and effective SEO-focused content, which will in turn increase your chances of bringing in more targeted organic traffic. And also, I would also put across this point: search is a big source for traffic. So, here is the most breakdown report as you can see here, 60% of all the traffic on the web starts with a simple Google search. And if you add together traffic from other popular search engines like Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, 70% of traffic actually originates from a search engine.

Now, let's say, for example, if your company is an educational site, according to Google, around 300,000 people search for online training every single month. This might be even more, but yeah, considering the first result in Google that gets around 20% of all the clicks, that is 22,000 visitors to your website each month if you show up at the top. But let's quantify this. How much are those visitors worth? The average advertiser for that search phrase spends up to $1 per click, which means that the web traffic of 22,000 visitors is worth roughly $22,000 a month. And that's just the search phrase, guys. If your site is SEO-friendly, then you can rank for hundreds or even thousands of keywords. In other industries like real estate, insurance, and all other parts of digital marketing, the value of search engine traffic is significantly higher.

We even have something called as organic and paid traffic. Organic traffic is something that has got out of the content that you create and how you market it. Whereas paid traffic is you're pushing them so that people can see it and get more traffic out of it. Okay, so this was about SEO. Now that you've understood how it works, let's talk about certain myths about SEO optimization.

So, there's this famous myth saying that SEO is all about optimizing Google. But the reality is, it's not. More platforms like Yahoo, Bing, and so on also depend on your business. So, yeah, SEO is not only about optimizing Google. Another myth is, you should pay for traffic to attain SEO. This process is actually called black hat and digital marketing. It's not about only SEO. So, these were a few myths about SEO.

Now that you figured out how SEO works, let's understand how digital marketing came into existence, its roots, and how its branches spread out. That is, the history of SEO. Search engine optimization is considered as a millennial. It is believed that SEO was first born in the year 1991. During this span is when the world's first website was also launched, that is, www, that is, World Wide Web. This led to the launch of many such websites that crowded the internet. SEO very much revolves around Google today. So, however, the practices that we know as SEO actually predates the world's most popular search engine, which was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But although when I said it was first started in the year 1991, the story of SEO officially began a bit later, around 1997, guys.

So, here are a few series of events that would justify the evolution of the SEO. So, in the year 1993, search engine Excite was launched, first by the Stanford students. So, there were six students of Stanford who helped in developing the search engine called Excite. And also, in the same year, in the month of June, Worldwide Wanderer was launched, which was later coined to Wandex. And in the same year, Aliweb was introduced. This site allows the owners to submit their own pages. This is something interesting and also something new in the field of SEO at that point. Also, correspondingly, in the year 1994, Yahoo, Lycos, search engines were also created. So, I think most of them know what Yahoo is. Lycos, I think everybody might know it. Also, in the year 1995, Looksmart, Excite, AltaVista were created. Looksmart is a search advertising, content management, and online media company. It provides search machine learning and chatbot technologies. So, this was created in the year 1995. And also, in the year 1996, the initiation of BackRub was started. Even this is a search engine. And also, in the year 1997, MSN search engine was built, and Google was launched. So, yeah, this was way back before we had Google as a registered domain. So, now we know where SEO and Google stand right now, right?

So, ever since Google was created, it wasn't an easy task to move from a particular domain to one particular search engine. So, Google is a search engine where you can find everything now. Even a small piece of information that you need or you want to know something, you can just Google it, and you'll have the information right away. But back then, it wasn't the case. But then, as Google was launched, everything changed. So, this is when SEO had a major twist in the field of digital marketing. So, yeah, this was about the history of digital marketing. Hope this satisfies how SEO came into the picture or SEO came into the mainstream of digital marketing.

Now, moving on to the next topic, we have the types of SEO in use. Now, talking about the different types of SEO that exist, we have a wide range of SEOs in use. A few notable ones among them are white hat SEO, black hat, gray hat. So, let's understand each of them in detail. And also, there are a few techniques which also come under these types. So, these are not exactly considered as types, but yeah, we call it techniques, which is on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. Now, let's start discussing about it.

SEO is something which is actually used to increase the organic traffic onto your website from search engines. So, using the right type of SEO, you'll be able to achieve this mighty goal. So, first on the list, we have is white hat SEO. As the name suggests, white hat SEO basically refers to the most upright practices adapted by the digital marketers worldwide to help rank your product high on the Search Engine Result Pages or SERP. This type is strictly abided by the Google guidelines. So, you should follow the guidelines of Google for better SEO. You'll also be able to focus more on the meta tags, keywords in the title and body of the content. It is also called as ethical SEO, guys. So, white hat SEO is also called ethical SEO. It is the most widely used practice for publishing quality content on the website, restructuring the links, and many more.

Now, talking about the exact definition of white hat SEO, this white hat SEO utilizes the techniques and methods to improve the search engine rankings of a website which don't run afoul of search engines, mainly the Google guidelines. It also focuses on the audience, opposed to a search engine, guys. And people who are looking for a long-term investment on their websites rely on white hat techniques.

Okay, so the next one on the list is black hat SEO. So, what exactly is a black hat SEO? So, this black hat SEO includes certain practices that focus on finding loopholes in Google's algorithm for ranking a particular content higher on the Search Engine Result Pages. So, if I have to say or compare a black hat and white hat SEO, black hat SEO is the opposite of white hat SEO. By this, I mean to say that the practices followed by black hat SEO are totally against the guidelines provided by Google and its algorithms.

Now, talking about the techniques that it includes, we have spam links, keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, and links. So, spam links are nothing but linking your blogs or overlinking your content. And keyword stuffing is something that is required if you are going to write an article of close to 5,000 or 6,000 words and you're not able to be adding your keyword at a particular place. You'll stuff those keywords at some point so that it gives a heads-up to you telling that SEO is good. Cloaking is an SEO technique in which content presented to the search engine spider is different from that present to the user's browser. This is done by delivering the content based on the IP address of the user agent, HTTP header of the user requesting the page.

Now, the next one is hidden text. Hidden text, I think most of you know. Hidden text is something which is invisible or unreadable. So, hidden text is mostly achieved by setting the font color to the same color as the background and rendering the text invisible unless the user highlights it. Okay, it can serve several purposes, guys. So, using black hat SEO, you can do these. So, you can link any of your videos or blogs to any of the platforms that you're going to be working on. So, using these techniques, you can make your content appear on the SERP, which is going to generate more traffic to your website, and also you'll get good leads out of it.

Now, the next one that I have on the list is gray hat SEO. Generally, if I say types of SEO, we make use of black hat or white hat, but also sometimes we make use of gray hat as well. So, what exactly is this gray hat SEO? Defining this gray hat SEO is a little tough, but I've put across them in a certain way that it could help you understand what exactly it stands for. Gray hat is not something that is between the black hat and the white hat. It's much different from what people say, guys. Here, in this case, it is a practice of using legal methods that help in improving website traffic. These are also referred to as "grey hats," which could one day turn into a black hat. Also, this falls somewhere in the middle, as these tactics and techniques are not specifically present in Google's guidelines.

So, this is about the types of SEOs that are present in the market right now. Now, talking about the different techniques or which is sometimes referred to as types as well, we have something called as on-page, off-page, and technical. So, you might have come across this keyword: on-page, off-page SEOs, right? These are nothing but the strategies that you follow to gain more traffic by having content on the page and off the page.

Now, talking about on-page SEO, this relates to the content that is present on the web page. Now, you might think, what's so special about working on the content that is already present on the page? Well, there is. All on-page activities primarily include distribution of keywords in the right place, inserting external links, meta tags, description for it, adding a customized URL to your content, and also, last one but not the one which you should ignore, images. So, all these are present on the page, and hence, optimizing it in a better way will eventually drive more traffic to your website.

Now, talking about keyword distribution, keyword distribution should be done at the right place. By this, I mean to say that if you're going to be writing a blog on SEO, you need to know where to include the word "SEO" in the entire blog. If you're going to be using SEO at the first part of the sentence on every other line, it's going to be making it very awkward. So, keyword distribution plays a vital role in generating more traffic or many leads to your website. Inserting external links, you need not provide the links to other blogs or other external resources. You can either link to your company's blogs or articles, or also you can link something which is more relevant to it. Even if you think the external source is giving more enlightenment or giving more opportunity to learn about some other factor that you've mentioned, you can always put a link to it. Links play an important role, guys. If you're going to be writing an entire blog about digital marketing, you need more facts, more resources, and also stats. For stats and facts, you can either refer to the people or companies which are mainly into digital marketing. So, this is how links play an important role.

Now, talking about meta tag description, meta tags are something that is present below your topic on the search engine pages. Let me show you guys how it is visible. If I type "selenium resume," you can see that our post is present over here, and also you can see a description, a small description over here. So, how to build an effective selenium resume? Go through this blog to understand how to build your selenium resume and ace an interview. So, this meta description also plays an important role because you need to add your keyword even over here.

Now, talking about adding a customized URL to your content, adding a different URL is definitely going to be working for you, guys, because the domain is going to be your company's name, that is, ours is going to be eduraco.com, and followed by which we are going to be adding the keyword also in the URL, right? So, a customized URL is going to help to get a better view to your article. And images, images should have alt tags, and also these should contain your keyword. Make sure that you add your keyword in such a way that it would help users to find it very easily and what you're going to be discussing about.

So, this was about the on-page optimization or on-page SEO. Now, moving on to the next technique, we have off-page SEO. This off-page SEO is also required to increase traffic onto your website, but it mainly focuses on external ranking mediums like backlinks, internal linking, and many more. This is most widely referred to as the activities that are performed on the web page after it goes live on the internet. Link building, brand promotion are all a part of this off-page optimization or off-page SEO. In addition to this, off-page SEO also includes commenting on a post, sharing, liking, and building user engagement. Brand promotion is always required, guys, because branding is something that you should work for from the scratch. Even if you have SEO, even if you don't have SEO, it doesn't matter, but branding yourself in front of the social world or social media is very important. This can be done using off-page SEO. This is not going to be dealing with anything that is present on the page, but everything that is taken care of after an article is posted online. After you finish writing your article or anything regarding content marketing, you'll have to link your post to one another, right? Now, say, if I've written a blog on "What is Digital Marketing?" I can use this "What is Digital Marketing's" link to another blog where I can just refer to just writing digital marketing, but not writing the entire definition of it, and not giving the exact proper explanation to what was digital marketing. I can just mention or put up a link to "What is Digital Marketing," and then you're there. So, this is exactly how off-page SEO works. Backlinking and internal linking play an important role in off-page SEO.

Now, the next one that I have on the list is technical SEO. Technical SEO is often related to the parts where there is no content. So, what's this supposed to mean? SEO is basically having a content and optimizing it, right? So, what exactly does technical SEO do here? It means that you'll have strategies that improve the website's backend structure. Also, as the name suggests, it handles the technical parameters that affect the visibility of your website on the Search Engine Result Pages. So, what exactly does this mean? Like I mentioned, it takes care of all the backend activities, and you'll have to make strategies to improve the backend of your post. When I say technical parameters, we can talk about HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Now, traditionally, the phrase technical SEO refers to optimizing your site for crawling and indexing. So, we'll see what crawling and indexing are in the next part of the session, but it can also include any technical process meant to improve search visibility. Technical SEO is a broad and exciting field, covering everything from sitemaps, meta tags, JavaScript, indexing, keyword research, and many more. It is called technical because it has nothing to do with the actual content of the website or the website promotion. The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the infrastructure of a website.

So, this was about the types of SEO and also about the different techniques that are used in the types of SEO. Moving ahead, let's take a look at the working of a search engine. Search engines are basically used for a better generation of results that you can look up to. Knowing the working of search engines is definitely going to be useful for better end results. So, let's see how these search engines work. Technically speaking, search engines have these primary functions: that is, crawling, indexing, and ranking. So, let's learn about them in detail.

Okay, now talking about crawling, this process is called as spiders or web crawlers. It automatically browses the web and stores information regarding the web pages you visit. It can also be termed as a Google bot. They help in finding new and updated content online. So, this starts out by fetching the web pages that you had looked for and then follows the links on those web pages to find new URLs. By following the trace of links, the crawler will be able to find new content and add it to their index. This is called Caffeine, a huge database of previously searched URLs that can later be retrieved when you are seeking information about the content on a particular URL and think it is a good match. To be honest, search engines work by crawling hundreds of billions of pages using their own web crawlers. So, these web crawlers are commonly called as search engine bots or spiders. A search engine navigates the web by downloading web pages and following links on these pages to discover new pages that have been made available. Crawling is a very easy process, guys. So, this image here shows you how exactly this works. Most search engines build an index based on crawling, which is the process through which the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing find a new way to index mechanisms known as bots or spiders crawl the web using new pages. So, these bots typically start with a list of websites URLs determined from previous crawls. When they detect new links on these pages through tags like href, src, they add these to the list of sites to index. Then, the search engines use their algorithms to provide you with a ranked list from their index of what pages you should be most interested in based on the query that you've provided. Then, the engine will return a list of results that are ranked using the specific algorithm on Google. Other elements like personalized and universal results may also change your page ranking. So, in these personalized results, search engines utilize additional information it knows about the user to return results that are catered to their interests directly. The universal search results combine video, images, and Google News to create a bigger picture result, which may mean a greater competition from other websites for the same keyword.

So, this was about web crawling or crawling. The next process is called as indexing. So, how does indexing work? Once a spider has crawled through your page, a copy of it is stored onto a data center. These data centers are massive repositories which have all copies of the web pages that were crawled. Web pages can be easily discovered by search engines, and it's done in a better way by adding a data structure called an index. It can also be defined as a repository of web pages that are collectively called an index. This concept is very simple, guys. If your website is not on their index, it will not appear for any of the searches. It is also true that if you have more pages in the search engine index, the more are your chances to appear on the search results.

Now, talking about the algorithm which is used, there's a huge collection of web page copies which are being constantly updated and organized so that you can quickly find what you're looking for. But you need means by which you can be ranked in order of relevance to your search term. This is where the algorithm comes into play. The algorithm is a very complex equation which calculates a value for any given site in relation to the search term or your keyword. We don't actually know how the algorithm is, but the search engines tend to keep this a closely guarded secret from competitors and from people looking to game the search engine and get to the top spots. That said, enough about the algorithms. Has been working out to let SEOs advertise websites to owners on how they improve their site's traffic and also move up the list in the ranking. Search engines don't actually store all the information found in the page in their index, but they keep things like when it was created, updated, title, description of the page, type of the content, keywords, incoming and outgoing links, and many more. These are all done by using the algorithm, guys. So, Google likes to describe their index in the form of something called the back of a book or a really, really weak book.

So, why do you need indexing in this process? Why exactly is indexing required? So, why should you care for having an index? So, it's very simple, guys. Like I mentioned, if your website is not in their index, it will not appear for any of the searches. This also implies that the more pages you have in the search engine index, the more are the chances of you appearing on the search results when someone types a query or something. Also, notice that it is going to appear in the search engine result, which means that in any position, not necessarily on the top pages. All right. So, this was about indexing.

Now, the next topic is ranking. So, if ranking plays a major role in optimizing your website as well. It is a process in which the search engine will pick highly relevant content and display it on the highest position on the SERP. These are nothing but the content you create that is hand-picked by the search engines for better optimized results for a particular keyword. You can also say that the higher the website is ranked, the more relevant the search engine thinks that it's a solution to a query. Also, talking about ranking, PageRank is one of the best algorithms for improving web search results. It is also considered as one of the ways to measure the importance of the website. And also, in addition to this, the websites and the content that are present on the first page of the search engine are those which PageRank things is the best. Like I mentioned in indexing, if your website is not on their index, it will not appear for any of the searches. In the same way, ranking is based on PageRank. So, this is exactly how SEO works, or I would say, search engines in general work. Have these three things satisfied, and yeah, you're good to go with your company's marketing plan.

Now, the next one I'm going to be talking about is tactics and the methods that you should follow. Just having a good website and great content will not help you rank on relevant keywords on the search engine pages, guys. You should follow a few techniques that will help you in better traffic generation and lead generation. So, here are a few tactics that will help you rank your content on the top of the search engine page. So, want to be a leader in analyzing and optimizing your content to rank on the first page? Here are a few tips from my side.

Okay, so the first one is good user experience. So, people landing on your website would often be looking for a smooth interface, and you should be able to provide them with this with ease. This is because Google only picks those websites which put up relevant and quality results or quality content. So, for Google to include your website as a unique content, you should have a good UI and a justifying solution to the queries that are put up. And according to a recent survey, it was also stated that the content that you create should be useful, usable, desirable, findable, valuable, credible, and accessible. So, these are some important factors that are required to help have a better user experience.

The next one is content creation. There's also a saying that longer the content, higher is going to be the ranking. This is the actual truth, guys. It has worked in my case as well. Longer the content, higher is going to be the ranking of it. Say, there are videos which go beyond 11 hours, and also close to five hours, four hours straight, right? These content have better chances of ranking because you'll be learning everything from scratch. You don't have to sit and watch every other video that is put up which has bits of content in it. Like, if the video is up to 5 to 10 minutes, you'll have information which is straightforward to it. You will not be revolving around the topics that is associated with it. So, longer the content, higher is going to be the ranking. The content that you create has a major impact on your website's ranking. A recent study also says that the longer the content, the higher the likelihood of its ranking at the top of the SERPs. So, yeah, this is exactly how content plays a major role in SEO.

Organic traffic is way better than generating traffic via paid search or social media platforms. So, organize your business goals in such a way that it does not hinder your company's growth. Talking about how much you're going to be spending on advertising rather than getting your organic traffic done, the average business venture spends up to 1% of its total revenue only on advertising. So, if your business makes up to $1 million per year, you might have to spend close to $10,000 only on advertising. So, think of the better picture here, guys. Organic traffic is never-ending. Organic traffic has no end or has no death. Whereas, if you talk about the money factor here, it is going to be affecting you as well as your financial state of your company. I wouldn't say PPC or paid advertising is bad, but you should know how to push your content and how to generate leads by them. But the main focus that I would say, that I've gone through, would be organic traffic is getting more views, more traffic, and also it is leading to lead generation, which is then converted to sales and also gets you good revenue. So, yeah, organic traffic and content creation play an important role.

The next one is keyword research. Till now, we've never spoken about keyword analysis or keyword research, the entire topic here. So, we're going to be talking about keyword research here because keyword is an important factor of SEO. SEO is mainly dependent on the keyword that you get. How to analyze a keyword, how to generate keywords, how to build your content on that particular keyword, and how to make them rank. So, keyword plays a vital role in making your content rank. Google is evolving, and so are its algorithms. Now, the main aim is to understand the intention of the viewers or the prospects, what do they want, their interest, the search volume of a particular keyword, and to be more specific, what search results to the keyword will help answer the queries.

Now, say, for example, the search engine shows "digital marketing" has a search volume of 3 billion per month. This is a very huge number, guys, and you'll be exposed to millions, and you'll have to target it very heavily. So, creating a content on a particular keyword or the keyword that you're going to be using plays an important role here. We'll also see how to optimize your keywords in the next part of the session.

Moving on, let's take a look at content marketing. So, these are the tactics that you should follow, guys. Now, talking about content marketing, be a hero in the field of creating good content and delivering it to the right audience. Content creation is a must, but promoting the content and distributing it across the marketing channels is a task in hand. But if your company is in a private sector, say industrial or educational, it's required to have corresponding articles or videos. Marketing is not just limited to making videos and writing blogs, guys. It is something which is way beyond it. You can promote your products by using social media as your platform, your go-to platform, and also you can go for email marketing as well.

So, when you want to promote any of your product, say, for example, if you're in the private sector and you want to promote the product that you've created on your own, I have a friend who is good at quilting. She is going to be marketing her product online. She chose to use Instagram as a platform, her go-to platform, I would say, because she is getting more views, more likes, more followers, and also people are approaching her with new designs so that she could make and she could deliver it to them. What I would say is she's getting something in return for giving something to them. So, this is how you market your product.

Now, if I say content marketing, content marketing is something that is related to creating content and promoting it, right? You'll have to take the opportunity of writing more articles and make more videos regarding the keywords that is being given to you. Even in this case, you'll have to make sure that you work on the highest search volume keyword. This is definitely going to make your content rank among the top 10 articles or the videos on the SERP. Now, I wouldn't say you should copy whatever is written on the first 10 links or the first page of the SERP. You should make content which is very unique, which has more information, additional information regarding a particular topic or the keyword. So, this was about content marketing. Content marketing is one of the techniques or a marketing channel which you can go for to get more views, to get more people to know about your brand or your product.

The next one is create a lot of backlinks. Backlinking is important to make your website rank on Google. Links are still the number one factor that determines the website ranking because without these links, ranking your website would be very hard. Also, links can be earned through high-quality content, influential marketing, and so on. So, these are considered to be extremely efficient, guys. So, yeah, a lot of backlinking is also important. So, this was about the tactics and the methods that you should follow.

Now, moving on to the next topic of the discussion, that is, how to optimize your keywords. Keyword optimization is very much required if you are going to be having a blog or an article. Follow these steps for better keyword optimization. So, the first thing you should do is select your domain and target the most popular keyword. Be aware of what domain you're going to be working on and target the most searched keyword in that field. This is going to help in better content creation and drive more traffic to your website for that keyword. Like I mentioned, selection of keyword plays an important role. If you're going to be working on programming languages, you should know which programming language you should target. There are so many programming languages in the market which has high demand and also which has a lot of importance, like say Java, Python, C#, and so many others, right? So, these are the popular domains, programming languages, and also keywords, I would say. So, be aware of what you're going to be working on and target the most searched keyword.

Now, once you're done doing your homework about selecting your domain and getting the most popular keyword, write effective content on that keyword. By doing your proper research, by adding appropriate optimized keywords in your website's content, you'll be able to connect with your prospects and customers online. By doing this, you can address your viewers in a much simplified way. So, creating good content based on the keyword that is being given to you plays an important role. So, you'll just be given a keyword, like I mentioned, Java. So, you should know how to build your content based on that keyword. I would say, what is Java? Why is it required? How it came into existence? What is it as a programming language? What are its major uses? What are its loopholes? And so many other things. So, you should know how to build your content.

The next one is, after you know what your keyword is, after you know what content to add, you should know how to add title tags, content strategy, links, URL, and meta description. So, when you work on digital marketing, the success of your organization is mainly contributed by organic traffic, which mainly focuses on researching, analyzing, and many more. And the title of your content is also very important, guys. So, make sure that you add your targeted keyword in your title because this is the most important piece of work on your website, both on and off-page. And also, try to make sure that you write a title which catches the user's eyes. You shouldn't say that "we learn about this," "we'll learn about that." You shouldn't be doing that. So, yeah, also add corresponding links to the topics you feel relevant and have inbound and outbound links that help in better optimizing your keyword. Like I mentioned, if you have a digital marketing blog, that is, "What is Digital Marketing?" If I want to specify or define digital marketing in each and every blog that I'm going to be writing, it's going to be very hectic for me as well as you because you're going to be going through the same thing again and again. So, leave links which help in better optimizing your content, and it is going to be neat, it is going to be making it look good. And don't forget to add relevant internal inbound and outbound links. Internal linking is something that is related to the articles that is already present on the website, and you're linking it to this page. Now, if I say Python, Python's keywords or Python blogs will have different keywords, right? In each of the blogs that you're going to be writing, you can add a keyword which is already present, you can use the keyword in that blog, and also link it to the other blog. So, this is how internal linking works. Always make sure that you're adding the slug part of your article, this is because this should contain your focus keyword. And also, if you have a doubt, just let me just show you guys how this looks like. I had already searched for "selenium resume." I'm just going to be opening this. Yeah, you can see this is a slug part. This is the keyword which I had, and this is exactly how I've used this slug. So, this is exactly how you can optimize your keyword. Hope this is going to be a proper help for you guys.

Now, talking about the next part of the session, we're going to be talking about title optimization. Title plays an important role if you're going to be strategizing your business. So, even before a viewer clicks on your link, he is going to look at the title, right? So, how exactly you should design your title? What exactly are title tags? So, like I mentioned, users or the viewer will look for the title even before he clicks on the link that is present on the Google web page. So, the post title should drag more attention. A well-written title holds the power to the interest of the reader, but that's all on the side of the audience. So, make sure that you create a lively or a good title. Title tags are an important part of the SEO strategy. This is because these are unique, short, and should have the focus keyword in it. This is also the first thing that the audience look for once they search for a particular query related to your product. So, you need to focus on crafting captivating titles.

So, let me just show you guys a title tag. Okay, the blog which I had opened. Yeah, so this is the title tag: "Building an Impressive Test Engineer Resume Selenium Resume." I have the keyword, and I'm going to be building my words across the topic that is "Building an Impressive Test Engineer Resume." This is going to help the viewers get some idea about what is happening, and also they're going to be much impressed with the title.

Now, how to optimize your title? There are some rules even here to follow that you should watch out for every other thing which is going to help your company's name go up and also rank your page on the Google web page. So, the first thing is watch the length of your title. Do not display it oddly, guys. Normally, the search engines display only the first 50 to 60 characters of the web page's title. So, make sure that you fill in the right title within the given spot of 50 characters. Let me show you guys how it is. You can see here, this also contains close to 50 to 60 characters in it. So, yeah, this is the maximum length of your blog or the article which you can write. Always use unique titles. Do not try to copy or plagiarize your content or title. All the web pages are unique, guys. So, customize your title accordingly. See, you could see that, let me show you guys if I go back. Yeah, you could see that there's this title called "Selenium Resume for Selenium Webdriver Job Interview Selenium Test Engineer." In all of it, if I have to check for digital marketing itself, I would say "Digital Marketing." See, you'll have so many results here, and also you can see that this is the ad. Ad, something which is called as paid ad, pay-per-click. Now, take a look at the titles over here. If I've told "Digital Marketing," it says "Exceed Your Marketing Goals Internet Marketing for Business." If I go down, we have "Digital Marketing Made Simple," "What is Digital Marketing?" "Digital Marketing," "What is Digital Marketing Overview and Resources." You can see that all the topics are different, but just that the keyword is similar. Keyword is the same, "Digital Marketing" is the same, but you'll find all the other things revolving it. All the other words corresponding to the keyword "Digital Marketing" is changing. So, this is exactly how you should create your titles. Your title should be very unique. Do not try to copy anybody else's, guys. So, this is going to result in the downfall of your article or your blog that you're going to be writing, and it is not going to be present on the search engine pages. So, yeah, and also prioritize your keywords. This has to be done because according to the recent research, it is said that the keywords at the beginning of the title may also have a lot of impact on the ranking of your page. So, prioritize your keywords. More stuffing is also required. I wouldn't say no. If you're going to be writing a blog close to 8,000 or 9,000 words, you should know where to stuff your keyword. Also, prioritizing them accordingly is also important. And also, this is the best practice to follow, guys. This is also one of the things which we as research analysts also follow. And last but not the least, branding your product is important. Branding yourself is also important. If you have a well-known brand, take advantage of it by adding it at the end of the title. Now, like I mentioned or like I showed over here, you can find the name of the brand. So, I've mentioned "Selenium Resume Automation Tester Resume" and "Edureka." This is the SEO title, guys. And an SEO title is different from the actual title that you're going to be writing for the.

Blog. So, yeah, you should optimize both of them. By doing this, you'll be driving more traffic to your website, and also the prospects would know about your work. Okay, so this was about optimizing your title. Now, let's move ahead and take a look at the tools that you should consider for SEO.

Tools are very important if you're going to be optimizing your website. And also, you'll be able to find a variety of tools available in the market that helps you in one way or the other. The booming tools are namely Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and many more. So, let's take a look at the tools. We also have Moz, Google Search Console, Keyword Tool, Google Trends, Keyword Research, Vurank, and so many others. So, so let's understand them in detail.

So, firstly, I would like to discuss about Ahrefs. This tool is one of the most popular digital marketing tools that is used for analytics, preparing backlink analysis, audit reports, URL ranking, and many more. Ahrefs tool is also used for keyword analysis. But also, a sad news here is it is not a free version. You have to pay for it. But the features that this tool provides is very, very, very good, and also it's worth paying a bug for it. That was one of the important tool for SEO. And also, talking about Ahrefs, it is one of the most recommended SEO tools online. It is only second to Google when it comes to being the largest website crawlers. And SEO experts can't get enough of Ahrefs' site audit features, as it is one of the best SEO analysis tool around. This tool highlights what part of your website requires improvement to help ensure the best ranking. From a competitive analysis perspective, you likely want to use this Ahrefs to determine your competitors' backlinks to use them as a starting point for your own brand. You can also use this SEO tool to find the most linked to your content within your circle.

Now, the next one is SEMrush. SEMrush is also one of the best marketing SEO tools which is used throughout the world. SEMrush tends to be the fan favorite in the SEO community, and experts love using this tool as it can easily access your ranking and changes them, as well as also the new ranking opportunities. One of the most popular features of this tool is the domain versus domain analysis, allowing you to easily compare your website to other competitors. So, if you're looking for analytics reports that will help you better understand your website's search data, traffic, or even your competitors, you'll be able to compare keywords and domains. So, on-page SEO checker tools allows you to easily monitor your ranking, as well as find some recommendations on how you can improve your website's performance. Well, this is a magnificent tool, I would say, for SEO marketing, and it does your keyword research, keeps a track of your business strategy, and runs an SEO audit on your blog or article. The main agenda of this tool is to create the best competitive intelligence solution for all digital marketing spheres. SEMrush is definitely a perfect match for PPC, that is, pay per click, as it allows a ton of keyword research that helps in planning, tracking, and performance of your paid search campaigns. So, folks, this is one of the best SEO marketing tools which is currently booming in the market right now.

The next is a KW Finder or SEO Keyword Tool. An SEO keyword tool like KW Finder helps you in your long-tail keywords that have a longer level of computation. The experts use this SEO tool to find the best keyword, that run analysis reports on backlinks, and SCRP their rank tracker tool helps you in easily determining your ranking while tracking your improvement based on one key metric. Plus, if this is not enough, you'll get a ton of new keyword ideas to help rank your website even higher. And the best part of the KW Finder is how darn easy it is to use. But don't let this fool you into thinking a KW Finder isn't powerful. It's a legit keyword tool that a lot of pros use. The best feature, I would say, according to me, about this tool would be the link profiles trend. This feature basically tells you how many links you'll need to rank for that keyword. So, if you find a keyword that has an LPS of 50 plus, you know that you need to do some more serious link building to rank for that term. All right, so this is exactly how a KW Finder works. Okay, so this was about the most amazing tool that is Keyword Finder.

Now, talking about the next tool that I have on the list is Moz. This is the SEO software. SEO software Moz kept popping up as one of the best SEO tools that experts usually use. Some raved about how Moz was always up to date despite Google's regular algorithm changes, and others rated about their chat portal because it allowed them to always use an insightful response to every question asked. Whether you're looking for a keyword recommendation or a site troll, Moz is a full-service powerhouse. You can get great insights into how your website is performing, but also you can get information regarding how to improve your website's performance. We also have something called as a free MozBar toolbar, which you can easily download for free, and it allows you to see the stores metrics while browsing any page. This was founded by the great Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muñiz in the year 2004. From then on, Moz has come a long way from just a blog and an online community to a giant in the world of SEO and digital marketing. So, Moz is actually a software which is also used as a tool. The page optimization feature in Moz tells you exactly what steps are required to improve the SEO of your every single page of your website. Moz's SEO tool improves the business as it provides increased transparency. Comparing your website to competitors on basis of traffic and optimization has never been easy to say. Using this tool has been made easy.

Now, the next tool that I have is Google Search Console. This is offered for free to everyone with a website that has searched Google by console. It lets you monitor and report on your websites present in Google SERP. All you need to do is verify your website by adding some code to your website or going through the Google Analytics and submit your sitemap for indexing. Although you need a Search Console account to appear on Google search results, you can control what gets indexed and also how your website is represented with this account. As an SEO checker tool, Search Console can help you understand how Google and its users view your website and allow you to optimize for better performance in Google search results. Okay, so this was about Google Search Console.

Okay, we also have something called SEO Spider. SEO Spider is an effective web crawler, but the free version is very limited. Also, the SEO Spider was originally created in the year 2010 by the euphemistically named Screaming Frog. Okay, so one of the most attractive features of the SEO Spider is its ability to perform a quick search of friendly URLs. SEO best practices dictate that the search engines are much more likely to index simple, relevant, and human-readable URLs over addresses which are meaningless strings of characters. So, SEO Spider can also crawl your site to check for broken pages. This saves you the trouble of manually clicking each and every link to rule out the 404 errors. So, this is going to be a very good application if you have broken pages or broken sites in your website. This tool also allows you to check for pages with missing title tags, duplicated meta tags, tags with wrong length, and any other feature which is not in line with the SEO practices. There is both free and a paid version of SEO Spider, guys. So, the free version contains the most basic features such as crawling redirects, but it is limited only to 500 URLs. So, you cannot customize robots, and no Google Analytics integration is possible. This makes the light version of SEO Spider suitable for smaller domains. So, the paid version costs more, and it also has more advanced features, as well as the support.

And we also have something called Google AdWords Keyword Planner. So, knowing the right keyword to target is all important when priming your web copy. And the next one that I have on the list is Vurank. As a top SEO analysis tool, Vurank offers free and paid options to track and report on your marketing data. You can plug in your competitors to discover which keywords they are targeting so that you can overlap with this. Try reporting on how keywords perform over time to really understand your industry and optimize for users in the best way possible. And the most important thing about Vurank is understanding the things your website is lacking from both the technical and the content perspective, as this tool can identify duplicate content, downtime, and security issues and provide guidelines on how to fix them. So, Vurank is one of the top listed analysis tools for SEO.

Now, Google Trends is also one of the most useful digital marketing or SEO tool. Google Trends has been around with us for years and has never been underutilized. Not only it gives you the information regarding a keyword, but also it offers great insights into trends about the topic which can be invaluable at the stage of business growth. Search for keywords in any country and receive information around it like top queries, rising queries, interest over time, and geographical location depending on the interest of your viewers. If you're not sure which SEO keywords are the ones for you, this is the best SEO tool you can use. This tool helps you give you the insights of a particular keyword and also lets you know that there are not many blogs or videos regarding that keyword so that it can increase the number of views and also it can increase the traffic to your website. So, these are the tools which you should consider using if you're going to be working on SEO.

So, with this, we come to the last part of the session, that is, what are the different guidelines you should follow to create better content and also optimize it. So, the first thing that I would say is, create content that is extremely relevant to your focus keyword. Do not beat around the bush in this case. If you're going to be working on one content, one keyword, you should know how to work your way around it. You should add relevant topics related to that keyword and then do the stuffing part. Write a small introduction to the topic. This is also called as meta description, guys. So, in this, don't forget to add your keyword. So, like I mentioned, meta description also plays an important role in generating traffic to your website. Yeah, so do consider writing a small introduction to it and proper usage of header tags for the topics that you're going to be discussing about. Use a different header for the heading and also for the subtopics as well. Say, for example, if you have topics that has been listed and for the first topic, you have some two to three subtopics under it, so the first header should be H2, and then if the subtopics are present, put them in H3, and if those subtopics have further topics to be discussed, put them in H4 or H5. Have a proper usage of header tags and appropriate images to your content. Don't forget to add images, guys. So, images play an important role if you're going to be making videos or blogs, and also if you're going to be making PPTs, if you're going to be giving a presentation to somebody who's interested in your product. Yeah, you should know how to add images relevant to the topic. Add alt tags to your images. Even in this case, add your focus keyword here. So, alt tags are included in blogs. If you're going to be writing blogs regarding a topic and you want to add an image to it, alt tags are required, in which you need to have your focus keyword as well. Internal linking is a must, guys. This is a very important factor which helps in ranking the relevant pages. So, if we've already discussed a lot about internal linking in this session, so let's not focus more about it. And readability should always be good. So, if you're writing a blog, the readability of the blog should be very, very good, and the sentence formation should be very simple. It shouldn't be complicated. It shouldn't make the reader think that you're just adding a few words to make a sentence. That shouldn't be the case. So, readability should be good. You should be up to date with the topic or the trends, and also you should know how to work your way around in creating your content. So, these are the few guidelines which I, as a research analyst, follow for writing a blog.

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Ahead, let's take a look at the different techniques and use. So, often I come across people who get confused between the types and the techniques of SEO. So, types majorly include Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO, and Gray Hat SEO. Now, talking about the techniques, we have three techniques in use, which is on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. So, let's understand what they are.

Well, on-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher on the SERPs and get more relevant traffic from the search engines. As the name suggests, it optimizes the content that is present on the page. Now, what do you think is the content present on the page? These are nothing but the title tags, meta tags, meta description, keyword density, URL of the page, and so on. So, these are some strategies that you have to follow to gain more traffic by having the content on the page. You might think, what's so special about working on the content present on the page? Well, there is. As long as your focus is on giving more attention or paying more attention to your content and the way it is presented to your viewer, you're in safe hands, guys.

Now, moving on, let's understand about off-page SEO. Off-page SEO deals with the actions that are performed outside your website to improve your ranking on the SERPs. A recent study also states that off-page SEO makes up to 75% of a good digital strategy. It has everything to do with your social presence, link building, and many more that doesn't really have to be present on the page. Putting it across in layman's terms, I would say off-page SEO simply tells Google or search engines about what the audience think about your website. Off-page optimization is just link building, but there's definitely more wings to it, guys. It has strategic control over the way of making you famous over the internet. So, do note, guys, off-page SEO is very important for your ranking and generating more traffic to your website. So, most widely used off-page SEO elements are backlinks, follow and non-follow links, anchor text, link juice, and relevancy. So, this was about what is off-page SEO.

Now, let's understand why is it so important. Search engine algorithms, ranking factors, and the tactics are constantly changing, and parallelly, the general concord is that the trustworthiness, relevance, and authority that an effective off-page SEO can afford still plays a drastic role in the page's ability to rank. Links are very important to make your website rank on the SERPs. So, having links which are namely inbound and outbound links on your website could just increase your chance of ranking on the first page on Google. To make sure that your content ranks there, there should be proper visibility to your website. Often, websites don't rank because of off-page SEO, guys. This is due to the absence of link building, social media, videos, and blogs. So, this is exactly why you need off-page SEO.

Now, moving ahead, let's take a look at the link and non-link related off-page factors. So, backlinks are the heart of off-page SEO, guys. Search engines like Google and many more make use of backlinks as certain indicators for good quality content. Backlinks are also the most critical part of off-page SEO. So, for this purpose, you can make use of SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and so on. So, Ahrefs is one such tool that has a backlink checker, which will help you in understanding how to create backlinks and to handle them. Now, when I say link, I'm talking about the links that are present on the page connecting it to the other website. So, I'll mainly be talking about the three links: natural links, manually built links, and self-created links. As the name suggests, a natural link is something which is created naturally, and manually built links are the ones which you want to rank or you want to link it to, and self-created links are anchor tags. The major factors which influences these links are the linking site's popularity, the freshness of the link, the proper usage of anchor text or anchor tags, authority of linking domain, and the website.

Now, how exactly is link building done? One of the most effective and most popular ways of dealing with off-page SEO is link building. Here, we have the concept of boards which help in gathering the ranking position of your competitors and your company. So, there are many ways through which you can include links, guys, and a few notable ones are: in your blogs, you can always have articles pointing to your website; getting traffic from other mediums like guest blogging and so on is very important, and also it is going to help you get recognized in the field of digital marketing and also have exposure to the current market trends. Another way is comment link. One way to achieve more customer engagement is by solving their problems and guiding them right. So, always have the chance of linking your content in the comments section. Vertical distribution is also another factor which influences link building. This is another way of getting more traffic to your website. Content marketing deals with creating videos and writing blogs. These business articles are not just composed of fancy words, but also contain the thirst for getting more traffic and good leads. So, you should be able to distribute your content right to the right people via the right medium.

Now, talking about anchor text, which is also used for creating links of a page. Anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink. These are the links that you can find in any article when they are linking to another web page. It is often blue and is underlying text, guys. So, anchor tags look something like this. So, these anchor text is used by the search engines to show how the reflection of how your audience view your website. The anchor was used in the previous HTML specifications, and now it is used as an element. And also, you can see this anchor text in our blogs, guys. If you closely observe the blogs, you'll be able to find a few topics put up in the beginning, and we'll be linking those to the position where the topic starts. So, these are called the anchor tags on the page. And also, you have links, right? Those links are going to help you to navigate to another web page or another site, right? So, these are called anchor tags or anchor text.

Now, moving on, we'll take a look at the non-link related off-page SEO. These factors have a lot more influence on your traffic compared to the ones you've got without SEO or social marketing. The few notable ones among the non-link related off-page SEO are social media marketing, guest blogging, linked and unlinked brand mentions, influencer marketing, and so on. Also, do note this, guys, that the net result of each of the activities on your website is to somehow create a reference to your site from elsewhere on the web. Reference your your refers to the link, I mention of your brand or your website over the internet.

Now, focusing on the backlinks part, let's understand what exactly backlinks are. Backlinks are also called as inbound links or incoming links. These are created when one website is linked to another. The link to an external website is often called as a backlink. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks as votes for a specific web page. It means that the page with the higher number of votes will rank higher on the search engine result pages. Like, say, for example, if I have liked a post from X on Instagram, I share that corresponding post on my profile, and my followers will click on the post that I share. This is actually going to create a backlink to the post from X. It means here I'll not only be including the post from X, but I'll also be getting more views and clicks because I shared one of the top posts from X. It's a win-win situation here, guys.

So, why exactly do you need backlinks? Backlinks are important to make sure that the audience know about your business. Also, look out for people to find more sources of information on the same or related topics. So, how do you create backlinks? Write a lot of guest posts. Build a good public rapper. Also helps in reducing broken links.

So, what is on-page SEO? On-page SEO is basically a practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher on the search engine result pages. This signifies that you will be optimizing both content and the corresponding HTML source code, and the best part about this is it generates effective traffic onto your website.

Now, talking about the stats related to on-page SEO: in 2019, Google accounted for close to 75% of all search traffic. 67% of all clicks go to the top 5 organic search results. 93% of Google traffic is based on HTTP. Site 36 professionals think title tags are more important, and 42% of SEO practices are carried out by internal and external links. Now, so why exactly do you need off-page SEO? What is the major importance for having on-page SEO? Internet marketing has grown to its peaks in recent days, and most of them have shifted their focus from social media, email marketing to SEO practices. Having an SEO team in your organization has become a necessity rather than a requirement. Some people think SEO is dead, but the reality is completely different, guys. SEO is more active and also is helping out a lot lately. Until you optimize your content present on the page, you cannot push it to appear on the search engine result pages. The more your website ranks higher, the more is the traffic and also the sales. Also, with an estimate of 46 billion reaches across the globe, digital marketing is sliding towards programmatic advertising, and more than 85% of ads would be automated. This means time management is sorted, and also less workforce. So, in order to make your website look appealing and wonderful, on-page SEO is required.

What are the on-page ranking factors? No matter how good your content is, it wouldn't rank higher if you don't include the SEO techniques. Ranking your website higher on the SERPs is a task in hand, guys. So, let's dive in further to understand the factors that influence the on-page ranking.

Firstly, we have title tags. Title tags contribute a lot to your ranking on the SERPs. A title tag is basically an HTML element that simply specifies the title of your website. It is always the text displayed on the SERPs, which is a clickable header. So, what's the point of having a title tag? Why is it used? Title tags are the first impression of your organization. It is a way a viewer looks at your website. Majorly, title tags are used in SERPs. This is because the audience can view your content on the search engines. Also, it is used in web browsers to save your content from getting more result. It related to the keyword that you're using, and also social media networks. It gives you a proper recognition in the social network. So, I'll show you, guys, how exactly title tags look like. So, I'm gonna search for a Eureka. Yeah, so this is a title tag, guys. This thing, yeah, over here, this is a title tag. Even this is a title tag. All right, you can see that how the title tag is visible to the viewers. You can add your corresponding keyword in the title and include the same in your page content as well. So, always make sure you have the title tags length checked. Don't over add the keywords in the SEO title, and always have unique titles, guys. Do not try to copy anybody's title or do not try to implement the same which is worked for your competitors. Add important keywords at the beginning of the title, and branding your business is very much important, and always add your company's name or your organization's name at the end of the title. Okay, so let me show you why exactly it is required. If I see a Eureka blog, yeah, you can see that reviews. This goes along with the name of the company, it is edureka. And if I check or if I click on any of the blogs, okay, let's say digital marketing itself, or if I search for digital marketing tutorial, okay, if I go in search of this and if I try to find, so this is the title tag, guys. But as a title is a little too lengthy, you cannot find the name of the company over here. So, let me show you another blog. I'll go for Selenium class. Yeah, you can see that this is popping up over here, and also you can see the name of the company over here. So, this is how you can brand yourself.

And also, the second important factor which influences the page ranking factor are using headers. Headers are used to drive more attention to the topic that you'll be discussing. So, these are basically used to highlight a particular topic. Like say, if I open this blog and if I scroll down, these are called the anchor text or anchor tags. I come here. So, these try to get more attention or grasp more attention of your viewers thinking that this is the title. So, the topic starts from here, right? Now, the page content.

Now, the third perspective or the third important major factor is the page content. Creating very impressive content and adding out-of-the-box ideas to improvise your website is definitely going to help the audience know about your business and the quality of content you create. Linking another article or website is going to benefit you as well as the external post. So, even backlinks drive quite a lot of traffic onto your website, and internal and external links also help your page to rank higher. So, you can see here I've linked Selenium WebDriver over here. If I click, it is going to navigate to another web page which is of the same company. Okay, so this is an internal link, guys. It is necessary to create content that has your keyword included, and also try to include them wherever you can, but do not overdo and stuff your keyword. Add relevant images to include the keyword in the alt text. Okay, so you can see that there are images over here. Like say, if I open digital marketing itself, you can see I've already related videos and images, and also internal and external links. See, this is exactly how you can include or generate possible attention of your customers. Also, do note this, guys, a sample template or any of your articles that you're writing should contain a minimum of 300 to 1200 words in the article. Also, try to use more images in the content. A minimum of 3 to 10 images can be added. Highlighting the subheadings is a must. Try to make it more attentive and grasping interest. Linking is a must. So, add corresponding internal and external links to your content. Sort out your content and try to make a table of it, as it drives more attention of your viewers. So, this was about three important factors that influences the on-page ranking factors.

Now, moving on, let's take a look at the insights about on-page SEO. So, the first major factor would be research. Before building your content, try to analyze and build a storyline of what you want to convey. Then categorize them in a genuine manner and elaborate them. Look at how other websites that are ranking on a CRP have pitched in their content and try to implement them in a better way. Add relevant images and know what images to add and where. Proper usage of keywords is also pretty important, guys. So, don't try to stuff your keyword until you want to use shortcuts like Black Hat SEO for making your website rank. So, research a lot about the stats that justify whatever you're working on.

Another important factor or a proper insight would be keyword analysis. Keywords are the building blocks of your content. So, so the more you focus on your keyword, the more content you can add, and more involving the website would be. So, search on Google for search synonyms. So, as you can concentrate on the synonyms of your keyword also, and do add suggested keywords. The more you can get all keywords under a single roof, the more you can rank on these keywords. So, on the whole, having on-page SEO can help you promote your product as well as be socially active on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.

Moving on to the next part of the session, let's take a look at the best tricks and the practices of on-page SEO. Okay, so on-page SEO is a bit tricky and requires a lot of attention. So, having some idea about a few easy ways will definitely be your savior.

The first trick would be breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are the links that help you in tracking the path from the page that the user is currently viewing. These are the ones that appear near the top of the page and reflect the structure of your website. So, why do you need breadcrumbs? Why is it important? And how do these affect us? Let's understand how. Let's talk about the usability first. So, breadcrumbs help users not only trace their paths but also help them giving similar pages. These help in minimizing the negative factors that decrease the bounce rate of your website. It helps the users to understand the layout, enables them to scan through your website, and helps provide better understanding of your content. So, how to use breadcrumbs to improve on-page SEO? Make use of breadcrumbs only when they are necessary. Place them at the top of your web page and always start from the home page and proceed further with the consecutive pages. Try not to link to the current page and style them to make them look appealing, but not the center of attraction. Your breadcrumbs are your secondary navigation, guys. So, they should never be placed in the primary navigation. And do include full navigation path in your breadcrumbs. Skipping a level can confuse the user, so don't try to do that. Do not try to use breadcrumbs in the title, as it drives more attention and people can get confused.

The next one would be meta description. A meta description is an HTML tag. This holds an overview of what you want to convey to your customers or prospects. Meta description of any article or any blog which you write looks something like this. Okay, let me show you, guys. Yeah, this is a meta description of any website or any article, guys. Optimizing this with the target keyword is a task, and also should be of a length ranging up to 155 characters. So, you can see the characters are more, so it is not showing the entire thing over here. All right.

Now, the next one is images and alt text. As far as your content matters, corresponding images also tend to drive more traffic to your website. More specifically, add keywords in the alt tags. This will help your images rank on the search engines, and alt tag is very essential in the name of an image. All images should use appropriate alt tags for the images. Not only are alt tags good for search engines, but they are also good for accessibility. And also use dashes between the words that you're going to be adding onto your alt tag. Try to reduce the usage of an underscore, guys. All right, so let me show the images for this as well. If I go search for images here, yeah, you can see that this is ranking over here. So, this also has edureka in it. So, yeah, this is exactly how you can make your images also rank on the search engines.

Now, talking about the best practices of using on-page SEO. Add your focus keyword always in the beginning and always have a unique title and a description. Do not try to copy the title or the description of the blog or the article that you're writing. Try to include the keyword in the URL. Always do this, guys, and optimize your page loading speed. Try to make it short, try to make it less, and always have corresponding inbound and outbound links. Like I mentioned, links play a major role in shaping your website. So, do link posts. Long content. Make sure that your content is around 1500 to 2000 words and always add images with alt tags. So, these are some best notable practices for using on-page SEO.

Let's understand the parameters to compare these two optimization techniques. So, I've noted down a few points or few parameters based on which I'll be comparing both these SEO techniques. Firstly, I'll compare them based on the agenda, and then the goal, and then we'll talk about the strategy which they use, and which one has more weight? Is it on-page or off-page? Which one is used the most? Okay, and also, finally, I'll compare them based on the result generation. How can you measure the results on both these optimization techniques? So, let's compare these both based on the parameters that are mentioned.

The main agenda of on-page SEO describes the changes that can be made to your website. This includes the copy, page title, meta description, header tags, and HTML code. Whereas off-page SEO's agenda is relating to any other SEO practices that occur outside your website. It includes link building, social media marketing, and influencer marketing.

Now, what is the goal of using on-page and off-page SEO? I can say the common agenda for this is generating traffic and getting noted on the Google search engine. Each technique has a different goal of its own. So, on-page SEO mainly deals with driving relevant traffic to your website. It is intended to make it easier for visitors and search engines to understand the nature of your website, as well as navigate the content and the structure corresponding to it. Whereas off-page SEO helps to improve your website's overall authority. This off-page SEO is designed to improve the overall authority of your website and help build your reputation as a valuable resource to other users. So, this is exactly how they differ based on their goal. Like I mentioned, the common goal is to drive more traffic and generate possible leads, but you can see that the goal of on-page SEO is slightly different to that of off-page SEO.

And talking about the strategy which these techniques follow. On-page SEO basically deals with research, best practices, and competitor analysis. It is always driven by research in proper and relevant keywords to your audience and the latest best practices for compliance with the search engine algorithms, as well as using a content gap analysis to see which keywords your competitors are using in order to rank on the search engines. Whereas SEO follows the strategy of backlink research, social media, and influencer marketing. Off-page SEO deals with backlink research tools. It also helps you get the insight of where your audience are present on social media and help find the top writers, bloggers, and publishers onto your field. Okay, so this is a strategy which both of these optimizations follow.

Now, the next one is, which weighs more? Do you think on-page SEO comes in handy or off-page SEO? Let's find this out. On-page SEO should be the first point of focus, as it is more controllable and sets a solid foundation for engaging and converting traffic that comes from backlinks and other off-page tactics. Whereas off-page SEO should be prioritized once on-page optimization or on-page SEO takes place, and you're confident about your website and also you can please your visitors as well as the search engine. Okay, so this was about which one weighs more. I think on-page has a lot of capacity to drive more traffic onto your website rather than off-page, but also you should not forget about the off-page SEO tactics as well. Just because people get to see what is present on the screen doesn't mean people who don't know about your content should not get to know about it. So, backlinking is also necessary. Off-page SEO is also necessary for your business growth.

Now, talking about the last parameter, that is, results. How long do the results take to show an effect? On-page SEO takes more time to register with the search engines, as new or updated pages must be crawled and indexed again before their impact is felt in the ranking. So, this will take a lot of time, guys. Uh, even in our case, when we write blogs, they just don't show up at the first page as soon as we publish them. It will take its time. You need to push it, you need to promote the product, you need to market your product, right? Only when this is done, you're going to get proper results. And talking about off-page SEO, off-page SEO has a lot of potential to move the needle faster, as you can leverage the power of domains that already have high authority and influencers with a wide audience. So, once you know that the content is created, once you know that your on-page SEO is perfect, you can go for off-page SEO to make this on-page SEO rank. So, it is in your hands as to which one you should focus more. Generally, both on and off-page solutions are implemented to improve the search engine placement. But Google ranks your website for search, and the two most important signals they use are high-quality page content and link building. So, this reflects the shared value of your on-page and off-page SEO, and the combination of these both in the marketing field would change your career or would change your fate. Okay, so focus on both of these, I would say, if you are into digital marketing. So, this was the major difference between on-page and off-page SEO.

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SEO plugin which helps you basically get more visitors from Google and Bing, attract more visitors from social media, and increase your readers' engagement on your WordPress site. Just out of the box, WordPress is actually a pretty well-optimized content management system. A basic setup can provide a very strong foundation even without any extensive customization, theme optimization, and plugins. That said, there are a few things you should do to increase your chances of ranking, refine your workflow, and make sure your website is perfectly optimized. By putting the right basic settings in place and applying a few simple tools and techniques, you can ensure that you have a strong foundation on which to build upon. But why Yoast SEO, to be precise? Yoast SEO improves your website using three perspectives.

Firstly, you have your technical features of Yoast SEO. Now, if technical SEO isn't your strong suit, what I'm going to say is not exactly going to make sense to you, but do not worry. Yoast SEO exists to make sure that you don't have to know all of these things. Now, the plugin settings are very sensible by default, and the configuration wizard also guides you through the steps to get your technical SEO settings right. This means that by simply installing the plugin and following the steps in your wizard, you're already fixing a lot of important technical SEO things for your website. That way, you don't have to know about the technical things such as robots.txt, clean permalink URLs, htaccess files, and sitemaps. The plugin will take care of these things for you. Furthermore, Yoast SEO also makes sure your site has canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content, a valid schema.org structured data implementation, a no-index or non-follow option for every page, open graph tags for every page or article, etc., etc. Since the 11.0 release, Yoast SEO also builds a full structured data graph for every post or page on your website. By graph, I mean it's a complete piece of structured data with well-defined connections to all the different parts. So, search engines now not only know what all the parts mean, but also how they all fit together. If you're a bit more familiar with technical SEO, you might enjoy reading more about Yoast's hidden technical features that secretly level up your SEO.

Now, the second thing: Yoast SEO improves your content SEO. Once your plugin is installed and configured, it's time to get started with your content. What is important to remember is that the plugin helps you with your rankings, but it still relies on your content. This means that you have to create good content for the right keywords. After you've done your keyword research, you'll have to start optimizing the pages and posts on your sites for the keywords and the key phrases that you want to rank for. To do that, you can set a focus key phrase for an article in Yoast SEO, and then the plugin uses your content SEO analysis to determine how your content scores on different ranking factors, such as how many times you use your key phrase, the length of your text, whether you used any internal links or not, so on and so forth. With this analysis, the plugin is able to tell you how you can optimize your post or page to rank with that particular key phrase, and it does this by using these red, orange, and green bullets to indicate how every factor scores. It also gives you suggestions on how to improve on those factors. This gives you an easy overview of the overall score and what you can still tackle to increase your rankings.

And finally, Yoast SEO improves your readability. Now, optimizing your content to rank with the right key phrase is important, but don't forget your reader. Even if you write amazing content for search engines, your audience won't benefit from it if they don't understand it. When a person doesn't understand your content, the chance of them buying something from you is close to zero. The same is true for the odds of them sharing one of your articles with their friends. So, you need to make sure that your content is not just accurate, but also easy to understand. And that's where readability as a feature comes in. Yoast SEO's readability features are well-researched analyses that give you feedback on how to optimize your writing. Now, this may sound strange because the way you write can be extremely personal. Now, let me explain how this works. The plugin uses an algorithm to check your content on different factors that are proven to increase readability. It looks at the use of transition words, use of active/passive voice, your sentence and paragraph lengths, bullet points, and much more. Yoast has a carefully crafted algorithm to make sure it's as accurate as possible without being too constrictive and strict. This means you're able to adopt the feedback in a way that suits you and your content, but your blog or your article will still have your own personal tone of voice.

So, in this section, you basically understand what Yoast SEO can do for your site. To sum it up, it basically improves your technical SEO by taking care of a lot of technical things in the background. Secondly, it helps you improve your content SEO by helping you set a key phrase and telling you exactly how you can optimize your content to rank on this particular key phrase. And lastly, the Yoast SEO plugin helps you improve the readability of your content by providing feedback that you can easily incorporate into your own writing style. I hope now you have some insight about the Yoast plugin and what it can do for you. It also has two versions, which is a free version of the plugin and a premium version of the plugin, to make sure you're not missing out on the features that will give you the top position and rankings. So, you can have a look at each of them and decide which suits you the best.

Moving on, let's look at how can you freshly install and set up the Yoast SEO plugin. And the simplest way to do that is to log into your WordPress website, and when you're logged in and looking at your dashboard, you can click on the plugins on the left-hand side, and you will see a menu there. You can search for Yoast SEO, install the plugin, and activate it, and you're done. Now, that's the easy part. After the fresh install of the Yoast SEO on your WordPress website, you need to take care of all the little things that you should configure in the Yoast SEO, things that you might forget in your eagerness to get started with your newly set up website. For that, you have the Yoast SEO configuration wizard. Of course, you want to jump right in and configure the plugin using that Yoast SEO configuration wizard. And once you've installed the Yoast SEO plugin, you'll see a notification in your general dashboard. Now, the configuration wizard basically helps you configure your site to have the optimal SEO settings. If it's detected that you have not finished this wizard yet, you would be recommended to start the configuration wizard to configure your Yoast SEO. Now, understand that if this isn't the first time you're using your configuration wizard, you'll still find a link to run the wizard again with a message.

Instead, I will say, "Want to make sure your used SEO settings are still okay? Open the configuration wizard again to validate them."

All right, so now moving on to the wizard. Once you've opened the wizard, you're going to be guided through the steps via a few questions. If you answer these, you'll implement the right settings for your website based on the specificity of your answers. Now, this will be done in eight steps.

The first one will ask you, "Is your site ready to be indexed?" The first question determines whether you want your site to be indexed or not. The reason you are asked is that one of the most important checks in your plugin determines whether Google can index your site or not. Google needs to be able to reach your website and index it, unless you don't want that. And there could be good reasons why you might not want that. Perhaps you're working on a development site or a staging server, or just don't want the public to see your site as yet. If that's the case, no problem. Just set your preference in the first step of the wizard and then click on "Next" to continue.

The next question would be, "What kind of site do you have?" In the next step, you will be asked about the type of site you have. It could be a blog or an online shop, or might even be a new site or a portfolio one. One of the reasons you ask this question is because it's essential for you to take a moment and think about this: What is your site about? Having a clear idea of this will help you focus on what's important for you and your site. So, let's take durraycard.co as an example. So you have multiple sections in the website: you have the courses, the community, and the blogs, right? In the blogs, we share knowledge about various different technologies. And then you have the community where we help our learners with troubleshooting questions they have, and our courses on all the newest training technologies. Now, all of these parts of the websites are equally important. Sharing knowledge is the main goal. So decide for yourself what your answer to the question should be. That'll make it easier for you to configure several features in the used plugin and, in fact, off your website later. As plugin developers, the information we get from this question is also useful for future improvements. For instance, it can help you prioritize future additions to our plugin for specific types of sites.

Third question is, "Is it for you or an organization?" For the right metadata, Yoast asks you to choose between organization and individual. Here, is your website about you or an organization you represent? Now, if you're a person, you might want to include your name. And if you're a company, you can add the name and the logo. This information will be included in the metadata of your website with the goal to provide Google with the right information for their Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph, as I had previously mentioned, is a block of information you see on the right-hand side of your search results. For instance, when you do a company search like Sony or Apple, in addition to the name of the company, you're also asked to let Yoast know which social profiles you have. Again, you can provide Google with the right information for their Knowledge Graph here. Google seems to be keen on delivering answers to their visitors right away. So you'd better make sure your information is on Google. With socials being a part of the Knowledge Graph and your website being linked on the social profile pages, make sure to fill this out as completely as possible.

Step 4: "To show or not show posts and pages." Now, the description in the image is pretty clear. This is where you can set posts and pages to be hidden or visible for the search engine. If you already know that you don't want posts on your site to show up in your search results, you can set this to "No."

Question 5 or Step 5 would be, "How many people are publishing content on your site?" Basically, do you have multiple authors or not? Basically, what the developers of Yoast SEO want to know here is that if your website has multiple authors. Now, there's a reason for that. When your site only has one author, WordPress will still generate author pages. And if you write all the content on your blogs and articles yourself, your blog page will show the exact same collection of posts as your author page, which indeed is duplicate content. Now, an SEO plugin like Yoast calls something "duplicate content" when the majority of a page is the same name as the content on another page. Google will get confused on this. It won't know what page to rank first and might decide to rank both a bit less. This might cost both of your contents a lot of engagement. You obviously want to prevent that, right? So to guide it, this particular check was added to the Yoast SEO configuration wizard.

Now, the next part is "Optimizing your page title." In this step, the wizard asks you to think about your branding. The website name you enter here is the name that your default page title template will put at the end of each page title. The default page title template looks like this picture, and the last part of the template is a site name, and that's what you fill out here. Now, be sure to add it. Keep it short, and make sure that the focus will be on the page or the post title. It's nice to have something of your branding in here so people will recognize your pages in the search result pages. And if they already know who you are and your website, they're more likely to click on one of your links. The third part of the template is the separator, which is a hyphen. A page title that follows this template could be "Some title of a post - The Hyphen" in there is the separator you set at the step in the Yoast SEO configuration wizard. And using an uncommon separator might make you stand out from your competitors in the search result pages. You could also choose to pick the smallest separators to squeeze in another character or two.

Next, on the penultimate step, is to "Boost your SEO efforts even more." In the next step, the good folks at Yoast would like to draw your attention to the newsletter plus some of their awesome products. So go ahead, and if you think these are absolutely essential to kickstart your SEO journey, you can try them. Else, you can just let them be.

And finally, step 8 marks your success because you've done all the steps before and have one goal now, which is to prepare you and your website for SEO. But while this wizard helps you get the general settings of your plugin right, your job optimizing your content is far from done. To use the Yoast SEO plugin to its full potential, you should definitely understand how it works and which settings are which. Luckily, you have this tutorial to help you with that. So now you know why you should give the Yoast SEO configuration wizard a spin and why it asks certain questions to you. The wizard's basically got you covered by setting things correctly under the hood for your website, so you can just focus your efforts on optimizing your content without worrying about all these background details.

So now that you've set up your Yoast SEO plugin completely, let's move on to using the Yoast SEO sidebar or Meta Box.

Yoast SEO is most famous for its green, orange, and red bullets, giving you feedback on the SEO friendliness of your content. Now, back in the days, you just find these in the Yoast SEO Meta Box below the post editor. Nowadays, you find them as a sidebar as well if you're using the block editor on WordPress. So, basically, there are four essential elements of highlight that you will find in both the SEO Meta Box and the SEO sidebar: one is your focus keyphrase, second, your readability analysis, third, your SEO analysis, and finally, the Google preview. When you write a post or a page for your website, checking these four elements should be the bare minimum you do before publishing a post. If you want to fully optimize a post, you can follow the steps that I shot. I'll be going over in a while.

So, first of all, you have your focus keyphrase, which is the first field in the Yoast SEO sidebar and the Meta Box. So, this is what my blog looks like, and I'm using the Yoast SEO Premium. And the first element we are going to look at is the focus keyphrase. As you can see, "Top 10 Running Technologies in 2021" is my focus keyphrase, and it is also the first field in the Yoast SEO sidebar or the Meta Box. In this field, you can either enter the phrase you like your post to rank in for search engines. You can select a keyphrase on a post-by-post basis, but if you're serious about your rankings, you'd better carry out a keyword research first. Right now, the Yoast SEO Premium allows you to set related keywords as well. Bottom here, "Add related keyphrase." Using this option, you can go ahead and add related keyphrases to your keyframes. Nowadays, you really need user-focused and high-quality content to rank high in a competitive market, and this definitely helps.

Next is your readability analysis. Now, after setting a focus keyphrase and writing your text, it is best to check the readability of your copy. This is the second tab over here, and Yoast provides you a convenient readability analysis. It helps you check whether your paragraphs are too long, do you use a lot of passive voice in your text, do you use enough subheadings? These are all the elements that make or break the readability of your copy, and readability is crucial for SEO. Now, if you are going to write website content, you need to understand that online and offline writing are two different things. While we take the time to sit down and write great stories in books or the articles in magazines, we tend to quickly scan and process and use the things that that we read online. So, this post isn't a page in a book. You need to understand that very clearly in your head. It's information for you to process, like most online pages are, like Wikipedia, per se. And Yoast has written its readability analysis with that purpose in mind. If the bullet is green, like you can see here, you're doing great on that subject. If it's orange or red, like it's here, you can follow the instructions that follow the bullet. And you can also click on this "i" icon, which will just highlight places with those mistakes. You can use the "i" icon, and it will highlight areas which need improvement in purple.

Next, you have your SEO tab, your SEO analysis. After you've checked the readability of your copy, it's time to look at the SEO friendliness of it. So, remember the focus keyphrase that you've set? The SEO analysis basically evaluates how well your content is optimized to rank for that specific keyphrase. For instance, it checks whether you've used the keyphrase enough number of times and if you've distributed them evenly. It also checks whether you've used your keyphrase in the introduction, your keyphrase in meta description, and your keyphrase in title. It should be present in your title, meta description, images, subheadings, so on and so forth. Moreover, this also checks the other SEO aspects of your content that are not related to your keyphrase. For example, if you have internal links or not. Right now, a lot of you might wonder, "Do all of these bullets need to be green for your post to be well optimized?" The answer is no. No, not every bullet in your SEO analysis has to be green for your post or page to rank. Similarly, getting your post all green in no way guarantees that it will rank. While it's tempting to simply aim for all green bullets on every post or page without working on other aspects of your SEO, that isn't the best SEO strategy. Proper keyword research and site structure always come before getting these green bullets. So, keep that in mind while you're optimizing your work.

And the final thing I want to talk about here is the Google preview, as you can see here. Now, in addition to the checks, Yoast also provides you an editable snippet or Google preview in the Meta Box. Right? You can click here on "Edit snippet" and you can change the SEO title, meta description, and the slug. Right? The snippet preview, which you would have seen before, basically shows you how Yoast plugin displays your page to Google and other search engines. In other words, it basically gives us an idea of how your site would appear in the Google search results page. So here, like I said, you can set an SEO title and meta description. Try and make an effort and write a title and meta description that clearly reflects what your post or page is about, like I have done here. Let people know that they'll find what they are looking for on your site and entice them to visit your site or page. There is no guarantee that Google will display your meta description in the results pages, but if the meta description you add here is very good, it will definitely increase the odds.

Now, apart from that, there are a few other items in the sidebar and Meta Box, but we believe that this is the minimum investment you should make when publishing a post via WordPress. As you can see, there are a few other things here, but we are not going to look at them today.

Now, a bit more advanced, I want to talk to you about the Yoast dashboard. Now, of course, there is much more you can do with Yoast SEO. You can access and change many settings of the plugin in the Yoast dashboard, but there's usually no need to change anything at all, especially if you're an inexperienced user. It's kind of wise to stick to the settings you set in the configuration wizard. But let me just give you a brief look around to give you an idea of what the options are.

So, this is something I want to talk about, which is the "Search Appearance." Now, if you go to the "Search Appearance" option, which is usually on the left-hand side navigation in your WordPress dashboard, you can basically adjust how your site appears in search engines. Take the title separator, for instance. In the configuration wizard, you can choose whether you want a dash, asterisk, pipe, or something else. Like you must have noticed, most of our YouTube and blog contents have a pipe separator. Some people might have a hyphenated separation, and some people might have something else. You can always change it here. In your "Search Appearance," you can change, among other things, how your plugins are set up, your titles and metas, your content types, where you'll be able to find the default template that you're going to use for your post titles. It's always good to know it's there and realize what you can or cannot configure. It simply means that you're basically going to use the title of your page or the post as the page title, and then add the page number if your post is divided over multiple pages. Then you're going to go ahead and add the title separator, which we just discussed, and then the site name you have set while creating a site. So, in this setup, the title basically looks like this. Now, understand that this example does not include a page number after the page title, as this post is just one page. So, this is the setup we recommend. It's focused on the page title and has the proper branding at the end, which is edureka. The reason that I've drawn your attention to this setting is that you should know it's there so you don't have to look for it in other tools in the future. This is why your titles are shown like this in Google searches.

Moving on, many of us log into our site every day, or at least once a week. But if you're managing a small business or a one-person blog, you can't always spend a lot of time on your SEO. You have many other things to do. Hence, before concluding this session, we're going to discuss several small yet impactful things you should try to work on a daily or weekly basis to keep your SEO on track.

Firstly, have a long-term SEO strategy. Before we dive into daily and weekly SEO tasks to work on, we should stress the importance of having a long-term SEO strategy. While it's good to have a list of quick SEO tasks, make sure you keep an eye on the bigger picture. You should base your strategy on extensive keyword research, look at search intent, and set goals and analyze how your site is doing holistically. Now, holistic SEO is a lot of work, but it'll definitely pay off in the end.

On days you only have about an hour to spend on your site, consider tackling one of these tasks. First of all, make sure your content always stays fresh. Content is important to rank, which is why you should aim to regularly add new content to keep existing up to date. Either writing and publishing new content or updating existing content is something that should be a part of everyday website optimization. You don't have to publish a new post every day. Just try to stick to a schedule of publishing that's realistic for you. If you publish a new post every Wednesday, for example, your audience will in time look forward to it on Wednesdays. Also, you will also have lots of valuable articles lying around that only need a small update before they can be published again. If you don't have the time to write a new article, it's useful to have a list of posts like this and work on those as your daily SEO task.

A task that's also related to keeping your content fresh and alive: if you get a lot of comments on your blog posts, try to regularly interact with the comments. If you don't reply to their comments, people can feel ignored, and it doesn't really look good to have a load of unanswered comments on your content pages either.

Work on your internal linking structure. Working on a good internal linking structure is like rolling out the red carpet for Google. But as your site keeps growing, you should also continue improving that internal linking structure. One of the things to keep an eye out for every time you look at your post overview is an orphaned content. It's such a waste having content that doesn't get any links from your other posts or pages, as those contextual links add much value. Have a hard time finding orphaned content? The Yoast plugin is here to help. After installing it, there's no need to open every post to see which internal links you've added already. Simply use the filter in the post overview to locate orphaned content and add relevant links. Another thing to incorporate into your daily SEO efforts is linking to your cornerstone content. Ideally, you should add links to relevant cornerstone content when you're updating or publishing articles. But just to make sure you haven't forgotten any cornerstones, check your most recent posts and make sure they include links to relevant cornerstones.

Keep your site maintenance on track. Most of you will agree that it's better to do a bit of cleaning every day rather than waiting for a house to become a huge dirty mess. It's the same for your website. Don't wait until the number of pages have become unmanageable. Stay on top of things, and that is a good advice for everything in life in general. One way to do that as a part of your everyday SEO is to look out for cannibalizing your content. Since you're already making sure you regularly publish or republish content, it's only a little bit extra effort to ensure that you're not competing with other existing content on your site. Unfortunately, too much of a good thing, such as quality content, can still cause problems. So, take some time to ensure your content isn't repeating itself. If you come across two articles on a similar topic from a similar point of view, consider combining them into one. You can easily do this using a Yoast duplicate post. It allows you to make a clone of a post so you can easily take your time to merge both the posts in a new draft. Then, when you're done, you can copy and paste the new content in the post you'd like to keep and redirect the other one. Similarly, on the same context, don't keep unnecessary pages around. Regularly factor in some time to check for pages that have lost their relevance and can't be updated. Delete the pages properly from your site, and you'll thank yourself later.

The fourth point is to work on your technical SEO. Now, many technical SEO tasks require time and expertise, but you don't need to be a part of your daily routine. Nevertheless, these are things you need to pay attention to on a regular basis. One of them is keeping the size of your images as small as possible. Having high-quality images on your site is a must, but you don't want your hand-picked picture to slow down your site, right? The loading time is of utmost importance. A quick task to add to your SEO routine: use tools like ImageOptim or websites like jpegmini, jpeg.io, or kraken.io to optimize the size of your images.

Another thing to be aware of is duplicate content. You're already on track if you regularly look for cannibalized content, but duplicate content can also be created accidentally. Now, you don't have to do a duplicate content check every day, but you should be aware of the possibility. For instance, if you're creating a tag that applies to the exact same group of posts as another tag, or when you add a printer-friendly version of your DIY post, make sure to do a duplicate content check.

One final thing under this point that could be easily implemented in your routine of publishing content is to add structured data. Not every type of post is suited for rich results, but for many types of content, it can make a huge difference. Yoast SEO is not only automatically adding the most important structured data to almost every page on your site, it also makes it super easy to add structured data for how-tos and FAQ pages. So, if you regularly post how-tos, use Yoast SEO structured data blocks to increase your chances of a rich result. If your site focuses on recipes, products, reviews, or events, you may even want to learn how to add structured data.

Keep track of your analytics. Now, Google Analytics has a ton of interesting data that you can use to optimize your website, but mastering every single aspect of the Google Analytics takes a lot of time. If you don't have enough time to dive in and only have a little understanding of the analytics tool, you can spend some time once a week looking at two reports. The first is the "Source/Medium" report, which you can find in the "Acquisition" section under the term "All Traffic." This basically shows you where your site's visitors are coming from. Check if you get organic traffic from search engines like Google and try to understand the data you are seeing. While sources have a high bounce rate, which sources drive the most traffic to your site? And if you look at this data every week, you will start to gather a sense of if your site is doing better than the week before.

The second report that's interesting is the "Landing Pages" report that you can find in the "Behavior" section under "All Pages." These pages are the very first pages people visit on your website. This is the one which gives you insight into the things your visitors are interested in. It'll basically tell you if the description of a page on Facebook or in a search result was interesting enough to make people click. Again, try to understand this data. How the bounce rate of landing pages works is slightly different, though. It shouldn't have a highest bounce rate like your home page, for instance. And if you dare, add a secondary dimension like a source to this report, so you can immediately see which pages are visited from Google.

Now, if you're not comfortable with Google Analytics, Microsoft also offers a free analytics tool called Clarity. Although it is not yet at the level of Google Analytics when it comes to features, it is still a tool worth trying out and keeping an eye on for future development.

Now, you're probably active on one or more social media platforms, so regularly posting updates for your followers is a great idea. Basically, it makes clear that your account is active and kicking. You can share your blog posts, but also pictures you take, events from your daily life, and other articles you find interesting, and so on. You know your audience best, and you know what they like. And while you're at it, also try to regularly interact with people leaving comments on your social media pages, so you keep them engaged with your site.

Now, you can go ahead, give this Yoast SEO plugin a spin, and honestly, it'll make a lot of things easier for you. Thank you.

Let's understand the first concept of advertisements. Sure, all of you must have seen various forms of advertisements in several platforms. Let me take a minute here and explain you how advertisements used to work in the pre-internet era. Back before 1990s, when the internet was not existing properly, advertisers mostly used television ads, billboards, newspaper ads, radio ads, direct mails, etc. The first three options had very high entry barriers, that is, very high cost involved, and it was difficult for advertisers to know the ROI exactly. For example, uh, Hindustan Unilever, which has amazing brand Lux. So when, uh, in the Diwali time, HUL used to come up with TV ads, newspaper ads, several radio ads, billboards, etc. So, uh, at the end of the, the end of Diwali, they would calculate their bump up in sales deals and then they would like to understand like which, which method worked for them better. Fortunately, there was no direct ways, no, which, which was doing better. Like newspaper ads did better, or the TV ads did better? There was no way to understand who is consuming the ads. So, for example, let's say your mom is watching Mahabharata, uh, back in the 1990s, and you seeing a cigarette ad. So, would she relate to it? Probably no. Your dad is reading a newspaper, and he is seeing a full-page Lux ad. Would he relate to it? Definitely no. To summarize, ads were mostly a game of companies with pockets higher. You pay more prime slots or front-place search slots you get in the newspapers. And the process was, advertisers paid money to TV or newspapers, uh, book a prime time slot. Connect. So, at this point of time, is not here. There is no check in quality of the ads. Payment would depend on how prime the slot is.

Let me quickly move to the era when the internet started. So, the first search engine was found out, found by Yahoo, back in 1994, and it came as a directory search. And within a year, we got a number of search engines which were competing for user attention, included Magellan, Lycos, AltaVista, to name a few. Basically, end users could browse the directory also and do a lot of keyword search also. Google came into existence in 1998, using the technology, you some of you might have heard, is called PageRank. The point I'm trying to make here is, Google came, joined the search engine race at late. It rose in prominence in leaps and bounds because of the high-quality search results it provided. Similarly, for paid advertisements also, Google was not the first company to start paid advertisements in search, but mastered the game by providing an amazing interface, better quality ads, but it also helped creating a level playing field for small and medium companies as well. Just understand that how advertising experience changed over the years. Let me give you an example of Josh Furniture shop. Seriously, what used to, what they used to do? Used to come up with newspaper pamphlets. They used to get a database of people. They used to call them and ask them to come to their furniture shop. Okay? So, even if they tried, they could have never opted for prime TV or video or newspaper. But what changed after the internet came? Uh, Josh Furniture created a good website. They took care of some basic stuff and started search advertisements. So, whenever people were searching for, uh, some kind of furniture online, because furniture came to, came in the search results, they came in the paid ads. The game completely changed here. Josh Furniture spent one lakh rupees in the ad in the month of June, and they got 400 legit inquiries, which resulted in 600,000 rupees of sales. So, ROI also is clearly known here. Please also understand that here the payment will depend on the prime slot as well as how good your ads are. It is something called ad quality. Basically, search engines provided right information at the exact moment when people needed them. Along with highly related advertisements, we also created a level playing field, which I will explain with this basics.

Let's move to some facts. We all have seen Google Search, right? Do you know how many searches, uh, Google processes per second? It's 70,000 searches, which translates to 5.8 billion searches per day. Out of that, like, and Google is not the only search engine. 76% of the search engine market belongs to Google. There are other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and different other search engines around the world. So, for paid hit search, like paid advertisement, the corresponding number is 73 for Google. So, whenever people search something in Google, they get a page which is called SERP, Search Engine Result Page. Different data is that 46% of the clicks go to the top three ads in the search result. And 63% of the people agree that they have clicked on Google ads. And lastly, Google delivers 8:1 return on investment, that is, a dollar for every one dollar spent. So, isn't it amazing? So, no doubt, because of all these things, Google has risen in prominence.

Let's move to the next slide. Let's try and understand what happens when there is a search is going on. So, first and foremost, let's try and understand, sir, why are search engines there? So, basically, search engines are there to return excellent quality and relevant organic search results to the users. Search engines, what they do is, behind the scenes, they crawl millions and millions of sites, millions of web pages. They crawl the data and various factors into account, and they decide that for each and every term that is searched in Google, what kind of pages are supposed to be returned. So, they provide an amazing organic search results, and above and below the organic search results, they also provide great search. So, let's understand clearly here that every time, uh, you're searching for something, there is a search option happens. It's a fraction of time. So, let's take the example of Dosh Furniture shop once again. Uh, as I said, first step, this is like advertisers around the world identify the key relevant terms through research. So, Google has provided some amazing tools like Keyword Tool, etc. So, the digital marketing person who is sitting in the Josh Furniture shop, he researches a lot of search terms and he decides, "Okay, these are the terms which would get some relevant buyers for me." So, the terms are like, "buy dining chairs online," "cheap garden furniture," "rubber wood coffee table," "buy home furniture online in Bangalore." So, they decide that these four terms, they are going to bid for. For simplicity of explaining, let's say they bid 100 rupees in Google, and they create good landing pages for each and every of this, uh, term. So, basically, when, uh, an end user searches for that term, for a similar term, what Google does is, Google reviews all the ads with that keyword or similar keywords, and Google, uh, does a quick test, like quality check, and Google narrows down that, "Okay, apart from the organic searches, there are three good quality advertisers who bid for this term." So, Google assigns an ad rank to all these three advertisers. So, ad rank is decided by factors such as bid quality, bid quantity, bid amount, ad quality, ad rank threshold, context, etc. So, Google quickly decides the ad ranks. At based on the ad ranks, it throws the sorted page. And just understand here, the whole thing is a fraction of seconds, maybe 0.25 seconds or even less. So, so basically, Google what it does is, like, apart from the organic search results, Google provides a couple of paid search results along with the organic, like either above or below fold. The organic search results. I am taking the example of "buy dining chairs online" keyword here. Online option happens. Google calculates all the payment basis on question time, quality, and ad rank. This is a difficult, slightly difficult concept. So, basically, let's say a competitor number one, based on the calculation provided by Google, competitor number one is supposed to pay 60 rupees for this action. And remember that Josh Furniture has bid for an amount of 100 rupees. So, now, according to Google's algorithms, Josh Furniture will pay just one rupee extra above the competitor number one to be on the top slot. So, please understand here that Josh told Google that 100 rupees is the maximum amount that I want to bid for this keyword. Is 61 rupees and gets the number one slot. And an important thing to understand here is, Josh Furniture is not paying anything if the ads are not clicked. Organic results are clicked, they are not paying anything. So, Google only charges the advertisers when, when an ad is actually clicked. If you understand here correctly, there is clearly a quality factor involved. So, an easier way for Google would have been to go for the maximum bidder. Google could have said that, "One whom appears to be the maximum would always come in the top." The search result clearly. Google never does that. And probably this is the differentiating factor here. Google takes care of the quality at every step.

Let's quickly move to the concept of Ad Rank. We quickly understand, uh, getting a high, getting a good ad rank is very important for advertisers, otherwise they will not be able to come up in the search results in front of their target customers. The higher the ad rank, better is the chance of coming in the results, and hence better is the chance of getting clicks. So, let's understand what are the parameters on which Google takes care of the ad rank. First thing, of course, a bid, the amount of bid set by the advertisers. Apart from that, this is not the only thing Google is looking at. So, I'll just quickly, uh, quickly, uh, try to explain one thing to you all. When two people, the two real people, work for a bank, they ask for a home loan. Till the bank provides the home loan to these two people at the same interest rate, the answer is no. Banks will look at something like the credit score. You might have, some of you might have heard about CIBIL scores and TransUnion scores, etc. So, depending on the payment history, etc., this is a score assigned to each and every person, and basis of which banks and financial institutions provide loans to individual users. So, this is something like that. So, apart from the payment part, Google will look at the ad and landing page quality. So, let's quickly understand how this works. So, remember the search term is, uh, "furniture online in Bangalore." Ads and the landing page, both of all the three keywords, the ad, and the landing page, two of them should be on the same page. Should all have the same kind of messaging. Landing page should be clear, it should have a clear UI/UX, it should have a good page load speed, and it should have a clearly stating the advantages that you would have spoken on the ad. For example, if you on the ad, you have mentioned "24/7 support" or "free shipping for all other orders," the landing page should also speak the same language. So, this is ad and landing page quality. When it comes to impact of ad extensions, but at this point of time, please understand that ad extensions are extra bit of information which advertisers add, complementarily provided details in the landing page or ad messages. Then, of course, the third factor is, uh, competitiveness of auction. It is very clear, right? Higher, higher the number of advertisers are there, more difficult auction becomes. Here comes the most important two factors. First, the context of search. Let's understand why these terms have come. So, these things have come recently in the last few years because because of the advent of various devices, voice-enabled devices, search has completely changed. So, Google, Google's AI engines are trying to understand not only the terms that person has provided, but also the context the person is in. The context is something beyond the keywords. Benefits of contextual search include helping the users get faster and more accurate results based on their queries. For example, if you are searching for Batman, if you are searching for the term Batman in the month of October, most likely you will be shown besides selling Halloween costumes because that is the time of Halloween. So, let me give you a better example which you all can relate. So, let's say you are already, you have already gone to Goa and you are searching for "top Goa restaurants" from your mobile phone on your 4G connection, versus you are sitting in your home at Gurgaon, Haryana, and you are using your home Wi-Fi laptop and searching for "Goa restaurants." These two are completely different contexts, and in all probability, the search page and the ads plus them would be very different here. At the last year is ad rank threshold. Clear language, ad rank threshold. The reserve is for your ad. Now, in the previous slide, I had explained that Google will charge you just one rupee extra, uh, in comparison to your, uh, competitor, right? That is a very basic explanation I gave you. The actual calculation is a little bit different. Let's understand here, like maybe there is a situation where only one advertiser is there, and that advertiser does not have a good quality score also. And time quality score because of the absence of the competitors, that that advertiser is able to show the ads in front of Google people. So, Google would not like to do that. If your bid is lower than the threshold, your ads will not show. If your bid is lower than the ad rank threshold. So, let's say that if the ad rank threshold is 60 rupees, and if you have bid for 50 rupees for that particular keyword, your ad will never show. And if none of your competitors are eligible to show, the threshold is the reserve price. It is the price you pay for the click. So, let me move to the next slide.

So, this is, uh, in continuation with the previous slides. Advertiser which gets the higher ad rank, uh, they are in the number one position. Competitor one has got a score of 5.6, so they're at number two, and competitor two is at number three. So, let's move to Quality Score, which is one of the most important concepts in Google Ads.

Before moving into Quality Score, let me explain you one thing very, uh, precisely. Google has always been very tight-lipped about, uh, how it uses its auction method. Google never gives out the details. So, for the first time in 2008, so Google, Google Ads system started back in 2001, 2002. For the first time in 2008, Google officially told that Quality Score plays an important factor. It is an important factor for showing Google Ads. So, let's understand what is Quality Score. Quality Score is an aggregate estimate of how well a keyword has performed overall in the first ad auctions. So, let me give you a real, real-life example here. You might have seen on the TV screen, there will be like, a lot of data given, like how many matches Virat Kohli has played, how many centuries he has made, what is the average score, what is the strike rate, what are the number of catches. So, Quality Score is similar. It is an aggregate estimate. So, whenever a keyword comes into play, Google would first look at its Quality Score. Each keyword gets a Quality Score on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest score and 10 is the highest score. So, needless to say, advertisers around the world are going to get higher Quality Scores. So, everyone is trying to get the Quality Score of 10, which is the pinnacle. Null Quality Score. So, generally, when you put a word first, like when you start an account or you start an ad, Quality Score would, in all probability, will start at null Quality Score. So, it will take some time for that Quality Score to gather enough info, enough impressions, or clicks to accurately determine the Quality Score. So, Google will take some time, and then, uh, general cases, the Quality Score starts at number 5, which is the middle number between 1 to 10. And let's understand the most important point here. Quality Score is not the same as auction time ad quality. It is not used at auction time to determine ad rank. Game Quality Score depends on exact match impressions. For now, you have to understand that it is a score. The keyword is, uh, "buy chairs online." Quality Score would depend on exact match impressions, and if it does not get a lot of exact match impressions, it might earn to null.

Let's quickly understand what are the factors to determine Quality Score. Again, Google has revealed this data. So, this is on black and white now. But if experts are supposed to be believed, there are more than 50 to 100 factors on which Quality Score depends. So, as per Google, first, the expected click-through rate. So, let's understand what is expected click-through rate. Expected click-through rate is a prediction, and it is different from the actual click-through rate or the CTR column that you will find in your account. So, unlike the actual CTR column, status ECTr will tell how the keyword will perform both within your account and across all other website advertisers' accounts. So, Google will take an aggregate understanding about how this keyword has performed across all the advertisers and why the score to that. And the status will also be adjusted to eliminate the influence of ad positions and other factors that affect the prominence and visibility of ads, such as ad extensions. And again, this will again depend on, uh, exact match. So, uh, expected click-through rate are given as above average, average, and below average. So, if you have an expected click-through rate of above average or average status, would mean that there is no major problem with your keywords. And but if you are getting a below average status, that means that you name, you definitely should consider changing your ad text and other things to improve.

The second point is ad relevance. And relevance is how supposedly your ad is related to your keyword. So, this is kind of a self-explanatory thing. If you are bidding on "red socks for men," if you so, your ad should be explaining about "red socks for men" only. You cannot tell that "buy socks online." So, if you, if you put a text like that, your relevance would be lower. But if you, if you create proper ad groups and create proper ads for them, definitely your ad relevance will be high. And relevance, uh, will have average, average, and below average. And again, if there is a below average status, that means things your ad or keyword may not be specific enough. Your ad group may cover too many topics. So, to get an ad relevance below average, you might have to revisit your Google Ads structure, and you might have to get more deadly themed groups.

Okay, the third is landing page experience. Again, I have explained it. Your keyword, your ad relay, ad, your landing page should be the same page. They would should talk about same messaging. Landing page should have good UI/UX, your landing page should have good navigability, should not have a lot of pop-ups, etc., and it should have a good speed score. This is how it looks like a Quality Score. So, depending on the Quality Score, we'll get some numbers like 6 out of 10 or 7 out of 10. And whenever you see a below average, uh, like the Quality Score is definitely, uh, like need for you to take action. So, let me give you all a pro tip here from my experience. So, Google AdWords is a game of Google Ads, the game of continuous, uh, improvement. So, you cannot create a perfect landing page, and you cannot create a perfect ad and sit down on your laurels. You'll need to come, like, always re-evaluate things. You'll need to always re-evaluate your ads, your landing page. Please look at options to make it better.

Okay, let's understand what are the types of search queries here. So, uh, search queries can be navigational, search queries can be informational, and transactional. Let's try and understand what these things are. Navigational query is a search query entered with the intent of finding a particular website or webpage. For example, "edureka." So, that you know that edureka is predicting so many good quality, uh, winners. So, you do not remember the website exactly. What you'll do is, you will go to Google, you will search "edureka," and you will most probably find.

Eureka website on the top. Similarly, this person has searched for Best Buy. So, he's in the US. He searched for Best Buy and he got an organic search result at the top. Which buy is there? The point here to be noted is Best Buy, as a company, has bid for the term "Best Buy" because you would not like the competitors to show an ad on top of the page. So, if Best Buy would not bid for this term, Best Buy, a competitor like Walmart or a competitor like Amazon can bid on the term and come at the top for that particular search results. So, this is this type of search queries would have a decent amount of interest from advertisers.

Let's quickly move to the next type of search queries, that is informational search queries. Informational search queries cover broad topics such as digital marketing or Bangalore. So, there are thousands and millions of sites that are returned, and these are generally not targeted by paid marketers. But because the topics are so broad, it would be very difficult to, uh, get something out of here. As marketers, we should not leave it completely. So, what strategies can we do for informational search queries? Is one, we can write blog posts full of tips. We can create how-to videos. We can write detailed step-by-step guides. For example, if I write a step-by-step guide on digital marketing, so probably I'll come, my page will come on the top of the search results. Probably design an amazing image or infographic.

Third type, and the most important type for marketers, is transactional search queries. Transactional search query is a query that indicates an intent to complete a transaction, such as making a purchase. To here, so recently I am facing a lot of problems in my laptop. So, I am trying to get a good laptop deal here. So, what I did is, I went and I searched in Google for "Buy Lenovo laptop online." Try and understand, before typing these search queries, I would have done a lot of informational search queries as well. When I searched for my Lenovo laptop online, what I can say is, like Lenovo is already at the top of, uh, so here you can see that Lenovo is already in the search of organic search results. But they wanted to make sure that the ads are also coming. They want to do not want to leave the top slots. And also the right side of the search result, you can see the Google Shopping ads. So, they have also made sure that their ads are coming here as well. So, advertisers across the world, they are trying to get the top results and top slots in front of their target customers.

Going back to the transactional search queries. So, to reiterate, uh, advertisers, what they do is, they do text ads, uh, to about the full visibility. Go for shopping ads, which gives them an extra edge because there are images and other information can be provided. But the important point to note here is, like, they cannot neglect the SEO and content marketing part. So, we saw another one, number one of the organic search results also. So, uh, to summarize, advertisers should do mechanic and paid efforts both to get results in search results.

Let's quickly move to Google Ads. So, with Google Ads, you get access to a broad range of advertising products designed to help you reach your target customers. Remember, this is the important point: reach your target customers in the moments that matter, right? So, I have already explained how the moments matter because, let's say, you are in Coorg and you are searching for a restaurant in Coorg. But this is a very important moment that matters for you. So, what you do is that you do a quick Google search. You find a good restaurant in Google Maps or Google Ads and you visit that place. You get some amazing food and you are wowed. So, you, uh, like, become a fan of Google and that restaurant for the rest of your life. So, what Google does is, based on your business goals, Google does a lot of heavily heavy lifting, providing wonderful technology. And why do you invite you a list of tools for you and list of pinch types for your goals?

So, let me quickly move to goals. So, the main business goals that some, most of us clearly understand, uh, first is "Drive sales and get leads." I don't think you need to explain anything, you guys, because you already understand this. Let me quickly move to the point "Build awareness." So, I'll give, I'll give a real-life example here. Is a friend of mine called Ratnam. He has a company, Innovative Products LLC. So, Ratnam has come up with a product called Garuda. So, Garuda is an augmented reality sunglass for driving assistance. So, what it does is, like, when you wear the sunglass and it is obviously connected through 4G and probably 5G, etc., etc., and it will provide you turn-by-turn navigation details. It will give you information about, uh, what are the restaurants on the road, what is, uh, what is the traffic condition. Will tell you, okay, nobody product. The purpose behind "Build awareness" objective is to increase the amount of people that see your ad. Your business might not be a well-known brand now, but with the "Build awareness" objective, you are able to spread your brand across the web and in front of the people. So, now, once you start these kind of ads, people will start recognizing your brand, your logo, and your product. I quickly tell you about the theory of 16 Impressions. You might have probably heard it. A brand needs at least 13 to 16 Impressions, they register in a prospective customer's mind. We do not, it is all happening in subconscious, right? So, we, we will think about laptops, we think about Apple, we think about Lenovo. How do these brands have done this? How did the brands have done this? That is through continuous impressions. Needless to say, uh, these type of campaigns, like "Build awareness" type of campaigns, will emphasize the number of impressions over the number of clicks.

Let's understand quickly how it works. Imagine you are a new business and you have just invented a new, a new product, for example, Garuda, because this product has never been seen or heard before. So, no one is searching about it. No one is searching for a virtual reality sunglass, right? Your advertisement goals for this new product should be like, bring it in front of a lot of people so that people understand, okay, such kind of product also exists. So, they should learn about your innovations also. So, the "Build awareness" objective is a good marketing objective if you are starting a new business or have a new product which is not widely known to the people. Also, it is a good example if you are expanding your business to a new area. For introducing customers to to offer is a new business goal for you. Another example for it can be, let's say, there is a popular, uh, South Indian restaurant called Chutneys in Hyderabad, and it is expanding to the city of Amritsar, which is popularly the city of parakeet and chole culture. So, we are going to, uh, Treaty of Amritsar, we need to create an awareness in front of the people, uh, that such kind of food habits can also be there.

Okay, let me quickly move the next, next, uh, topic that is "Influence consideration." So, consider "Influence consideration" as the next step to "Build awareness." Now that you have built awareness on the innovative product Garuda, this is the next step. So, it is called, is like moving a step ahead in the buyer decision-making funnel. Remember, AIDA. I'll not get into retailers or AIDA now. Basically, how it works, "Influence consideration" objective includes something called "In-market audience" targeting and engagement ads. So, "in-market audience" are consumers who are actively researching, comparing products across the Google Display Network. Let me give you an example of my case. So, as I told you, my laptop has started giving problems, okay? I am started searching to buy a new laptop. I do a lot of search on digital marketing. I'm a tech enthusiast. I check out whatever new products are coming in Google on a regular basis. I love driving. I do online shopping a lot. I love driving to new places, staying in hotels, etc., etc. Also, I invest in stock markets and mutual funds. So, without me knowing, Google has collected all this data about me, and Google has put me into 10 different sets of in-market audience. Or not get into technicals, but basically, you just need to understand the term "audience." Does that mean that Google has given my name to these three advertisers across the world? No. So, Google has anonymously created lists of audiences where which kind of people are there. Imagine Lenovo, okay? So, I need to show my laptop ads to people. Oh, no one knows that I am the in-market audience of buying a laptop. Probably the Lenovo will start showing me ads in the Google Display Network. So, these kind of engagement ads gives customers more information about your business. So, basically, through these kind of ads, you can display your product information in front of thousands of people who are great customers. To "Influence consideration" objective is for businesses who have to differentiate from similar products of their competition. Switcher allows you to educate your customers about your specific product or service in order for them to understand why they should be buying from you. So, you are creating a differentiating factor for yourself.

To this, the fifth business goal is "Promote your app." We are talking about the Google, the types of Google Ads here. Search ads. Search ads, I don't have anything much to explain anymore because, no, a lot of it has already been covered in the few slides. Google Search Ads appear on Google Search Network. So, Google Search Network is not only the Google site. It is a group of search-related websites. So, your ads can show near the search results when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords. And what are the types of ads in the search networks? So, they are text ads, dynamic search ads, all only ads, shopping ads, image and video ads.

Let me quickly move down to the next slide. Google Search Network. Google Search Network comprises of not only Google Search. Also, Google Play Store, Google Shopping. So, it is like, if you do not know, it is google.com, shopping. Yes, then there is Google Image and Google Maps also. Google App, Google Maps app is also there. And let's understand about on Google sites as well. So, there are a lot of non-Google sites also in Google Search Networks who have a search functionality embedded in their website. So, for text ads, search partners would include hundreds of non-Google websites as well as Google video and other Google sites. For product shopping ads, third-party sites that display and link products for sale.

So, this is the Google Ads account structure. So, we have an account, which is a unique combination of email and password. Inside account, we have current campaigns. Each account, each campaign would have different sets of ad groups. Inside the ad groups, there will be ads and keywords specified. So, this is very important. Whenever we are planning something, we need account structure perfectly, okay? And again, every account will have certain budget specified.

So, last point here is the keywords for text ads. Keywords are very important. These are the keyword match types that Google provides. First is broad match, an exact match, broad match modifier, phrase match, and negative keywords. So, let me quickly explain with an example what are they. Let's say I am a seller of red socks for men and women. So, if I am writing "red socks" like this, this is called an exact match, and my ads will only show when someone searches for "red socks." If someone searches for "red socks for men," in the case one, it will not show. So, exactly "red socks" exact match will show. Second case, "red socks for men." So, again, exact match will show when someone searches for "red shirts for men." Otherwise, it will not show for any other thing. Then let's come quickly to phrase match. If I put "red socks" like this. So, if someone searches for "red socks for sale," "red socks to buy," "red socks for me," all these search terms, when it is there, the exact phrase match, these ads will show. And the fourth type is like a broad match. It is like putting a broad match. So, it will attract all kind of search terms like "red socks for newborn babies," or "red socks cute," "can red socks match with black leather shoes," "red socks which is a team," etc., etc. So, the point here is, as paid marketers, we cannot afford to show ads for these non-trivial "red socks cute." So, we'll have to do a lot of hard work. We'll have to do analyze the search terms on a daily basis, and we'll have to put a newborn negative search terms like "coupon," "babies," "cute," "shoes," "cam," "why," etc., etc.

So, this is how the Google Ads interface will look like. This will show your different forms of ads in the left side, or clicks, impressions, and all the details. Let's quickly move to Display Ads. Let's first understand what is Display Ad Network. So, previously we tried reaching at as marketers, we tried reaching our target customers to only Google Search, right? Now, Google will Display Ad Network is a repository of more than 2 million sites and apps. It reaches 90 percent of the people on the internet. And so, basically, your ad either gets matched with the content related to your business, like your keywords, or customers' interests. So, quickly understanding about with the Google Display Network, it is much bigger. It provides much bigger reach as compared to Search Network. There's a flip side here too. Do not do proper targeting, there is a high chance of blowing away your budget without achieving anything. Quickly understanding about display ads. So, in case of search, there were three different parties. One was, first was advertisers, second was the target customer, and interface was the search network, right? It was either the Google search website or Google search network website. In case of display ads, advertisers who are trying to reach their target customers across the world, and there are publishers. So, let me explain quickly what is a publisher. So, publishers are any website or app who have a good website or app. For example, I have a fashion website where I write regularly about fashion and give, give a lot of information about what is in, what are pending, etc., etc. So, I'm, I'm spending a lot of money in keeping the website up, keeping the blogs, keeping the images, etc., etc. So, for publishers, these ad networks provide a way to earn some money by placing ads in their website. So, how does this work? Advertiser is the one who pays money to get his advertisement shown, and advertisements are shown in the publisher websites or apps with the help of these ad networks. And advertiser is money, and he makes money by return on investment by selling targeted advertisements, products of and services. Advertiser owns or controls the product or services that is being advertised because he is in the command. Similarly, publishers earn money by giving away slots in their existing website or existing apps. And advertiser advertises actual products or services and drives the users to publisher's page, fill out the form, or make a purchase.

Let's quickly understand what are the display ads targeting options. First one is topic targeting. Topics are essentially the category of the page user is searching on. So, actually, topics can be very useful for display advertisements. For example, taking the advert, taking the example of Josh Furniture. Let's say Josh Furniture provides mattresses for beds. So, a good topic for Josh Furniture can be "Home and Garden" class "Bedroom" plus "Bedding and Linen." So, these are topics which are already provided by Google DDN net, like Google interface. And if I'm trying to sell mattresses, I can quickly select this topic and I can quickly move with my advertisements.

Second is interest categories. So, there is something called "in-market audience." So, "in-market audience" are users who are actively researching or comparing products for services across the Google clear network. So, Google is collecting all this information through cookies. Google is able to understand that, okay, this person, Mr. Abhijit, is actively looking for laptops, or Mr. X is actively looking to buy a car. This audience is very valuable, as these guys already have moved further down in the funnel. So, they have already, like, they have a need, they'll need, and they are looking for the real product to buy. A good example can be, if I am a Kia car dealer, so all of you might know that KIA is a new brand which has come to the Indian market in, uh, probably last one or two years. A car dealer can target folks who have been shopping for Hyundai or Maruti. So, it becomes very easy for them to target these people to these audiences.

Second is affinity audience. Affinity audience takes a broader view in allowing advertisers to target users based on their interests. So, unlike in-market audience, so in the previous example, I have explained "in-market audience." Affinity audience are not necessarily in the market to purchase a product at that very moment. They are actively searching. So, in my case, Google knows that I am a, I search a lot on display marketing. I search on a lot about restaurants, hotels. I travel a lot. I search about cars. So, probably I am, I'm in the affinity market list for all these topics. And the best part I love about Google is that it gives standard options plus it allows you to fix and match things.

Then there are placement targeting. So, for example, I am the Kia car dealer, okay? So, I have a list of 100 websites, 100 top websites which car lovers frequent. So, what I do is, instead of going for topic advertisements or interest categories, please just put my ads in these top 100 websites because anyways, anyone who is going to research about cars is going to only stop sites. And, uh, here an idea can be like, you can do a lot of research, you can make a list of 100, 200, 300 websites and you start, or you can choose to glow, go slow here and pick a list of 20, 30 websites first, keep on adding.

Fourth one is contextual targeting, which is targeting by keywords. It works a lot like Google text ads. So, we pick up keywords and we'll, uh, searches for these keywords for in the websites, and Google, um, this is our ads in the corresponding websites.

Fifth one is demographic targeting. So, demographic targeting would include age, gender, and parental status. Explain this with the example of marketing guy at Friends Adult Diaper. So, if I am selling adult diapers to men, so I don't have to do any hard work. I'll just take an age category 65 plus, and I'll take the gender as men. Bingo, ads are on. It is as simple as that.

Last point is like exclusions. So, depending on various reasons, advertisers would not like to show their ads in different categories of websites. For example, a lot of advertisers do not like to put their ads on gaming sites or casino sites or sites where content is sexually explicit. So, you can select these categories. You can include, exclude, you can mix and match things. For example, if I am working for a company which is not pulling under any standard of standard categories or topics or interests, I can create my own categories or I can create my own market audience by taking care of topics by adding interests, adding contextual targeting, including my competitors. So, it is to me, guys, it is absolutely amazing.

Video ads. Again, it is a complete science, and there are different forms of ads. Are skippable in-stream ads? Ones which are can be skipped after five seconds, and they appear on YouTube watch pages and across websites and apps which are in Google Video Partners. So, please note that there is a Google Search Partner Network, with a Google Display Partner Network, and there is a Google Video Partner Network as well. Unskippable in-stream ads are the ones which are non-skippable. So, here you get maximum 15 seconds to provide your message. Ads cannot be skipped, and the ads appear across YouTube videos and across websites and apps running on Google do partners. And the third category is video discovery ads. Only appear on YouTube and reach people in places where they are discovering content. So, for example, when you go to YouTube and you saw, you're searching for something, so, uh, these kind of ads will come. They will help other users to discover your content, and they will also appear alongside related YouTube videos and on YouTube mobile home page as well. And there are bumper ads. So, you can use bumper ads when you want to reach viewers broadly. The short, memorable message. Bumper ads are six-second slots, and here you can reach people with a very quick messaging, very quick, powerful messaging. Consumers, as the name suggests, it only appears on Google partner sites. It does not appear in YouTube. These ads are available in mobile and tablets, are designed to give a better experience in mobile. So, to help you reach a lot of people who are outside YouTube.

Okay, guys, let's move to App Ads. Quickly understanding App Ads. App Ads are automated campaign types. You don't have to create any campaigns here. They are designed to help advertisers to drive app installs and app conversions across all of Google's inventory. So, basically, we need to understand that there's a lot of app churn goes on, and even if you come up with your app, it's very important for the right end users to discover your app. So, Google provides Google App Ads for this purpose, so that you can put your ads directly in front of the target customers. They have like two different methods. One is cost per install. So, as the name suggests, here the advertiser is willing to pay a certain amount for each install. For example, if I have a budget of $100, I say that I'm willing to pay $2 for each app install a day. Like, and my budget is $100 per day, probably I am targeting 50, add 50 app installs to app. Similarly, cost per action is like promoting users to take specific actions inside the apps, probably some revenue-generating action, or for gamers, going to the next level, is like that.

Dropping ads works amazing for you if you are a physical or online retailer. For using shopping ads, you can promote your online and local inventory. You can boost traffic to your website. You can get footfall to your local store, and you can find better qualified leads. Ultimately, that's the idea, right? You have to get leads. So, let's quickly understand how shopping ads work. It is very important. First, we'll have to create, like, create a Google Merchant Center account. So, it is a free account. Using Merchant Center account, we can upload our inventory data, physical inventory data in Google. It will upload to Google Ads and it will provide the data. For example, in case of Josh Furniture, first Furniture can provide the data of, like, bedroom furnitures. So, we'll just upload it. We'll have to upload the data, and Google will automatically show the right ads with images and other details in front of customers. So, let's quickly understand, like, what is the differentiating factor for for these kind of ads? Google text ads are completely text ads. There is no display elements there, okay? But in contrast to text ads, shopping ads provide users with a photograph, provides a lot of information about title, your price, your store name, and a lot more, okay? And it also gives you details like free delivery, as we can see, uh, in this example. So, this is how shopping ads work.

So, let me quickly move to metrics for search engine marketing. It is very important to understand the metrics. And we are talking about Google Ads. These are the metrics that I am looking at: Impressions, Impression Share, Cost, Cost Per Click, Conversions, Click-Through Rate, Cost Per Conversion, Quality Score, Ad Position, View-Through Conversions, etc., etc.

Let's quickly understand Impressions. So, an impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other sites in Google Search Network. It is pretty straightforward. So, this is the Google Ad interface where we can see how many impressions are there.

The next point is Impression Share. So, it is a competitive metric. So, Impression Share is provides us with a comparison like, what is the number of impressions that an ad receives, guided by the estimate number of impressions that were available. Let's take an example of Josh Furnitures here. Let's say my daily budget is like just 1000 rupees, okay? And, uh, cost per click is like, click-through rate is like 100 rupees. Cost per click, like, within, very soon I am, I'm exhausting my, uh, number of clicks and number of impressions. So, if I would have increased my budget, probably throughout the whole day, I would have got 1000 impressions. But because of various reasons, I only got 100 impressions and 10 clicks. So, my impression share is 10 percent. Share. It shows the opportunity that an advertiser has in terms of reaching out to two audiences. It also reflects the performance of your ads, and it also gives you performance of the competitor sites. So, you know, like, Josh at Josh Furniture, I know that I'm just getting an impression share of 10 percent, but other competitor share, other competitors are getting, uh, 50 impression share. So, they are in front of the target customers five times more than me. This is definitely a point to ponder, right? It will again, it will depend on target settings, approval status, and quality score. If the quality score goes down, I, as an advertiser, can lose on impression shares as well.

Metrics. Second, this one is pretty straightforward. Cost. First is shown across at various levels. It is shown for keywords, for ad groups, for campaigns, and at account level. First, we need to look at costs at every single point of time to know how we are doing. Ideally, the cost would have been on the lower side, but actually, it is a function of how big the content reaches. Probably, the better data to look for is clicks and cost per clicks.

What is clicks? We all know like where we all have clicked ads in Google Ads, right? So, clicks signifies user interest. So, when users is seeing something on, let's say, Google text ads or display ads or wherever, whenever, so they look, just came through all the data. They look at the organic search results. They look at the paid search results. Of the one which applies to them most, the one that connects with them most, click that. So, if a user is clicking on the ad, it means the user has found the ad relevant and wanted to know more about the product or service. Again, big data is available at all levels, at keyword level, ad group level, a campaign level, and account level, and it helps advertisers in deciding if the ads are creating required engagement. And generally, the higher the click, the better it is.

CTR. Next metric look for is through rate or CTR. So, click-through rate is the ratio that denotes the number of users who clicked that versus the number of users who saw that. So, in simple terms, it is number of clicks divided by number of impressions. And click CTR is a very important metric to look forward to because it is the CTR which has a direct impact on quality score. So, the higher the CTR is, Google will know that your ad is very relevant, people are clicking it, so it will probably start providing a higher quality score. Your ads. It is calculated by dividing the total cost of campaign by the total number of clicks it received. Or if you are looking for a keyword at keyword level, it is like total number of total clicks it has received and total amount it has which has been spent on that particular keyword. We should understand that as per click should, as marketers, we should always try to optimize the cost per click. So, cost per click to gradually go down. So, a lot of sectors such as ads, landing page, geographic targeting, etc., etc., is used for optimizing and reduced CTR.

The next factor is Conversions. It is a predefined action. For example, if it is an e-commerce site and you have put a payment gateway, and finally, if you want the user to pay at the end of the transaction, that is considered as conversion in case of e-commerce. Probably, but in case of normal product or service website, it can be as small as a phone call also. It can be as small as a form fill-up also. Okay, to define conversion properly, and we need to look at conversion data for upper optimization.

Next data is cost per conversion. It is the total cost incurred in a campaign by the total number of conversions generated. For example, if in a campaign which I ran for a week, if I got total 150 leads by spending 10,000 rupees, then cost per conversion would be 150 divided by 10,000, which is 66.66 rupees. So, cost per conversion is very important because I believe it will give me the ROI of the campaign. Over the cost per conversion, the better ROI is.

And Quality Score. I have already explained Quality Score. Uh, it is, it is an aggregate score. Comes on a scale of 1 to 10, and advertisers are always on the lookout to optimize quality score. It depends on expected click-through rate, add relevance, and landing page experience.

Ad Position. Depending on your ad rank, your ad position is calculated. Acquisition is available at the keyword level. Now, Google has gradually started not giving the ad positions also.

Cost Per Mile. It is a display ad metric. Just like when an advertiser is only charged when ads appear in front of prospective users, thousand number of times. So, thousand impressions. So, CPM method of billing is mostly used by an advertiser when the objective is brand awareness, which I, I had already explained. A publisher earns revenue to CPM methods as well. And the visibility here is to improve the visibility.

So, let's start with Google AdSense. Google AdSense is an ad network run by Google to which website publishers in the Google ad network of content sites. Third, different kinds of ads like text ads, image ads, video ads, interactive media ads that are targeted to the target audience of the advertisers. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. So, they can, they can generate revenue on their pay per click, a pay impression basis. Basically, Google AdSense is the ad network which provides a monetization way for billions of sites in the world. So, AdSense is a participant in the Ad Choices program. AdSense ads would typically include a triangle-shaped and choices cycle. So, this is how you differentiate like a display ad or text ads. In Display Network, it would have a triangle with "I" and "Ad Choices" will be written there. AdSense requires an advertiser to submit a sealed bid. So, basically, a sealed bid is a bid which is not observable by the competitors. Additionally, or any given click received, advertisers only pay for one bid increment above the second highest bid. So, Google has made its system so transparent. If you say that max amount that you are willing to pay is 100 rupees, Google will not pay you 100 rupees. So, based on a complex calculation, Google will calculate what kind of competitors are there. This is applicable for both for search ads and AdSense as well. And Google will charge you just one increment bid above the second highest bid. Google currently shares 68 percent of the revenue generated by AdSense with content network partners and 51 percent of the revenue generated by AdSense with search partners. We will understand the details of it.

So, before moving to the next slide, you have to understand that Google AdSense is not the only ad network in the world. AdSense is the biggest ad network in the world with over over 11 million websites using AdSense. But then there are multiple number of websites, or ad networks available for the monetization of your websites. Some of the notable names are InfoLinks, BlogHer, RevenueHits, Mediavine, AdThrive, Media.net, Monumentric, Homo Ads, Google Earth. So, basically, there are a lot of them, and every, every day new ones keep popping up.

So, let's understand what are the types of ads, uh, which Google AdSense provide. First one is content, second is search, third is video, and fourth is link units. So, let's proceed to the details.

Okay, first let's understand what is content for AdSense. So, content-based advertisements can be targeted for users with certain interests or context. How these ads, which are shown in the Google Display Network, it is based on majorly two things. One, what content is there in your website, based on the keywords of your website, which is called context, and this is called contextual targeting. Second is the user's interest. Might have seen that when you browse the websites, you see a lot of ads in various websites depending on your interest areas. The targeting can be either cost per click or cost per thousand impression, which is called CPM. CPC based targeting is most common, is applicable for Google Search Ads as well, and this is applicable for the AdSense Network as well. Ads can be simple text ads, image ads, it can be animated images, it can be Flash videos, can be videos, it can be rich media ads. And coming to the number of ads per page, previously Google AdSense had put a restriction. We can only put b ads in a single page. But for the time, Google has realized that the competition is increasing. So, as I mentioned, there are a lot of competitor websites, and they provide a lot more percentage of the revenue also, and they do not put any restrictions. Sensing that competition, Google removed this previous restrictions of key ads per page also. Will allows publishers to receive 68 percent of the revenue recognized by Google.

Next, let's move to search. This one is pretty easy. This, this is like similar to Google Search, but this kind of search is happening inside the website. So, basically, AdSense for Search allows publishers to display ads collecting to search terms on their websites. So, let's, let's take an example of a site, for example, Economic Times. Okay, so Economic Times has thousands and thousands of pages, right? So, let's say, let's say you want to see, you want to search for a news on, um, some, uh, Gujarat flood or something. So, when you search, there is a probability that if they have opted for this kind of ads, alongside the search results, you will see some ads. Just remember here, search results will provide links from your own website only. It won't, it won't give you a third, third-party link. So, you basically, your users will be inside your website, they are not going anywhere, but they will see ads. So, uh, publishers received 51 percent of the revenue recognized by Google. So, this is like, you're not doing anything. You have data site, you have built your hard work, you have created a lot of good quality content, image, and all, put a search function in your, when your website, and you start getting an extra income. So, if the site has already built-in search functionality, a lot of sites have that, right? They already have a built-in search functionality. So, Google AdSense provides us a custom search ads which can be added to show search ads next to your search results. Alternatively, if you do not have a custom search engine, if you do not have a search engine embedded, Google AdSense gives you a custom search engine which can be added to your site where readers can search the site and see targeted ads.

Okay, let's move to the next slides. So, here, here it's an example from a good site called parenting.com. So, inside parenting.com, one prospective parent or one current parent have searched for "baby bottles." So, he or she has got, got some organic search results, that display below, and ads by Google is displayed in a box, and it is highlighted properly.

Okay, let's move to the next, uh, ads that is video ads. AdSense for video allows publishers with video content to generate revenue using ad placement from Google's extensive advertisement network. You have to remember one point here. All the bit, like, if you are showing a video ad to be displayed, that has to be definitely hosted in Google, uh, to cube channels, okay? So, let's understand what are the types of ads which are displayed alongside your video content. So, it's, it can be video content, it can be overlay ads, it can be full slots ads. So, let's understand what kind of video ads can appear inside your video content. A video ad can appear before, in between, or after a video content. So, uh, like, when it comes before, it is called pre-roll. Then it comes in the mid, in the middle, comes, it is called a mid-roll. And when it comes at the end of your video, it is called post-roll. Here we can see the standard non-skippable videos, and they will come in the formats pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll. And it, then there are two view videos which can be skipped after five seconds. So, these kind of videos can be shown, uh, alongside our existing video content.

Second is overlay ads. Overlay ad is a text, image, or a rich media creative that usually appears over the bottom third of the content. Can you see the image? It is pretty clear, light. I'm sure you would have getting these ads on a daily basis.

Fourth, this one is a bit tricky. This is called full slot. So, full slot ads are next ads, image ads, or rich media creatives that appear before a on pause or after the content. So, the trick here is, users need to close this ad before continuing to the video content for next video because there is a difference here. So, let's, let's, uh, proceed to the next type of ads that is link units.

Link units are closely targeted to the interests of your users because users directly interact with the ad unit. This may be more interested in the ads they were eventually see. Let me quickly show you what a link unit looks like. Sure, you would have seen these. So, to also quickly see, uh, that there is an "Ad Choices" icon here, which differentiates an ad from the generic website content.

Coming back to the link units. AdSense publishers are paid for clicks on the ads, and ads on the linked page are pay-per-click. Google Ads, similar to those shown in regular AdSense ad units. So, basically, this is like a kind of a text tiled individual text ads created into a unit. And test point. Link cards are responsive by default. They allow you to support a wide range of devices because nowadays ads can come in any devices. It can come from computers and laptops, phones, tablets, and there are multiple screen sizes, there are multiple resolutions. So, by default, Google has made ads responsive. And we'll have to remember one thing here, that Google does not disclose how much it is for link units.

So, let's understand how how does Google AdSense work. So, it's actually pretty simple. I'm sure you would have, some of you would have tried installing, issue like, initial, like installing Google Analytics code. So, basically, it is a JavaScript code which has to be put into the website. So, webmaster, a publisher type, is the site which is willing to participate in AdSense program to search the AdSense JavaScript code to the website, and bingo, it works. Start working from that point. Each time the page is visited by an end user, JavaScript code is fired, and it fetches content, like it fetches right ads based on either context of your website or interest of the users, and start showing ads. It is as simple as that. A contextual advertising system scans the cost of a website for keywords and returns advertisements to the web page based on these keywords. The advertisement may be displayed on the web page, or maybe also displayed as a pop-up ad. For example, if the user is viewing a website pertaining to sports, like I'm sure you must be buzzing a lot of cricket websites. So, so when you are using this website, you must be seeing a lot of advertisement related to sports and electric company, for example, a sports good sellers or other sports websites, etc., etc. Advertisement also called interest advertisements are in context technology. My personal take here, contextual ads are less irritating than traditional advertisements. That is why it influences users more effectively. Shows users the area of expertise of area of interest or expertise of theirs, and thus increases the chance of receiving a response.

Let's understand, like, how do we get paid? How do publishers get paid using AdSense? So, uh, AdSense payment cycle is monthly. Publishers act through estimated earnings over the course of some month, and then at the beginning of the following month, their earnings are finalized and posted as balance on the payments page. If the balance exceeds the payment threshold, and if there is no payment holds, publishers will be issued a payment between the 21st and the 26th of the month. So, so let me exam, let me give you an example. So, let's say, Josh Furniture starts displaying using Google AdSense. They accrue limited earnings throughout the month of July. Okay, let's say the payment threshold for their account is hundred dollars, which is kind of default for a lot of parties. Throughout the month of July, it will all be calculated. It will be accrued by August 3rd. We will see their July month finalized total earnings added to their AdSense payments page. So, it is not credited to their account. It will be credited to their payment stage. If that amount has gone more than 100, so it has, if it has increased above their threshold amount, then Jeff will get, George Furniture will get a payment for their July earnings and any other credits. There's a lump sum payment in and around August 21st. Also, AdSense would need information about your tax information, your personal identification details, and address. You also need to select a payment method. So, these are the different payment methods. AdSense has been very lenient here, depending on different countries and rules of the different countries. They have they use various methods like repayment, electronic fund transfer, wire transfer, Western Union, quick cash, appeda, and EFT. So, also, we need to remember that depending on what method you select, and depending on what method is available in various countries, it will, it might again take some time in getting these payments.

So, let's understand the do's and don'ts. What should we do to maximize our AdSense income? First point, produce good quality content that attracts and engages users. To provide good user experience. Create and maintain a content calendar around the theme. If your site is into fashion blogging, maintain the theme. Do not add random new topics just for the sake of AdSense profitable keywords or building guest posts, etc., etc. So, stick to your theme. Definitely, it will, uh, will get good results over time.

So, let me move to the next point. Follow Google Webmaster and AdSense guidelines. So, uh, this point is actually applicable for all the website owners. It is just not for AdSense users. So, Google Webmaster guidelines generally ask you to create, create content for people, for the people, not for our search engines. So, ask webmasters cover things like, are using automatically generated content, participating in link schemes, creating pages with little or no original content, also methods like cloaking, sneaky redirects in the website, putting hidden text or links in the website, using doorway pages, scraped content, and the list goes on. Basically, and website owners, we should always stick to these guidelines. We should never use any unnatural ways to get some traffic. AdSense guidelines also essentially tell all the same thing. We also tell not to tamper with AdSense codes.

Deeper SEO checklist ready. This is again, this is important for all the website owners. I like, I because I have mentioned that I have a couple of websites on my own, so I have always kept an SEO checklist ready. Some of which points are directly on top of my mind, like setting up Google Search Console, installing Google Analytics, setting up Bing Webmaster Tools. Yeah, one thing here, never forget Bing, because, just remember, Google is only 76 percent of the search. Rest 24 percent belongs to different, uh, search engines. So, go, ignore Google. Coming back to SEO checklist, setting up Bing Webmaster Tools, submitting XML sitemap to search engines, prepare your robots.txt file, use rich snippets, keep the URL SEO friendly, write long-form content, include primary keywords in the first paragraph, focus on maintaining your density, and the list goes on. I don't need to tell all the lists to you here. You can easily create one for yourself or search for a good one. A lot of, uh, sites that are available on the internet which gives which can give you a free one.

Fourth point, keep an eye on cost per click column while doing a keyword research. So, it is commonly believed that effect is directly proportional to money in blogging, but this is not accurate in terms of AdSense advertisement. The reason for this is so many factors which can affect your AdSense incomes. Some of them are for ad placement, which is very important. Fat types, or

traffic sources and most importantly the AdSense cost per click. So if you are using keyword research for your website, keep an eye on the cost per click factor. I use SEMrush as a tool and I would highly recommend using SEMrush as a tool by choosing some keywords which have high eCPC. I'm not saying that, uh, just go out, go and choose only high CPC keywords. But first thing, uh, according to the first point, it should be as per your team for your site team. Secondly, you should select some of the profitable keywords.

Okay, next point. Mix and match different formats. This is also a very important point. So many site owners that I have interacted with simply use images because they believe, and this is also one of the myths of AdSense, that image ads work better. But from my experience, believe me, it is not like that. I advise the site owners to use all ad types. Like we have covered the different type of ads, ad types, right? AdSense for search, uh, then link-based ads and videos. Videos are generally out of purview for us, but then we can easily use AdSense for search. And I am a fan of AdSense for search because not only does it help you monetize your content, it also helps with user navigation. So users can find the right content on your website if you put a search functionality to the website.

There are some pro tips for WordPress website owners. So I'll quickly browse through these pro tips. And I was recently sitting down with one of my friends who is a site owner who has very good traffic on his website. So we found these points out. We'll recommend using a 720x728 into 90 leaderboard image ad unit above the fold on the home page and below the main navigation bar. So depending on the page length, so these are for the home page. Depending on your page length, if the page length is good, use a vertical ad unit of the same size. Just different ad units like there are 160x600 or 300x250 medium rectangle in your sidebar or your blog page. Again, for WordPress website owners, the type of their blogs, so it's very important for them. This 36x280 large rectangle ad unit at the top of the article. Choose a similar ad unit at the end of the post before the comment section. Similar to the home page, it's a skyscraper or a medium rectangular ad unit in the sidebar.

So these are pro tips. Very important for you. It is important to understand don'ts rather than do's. So now that we know the do's, you need to understand the don'ts. First, ever, ever try to compensate users or third-party players for viewing ads or performing searches. Google will have to know that you are doing it, then there is a high probability that your site and your account will be banned. Because never, ever encourage users to click Google ads using phrases like "click the ads" or "support us." Never try to draw user attention to the ads using arrows or some graphical gimmicks. Never try to place misleading images alongside individual ads. Basically, ad units should be very clear, and your unit should clearly say "these are ads." So to place anything nearby, Google is not going to like it. Never place ads in a floating box script. Google does not like it. This practice has to be avoided at all costs. Never try to format your ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page. Your site and ads should have some gaps. Like Google sometimes says that it should be at least 15 pixels. So never try to mix things. Never try to make them indistinguishable. People ever try to format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads. So it is the reverse way. So be it any which way you do it, Google will not like it. Never try to place misleading tables about Google ad units. Like ad units can only say that they are sponsored ads or their paid ads. Units cannot be labeled as "favorite sites" or "today's top offers," something like that.

Don't ever click on your own Google AdSense. A lot of like to go to an AdSense forum. You will see a lot of site owners complaining about this that "I am banned from Google AdSense." And, uh, and one of the major reasons is that they do not get any revenue. They get frustrated. They click their own ads, and you're gone. And believe me, guys, Google is very, very serious about its policies. Once you get banned, it's very difficult to reinstate your account. Then if you recreate the account, uh, it will have a very high probability that it is going to be banned. And the same applies for Google Ads as well. So never try to fool around with Google Ads or Google AdSense. Do not use automated click-generating tools like robots or deceptive software. Give me, guys, there are a lot of black hat things available in the market. Do not try to use that. If Google knows, and you know, Google is the big daddy, they will definitely know that you are using some of these automated processes, and you will be banned forever.

Okay, let's move to metrics now. First metric is Ad Request. Ad Request is counted whenever your site requests an ad to be displayed. It is the number of ad units that requested ads for content ads, for search queries, for search ads. To add reports, an AdSense report an Ad Request each time a request was sent, even if no ads were returned. Let me quickly explain you this. So let's say you have a page, uh, you have a blog page, and you have put key ad units there. So, uh, three is the number of ad requests. So based on, uh, depend, based on different criteria like based on your content, based on the data Google has about the visitor, Google will return you the number of ads. So it will depend on a lot of things. So if some, if your, if the user is browsing your website at 2 AM in the night, some people might have put time restrictions also, some advertisers. So depending on a lot of things, you might be able to show three ads. It can be zero or one as well.

Okay, next point is Ad Request Coverage. Average is the percentage of ad requests that returned at least one ad. Generally speaking, average can help you identify sites your AdSense is not able to provide targeted ads. Formula for coverage is ad requests that returned ads. So in the previous example, if out of the three slots, only one slot, uh, displayed an ad, so this is one divided by three, uh, 200. So, uh, if two ads are shown on that page out of three slots, it is 66.67%. Likewise, if you have a search box, an average of 80% would mean that an average of one query out of the five showed, or out of the five, did not show any ad. I hope I'm clear about it. For coverage is a sign that Google was not able to provide ads suitable for your page and returns, it did not return any ads.

Ad Request CTR. I don't know. Click CTR is Click Through Rate. So Ad Request Click-Through Rate is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of ad requests. Very simple. If you received seven clicks out of 1000 ad requests, so CTR would be 0.7%.

Ad Request RPM. It is Revenue Per Thousand Impressions. So Ad Request Revenue Per Thousand Impressions is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of ad requests you have made, multiplying it by 1000. For example, if you earned an estimated $60 from 15,000 ad requests, so Ad Request RPM would be like $60 divided by 15,000, uh, into 1000, which is $4. It's pretty simple.

The number of times a user clicked on a standard content ad. Cost per click is a simple and important metric. Amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. CPC is calculated by dividing the estimated revenue by the number of clicks received. Earnings again, straightforward. Number of estimated earnings for a publisher. For that, very recent numbers can be a little problematic, but you can in your dashboard, you can see your recent earnings up to yesterday.

Impressions. So this looks like a simple one, but this is an important one. Impression is counted for each ad request where at least one ad had begun to download on the user's device. It is the number of ad units for content ads or search queries for search ads and loaded ads. With a very important point here to note is there are, I told you right, there are a lot of ad networks that are available. So who maintain a standard? But there are standard bodies like the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is IAB, or the Media Rating Council, MRC. They do a lot of research on this. They do a lot of periodic reviews, update industry standards for impression measurement. They also recommend guidelines over time. The standards for counting an ad impression on the web has evolved from counting an impression when the ad is served to counting an impression when the ad starts to download on the user's device. So there is something called a served impression, there is something called a downloaded impression.

CTR ratio of impressions that resulted in a click. Straightforward.

Okay, let's move to managing Google Ads. These are the steps for setting up a search campaign. So this, this is generally the first step for each campaign, not only for paid campaigns, for any campaigns. First step is generally to identify measurable goals. Once we identify measurable goals, we move forward. And in case of SEO and PPC campaigns, we move forward for the keywords. So in case of paid campaigns, the second step is like identifying keywords, structuring them into proper campaigns and ad groups. This is very important. Create perfect ads for your target customer. The important point is the target customer. And when you are, while you are measuring your goals, you need to understand your target customers perfectly. So what kind of searches they are doing, what kind of sites they are browsing. Once you crack all these details, you are good in Google Ads. Fourth point: view the results and make changes if required.

Okay, let's move on to identifying the measurable goals. These are some of the common goals that I identify. Goals can be much more tricky or complex, but let's keep it simple for the discussion. Those can be like total number of business leads required from a paid search campaign. Can be total number of revenues to be generated from a paid search campaign for e-commerce campaigns. Or visibility campaigns, goals can be a total amount of traffic to be generated. For app campaigns, goals can be total number of app downloads or in-app actions.

Let me quickly move to the first, first point as we discussed is identifying the keywords. So Google has given a wonderful tool for free. It is called Word Planner, the Keyword Planner. Once you identify the goals, you start searching. Google gives you this tool. You can do as many searches in this tool. You just have to, for search terms, you can define a geography. So if you are targeting United States, you can put US. To targeting India, you can put India. If I am creating a campaign specific for Bangalore, I can put Bangalore. So, uh, once you do this, you will be able to see the keyword search volumes, estimated cost per click, and so on, and you will be able to get an idea like how much approximately you are going to spend.

Ad Manager at George Furniture is searching for terms like, "buy office furniture online," "buy garden furniture online," sorry, "buy garden furniture," "buy furniture online." And what data Google is giving. He has put location as India. It could have been narrowed down. It could have been Bangalore or Chennai or also. So, yeah, once they are putting this data, they are getting average monthly searches, competition. We can see clearly see the competition is very high. And because, uh, they have already not started the ads, the impression shares are not shown. And can also see the top of the page bid in the low range and higher range. So for "buy office furniture online," George Furniture knows that they have to spend something like ₹20 to ₹30. That can, what all details it will depend on. It will probably depend on their Ad Score and ads.

Let me move to campaigns. Very important. This is the first structure. A campaign is like, I generally take this approach. I create campaigns according to network, geography, device segmentation, product type, and probably many other details. So I'll give an example. George Furniture selling chairs and tables in Bangalore and Chennai. So look at the data point. It's a furniture company. It can, it can sell chairs, it can sell tables, it can sell, uh, garden chairs, it can sell garden furniture, utensil, bedroom furniture. Different set of keywords to different locations, Bangalore and Chennai. They also have, like, you can select search or display ads depending on that. You can select. First, first approach is to be at a good campaign structure for search and campaign for garden furniture for Bangalore. To choose one keyword theme, choose one location, and choose one network. So search network, one keyword theme, which is garden furniture, and location Bangalore. Create a campaign first. Give it a meaningful name. Start working, start optimizing. Similarly, create a display. Just create one for display ads as well. Right. Once you master the structure for the next campaigns, you just need to load between settings. I have highlighted here that no need to add the campaign setting every time. You can just load your campaign settings.

Then comes ad groups. Very important point. Ad groups are part of, like, the ad campaign. Yeah, they are part of the ad campaign. They help in recognizing the ads by a common theme. So if you to select garden furniture, you can again go granular. So it can be like garden chairs, it can be garden tables, it can be something else. So my advice here, go as granular as possible. Select very tightly themed ad groups. Choose two, three, four keywords max. Do not go beyond that level. Be it targeted ads for those keywords at the ad group level. Bidding is done to control the ad display.

So let's move to the next, next point. Ad copy creation. Okay, probably the most important part. For best ads and similarly for display ads. So for time constraints, I have taken the example of text ads. As you can, as you can see, a text ad copy. There is a final URL, there's a headline one, which is 30 characters. Headline two, 30 characters. Headline three, 30 characters. Uh, and to be noted here, ad line three has been recently introduced. You may or may not show. So line one and headline two will definitely show depending on the devices, depending on various other points. Uh, these factors will show. Then there is a display path, which is like your website name slash ad path one, path two. So for example, in case of George Furniture, it can be GeorgeFurnitureShop.com slash garden furniture. There is description one, which is 90 characters, and description two would be 90 characters. Again, when you type things here, Google will show you previews for desktop and for mobile. Effectively reach your potential customers. Next ads should be very specific, relevant, attractive, and empowering. Some of the good practices that you can follow. You can highlight the differentiating factor first. Then you can include at least one keyword. So remember, beside your ad group, there are three, four, five, six keywords. You can push to go very broad and you can put 20 keywords. But do you know, do you think you should get an ad for 20 keywords? Would you be able to do the justice? No, right? So that is why I told you that keep the things tight. Give them correctly themed, maximum two, three, four keywords, five keywords per ad group. Then include your call to action, like "buy now" or "call us now," "visit our store." Fourth point: include prices, promotions, exclusive. Self-explanatory. Fifth point: make sure the ad text matches with the landing page. First important point. We covered this point. Whatever is your ad, like whatever is the term which is creating your ad, so the keyword text and the landing page should all be on the same page. This should speak the same language. Make sure your ad extensions complement your ad copy. How? We'll see in the next slide.

Ad extensions are additional pieces of information such as additional links from your website, phone numbers, seller reviews. It becomes a part of your advertisement on Google search ads. What do they do? They actually grab more real estate. But adding an ad extension, the size of your ad increases, and you know, size does matter, right? So in the side, the eyes of the ad increases, users would most likely to notice it more, click on these ads. So there are some examples shown to you here. At point, you can use extensions based on your business goals. Very important point. If your goal is to get customers to buy from your business location, if you want people to get, like, if you want to direct your prospective customers to your store, a restaurant, or any other place, you can use location extension. Very important point. So apart from location extension, there is something called affiliate location extension. For example, I am a Kia company, and I am creating my ads for my individual dealers. Okay? So I'm just trying to facilitate them. So instead, like I cannot give Kia Motors address there. So I'll create an affiliate location and I'll give the address of 3Z Motors, which is a Kia Motors authorized dealer, and I can give their location. Example. Second point is callout extension. Add additional text to your ads like "free delivery," "24x7 customer support," etc., etc. Second type of goal. If you want your customers to contact you by phone, simple, use call extension. So Google also had a text message extension, but it is not there anymore. But goal: get customers to convert to your website. Basically, if you want people to visit your website, you can use site link extension. Site link is like you can pick two or four site links, so that people can come to your website directly. For example, you can give your hours or order now direct link can be given. Again, callout extension. Add additional text to your ads like "free delivery," "24x7 customer support," etc., etc. And as an advanced concept, called structured snippets. The structured snippet would also give extra information on your product or service category. Also, there are price extensions, and it is not available in all the countries. If your goal is to get people download your app, I am pretty simple, use app extension.

It comes ad scheduling. Scheduling allows you to set custom times throughout the day when you want your ads to run. Specific hours for each day. For example, you can use ad scheduling for specifying certain number of hours or days of the week when you want to show your ads. For example, I am a restaurant, and I want to attract people near, I want to attract office buyers, office crowd near my restaurant to my restaurant. So what I will do is like I will provide much more importance during the lunchtime or the afternoon time when people go and meet other people. So I'll put my location extension, I'll put my call extension. I for these details in the right times only. We can also go a step further and set bid adjustments, increase or decrease your bids for specific days. And it's amazing, right? By default, Google ad campaigns are set to show ads all day. So when you do not touch your scheduling part, they are set to all day.

Conversion tracking. Are probably one of the most important points. It is again a free tool provided by Google Ads. So you can specify the actions which are important for you. For example, whether they are buying a product, or signing up for your newsletter, that they are calling your business, or downloading your app. Depending on, depending on your business goal, you can set it up. So, uh, when a customer completes an action, uh, that you have defined as the conversion, you can see the details of conversions. I suggested method here, use Google Analytics conversion tracking methods. And for that, you need to link your Google Ads with Google Analytics.

Let's quickly understand how we do that. Linking Google Ads to Google Analytics. Very important point. Probably it's the first step that you should take in order to view Google Ads data inside Google Analytics account and vice versa. Basically, there are two different accounts. One is Google Ads, and there is Google Analytics account. We need to link them. Before linking them, first step is to enable auto-tagging in Google Ads, otherwise the data may not report correctly between two platforms. And remember, the platforms have two different ways to collect this data. So we need to be very careful here. Analytics, as per the screenshot, I think you can see the screenshot. Go to go to your Admin view, go to Properties, and do your Google Ads links. And next steps are practice. Self-section. Artistry. I'm sure you will be able to do it.

Once you link your Google Analytics account with your Google AdWords account, then you can view ads data inside Analytics. So you, you, once it is linked, you go to Google Analytics, go to the overall view, you go to the Acquisition part, you go to, you go to the Google Ads part, then you see, go to the campaigns, where you will see, you will be able to see the clicks data, the cost data, cost per click data, how many users, how many sessions, and increasing part, bounce rate, just for session. These are all Google Analytics. All right. You cannot see this data in Google AdWords. Once you link both the properties, you will be able to see the of the data inside in one window. Similarly, you can see your shopping data, your display targeting data. I have not shown it here. You can see it during analytics data in Google Ads. It is the reverse one. Now that you have, you're able to see the AdWords data in Analytics, we'll want you to know that you can also do the reverse thing. So apart from the usual AdWords data like campaign data, budget, status, clicks, impression, CTR, that is click-through rate, average CPC, we can also see the Analytics details inside your AdWords. So these are, uh, visits, pages per visit, percentage of new visits, etc., etc. Bounce rate.

This is very important. I need your full attention here. Multi-channel funnel report, which is very important. In Analytics, conversions and e-commerce transactions are attributed to the last campaign. So it is by default attribution. Analytics is set to the last step that a user did while converting. So attribution, so by default it is attribution is set to the last action. So probably it is the last search or last hit ad. So the by default it will be shown like that. But what role did IR website referrals, purchase, or ads play in that conversion? We need to understand that. How much time passed between the user's initial interest and his or her purchase? So you need to understand in order to understand the user funnel, how the user moved from top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel. It is very important to understand that. We need to see the first time the user came to my site using a paid ad, then probably he or she came directly and converted, or probably they came to my website for it using paid search, then do some display campaign, they converted. So in this report, we went to all to check this report. There are parts given like that. So users have come, first they have come via paid search, like text ads and all. They have come via display ads. The users who have come by via paid search, then they have come directly to the website and converted. And if you are an e-commerce site and if you have installed e-commerce data properly, you'll be able to see that how much conversion value it got. For normal users, the values will be zero.

So let's come to the last step of our discussion, that is optimization. Very important. Google, Google AdWords, most important point is like doing continuous optimization. And how do we do continuous optimization? First point is for keywords. We need to check the keywords status always. Are the keywords, are all of them eligible? Are all of them performing properly? Are they performing properly? Are all of them getting good through rate? GTR is high or not? Are the bids, like, are they under-bidded? Like the top page bid is much higher. The impressions are counted, but it is not getting clicks. So we need to check all of this.

Into, go to search term reports on a regular basis. So whenever we, whenever we need, we analyze the search term reports, we will see a lot of negative keywords coming. So we need to keep adding the negative keywords so that our, uh, performance becomes better. We need to review our max cost per click. So this is very important. Cost per click at the corresponding quality score and gradually improve. Our idea should be to decrease the cost per click gradually. Basically, if our quality score will improve, our max cost per click will go down. New keywords came, but you, you need to continuously use the tools like keyword tools also. From the search term report, you will see a lot of new keywords which are used. Cash point. Test out branded keywords. Branded keywords are keywords which use your brand name. For example, Walmart or Edureka. People, people do not remember Edureka website. You will just type and they will come to your, they will, uh, CRP page. We need to bid on these as well.

Let's move to the next point. Ad map campaign structure. The important point. The ad group is a bit tightly structured. It should have maximum two, three, four keywords. For that, we can do a justice to these keywords and put a text which properly caters to all these keywords. So tell me, what happens when we start our campaigns? We are not that particular. So we create slightly broader ad groups. So in case we had done that, nothing to worry about. There's always room for restructuring. Keep reviewing the campaigns. And also, one point here, most of the time advertisers are under pressure that, okay, we need to deliver it at campaign within one day or two days. So initially, we don't know. We might not get time for a very good ad structuring. I would recommend to do that. And then when you take time in the future, you can always go back to the same campaigns, do a restructuring, split up ad groups, again, viewer ads. You need to, whatever good ads you produce, you know, return to those ads. You need to continuously test new ads. The first thing for any ad group, you should at least create three key ad groups. At least for each ad group, minimum three ads. Then you need to check how these ads are performing. Are they getting enough clicks? Are they getting enough conversions? Are they getting enough impressions? If some of them are not getting any impressions, pause them and add new ones.

Message matching is very important. Again and again, your keyword, your text, and your landing page should all match.

Dynamic keyword insertion. So Google provides us a way. If your ad group has four keywords, you can, or five keywords, or whatever number of keywords, you can do curly brackets and you can use dynamic keyword insertion. So basically, for all these keywords, your ads will be triggered. So your headline will show, or your ad will show. Never, there is a dynamic instruction. Good practice. I always do that. Would also recommend you to do that. Never do that if you use a lot of broad keywords because that can clear your ad. Also utilize the display URL. Low-hanging fruit. A lot of advertisers forget the display URL. So you can use your keyword and you can use. Important point in the display URL. Remember, it is after your, after your website. It is there are two different fields of 15 characters each. Whose call to action? I've already explained this point before. Stand out from the crowd. You have to do that by continuous experimenting and A/B testing. I like your USP. Again, explained it before. Tap attention with an amazing headline. So headlines are like really boldened. So you need to write an amazing piece of headline. And practice which I generally follow is I, in like to include the keyword in the headline. I would also recommend you to do that.

Next point: optimizing your website and landing page. Again, constantly test new landing pages. One very important point here. Google puts a lot of importance on speed. And Google always improves quality of page speed. Like Google also gives a lot of importance for mobile page speed as well. You need to do that. You need to put importance on page speed. You need to constantly test new landing pages. You need to take care of UI/UX issues. Make sure there are no UI/UX issues. Google does not like that. Keep your language, cultural aspects in mind. A lot of time what happens is we do a lot of pretty targeting. Like I have also done this in the past. I have done the mistake. I created a campaign for US and UK. So I created this like same. I used the same landing page blindly. I used the same text blindly. Trick. No, no, not the country. People speak English, but where they speak English and the way they pick words are different. You need to take care of these small aspects in mind. Most important point: do the on-page fixing of landing pages. So do the SEO fixing of your landing pages properly. Like signing a proper heading tag, title tag, upper meta descriptions, assigning proper image alt tags, etc., etc.

Optimize your ad extensions. Ad extensions, very example I explained you in detail. Use ad extensions as per your goals. Use whenever appropriate. Consider scheduling ad extensions as per your office timing or as per your store timing or as per your customer's convenience. You can measure your ad extension performance. So you need to do that periodically. Define your search, reviewer location settings. Very important. Sometimes like people create an ad campaign for US. So let's remember that US has 50 states. And US East Coast has a lot of search volume. The West Coast has a lot of search volume. Central part of US does not have a lot of virtually. From my experience, I'm telling this. So you need to further go down, further a good, more detailed. You can break down your locations from overall US to New York, probably New York State, New York City, California, like different cities of California. And you can also try out specific location targeted landing page. Believe me, they work amazing. Save money by scheduling. Schedule your ad only to appear during business hours. I explained this. Increase or decrease your bids depending on the results. Increase quality score. Quality score is the most important factor. And it depends a lot on through rate, click-through rate of your ads. Can only be increased when you experiment a lot on the text. So you need to write keywords. You know, to do a lot of experimentation or to write good text. Optimizing landing pages, optimizing ad text pages. Very important concept.

SKAGs is like Single Keyword Ad Group. So recently, a lot of advanced experts have been like advising this. I have also tried myself. Believe me, it works wonders. You take a single keyword based on the search volumes or probably which is the one which is most important for your target customers. Yet story around it. So out of that single keyword, you create a landing page, you create that ad group, and keep optimizing. I'm sure and your quality score will increase like anything. I tried this, my quality score increased from 5 to 8, reached 10. You'll understand how much impact it will have on the cost. So probably you will have to pay less than half of what you used to pay before, or even even lesser. Important point: keep optimization as a process. You need to implement it as a process. You need to be doing it for your CPC and maintain value for money and for high quality scores. Two SKAGs, use tightly themed ad groups. And also ask question like, do I need to aim for first position? Because a lot of time, first position, like the cost per click is very high. You can lower your cost per bid. You can still be on second and third position. So you are still on top of the fold, paying much lesser. So you need to think about things like that. Then we allocating budgets from underperforming campaigns and to remove underperforming campaign or ask them reallocate that same budget. Two search term reports. Cash point. The view competitors. Build on the competitors' names. And so if I am Walmart, I would probably build on my competitor, Best Buy's name. So you can also do that. Get ideas from your competitors. How would you do that? You can use some innovative tools. I have used a tool called SpyFu. It is an amazing tool. It will give you within a few clicks, it will give you all the data about what your competitors are doing. You can check out some, some of the best practices they are doing. Remember, be different.

Let's take a look at content marketing. So it is, you know, create the content, publish or promote it, and then distribute it on relevant channels. And these, this has to be relevant content with which your target audience is looking for and is searching for on the net. And this, this can be achieved through different marketing channels. Like you have various social media channels, you have your blog, there are different channels where you can, you know, put across your content. And this, once, once you are able to do this, I mean, it's easier said than done. But once you are able to do this, it will help you in increasing the engagement, uh, overall with your brand through this content, and it will actually drive a lot of business results. But the one thing that we need to really make sure in content marketing is the target audience is actually looking out for the content that you're putting out. I mean, it should, on it should either, uh, satisfy a need or a want which your target audience has, or it should be some information which they are seeking. So, so that would be considered relevant content to your target audience.

Okay, okay. So let's, let's take a look at, you know, what, what are the, what are the building blocks essentially of content marketing? So I think we, we went, uh, through this in the agenda. But so it's basically, you know, this is a, this is a process flow which we have. So we, it all starts with, you know, defining your goals and mission, then taking a look at the target audiences, and then they can call on, you know, which types of content would be helpful to them at various stages of the purchase cycle where they are. And then brainstorming and using various methods to come up with content ideas which gets fed into, uh, when defined content calendar. And then basically, you can, you know, start your publishing, creation, promotion of content, and then measure how it is helping you move towards your business goals and adding value to your own business. So these are the, this is the process flow which content marketing typically follows.

Okay, so let's, let's dive into the first subtopic which we have. So it says defining goals and mission. So any, any, uh, marketing initiative which a business takes, it, it has goals and missions. We've clearly, uh, well-defined rules and missions behind it. And this is a very important step to be done because if, uh, content, um, if a content marketing activity does not have clearly defined goals and missions, you might end up creating content, but it will be difficult to quantify at the end of your marketing efforts that, you know, what exactly is it helping your business achieve. So let's take a look at some of the goals typically which you might have. So what might be brand engagement? So in the, in the age of online, uh, marketing, brand engagement has grown in increasingly important. And if, if your content is able to, you know, engage the audience with your brand, it creates a top-of-mind recall. And over a period of time, they might recall your brand and they are making a purchase decision in, in the same industry. So it is really helpful for brand engagement. Next is thought leadership. So your, you might, you might want to establish a thought leadership via your content. So you see, uh, you might have seen on LinkedIn, there are so many people now who are kind of publishing their, their own posts. So the reason is that, you know, they want to publish themselves as thought leaders in a particular industry in which they operate. And that is one of the ways of doing it. They are putting out content over there, and people come and read it, they engage with, with the method, and that's how over a period of time, the author is seen or perceived as a thought leader in that industry. So content leadership similarly can help a brand achieve thought leadership in its space. Then we have new customer acquisition. Uh, this is a very common business goal because it adds directly to your bottom line. So you would want to acquire new customers via content marketing. And the way content marketing kind of helps is, you know, it helps push people down the purchase funnel. So maybe, uh, I will talk about it later in, in the webinar, but yeah, content marketing, uh, can help out if your goal is acquiring new customers. Then the other thing might be customer loyalty. Might be one of the potential goals that if you already have your customers, and say, you, you have a call center dedicated to answering their queries, you can use content marketing and put out, you know, FAQ pages or, uh, or a lot of content basically which they might potentially want to seek information after they have become your customer. So that, you know, it helps them also, it helps give them access to information 24/7. And as a business, it helps save your money which is spent on call centers, which can be, you know, spent on creating really good content which can be accessed from anywhere 24/7. So yeah, so these are like some of the goals which a content marketing campaign might have. And the takeaway is that it really makes a lot of sense to define your goals upfront so that you can, you know, have a well-defined targeted content marketing strategy as you go along.

Okay, so, so you have your goals defined. So what do you do next? So you would definitely want to have a look at the audience which you want to target with your content marketing. So you, we say that, you know, we need to create relevant content through our content marketing efforts, but you can't, the content cannot be relevant unless you know the audience for whom you want to make the content relevant to. So that's the entire purpose of this exercise that you want to define your target audience. And, uh, there are various ways of doing this. So let's take a look at the potential customers that your business might have. So how can, how can you, how can you define the target audience? Maybe you can take a look at the video. You can segment them by the demographics, right? Where they lie typically, right? So my demographics, it, uh, refers to, you know, maybe the, the age groups in which they lie in, or maybe the location from, uh, where they are based out of, or gender. So these are some of the characteristics by which you can segment your potential customers. You can take, look at their interests, which we generally call as psychographics. So what kind of interest do they have? So, so how does this help? Say, uh, for example, you, you have a, a segment of your customers created which, you know, shows a lot of interest in, say, cricket. So you might want to connect cricket, you might want to have content on your site which connects cricket to your, uh, product services, or talk about them in an interesting manner. So this might not be relevant in all the cases, but if you can do that, then definitely it might, you know, help in engaging such kind of customers. So you, you might also want to look at the buying behavior which your customers typically exhibit. Are they impulsive buyers, or are they, are they early adopters, or, you know, they are late adopters? We can segment by this method. Other things you can look at is the digital behavior that, you know, what other, what are the digital touchpoints to do here, a target audience exhibits? Where do they spend their time typically on? Is it, you know, various social media channels, or is it various devices which they use, like mobiles or tablets? Are they present more on the mobile phones and tablets, or they use desktop, or, or many, many other channels? I mean, to, like, do your customers typically originate from organic search or paid search, helping your marketing efforts? So you can take a look at, you know, the behavior which your target audience typically exhibits in the space. Uh, then, this is a really important, the purchase life cycle stage. So essentially, you can take, take a look at, you know, what is the decision journey which your target audience typically exhibits. So when we talk about decision journey, it could be, it is typically segmented into, you know, awareness, consideration, and purchase. So at an awareness stage, a potential customer is just aware of the need. So see, you're selling a credit card. So, so he, he typically would not, you know, directly zone in on a credit card as his name. He probably, he wants to understand, you know, how to manage his expenses better. So that might be one of the things that he, he searches when he recognizes the need. So what are the kind of touchpoints that he had digitally when he has recognized that need? And then how does he do the research part of it? I mean, uh, when he's searching for, you know, the best credit. So once he has identified he needs a credit card, so his queries like, you know, "best credit cards" or, you know, "compare credit cards." So what are the kind of content which he goes through, or which other type of content which kind of influences his decision to purchase? So that is the, so that's there. And then at the purchase, uh, stage, you know, uh, what is the content which is, uh, actually, uh, helping him make a final decision? So if I talk about credit cards, it might be, you end up on a brand site, and then you see your list of credit cards, and then you try and fit one of those credit cards to your particular needs, like you might want to, uh, have a credit card which gives you more air miles, or which helps you in shopping. So I mean, do you have a proper content created on your site which educates the target audience about this or helps, helps make them make that decision? So that's why understanding all, all these things are really important for doing your content marketing. And the other, this is for the potential customers. For the existing customers, you can, uh, segment them, because you have, uh, access to the analytics data and you can do a lot more with that. You can segment them through the life cycle stage, or you can segment them by revenue that that segment particular segment brings in, or you can look at the past content consumption behavior, etc., or you can take a look at the engagement metrics. So there are very various methods of segmenting your existing customers. So, so this is an important, uh, aspect of actually, you know, creating these segments, what we call as a buyer, buyer personas. So personas are nothing but something which represents a particular category of customers. It's not, it's not an individual customer, but the information laid out with you will, you know, typically represent a category of customers. And it captures a lot of psychographic and demographic information about that particular customer segment which is the person that is trying to represent. And this includes, you know, their interest, their needs, wants, as we discussed, their desires, or the influencers, etc. So, so let's, uh, take a look at an example. Let's, uh, assume that we are a company that sells, uh, digital, digital marketing product. So this is a typical persona that we might have. So let's take a look at it. So it says neighborhood. Though this does not mean anything in our context because, you know, it's representing a particular category, but just to represent, we have put a name over there. It says he's a marketer by profession. He works at a large company. So he might be a marketing manager at a large company. Typically leads a team of five people, right? So we get a clue over there. So suppose this person is trying to make a purchase decision. So there might be someone in his team who might be the influencer for it. So he is 40, married, two kids.

Typical, uh, but yeah, uh, typically at that position. Then it says, the professor's goal is increased sales by making sure the prospect pipeline is full. So, he is basically a person who is maybe responsible for lead generation for his company, and he works in an uncertain environment because it keeps on changing all the time. And he needs to understand the landscape better to talk about a better marketing strategy, maybe overall, it might be an additional strategy. And, uh, since he's new, he wants to improve digital marketing skills and better, better the performance reporting which is currently going on in the company.

So, if I'm a digital marketing product company, so definitely this is a very important statement to me. And I would, this is like a sample of the information which we have, but I would like to, you know, fill in more information about this about such a segment by, you know, doing both primary and secondary research. By primary research, we will deep dive into that, going for, going ahead with the webinar, but that means, you know, conducting interviews with such kind of people or taking a look at, uh, you know, what conversation our CH team is having with such kind of people, or or secondary research by, you know, going on the net and finding out more about them.

How this would help us? Uh, let's take he works in an uncertain environment. And say we are a digital marketing product company, and we put, put in a very good content on our site or on other channels about, you know, how our digital marketing product actually kind of helps, uh, marketing managers come up with a better digital marketing strategy to cope up with an uncertain environment, like 10 ways it helps us in doing this. So this would be like something which, uh, Rohan might be searching on and might end up, uh, interacting with our content. And that increases our brand credibility in front of Rohan. This is useful content which actually helps him. And then our digital marketing product will be, will definitely be in his consideration set the next time, you know, he's trying to make a decision on going with a digital marketing product. So, yeah, that's one of the ways which buyer persona would definitely help us and our overall content marketing efforts.

Okay, so now we would, we take a look at distributing content, uh, based on the purchase cycle. So the purchase cycle, uh, as I explained, so it's been split into four stages over here. So I talked about the awareness stage, where a person, you know, is aware about the need. And then we have a research stage, where he kind of does research about solving this problem. And then there's a comparison stage, where he's trying to get, uh, a product which basically satisfies the criteria which he is going after. And then there is a purchase stage, where he actually goes ahead and makes the purchase decision. So, so these are, like, some content types which typically help in these various stages.

So if you look at awareness, you know, uh, you have blog posts, so, uh, or you have social media updates. So this is an example of content type which at this stage might help in making the user or the visitor aware about, you know, that, okay, this, this is one of the ways that my need can, my need can be satisfied, or, you know, even making you aware of the need altogether. So somebody searching for how to manage my business expenses, so you might get, like, five to ten ideas, and he might not have heard about two, three of them. So, so basically, it helps make him aware about what's there about in the market. And, uh, that might lead him to, you know, do further research on his end.

Research, typically he would do on the net, or he would want to say, attend a webinar, or look at industry reports, or, you know, in general, do research, maybe, uh, look at some YouTube videos. Then, uh, then he would, then once he's done his research and he's figured out how he's going to solve this problem, then he would do a comparison of the top products or the top brands which are available in that space. And there are a variety of ways of doing that. Some of the content which he might use might be case studies, or he might have a look at customer reviews and testimonials about their experience, which typically everyone of us does before making a purchase decision, or take a look at demos and figure out, you know, whether it's satisfying his criteria for making the purchase.

And then when he's in the purchase stage, definitely he would want to take a look at, you know, more detailed product pages or other detailed product reviews which would actually give him an indication of how that product is going to ultimately, is always need, and whether it caters to all the criteria that he's going after. And that would help him make the final purchase decision. So, yeah, this slide in a sense gives us some of the different types of content that you might want to look for while guiding your prospects from the awareness to the purchase stage.

Okay, so, yeah, so now we have our goals, our target audience, and as we said, we took a look at, you know, how we can map the content types to the buying cycle stage. So here we have listed, uh, some of the content types that we can produce. So there are, there are a lot of content types that can, that can be produced. So this is just to make everyone aware that, you know, it's not just a blog entry that we can put or share something on social media. There are a lot of engaging content types present. It's just that we need to narrow down our goals and target audience, and then it will be very easy to figure out which, which of the content types might be useful, uh, depending on our products and services.

So, yeah, we have, you know, case studies, we can put out white papers, there's email newsletters, how-tos, webinars, videos. So videos have shown, uh, increase in user engagement. So typically, if you put a video on a page, we see that people tend to engage a lot more with your page and might be interested in the product. Uh, so we have PDFs, guides, ebooks, tools, blogs, podcasts, games. Games can be a good way of engaging. You can put quizzes. So if I take the same example of credit card, which I taken earlier, so you can have a quiz on your page, right? So a person comes in, and there are five questions which are that, you know, what, what is it that your, what is the type of rewards that you're looking for? So there might be two, three options, MIS, etcetera, etcetera. What is the type of spend that you do, etcetera, etcetera? And once he has quickly clicked on these two, three questions, it will suggest the top three cards which might be relevant to him. So it, it makes the, the decision that much easier. So such kind of content, you really have to narrow down, you know, what your goals are, what are the kind of products and services you have for, and then it, it really becomes much more easy to make a choice of, you know, which content type would satisfy your, the need of your target audience. So, yeah, so these are some of the power types.

Okay, so, so let's, let's take a look at, uh, what we, uh, call has the content marketing pyramid. So, yeah, so content marketing, uh, has a lot to do with quantity as well as quality. But increasingly over the years, it has been proved that, you know, really high-quality content is the one which actually engages the user a lot more, gets shared a lot, gets linked to a lot, and actually, you know, helps bring in tangible benefits to the brand and its goods. So what it, what it means over here is the, the more efforts you put into your content creation process, the, the more unique and the more value it will add to users, and ultimately the business will benefit a lot more.

So if you look at the lower end of the pyramid first and the second levels, so you have social media posts and tweets. So essentially, it's very easy to create a social media post or, you know, just tweet about something which is happening. And typically, a brand in today's time tweets, you know, say 50 to 70 times per day. So, yeah, it requires a comparatively less effort. Even curated content, which is curated content, is nothing but content which is picked up from various sources, or you have a blog posts or contributed content. So these, these type of content are typically, uh, require lesser effort. But if you start, you know, taking time out and trying to build quality content, then you can come up with things like infographics, or a presentation which you can probably share on SlideShare, or a webinar which you can have for your customers, or create an e-book or a white paper which actually helps, you know, solve some problem of your target audience or adds value to them in their research. So the, these type of content typically cannot be created, you know, in a span of say, a week or a week. It typically will require a lot more effort, say 15 to 20 days on an average. That would really depend on your team, but it would definitely take a lot more effort, and it would add a lot more value, and it, you will see a lot of visitors over a period of time benefiting from this content, would bring in increased engagement.

So, yeah, so that's what this content pyramid is essentially talking about, that the more efforts you put in to your content marketing, the, the your, the content that you create will be of higher quality, and it will add a lot more value to your target audience, and this, and ultimately to your business.

So, uh, now let's take a look at how you can develop content ideas, right? You have your target audience, you have your goals, you have your content type figured out. So now you would typically want to figure out, you know, okay, so now what kind of, like, what, what theme or what, what should be the theme of the content, or what should the content talk about? So there are, like, various ways that you can used to do this. So the first box talks about consult. So you can consult a subject matter experts in that industry. It will be, these are the types of content which, you know, would be really helpful to somebody who is looking for information in this industry or trying to make a purchase.

You can do a brainstorm session with your colleagues. That's okay. So what, what are the type of content they feel, you know, was, uh, requested by your customers or would, would add value to your customers? Or you can talk to your sales team, because your sales team is typically having a lot of conversation with your customers, and there are many leads they close or do not close, but they do have an idea of what the customers are looking out for. Or you can directly talk to your customers, have feedback or a survey which you can plan, and then get a lot, a lot many ideas about which content or information your customers are after.

You can do secondary research. Uh, you can look, search on the net, take a look at, you know, what kind of content your property details are developing, uh, or you can, uh, you know, take up some USB good keywords which are being searched into industry and see, you know, which are the top results Google is showing up, what kind of content is being shown as relevant to the keywords which are, you know, being searched in your industry. So you can, uh, also use content research tools, like there's one mentioned over here, ideas.contentfile.com. So later in the webinar, we also take a look at one of those tools, uh, called Mastermo. So that will give you an, uh, it is basically a database of content, and it can tell you, you know, what kind of content is popular for a subject or is getting shared a lot on social media networks. And you would want to take the content idea and, you know, and modify it a little and add your unique brand voice and want to put it out. So, yeah, that's one not one method.

Then you would want to review your existing content. They might be, uh, already content on your blog or what you have shared on your social media site which was really helpful to people and you brought in a lot of engagement, and you can republish their content, add, add a spin on it, so that, you know, it adds tags value and also uses the course theme, and you can republish it. Or you can then, uh, but, uh, we need to definitely plan ahead. We need to have a content plan, and we need to have a content calendar, because, you know, it's very difficult to, without planning, it could be very difficult to come up with content marketing ideas close to the publishing date for the contract. So you need to definitely have a solid content plan and a strategy in place for your content marketing.

Okay, so, so yeah, this slide, uh, is, uh, this is a very good graphic. It actually tells you that your content should lie basically, you have taken a look at the customer interest and their needs, which we have done through the process till now, and your, and there is, like, a need for your content to satisfy your business goals, and it needs to communicate your brand expertise and value. And, uh, so typically, uh, there is something which is the customer wants, there is something which your business or your brand wants, and you want to have your content in The Sweet Spot, which actually lies at an intersection of, you know, what the customer wants, or what his needs are, and what your unique, like, the brand proposition is, what a unique plan value is. And that is the type of content which will also add value to the customer while making, uh, your customer aware of a brand and what you offer, and, you know, get them interested in your product services and help them make a buying decision in the favor of your brand. So, yeah, so that's what this slide essentially communicates.

Well, let's take a look at typically what you would want to include in in your content calendar and why you would want to actually have this content calendar. So as we said, first of all, it helps in having a clear plan that, okay, these are the types of content that you're going to publish, say, over the next three months, and these are the type of content types. So once we have the plan, this can be distributed among all the different parties that are going to be involved in the various processes, like content creation and, like, content writers who are going to actually write the content, or the, the SEO team, they might want to have, you know, certain keywords inserted in the conferences, so that it will become relevant to keywords which are actually getting searched for, or content narratives who know that, you know, they are expecting this content to go live at this date, and this is when they need to make sure that the copy is done. So it is very, very important to have the content calendar in place so that there is a set schedule, and everybody who's, uh, a part of it knows, you know, when to play their role and when they need to essentially, uh, contribute to that.

So these are the some of the things which can be included. So in the calendar, we did see an example in the, in the last slide, we'll just take you through. So we can take a look at the theme which is which it is retracing. So theme can be like a content theme. So like how to set up a Twitter profile was one of the examples which we saw. So, so, so anything related to Twitter profile, uh, can be like one thing. So what different and kind of content we are going to create to tackle this theme can be included as part of this. Then we have the planned post date, when we know we plan to post this content. What is the title of the content? Like we saw, how, how to post a Twitter file, how to create a crypto profile, so that can be the title. We can add a short description about the content. So we can put in the content publication channels, the different channels or the different social media channels or the different blogs where we want according to poll. I want we can put the tags. So tags can be related to the SEO elements, like what keywords we want to target. What if we have a blog, so what category this content should fall under? All this can be captured over here. So if there's a CTA, right, if it's a block entry, what is the CTA which we should have on it, or if there are, so what, what kind of behavior it, it is meant to drive? Like some content would, you know, drive a newsletter sign, some kind of content would drive a purchase on your site. So it makes sense to identify that, and that that can become the intended goal of the content piece. So it makes sense to, like, these are some of the attributes. You indefinitely, as you go along, you can add to this list, but capturing all, all these basic elements would really make your content calendar very robust.

What, what do we need to execute a typical content marketing campaign? So you, as we talked about, we need, first of all, we need the content, definitely. So we read it in all the various formats which we have mapped to our target audience. So it might be ebooks, videos, articles, but we need to have a content calendar in place, and we need to have content created, uh, as per the content calendar. Then we need a place to host that content, the content that we have created. So it would also depend on this content type and, you know, our strategy. Okay, you would want it to reside on. So if it's something like a blog post, maybe it will reside on our own website, or if it's to do with our paid search landing page, the content of land will reside on our landing page, or if it's a video that we have created, then we would want to include it on one of our pages on the site, and also maybe host it on YouTube, because YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and when we begin, when we can discover the video through YouTube itself. So, yeah, we would want to take a call based on the type of content and the strategy that we have in place on where we would want to host that content.

Then we have channels to distribute the content. As we said, it can be the various social media channels which work for a business, or where our target audience typically hangs out, or it can be, if it's a learning PJ testing, a same channel, or if it's a newsletter that if you have created content for a newsletter, then it will tie into our email campaign. And ultimately, then we will talk about the measurement tools. So, yeah, we have the contents in place, we have done the promotion, the users are having this. So then you would want to essentially know, okay, so how, how is, how I mean, how, how is the content marketing essentially move the needle on the performance, right? How, what were my engagement metrics before, and what are they now? Like, which kind of content is actually resonating with my target audience, you know, which kind of content they actually are finding a lot of value, and which can also feed into my, uh, future content calendar. If my goal is to, you know, increase conversions, then you would want to take a look at, okay, so these are the number of conversions, how is my content actually contributed in getting these conversions? It might not be direct, but you can use various attribution techniques to, you know, uh, say, okay, so this content has actually played a role in in the conversion. So it was a part of the customer journey. So such kind of measurement, uh, tools you would require to actually say, backup with data that's, okay, this is how your content marketing, uh, has helped you.

So what, according to you, is social media marketing? There are nearly 3 billion active social media users across the globe, and this constitutes up to 40 percent of the entire world's population. And around 90 percent of social media users across the globe access social networks through mobile. Also, the sector is way faster in terms of reaching your customers irrespective of their location status. It mainly refers to the process of obtaining more traffic through social media sites. So this is the major agenda of using social media marketing, guys. It is a vast field where you can find evergreen job opportunities for freshers as well as experienced professionals. Some major social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on.

So now that you guys have got a clear idea about what is social media marketing, let's understand its benefit. How exactly social media is going to benefit you or your business? Let's have a look. Social media can help you out in a lot of ways, guys. It helps you increase your website traffic, also helps you raising your brand's awareness, helps you in creating your brand identity, and also helps you in improvising your communication with customers or prospects. So this is exactly how social media is helping you out in delivering your content to your customers or prospect effect.

So moving on, let's understand what keeps social media intact and so much more life. So let's understand how. So we'll mainly discuss about the five pillars in the field of social media marketing. So let's see what are they. So there are five pillars, like I mentioned, which helps in keeping social media marketing alive. So the five major pillars of social media marketing are: strategy, planning, engagement, analytics, and advertising. So let's understand how they help social media marketing. First, we'll discuss about the strategy. So this phase is considered as the major part that drives the growth of your company. It lets you analyze, set relevant goals, and also helps you in planning your business. The more effective your strategy is, the more are your chances to being successful.

So talking about the strategy, it encompasses everything related to planning, setting goals, how to meet the desired goals, analyzing how to engage with your audience, and so on. And also another major feature, I would say about strategizing your social media campaign would be, it lets you know what kind of conversation you should have with what kind of intellectual person, or so on, something like that. So this is exactly how strategy helped in social media marketing.

Now talking about planning, a large part of your success in business depends on how well you plan your social media campaigns. Also, before you start posting on social media, you need to have an amazing plan, guys. Research about your current market trends and define your target audience, and identify which social platform is suitable for your business. Okay, in order to create a good plan, having an objective is more likely to help you with that. As long as you stick to your plan and work on improvising it, you'll be in safe hands, guys.

Now moving on to the next important pillar of social media marketing, we have the engagement factor. As your business grows, the reach also eventually increases. You'll have a lot of things to take care, starting with maintaining a good social profile to interacting with customers on any of the social media platforms. You'll be on the edge of your marketing campaign. So having a good engagement ratio is going to help you with that. Now, the best part is, you can track your engagement ratio by using engagement tools like Buffer, Slack, and so on. It aggregates all your social media mentions, also the posts that didn't tag your business's social media profile, including a few messages. Now, this was about engagement.

Now talking about analytics, social media is a very vast platform where you can promote any of your product. Analyzing its roots can give you enough kickstart your business growth. So analyzing your leads from social media, tracking them, and converting them is very important. You can make use of a few analytics tools like Google Analytics, this metrics, and many more, which helps you analyze your website's performance on the SARPs.

Now talking about the fifth and the most important pillar of social media marketing, we have the advertising factor. Have you ever seen some ads which pop up every now and then while you're watching a video? These are nothing but the advertisements that are up for promotions. Social media is so damn powerful that you can manage the status of who can view your advertisement. You can always make use of platforms like Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram sponsored ads, and so on. So this is exactly how you can promote your product by pushing it. So advertising is one of the major factors or the major reason for you to even create content in the first place. As long as you promote your content or promote your work, it'll be useful for you as well as the customer or whoever it is on the receiver end. So these were the five major pillars of social media marketing.

Now moving ahead, let's take a look at the different tools which are used. So in this video, I'm going to be talking about only two major social media marketing tools. So let's understand them in detail. So I'm going to be focusing mainly on two tools that are namely Buffer and Hootsuite. So let's understand them in detail. Firstly, we'll talk about Buffer. So Buffer is a software application which is mainly designed for web and mobile. It can manage your social accounts by helping you schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, and so on. And also the best part about this is it lets you analyze your results and provides means to communicate and engage with your customers. This is an extension, guys, and also this browser extension is one of the latest productive hacks. I've tried to list out a few notable features of this, so let's have a look. It is easy to share your posts faster using Buffer's browser extensions. It is free of cost, guys, and you can share your tweets at the right time. If you get any tweets or retweets, you can just tweet back or you can just retweet at the right time. And also, it is easy to track top performing content. If you're going to be working on a keyword like say, digital marketing, for example, if you're going to be working on digital marketing, you want to know the top performing content, right? So this tool helps you give you the insights about the top performing content. And also, you can easily customize your scheduling process for each platform. You can also make use of the Chrome extension, like I mentioned, to add articles and contents from the web to your Buffer queue or share the content on the go.

Now moving on to the next tool that is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is one among the most widely used social media marketing platforms, and it was created by by Ryan Holmes in 2008. This social media marketing platform lets you build smarter workflows, scales across your organization, and delivers demonstrable ROI. This amazing tool allows you to collaborate with your team members alongside the major benefit of seeing your comments and mentions in one place. You can also assign tasks, plot a social media calendar, and schedule your updates over there. So this was about the two major tools which are used for social media management.

Now moving on to the next part of the session, let's take a look at the different tips that I'm going to be giving you related to social media marketing. A few tips from my end to help you out with social media marketing, guys. So the first thing you should do is identify your market goals. Set a proper goal and try to work towards it and create unique and specific strategy for each social media platform. If you're working on Facebook, you need to have a different strategy. If you're working on Instagram, you need to be very unique and different. Always be consistent, guys, and always choose the right platform that is right social media platform for promotion. See, you need to know how to analyze your website, guys. Once you know that you're getting traffic from one of the marketing channels, you should focus on that. And if you're not getting more traffic from one of the channels, you should try focusing on a different channel and try to, you know, elaborate or try to be more interactive with your customers and try to create more good content. So this is exactly how you can get more traffic. Also, focus on your messaging part because it has a greater impact on your website as well as your business. Always be up to date with the latest technology trends. This is a must, guys. If you're working on social media platforms, you need to be very up to date with the technology trends. Also, know how to analyze your results and focus on the part which needs more attention. So this is how any company grows. This is exactly how anybody comes to the first position in the SARPs. So know how to analyze your results. Okay, so these were a few tips from my end, guys.

Now coming to the last part or the final part of this session, let's understand how to choose the best social media platform. Knowing what to market and how to market plays a vital role in choosing the right social media platform. So here are a few points that you should consider before selecting any social media platform. Seek out your target audience, guys. Focus on what your customers are looking for and try to deliver accurate results. Also, define a good set of goals and build a good business strategy. Always concentrate on what your customers want, and delivering good content requires a lot of research. And also, you should be good at social media management tools, and also distributing your content is a must, guys. If you're working in an e-commerce site, you should know how to handle posts, you should know how to analyze your results, you should know how to track them, and so on, right? So these are a few factors which you should consider before selecting any social media platform.

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Topic of the day, which is understanding affiliate marketing and how we're going to do that is we're going to do that by an example. We all know about CarDekho. Now, Priya, an imaginary character in this particular case, is planning to buy a new car. Now, she is confused between two different models, and what she does is she goes to cardekho.com, maybe compare it and get some guidance. That is how a usual consumer goes and researches about a product. Now, moving ahead, she made check all the details and reviewed all of the details of the two or three options whichever she was looking for on CarDekho, and she made her choice. Now, she checks all the offers which are available, selects her nearest dealer, and fills out a form with her contact info. What is the business model for CarDekho? I mean, they just simply took the lead and passed it on to the next company which was, in this particular case, Maruti. Now, during the entire process, CarDekho did not charge Priya anything for the service. If she was able to check reviews, she was able to check the features, she was able to compare all the cars, all of this was free of cost. So what is CarDekho actually doing? Why are they doing this for free? And and the biggest question is, how do they make their money? Now, the answer lies in the next slide, which is they earn their money through affiliate marketing.

Now, let's go step by step into this and see that how it works. Now, the first of all, the seller strikes a deal with CarDekho.com. Now, about this deal, we're gonna talk about it. Places the seller's offer on the website. Now, Priya sees these offers and then she puts out a particular form. Now, CarDekho, what it does is either automatically or manually sends the lead to the nearest seller. Now, it could be a showroom as well. Now, seller receives the lead and makes a contact with Priya, and let's assume the purchase is made. And even if the purchase is not made, CarDekho.com earns a commission for a lead. The seller gives CarDekho commission for a lead or for a sale. Now, that is how CarDekho.com makes its money. Now, that brings us to the definition of affiliate marketing. In simple terms, affiliate marketing is promoting a product in return for a commission on the sale. Now, think of affiliates as commission agents, or just think about affiliates as one of your brokers. And just like any real estate broker gets some money whenever there's a sale done of a particular house, the same way affiliates also get their commissions. Now, affiliate marketing is an extension of performance marketing. Performance marketing happens within a particular company, right? Affiliate marketing is dependent upon the people who are outside of your company.

Moving ahead, let's look at some of the key terminologies which are used in affiliate marketing. Number one, it is a merchant. Now, merchant, also known as advertiser or a seller, is the product owner whose product is being promoted and who sells the product. Now, in case of, let's say, Amazon, tower for example, is not a product owner. The product owner at this particular point of time, because it is displayed on Amazon, and Amazon is the merchant or an advertiser or a seller.

Moving ahead. Now, why merchants need affiliate marketing? Large e-commerce players lack a critical piece of organic traffic or engaging content. Let's take a very simple example of a camera, and let's take it as a product which has been displayed on a large e-commerce company, for example, an Amazon or a Flipkart. Now, the Amazons and the Flipkarts have a difficulty in targeting the non-commercial, early-stage search traffic. Let's say you search for best cameras of 2021, and in that particular case, assuming Amazon's search result do not come up at the top, but an affiliate website or a YouTube video or anything of that sort comes up there, and then you find the links, and that is how they get more traffic onto their own website. Now, affiliates with high-quality, relevant, SEO-friendly content can actually fill in the gap, exactly how it happened or in the case of the camera. Now, small merchants lack the resources and the market reach. And when you are talking about resources, it could be the internal team or it could be the lack of marketing budget. Now, affiliates provide the market access, that reach, and the branding as well. Now, in this particular case, affiliates are an extension of a marketing team, and they start keeping the marketing cost in check. Now, the merchants, because they do not have unlimited amount of money like how large e-commerce have, they can always make sure that their marketing cost is in check.

Moving ahead, how affiliate marketing benefits the merchant? Number one, they get extra set of traffic without spending any money, because traffic is not monetized. Secondly, there is no risk advertising, that means you have to pay only when someone buys the product. Number three, build the brand, especially for new businesses. Now, assuming I'm a small-time T-shirt maker, and somebody who's very famous, a fashion model or somebody, just posts about that and posts through our affiliate link, then in that particular case, you will be able to get the business from us, and they can build the brand for me. Now, again, one of the great things about affiliate marketing is that you get a lot of backlinks without doing any effort, and the only thing which you will have to do is that you have to pay once the sale is done, which is pretty much okay with almost any entrepreneur.

Moving ahead, now let's talk about the affiliate. Affiliate or a publisher is either a site or a company or an individual that is promoting the product and gets a commission for each sale. They usually have a niche audience, as I told you about the example of camera is the best example here. Let's say there's a, assuming there's a photography.com, and then they tell you about the best cameras for 2020 or 2021. They have a very niche audience of just those photographers, and that is what is the best part about being a publisher or an affiliate.

Now, why affiliates need affiliate marketing? Because of that, actually, there are millions of sites that receive heavy traffic, but they do not have any product to sell. Now, also in the same scenario, some of them might not have large enough traffic, but have really, really loyal visitors. Now, ads is an effective monetization option when the page views are in millions. Any blog lets you start any blog tomorrow, and if you have 200 people or 500 people coming onto your website on a daily basis, and if you try to put in ads there, it is not going to give you a lot of info. But again, let's assume that you own photography.com, and again, 500 people only are coming through it, but one of them decided to buy a product from your website. Now, in that particular case, you're gonna get a very decent cut out of the sale, which eventually is going to help you monetize your visitors. And also, this gives you a source that your information on the website, whatever you are promoting, is actually making sense.

Moving ahead, how affiliate marketing benefits the affiliates? First of all, you can monetize your traffic. Because if a person comes over to your website, clicks on that camera link, goes ahead and buys that camera, in that particular case, you're going to be monetizing yourself. Secondly, it is more profitable than running ads. Now, the reason why it is more profitable than running ads is, first of all, we know that there are ad blockers, pop-ups, there are ad blocking browsers which are available. Now, so ads actually on third-party websites are going down, as we can already see it. Then actually, it becomes a better option in order to start making money on your website. Now, third thing is that you should have a better control of what visitors see and buy. Whenever we are talking about better control over what visitors see and buy, that means you are putting the direct links of the products, you are giving a proper photoshoot, and you're doing all of those efforts, and you have a better control of it. Because in cases of ads, you do not have a very good control that who will be advertising on your platform. That is where affiliate makes more sense. Now, number four is that ability to offer custom deals to promote sales. That is also one benefit which affiliates get.

Moving on, there are a lot of affiliate websites which are available. Now, if you want to see a review comparison website, we've already talked about CarDekho.com. But if you are into mobiles, you must have always heard about GSM Arena. Secondly, now there are some loyalty and reward websites as well, because it just doesn't make sense for them, so they want a more loyal customers coming onto their website. So every time somebody buys anything from their website, they provide some sort of a loyalty points as well to those, so that they keep on visiting their websites, buy again from their affiliate links, and so forth and so on. Now, number three are your Google websites, coupon Dunya. Now, what they do is, like, they provide you with a coupon code which might be available somewhere else as well, but once they give you that Google code, they redirect you to the merchant website. Number four, large media websites. It could be Hindustan Times, it could be Wall Street Journal, or anybody of those sort. So they are also doing the same thing because again, you have more control, and you get a lot of money coming out of by doing the affiliate marketing. And the last and not the least are like blogs. Again, as I told you about, let's assume you own photography.com, and you are making those blogs and photos.

Moving ahead, we're gonna talk about the customer. Now, this is the end point of the cycle. Now, customers are drivers of any affiliate marketing program. So basically, when a consumer buys a product or service via an affiliate, the affiliate also gets a cut, and the merchant shares the profits, and he gets the sale. Now, this is how the affiliate network or a platform works. An affiliate network or platform is a third-party platform that acts as an intermediary between the merchant and the affiliates. They charge a fee for being a middleman. Now, think of it as one more layer in the graphs which we saw before, and these are the people who actually manage your affiliates. So if there's a merchant, this is an affiliate network, and there would be multiple affiliates which would be there within an affiliate network. Now, here are some of the examples of affiliate network or a platform. Now, first of all, is Commission Junction. Then we also have Comely. We have ShareASale, and we have Qlinks.

Now, let's talk about affiliate program. Affiliate programs are a type of an affiliate network. These are the programs which are set by large companies who want to get their affiliates on board and to get more traffic to their website by reaching non-commercial or early-stage search traffic. Now, just to give you an example, an affiliate program is something which has the fee structure, that how much are you, as an affiliate, going to get if he sells a particular product or a particular type of product or a product in a certain category. It could also include the basic operating procedure, that how do you go ahead and make your own custom links and share it on your blog or a website. And it does include the payouts, when the payouts are going to happen. Now, how it works is that the affiliate program generates the traffic for the website and in turn gives the commission on the sale.

Moving along, some of the affiliate program examples are as follows. Now, Amazon Associates is probably one of the most popular affiliate programs. eBay Partner Network is also there. Shopify and Flipkart also own a a program. There's some other key terminologies which you should be knowing about the affiliate market. Number one is fee. A percentage of sale or a fixed amount which is paid to an affiliate. Now, fee, as I told you previously, could be different for each and every company and could be different for each of the categories within a particular company, or even to a certain level to a product as well.

Link views is that how many times the product link was viewed on an affiliate site or a network. For example, assuming you are an affiliate and you put up a link for Amazon on your website. Now, how many times a person has clicked on that link and went over to the website, that is what is considered as link views.

Moving on, clicks. How many people went to the merchant's site by clicking the affiliate link. Number four is our average order value. Size of the average order in INR or any applicable currency. Earning per click, which is your total commission, how much you have got within a time frame, and total number of clicks generated by an affiliate in a given BB.

Moving along, we're gonna talk about how it works. How affiliate marketing works. Now, first of all, in the first step, affiliate obtains a merchant's product details and creatives, sometimes directly from the merchant or from the affiliate network. Number two, affiliate uploads the products or creatives with a special link. It is also known as a parameterized link that contains your affiliate ID, so that the consumer visits an affiliate site and clicks on the merchant's product or a creative or a link, anything. Now, the cookie or a code is sent on the consumer's browser, which identifies the merchant affiliate, which is you in this particular case, and the link. Moving on, consumer is redirected to the merchant's website. Now, whenever he goes to the website, then the affiliate identity is captured by the merchant URL. Moving on, the consumer purchases from the merchant website, and cookie information is sent to an affiliate or affiliate network. Now, merchant auto transmits the sales information to the affiliate network, which includes the affiliate ID. The affiliate network tracks the sales and the transactions with matching to that affiliate ID. Affiliate and merchant reconcile the transaction, and merchant pays the affiliate directly.

Now, if you are a company who wants to set up their own affiliate marketing, how are you gonna do that? We're going to be talking about the same thing. Now, what are the basic requirements of a merchant if you want to set up your affiliate network? Now, number one is that you should have a product to sell. Then secondly, you need an affiliate platform. Number three, you need to have an offer or fee that you will pay to the affiliates. Number four, you should have a very compelling product description. Number five, you should have the creatives such as banners or images or something of that sort or a video email to make sure that whenever you're sending it out to an affiliate network, it actually gets clicked and the last is a sales pitch that why should an affiliate work for you.

Because assuming if you're pitching out to a lot of Affiliates, then you need to lure them with something. Could be a high fee, or it could be an instant payout, or it could be anything of that sort.

Now, moving on, the second thing which you have to do if you want to set up your affiliate network is that you need to find your right affiliates. Now, as a merchant, it is very critical to find the Affiliates that are in line with your product. Now, what Affiliates to have audiences that need your product? But this audience should not be the same as your current set of customers. Why is that? The reason behind that is that you're going to be giving the same a fee to those people who would have anyway come over to your website and bought it from you.

Number three, you want the athletes to have an in-depth understanding of your industry. However, they should also not be your direct competitor. Affiliates should get you sales, but they should not be pushy.

Now, the third thing which you need to do is that you have to decide the fee. First of all, Affiliates take care of your profits, which is true. Therefore, it is important to determine the amount of Revenue you want to share with the affiliate. Now, it depends upon if you already have a certain amount of Affiliates or if you're just trying to set up an affiliate, and that is how it's going to work out. It should be substantial enough to motivate an affiliate and leave you with your decent margins as well.

Number four, the pricing model can be chosen depending upon your business goals. Now, you might pay out a lot of money in the very start if you're a very small company because they're saving you on your marketing budget. But let's say you're a big company and you have the upper hand, then in that particular case, your pricing model could be a little cheaper. You could pay a little lesser fee. You could pay it and after a couple of months. So you have to decide on those particular fee processes.

Now, there are multiple pricing models. Now, the first of them is pay-per-sale, which is the percentage of the sale price of the product which you pass it on to an affiliate. Then the second one is pay-per-click. This is not very much used now, but based on the clicks and traffic generated on the merchant's website. Number three, you have pay-per-lead. Remember the first example which you saw, car deco.com? That could actually work out as a pay-per-lead. Number four is pay-per-performance, which is based on your pre-decided consumer action. It could be a download, it could be a referral, or it could be anything else.

Now, let's talk about the affiliate platform demo. Whenever you have a website of your own and you want to set up your own affiliate program, you can easily go to ShareASale.com and follow the steps to set up your merchant account. Now, in this particular step, what you can do is like set up the rules, set up the processes, set up the fee, set up the payout mechanism, and all of those details to start your own affiliate program. And ShareASale is a platform just for that.

Now, moving ahead, setting up affiliate marketing as an affiliate. That is what we are going to start to learn. What do Affiliates actually need? They first of all need a website with good content. Now, in some cases, this could be also a good account of a social media which has a lot of following. Now, you need a large loyal audience. Now, this again could be a social media audience or could be a website audience as well.

Number three, the most important step which you need to pass is the merchant approval in order to become their affiliate. Now, these approvals are based on multiple things. It could be on your social media following. It could be about what type of a website do you have. Is it secure? Is it mobile optimized? Yes, no. So all of these things, merchants make and keep the guidelines off in order to give you an approval to become an affiliate.

Now, moving ahead, let's assume that you have gotten the approval from the affiliate from the merchant. Then in that particular case, your first big thing would be getting visitors on your website. First of all, you need to think very carefully that where can you compete. Now, this could be a niche you might be good at, or this could be a niche which is a market gap. Now, once you do that research, you make a website on that, you start putting content into that, and then you start doing those affiliate links.

Now, moving ahead, you need to leverage social media to promote and build a community. Number three, you need to use your referral links which are there on the related blogs and the website. Now, how that happens is that once you become an affiliate, you are given an access and then you can create your own special links. And you need to use those special reference links on your blogs.

Number four, you need to join forums and start promoting your products there. Number five, you need to generate the referral traffic to this website, but do not randomly push the affiliate links. It will be considered as spam. It's always a good idea in terms of content marketing. You have already learned about it that it's always better to help the person rather than starting to push a person to do a certain action.

Number six, you use ads if it is allowed or for your own brand, but only after testing the conversions. Number seven, catch people early in their buying stage before they have decided to buy using your SEO. Again, this brings me back to the topic of photography.com. If you have a blog which says the best cameras of 2020, there are chances that you're going to be ranking on the SEO. And once you're ranking on the SEO, you would be getting a lot of traffic and in turn a lot of sales and in turn a lot of fee coming to you.

Moving ahead, SEO and engagements are the key. Consider your blog again, as I say photography.com. You need to target the informational searches. Now, when I talk about informational searches, it is again bringing back to the same example. Then you need to focus on the long-tail keywords. This is a game which you've already learned in SEO, but this is a snapshot of how you should be doing it for an affiliate marketing.

Number three is that you create useful, in-depth content like tips, reviews, and resources. And number four, you need to use lead magnets such as freebies or samples or something of that sort. Number five, you need to create an email list using forms and social media so that you can target them later. Again, whenever you write a new blog with your affiliate links.

And those moving on, you need to start promoting the right products. Again, we're just going to keep one example, as I've already talked about it multiple times. You need to search and find the products that fit your niche. You could be a photographer, you could be a videographer, you could be a fashionista, you could be anybody. Just focus on your niche so that it does not sound like spamming. Assuming you're a makeup artist and you suddenly see that there's a lot of interest on the photography, then in that particular case, it's ideal that you should not put your photography cameras on your makeup website.

Now, number two, keep the product portfolio small enough to stay on top of the updates and the changes. Now, when I say product portfolio, that means again the products which are fitting in your niche. And you need to keep them there so that you can keep on regularly make changes on it, unless you have a really large team.

Now, number three, never keep all of your eggs in one basket. Now, when I say that, that means don't just join one affiliate program. Don't leave all your money on the table with one table itself. Join multiple affiliate programs.

Number four, you need to research the merchant before signing up. Some of those, you know, might be extremely new. They might not pay you out or something of that sort. And on the other hand, you can always go with the most popular ones, something like Amazon.

Number five, target high-selling products. Automated scripts and programs can be used for it. Now, when you say target high-selling products, it could be high selling in a certain time. Assuming you are in a situation of COVID and you think that selling these masks would be a good idea at this particular point of time, you can go ahead and start doing that because they are high-selling products right now, or hand sanitizers or anything on that sort.

So what you can do is create a ShareASale affiliate account. Now, we've already talked about the merchant account on ShareASale. You can also create an affiliate account on ShareASale. For that, you need to visit ShareASale.com and create an affiliate account. Then you will need a live website to create an account. ShareASale usually takes one business day to review your application. And then they're going to come back to you telling you that if your website is good enough to be a part of ShareASale affiliate account.

So whenever you do that, you will see a dashboard preview. And those dashboard previews will have all of your details of all the merchants you're working for, what are you earning, from where are you earning. And you will get sample reports which are there here in this particular slide.

The other one which is extremely popular is Amazon Associates. Because Amazon being the largest e-commerce in the world, you could always go ahead to affiliate program.amazon.in and log in with your Amazon ID. Now, what you need to do is like follow these steps to create your account. And your application will be reviewed after your website drives a minimum of three valid sales within the 180 days of registering.

Now, what you need to do is to make sure that you are not using any sort of a bad IDs. Your website is properly secure. It has the SSL certificate on it. It should have enough content on it. And it should not be a very spammy website. And that is when you get a green signal from Amazon.

Now, once you do that, you're gonna see a dashboard from where you could actually create the links and also look at your earning review. Now, in order to create a link on Amazon affiliate, you need to find something which is known as the ASIN number of a product. Now, once you do that, you need to copy-paste into the bar and click on go. And then after that, you could get multiple set of structures of your link. So it could be a short link, it could be a preview along with the image, without the image, etc., etc. So you can go ahead and customize that. Literally copy-paste that code or the link onto your website, and you're good to go.

On the other hand, you also get to see your fees, bounties, and clicks. Now, fees is something that what you earn. Bounties is what you get when you sign up somebody for, let's say, Amazon Prime. And clicks are the number of clicks which you actually got onto the website for the Amazon.

Moving on, affiliate marketing, since it comes with a lot of upside, it also comes with a lot of downside as well. Now, affiliate marketing has a lot of frauds as well. So the first fraud which is there is fake conversions. That means that you are deploying bots or using click farms to generate a fake conversion. Number two is the content duplication, which means that copying content from genuine affiliate websites to create a shadow website of your own. Number three is cookie stuffing. That means generating malicious cookies that provide a fake tracking code which trigger fake sales. Number four is your load time fraud, loading destination page in the background to fetch the clicks and time spent on the website. Number five is your type of frauds, buying a domain that is almost as same as the official website.

Some amazing facts about email marketing which I have for you. One very important point is that during consumer surveys, whether in U.S. or in India, most of the consumers, they have always been willing to connect with the brands on email. So, let's say you called a motor company and you inquired for a car, like, "Okay, I want to buy a new car. This is a new model. Can you tell me something more about it? And what, what are your costs, etc.? What do you charge upon the ex-showroom price? Those kind of things." Now, receiving an email with the entire details makes things easier for you, right? So, a lot of people think that interacting on email makes the entire personal journey more fruitful for them. So that's the reason most of the people ask for their email correspondence.

Let's shift our focus to a very important fact that again, Facebook has over 1 billion users. You have Twitter around 340 million users as well. But email, in terms of customers, it has three times more customers than 210 Facebook company. So that's a very important fact which is neglected. And again, a lot of people say that in email, even if the number of customers are more, the engagement is higher on Facebook and Twitter. I agree to some extent, yes. You can engage with your customer on Facebook and Twitter, but there are different resources for it. So, for example, Facebook and Twitter, they have their own idea for, like, Facebook, you won't go to, you don't go to Facebook to see ads or buy a product, right? It's something like TV. When you watch television, you are looking forward to a show, etc., are targeted to you depending upon your customer profile, depending upon what kind of show you are watching. So those kind of things happen. This happened along with the content. But in email, if the slight difference is that in email, actually, you are looking for something. That's the reason you have subscribed to a particular, you have given your email ID to a particular website or a company because you want something from them. That is one very important reason.

So, moving on, why it should matter to you as a business person or as a marketer, or let's say a student, why email marketing should be an important field for you, right? So, I just, I think I have a question. Just a second. So, we have two questions from Kiran Aryan, right? So, how far is it profitable? Yes, we will discuss some stats on profitability as well. And there's one more question, how can we make a short and effective email that may not make the recipient bored to read? Yes, in fact, this is not in this presentation, but definitely in our email marketing course, we have almost an entire module dedicated to how to write an effective email and how to make it more, how to make it more engaging and how to make it more action-oriented for the customer.

So, as I was talking about, why it should matter to you, so email adds value to both your sales and service. So, if let's discuss a sales cycle. So, what happens in a single cycle is that you reach out to a customer. It can be an inbound lead, for example, it can be a lead which the customer came to your website, he gave you his email ID and phone number, or it can be you have a tele-series network where you are calling prospective customers and getting details from them for the interested customers, or it can be pure reference. So, in each of these, once you have started the sales cycle, and email becomes an integral part of it. We'll be sharing details with the customer, beat giving more inputs to the customer. Let's say I have, I want to buy a product, and I am convinced with two features of it of the product, let's say insurance. I am convinced that, "Okay, the sum assured is right for me. The premium is right for me. I just want to know more about the policy in a very simple term which I'm not able to, let's say, understand from the website." So, in that case, email plays a very important role. The way you naturally same with the service.

Now, take a scenario again. Let's take insurance as an example. So, there's a customer who has bought a policy from you, right? And he has made a payment. Now, he's expecting his next step for the policy. And in an insurance policy, either steps, there are a number of steps after the policy as well. From insurance to, let's say, sorry, from booking to issuance. So, from booking to issuance, it's a whole cycle. And then a number of steps. So, let's say if the customer has bought a health insurance policy, so the next step would be, he'll check whether there is any additional document required from the customer, whether there is any additional medical required for the customer, and then it will go to the underwriter, and then so and so forth. You will send a communication to the customer, "Your policy has been issued." You will send a soft copy, and then you will send a hard copy. So, in all these communications, email is not only very relevant, it is also the cheapest option. Giving a customer a call for every minor detail might not be very feasible for an organization, especially when you have, let's say, thousands of customers and you have almost 30, 40,000 policies being sold on a daily basis. So, in that perspective, email becomes a very important tool. And whatever be your goal in your organization, it can be, email can play a very important role in every, every goal of your organization. And in fact, in our course, that we have, going forward, we'll see the different cycles, different kind of business goals that are there for a company. It can be there for the company, and how email fits into every, every role basically. So, it's very important that you align your business strategy with the email strategy. It cannot function as a standalone function of your organization. It has to be what you are, what you want to achieve as a business should reflect in your email strategy.

And one important myth I want to break, that email is only transactional. It's not. In fact, email, like these days, Twitter is being used to promote, let's say, your initial launch or you want to generate hype around something. Twitter is a very important tool. And yes, it is, it draws engagement, it reaches to a certain people, people talk about it, yes. But email also plays a very important role, especially if you want to test a campaign, you want to reach out to a set of targeted audience who, and you want some response. So you can share your campaign, you can include a feedback form into it and get some thoughts. Or if you want to see, let's say, you just want to promote your teaser. So there's a, again, even if you have a feature on YouTube or any other tool, you can share those things on email and see the response from the customer. So in all this thing, email can play a very important role.

So, let's see how it performs on three very important R's: one is reach, relevance, and ROI. So, let's see what are the industries where email makes more sense. So, as I discussed about the examples of financial insurance, it makes maximum sense for them because this is one industry. You can take banking, you can take insurance, even something like credit cards, loans, any business. So, this is one industry where sales and service are very highly dependent on email to reach out to their customers. So that's the reason they are the top email senders. And there should be no surprise about this. In fact, if we do a similar breakup, but overall marketing, still finance and insurance will top this chart. Reason being, as an industry, finance and insurance, they have the maximum margin compared to other industries on their products. And they have the biggest marketing, marketing budgets in their compared to other industries. The reason being that these guys, they have to, the competition they are in, plus the kind of misgivings customers usually have about the financial products, they have to really spend more and reach out to the audience, engage more with the audience to get their point across. And then, going down further, you can see telecom is the next best. Advertising itself uses almost 12.10% of the total, and that is third on the list. Next comes your healthcare, entertainment, retail, etc. Even social media, to an extent, you use these emails. So, there's a small 4.50% which is being used by social media.

Let's start the comparison game with email for a moment. Let's see how the numbers stack up. Which is the skills that email is thighs the number of accounts compared to Facebook and Twitter? Now, let's compare with the search engine. Search engines get the maximum amount of traffic. It is widely understood that, and it includes all search engines. It includes Google, user, Bing, Yahoo, everyone. But compared to email, on a daily basis, this traffic is only one out of 100 of the total email traffic. So that as minute as you can see, even in terms of bandwidth, what email consumes across the world, all pages viewed on the web in a day, all pages means all websites, everything across the world, it just makes up two, it just consumes only one-fourth of the bandwidth consumed by email. You can see the kind of power email has still. When the when people think that, "Okay, it's not gonna do it's not gonna work well. Email will be no more very soon."

So, let's see how it compares with their offline counterparts. Let's talk about some major measurability of different mediums. For example, television. Television is a mass medium, no doubt about it. It is a very important medium to reach out to a very large audience at a time. It also requires a lot of money. But the shortfalls for a TV is there is no view for who is watching. Not ad, and everything is decided based on a comparative rating system to evaluate how much, how many people it reached. So, it can be in terms of your TV rating system like per thousand or just comparison ratio like 3.9, 4.9 compared to others. So, it doesn't give a very clear picture to what actually happened to your campaigns.

The second very important is direct mail. So, through direct mail, you know who is receiving your mails. That is for sure, because you are mailing them to your customers with your, with their addresses and phone numbers, etc. But you have no view if the mail has been delivered or has been read by the receiver. Whether it has reached the mailbox, it is just lying in the mailbox, or it has just found the dustbin as it reads the, as it reads the customer. It has opened or not? No idea. So, this is one shortcoming the direct mail has.

Coming onto the email, the kind of technologies we have as of now, you can view who all received your email. You have the list. You have customer profiles based on your segmentation. You can view how many people opened it, clicked it, and within the email, what they did with your email. So, let's say you have four links in your email. Let's say you are an electronics company and you have sent a mail to a customer with four different mobile phones and four links. So, you can actually see which, in which phone the customer was interested in. You can actually get the data on that. "Okay, there's a particular iPhone which customer clicked on and reads the landing page." And you can then do a back analysis that, "I sent mail to 100 people with the same four mobile phones. Most of the customers were interested in this, and these will reach the website using this particular phone." And then you can have a strategy based on that.

Just before we move on, we have a, I just like to take a question. So, there's a question that from I think from RN, Kiran RN, is there any proper format that to convert an email into a lead? Yes, it's a, there's a whole sales cycle which involves converting a lead to a conversion. So, again, we'll be discussing, we'll be having more discussions on it on the lead to conversion cycle in our course, which will begin very shortly.

They're moving on. So, now let's do social media marketing and purely numbers. So, we have discussed some theoretical things about what, how email can be more efficient in social media marketing in theory. We have discussed, but now let's get on some numbers and see what, what exactly is happening in different mediums. So, CTR is a click-through rate. So, click-through rate is something like, for example, let's say I have sent 100 emails or 100 advertising messages on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere to a customer, to a customer, to different customers. Out of those 100, let's say five click on that message. So, CTR for that particular engagement for that model will be 5 out of 100. So, that's the CTR. Higher CTR means your campaigns are doing well, you're performing well. So, on Facebook, with the latest data that we have, average CTR on Facebook is 1.49, and that's a pretty decent CTR for a social media platform. On Twitter, the CTRs are slightly higher because the customers are slightly more engaged on Twitter. So, it's 1.64. But nothing in comparison to email, where the average CTR on email is around 5.2%. So, it's almost like triple of what you have on Facebook or Twitter. That's the kind of CTR that you get. And CTR is a very important metric when you are tracking your campaign on online. Be it your search engines, be it your social media campaigns, even your YouTube campaigns. Companies target CTR is a very important, very, very important video.

Now, look at the conversion rate. So, what is the conversion rate? Conversion rate is something that, let's say you reached out to 100 people, five of them clicked on your ad. Now, when they click on your ad, they will reach to your website. Once they have reached your website, there will be certain consumer action. Some, let's say, for you, a conversion is if a user gives his phone number and email ID and let's say registers for a newsletter. So, for a company, that can be a conversion. For a credit card company, it can be an application. Customer went to the website and filled up the entire information which is required for a credit card and submits it. So, that's a conversion. So, if we compare the conversion rates of different mediums like search engine, social media, or email, search engine has a very healthy conversion rate, which is 2.5%. Social media is slightly low on conversions for obvious reasons, because it's, it gives you more engagement rather than conversions. And email again shines through with the highest conversion rate of 4.25%.

So, let me explain you a bit about search engine while I compare it with email. So, in search engine, what happens is, let's say when you go on Google, you type something, and then results are displayed. So, basically, there is a user intent. Let's say I want to buy shoes. I will type "buy shoes" and then I will get to see two ads on the top and then the organic results. So, the top two ads are based on my query. So, I have typed "buy shoes," so those ads will talk about shoes. They will not talk about bags or shirts or jeans, etc. So, there is a user intent. Which in turn, if you give the right kind of ad to a user, he will click on it and maybe what he wants, he'll get it. So, so that's why that, that's the reason this 2.50 figure becomes very important because that is derived from a user intent. Now, email is still beating the user intent and getting a conversion rate of 4.25%. And that shows how effective the medium is. So, whether as we discussed, whether it's your initial reach, you're creating buzz, you're engaging with the customer, and finally, the most important thing for a company, conversion. Email still stands very, very strong ground on that as well.

Moving on, see, all mediums are important in their own way. So, we cannot just say that email is doing everything for us. To really ignore all your Twitter and Facebooks and everyone. So, these mediums have different purposes. So, let's analyze the purpose of Twitter and Facebook before we get into the purpose of email. So, generally, as far as Twitter is concerned, people use Twitter to find trusting things. So, when you follow somebody on Twitter, you follow that somebody because you want to hear something from that somebody. It can be your Prime Minister of the country, it can be your favorite actor, actress, your favorite sport star, or any other channel that you want to explore. If you want to hear from somebody, you like their views and you want to hear more from them. So, that is one way. So, how do brands use this medium? Brands use the medium to engage with their customers. So, one very important engagement feature of Twitter is that for most brands, it has become a grievance redressal mechanism. So, basically, let's say if I bought an Airtel connection and there is some problem in it, I'm not very happy with that connection. Now, I can either write an email to them or I can maybe call them on the customer care, which will loop me into IVR and I'll take a lot more time to reach out to the agent and explain to them my problem. Or I can write on Twitter. I can write, I can just write a post on the Twitter handle of Airtel and ask them, "Okay, what's going on?" So, on Twitter, now Airtel has to respond pretty quickly because that tweet is visible to your followers as well. So, a lot of people can see that this person is facing a problem with Airtel, right? So, when you, so it becomes the onus is on the company to respond pretty quickly. So, that's the reason Twitter becomes very important for this kind of conversation. Also, if you want to run a contest on Twitter, so you can do that. If you are able to trend your hashtag pretty well during a day or for whatever time your promotional activity is going, then you can engage your users by giving some decent contents and participate in it and get respect the word. So, these are the kind of things that Twitter can be used for.

Now, coming on to Facebook. Facebook is generally people used to finally interact with their friends and share their stuff. So, you go to Facebook to see what your connections are doing, what are places they have visited, what was what was the recent review that they wrote, something like that. So, what other people are doing, mainly friends, your friends and your family, etc. Now, as far as Facebook ads are concerned, brands have been using it lately, even the past one year or so, to put relevant ads to attract user attention. So, over a period of time, based on your data, they figure out, "Okay, what kind of, what kind of user behavior you have, what, what kind of things you like based on your post, etc." So, based on that behavior, they try and give you relevant ads on the right-hand side or in the middle. So, that is a, so as a medium, it helps in getting attraction. But again, the sole purpose of a Facebook ad should not be to convert that user and make him purchase something. It should be to reach out to your users and tell them what they are doing, what you are doing. So, communicate with the customers rather than put them under a bracket at, "Okay, now it's time for you to buy." So, those that kind of behavior should be discouraged.

Now, compared to the social media counterparts, email is more transactional. In this, it's a one-on-one kind of a conversation happening between me and the brand. So, let's say I have subscribed to a website. I subscribe to, let's say, a website which gives me very handy newsletters on what is happening in the email world. So, instead of, and I, let's say I respect the views on the website, which I respect the content, I just like the content and see and the people who create that content. So, for me, that becomes a one-stop shop for my engagement with that company and knowing more about email marketing. So, maybe I, if I'm religiously following the posts that they are sending to me, maybe I won't even go to Google to search, "Okay, email marketing and more or what is happening latest." If they keep on serving me, so I become a very, very long-time customer for them if I'm getting the right information from them. So, that kind of conversation is here, and the transaction is happening between me and the brand. And again, in the sales life cycle, you can send a very appropriate message to a customer depending upon where the customer lies at a particular stage. So, a customer can be just a lead from a, and the lead can be just without any information. It can be a nurtured lead. Now, by nurtured lead, I mean that you have certain communication that has gone in. Customer knows about your brand. He knows about what kind of product you're offering. So, he is at a certain level. So, then you can reach out with a very appropriate message. So, these kind of, again, this helps in the one-on-one transaction that we spoke about. So, depending upon the sales cycle, you can explore these options.

So, now let's see how it impacts the overall sales process. Like somebody asked a question about how to convert a lead into a conversion. How, how do you create leads basically? The first question is that, so what are the different ways that lead is created? You can have a telecalling network. You might be reaching out to your customers through video conferencing. That is primarily B2B. You can be setting a meeting in person, which is a very common thing in banking and insurance. So, wherein a personal touch is required because products sometimes are very complex for the customers. They're not able to understand what is happening with the product. So, setting up a meeting helps. And that's how you get a lead. And staying in touch to nurture the lead. So, basically, once you have got the lead, so you need to be, you need to be very constantly in touch, but at the same time, not overburden the customer, consumer at any point of time. Too much communication should be avoided, but you should be in touch with the customer. So, that I should add when the customer is finally in the decision-making mode. And you never know when the customer will be can be in a decision-making mode. And you cannot afford to go off the hook when that particular thing is happening.

So, we discussed about how you set up a meeting, how you nurture a lead, etc. But before I mean, as we discussed about the service part, it gives you a wholesome picture. So, let me give you a very, very relevant example. Let's say you have entire communication stored for your customer from starting from lead to conversion to post-service to post-sales service, etc. Let's say you have the entire conversation with the customer. So, next time when you are reaching out to the customer or a similar customer with a similar background, you know what were the hurdles that you had to cross to convert this customer because you have all these conversation or communication documented with you at your backend. And you are using your churning data, you were using the data to come out with a very relevant information which can help you in making business decisions. So, these kind of customer-specific profiling and then reaching out to the similar customers who will fit those profiles can boost your sales, which you cannot even imagine the kind of scale it has. So, when you talk about big data and all these are the things that constitute the big data and then the decision making.

So, nurturing a lead, a bit more on how to nurture a lead. So, currently, what happens is that whatever leads that enter your CRM through different resources, whatever you have employed, telecalling, or whatever personal mailers or visits, etc., these leads are not qualified. There has to be something, there has to be a process to make this lead qualified. Because unless it is qualified, unless the leads are qualified, there is no point wasting your resources, the major resources, let's say your best salesperson or your premium pitching frameworks on such customers who are not yet qualified. So, here in the part of email comes into play. When you can use it to nurture a lead, and it has been proven that if you have nurtured a lead over a period of time through emails, those kind of leads result in 40% more sales than those that aren't. So, if a non-nurtured lead or a just a, let's say, a freshly, if you put a burden on that lead to convert as soon as possible by bombarding that lead with calls, etc., trying to get as many meetings as possible, then it's very, it becomes very unlikely that a customer will convert in a reasonable time. But if you have nurtured the lead over time, it will not only give you a sale, but it will also result in a long-term customer, long-term customer for you. That's the place where nurturing becomes very important.

These marketers are worried. Why are these marketers worried? Because marketer number one has a different problem. He says that, "We spent a lot of money and resources to create an SEO-friendly and user-friendly website with great content. We received a good number of visitors after a few weeks of the website update, but now the website traffic has become stagnant. What are we missing out on?" Let's talk about marketer number two. He says that, "We have a presence on all major social media platforms. We recently launched a campaign to promote a new product using organic and paid advertising on social media. Generated a lot of traffic on our website, but the problem is that the conversion rates were very low. So, what could be the reason for that?" Moving on, let's talk about one more marketer. Marketer number three, who has a good website and a social media presence. Their sale numbers have been good too, but they have a very huge problem of the number of return customers is not as high as they would like. So, what should they be doing in this particular case?

Now, whenever we are talking about these three examples, we'll be solving these examples from an integrated digital marketing campaign view. Now, digital marketing is actually like a machine. Different parts must work in tandem to ensure peak performance. Integrated digital marketing campaigns combine several marketing channels, which we have already learned about, to promote a consistent message to the target audience. These channels could be SEO, this can be SEM, these could be email marketing, affiliate marketing, or even social media marketing, or as far as whatever is required for your business.

Moving on, the definitions of integrated digital marketing. The first definition comes from the Data and Marketing Association. They say that, "A method of engaging consumers with your company or brand that combines all parts of marketing communications to work together and assist the customer along their journey of awareness to loyalty and advocacy." Second, which is given by HubSpot, it says that, "Integrated marketing is a process of arranging your different marketing channels to work in tandem to promote your products or services, typically through a strategic campaign." So, these were the definitions of IDM.

Now, what is the need of IDM? The first need is that customers need various touch points before they decide to purchase. Think about it on your side. You went over to Amazon, you looked at a product, and then you probably forgot about it, or you got busy with something. So, your entry into Amazon was organic. But after that, you made the purchase once you saw the remarketing ads on Instagram. So, that is how various touch points are used in order to make a purchase.

Now, customers also continuously look out for fresh content. In some of the cases where you have a product which is very complicated, which cannot be bought without a consultancy or something of that sort, then they are looking for different sort of content as well, every time.

Number three is online traffic comes from diverse sources. Now, obvious reason, taking Amazon into this picture here again, as you probably learned about it, they have affiliate marketers, they have done their SEO, they are doing their Google Ads as well, and they're doing their remarketing ads as well, and multiple things like that. Even email marketing, there are certain strategies which brings visitors to a website.

IDM campaigns generate higher conversion rates. The reason behind that is very, very simple. First of all, you do not have to get the same target audience again and again over to your website. You can get just a few percentage of those target audience and you can take it up with them and go ahead and provide them with a better conversion rate.

Number five, the customer engaged through IDM actually spends more. The reason behind that is about branding. So, if you have just one source of traffic coming onto your website, but they don't see you about any on, maybe let's say all social media channels, or maybe any sort of a partnership with other brands, then the brand in itself becomes weak. So, you don't buy from a new e-commerce website, but you know that you can buy the product from Amazon, and even if the product quality is not good, but you trust Amazon.

Digital marketing channels are continuously evolved. This was a very good example when this happened in 2016, if I'm not wrong, that the SEO algorithms actually changed, and a lot of rankings went down. But nothing changed in the social media space. So, it's all about keeping all of your eggs in different, different baskets.

Going ahead, the worried marketers, the three marketers which we had a conversation about, what would it be the advice which we would be giving to them? So, the three marketers, just a quick recap. One, the traffic has become stagnant. The second marketer has a problem which was conversion rate was very low. And the third one was that the return customers were not enough. So, this is a very basic exercise when it comes to about integrated digital marketing. Let's say if your traffic has become stagnant using SEO, you need to go ahead and start putting in more channels into the picture. Could be social media, could be email marketing, could be anything else.

Number two, if the conversion rate was very low, then you have to again integrate multiple channels so that your all of the channels combined provide a better conversion rate to you. And whenever you're talking about return customers are not enough, then in that particular case, I believe they are not doing the email marketing properly. Because if somebody is buying from your website, I'm assuming that they are giving you their email ID. And if they're not giving, and if they're not running promotions on the emails, then in that particular case, I think the return customers are not coming because of that.

Now, what are the challenges in an integrated digital marketing campaign? The first challenge is that how to select the right channel and the tactics for each of these channels. Now, this is based upon the different type of businesses. Let's again assume you are running an e-commerce again, which is selling cameras and high-end camera stuff. So, you know that these people are going to be there on Instagram, because being a pictorial platform, that is something which a lot of people use, a lot of photographers use Instagram. So, finding these channels, understanding about these channels in tandem with your business is a big problem.

Number two, what will be the flow of launching a campaign? Let's say you found somebody for your website, for your photography or videography website, via Instagram. Then after that, what are you going to do? Let's say a person showed an interest in buying a certain camera. Then what? After that, it could be remarketing ads, it could be email marketing, or anything of that sort.

Number three, how to ensure that the communication is consistent? And when I'm saying communication is consistent, that means it's not overpowering at several places that, "No, please buy, buy, buy, buy, buy." And the communication, if you're going via helping people of the content marketing side of the things, then that is how you

Make your communication very consistent.

Number four, how to tailor the communication for each medium. Now, this comes down to either copywriting or content writing again. Because if one of the medium is Instagram, then you could use stickers on it. You could use other types of stuff on it. Use it on the Instagram Reels or maybe on a story or anything of that sort.

The same way, it's very hard. And these are the four challenges which are a major challenge when it comes to launching an integrated digital marketing campaign.

Moving on, we're gonna talk about the example which was like by Nike. They were making a Breaking 2 campaign. So let's see what channels did they use when they were making a Breaking 2 campaign.

Now, first of all, just to give you a little bit of background, Nike obviously, you should be knowing that Nike is in the business of athletic wear and equipment. It uses marketing strategies very efficiently to promote their products to the target demographics.

Number three, Nike promoted the shoe line, the Zoom Vaporfly Elite, by live-streaming athletes wearing those shoes while attempting to complete a marathon in under 2 hours, making that they will break the world record.

Now, the channels which they used: first was relevant and niche influencers. They found out that there are three long-distance marathon runners who are going to be an influencer for them. And secondly, there was a live event which was live-streamed on Facebook and Twitter as an event. So you could actually watch it, so get more excited about the product or cheer the athletes on while they're wearing those shoes.

Then there was obviously social media marketing, which leveraged Twitter or Facebook, Instagram to promote the event using the hashtag #Breaking2.

Now, number four was a well-produced content, which is like they teamed up with National Geographic to document this particular race.

Now, here are the results: the campaign's message of unlocking the human potential tapped into a very broad audience. With the campaign, Nike garnered 87% of positive comments, which is used in the era of Twitter, 584,000 mentions on social media. The hashtag was used more than 400,000 times, 2 trillion impressions, and 5.2x of the digital content engagement.

It even drew congratulations from Nike's rival, which was on the left. You could see that Adidas Running actually gave a congratulation to one of the marathon runners.

Again, let's go into another example, which is of Microsoft's integrated marketing communication approach. Now, Microsoft and Carlsberg got into a partnership. Microsoft has been continuously taking up various artificial intelligence-based projects and has placed AI high updates in its product portfolio.

To promote its AI offerings, Microsoft teamed up with Carlsberg to use AI to speed up the process of brewing new flavors of the beer.

Moving on, what they did was, Microsoft marketed this project using the integrated marketing approach using a multitude of channels. So, as you can see on this screen, the microblogs on Twitter, a lot of press releases in Financial Times, and then there was also video promotions across Facebook and YouTube as well.

Now, how do we actually create an integrated digital marketing strategy?

Step one is knowing your target audience, which has been a step always. Now, for sub-step of that is that who are your target customers? What are their motivations? How do they like to get in touch? Which publishers do they read? Which websites do they visit regularly? And which channels are they using? What are they talking about right now?

Step number two is to design clear and consistent content that can easily be adapted or used on different media or channels. So, using both visual logos and slogans and brand cues, which was voiceovers and music, consistently all across channels. So, communication such as messaging and offers must be clear and not be filled with confusing words and phrases. You don't have to be too fancy whenever you're writing a line, that's what it means. The messages and offers must be compelling to the receiver. Obviously, if you are providing something, if you are spending a lot of money on something, then you need to make sure that it's actually needed. And we learned that in step one as well.

Number three is your message should be consistent across channels. Website, it could be phone, it could be in-store, or it could be mobile, just so that you create that brand for you.

Step number three is invest only in those channels that have a clear role in the campaign. Understand what each channel can deliver in terms of reach and cost. As attitudes towards as vary by channel and format, different media have innate strengths in different regions. To give you an example, if somebody is coming into India to start its own business, the first thing they do is go with Facebook ads. Why and why not Twitter ads? Facebook ads has a very defined targeting of digital marketing, whereas Twitter ads, it's a little bleak on that front. And Twitter being Twitter, costs a lot more compared to Facebook.

So, coming back to the slide, which channels do my customers use the most? So, whatever channels you are using, that is what you have to do.

Number two is, what are the channels' strengths and gaps? So, according to your target audience, let's say you are not able to reach that very definite pinpoint audience, but could reach to a relevant audience. Do we want to go ahead with that or not? That is the decision which you have to make. How will these channels are going to help me attain my business goals?

You could use Google for lead generation, and you could use Facebook and YouTube for brand awareness, just to give your example.

Moving on, step number four, tailor your content for each channel while communicating the same message. Understand the nuances of each of the selected channels and develop creatives that matters to the users on that particular channel. Make sure each channel of your marketing campaign is set up to drive traffic to your ultimate goal. For example, social networks are just Twitter or Facebook could be used for engagement. Websites for email newsletter subscriptions, purchases, and reservations. Keep your URLs and usernames uniform. That's a basic hygiene practice. And use the same keywords and phrases throughout your integrated marketing campaigns.

Step number five, you have to plan the flow of launching the campaign. Now, the factors influencing the launch flow are: first of all, the campaign objective. So, it would be different for different companies. It could be different for a different product as well. We need to know that what will be the plan to actually launch a campaign.

User behavior on the channels used in the campaign needs to be checked. For example, there is a peak time. And there is usually a peak time on Facebook at around 7 PM or 8 PM Indian time. And so you know that, okay, if you want to go ahead and start off with a blast, then you need to run your campaign at like seven or eight.

The third factor is the funnel stage: awareness, consideration, and conversion. It's an integrated approach. The content and creatives are created for each of these stages. Now, each stage is planned differently, but interlinked, finally to convert a user.

Here's a tip: to pay a social blog post calendar in advance. A good campaign features multiple ads. Prepare an ad and schedule it.

Moving on, step number six, make sure your marketing team agencies are working in sync. This is obviously communication which needs to be happening within the team. If working with several agencies, ensure that there's an in-house team member to monitor and coordinate with them. Facilitate team meetings with members working on different projects within the same integrated marketing campaign too. Keep all the members on the same page. Keep the message of the campaign consistent and maintain company brand standards across the campaign. Since I've worked with a lot of agencies, I've had an agency of my own, I can tell you that this is the real, real big problem where agencies are not working in sync. So, assume there's an agency which creates our images, but there's an agency which is creating your video. They both need to be in sync in order to provide a consistent brand message.

Step number seven, you need to track your campaigns. In an integrated marketing campaign, it is vital to utilize the proper analytics and attribution methods that help understand how conversions and results are achieved.

You need the analytics for your website, for your social media, for your email, for your search ads, and for your display ads, and anything else whichever you are doing.

Now, here are some of the key metrics which you should be tracking:

So, website site visits, maybe traffic by source or channels, number of new visitors versus the number of return visitors, bounce rate, exit rate, interactions per visit. All of these you can find in Google Analytics.

Social media marketing, you need to figure out the likes, comments, shares, clicks, impressions, reach, conversions, or maybe you could just bunch it up into an engagement, which is for the likes and the comments and the shares are all engagements. You can bunch that up.

Also, email marketing, you need to figure out the sends, open rate, the CTR, the conversion rate from there, the bounce rate, the number of people who unsubscribed, and the revenue per email which you send.

Number four, search and display ads: impressions, reach, cost, obviously engagement rate, CTR, CPC, and conversion rate. All of these we have already learned in search engine marketing that what do they mean. And now you have to start tracking them when you're making an integrated digital marketing campaign.

Moving on with an example of LinkedIn's "In It Together" campaign. This was a campaign which was run during the Golden Globes Award. Most people viewed LinkedIn platform as a platform only for white-collar professionals. With this campaign, LinkedIn wanted to break a stereotype and connect with a global audience while highlighting the power of the community in finding a job.

The channels used, obviously, it was LinkedIn. Then we had videos as well, and there was a lot of digital display as well.

"In It Together" featured people from professions such as musician, martial arts, culinary arts, bankers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and more. The campaign featured the real stories of real members across career stages and how they are adapting, innovating, and learning on their networks to push forward in this new world of work. The black and white documentary-style videos made them stand out from the commercial ones, showcasing their authenticity.

Let's move on to another example, which was of Levi's "It's Your Vote" campaign. Levi's launched a campaign, "It's Your Vote," before the voter registration day in the US. The main goal was to encourage its user base to register for voting and cast their votes on election day.

The channels used were: several video spots alongside in-store registration booths for votes. Second was social media to share images of celebrities and what branded apparel. Number three was a microsite which was used to further promote the campaign.

The results were that 60% of users who discovered products on Instagram got involved in the campaign. 75% of users took action after seeing the Instagram post. Video spots were also shared on Facebook. 64% of consumers stated that after watching their video, consumers were motivated to buy the products.

Another example: Spotify's 2018 Wrapped campaign. Spotify launched a personalized 2018 Wrapped campaign to celebrate each subscriber's listening habits. So, what they did was that once the year 2018 was over, they said that this year you listened to 6,207 different songs on Spotify. So, they actually gave you a stack, which is not required, but it just opens up the eyes in front of the consumers, saying that this is how much actually I used my Spotify membership or the free trial, whatever.

Channels used was a personalized music playlist for what they did because they already knew about the browsing habits on Spotify. They engaged with subscribers and gained their interest through data of their personal listening habits. Number two was that there were customized emails. So, subscribers received a personalized email with listening data from 2018 and a CTA to access these Spotify's data-driven microsite.

The data-driven microsite gave a story-like overview of the subscriber's listening habits in a similar fashion to a billboard advertising campaign. Users were prompted to share their musical snapshot, which made it Twitter's top global trending topic on launch day.

Moving on, here were the results for the Spotify campaign: over 34 million fan visits, over 400,000 artist visits, over 5 million social shares, and over 3 billion streams which were driven.

As you can see, that even for one tweet of 45, they got 172 reads with 724 comments and 3.1K likes. It was for the Wrapped 2018 campaign.

Let's go into another example where we are talking about Uber's "Beyond Five Stars" campaign. Uber launched a promotional "Beyond Five Stars" campaign to spotlight some of the tremendous works its drivers are doing. Uber presents each featured driver with a short vacation trip as an acknowledgment of their hard work.

The channels which were used: the campaign serves as an extension of the brand's in-app complementing feature. The microsite which was speaking about the cap drivers and customers' experiences. The video ads which are featuring several drivers who were bombarded with in-app compliments, and the images which were shared on social media platforms.

Talking about the results, the campaign images were also shared by Facebook, whereas they have accounted for 75% to 90% of advertising effectiveness. Through this campaign, Uber not only attracted more customers, but it also attracted an extra number of drivers through the platform.

You can see the tweet on the left side where Uber reads, "When your driver goes beyond five stars, share a compliment, share some love. It only takes a few seconds, but it can go further than you think."

Let's move into another example of Taco Bell's integrated marketing approach, which was Taco Bell. You already probably know about it. It is a Mexican cuisine-inspired fast-food chain. After a recession in 2011, Taco Bell experienced a slump. Draft FCB, Taco Bell's advertising agency, designed an integrated marketing campaign to position Taco Bell as a multicultural food experience.

They launched a campaign named "Live Más." Más is Spanish for "more," so that makes it "Live More" to make the brand feeling to youth-oriented and cross-cultural consumers. They rolled out new products and an upscaled menu to penetrate the market of health-conscious customers. They also co-branded with Doritos to launch the famous DLTs, which was Doritos Locos Tacos.

The channels which they used: YouTube ad of a customer who drove 900 miles to try the DLTS, and the montage of Instagram posts of customers was trying out the DLTS for the first time. Influencers among fans tried the DLTS and spread the word about through their social media channels. Another short video ad on the "Live Más" theme featuring a bunch of senior citizens sneaking out of their retirement home to a party. A mobile ordering and payment app was also launched, and Periscope to live stream the launch of new products to catch Generation Z's attention.

The results were: the integrated marketing efforts created a huge buzz and contributed to nearly a quarter of the Taco sales. A short video ad featuring senior citizens grabbed a lot of attention on social media and drove a lot of traffic towards the brand. They reported an 8% decrease in sales.

What exactly is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is the strategy of using customer information for optimal and targeted media buying and creative messaging. It is one of the most transformational changes in the digital advertising that has ever occurred. The rising quality and quantity of marketing data have been followed by explosive growth in the technologies for creative production and automation. These expanding marketing tech and ad tech sectors now enable personalization of every aspect of marketing experience. Data-driven marketing is taking the answers to questions like who, when, where, what message, and making those answers actionable. Usage and activation of data, often in automated or semi-automated manner, allows for a significantly more optimized media and creative strategy. This people-first marketing strategy is more personalized. It has also been responsible for driving considerable ROIs in the markets.

With this, we shall move ahead and understand the major benefits of data-driven marketing. The benefits of data-driven marketing, and especially data-driven advertising, are highly significant.

The first one is more efficient media buying. Data-driven marketing is probably the most advanced and pragmatic marketing sector. By leveraging algorithms and machine learning, agencies and marketers are removing a lot of guesswork from media planning and buying. This, in turn, enhances customer search experience and runs advanced marketing capabilities to sellers and improves their business.

The second one is targeting the right customers. Ad spends and marketing messages are optimized to be shown only to the appropriate targets for the marketing campaign. Here, the customer's search history is tracked, and he or she is targeted with only the relevant ads that help them to find exactly what they're looking for and improvises customer experience.

The next one is messaging audience with relevant messages. The age of generic, one-size-fits-all marketing messages is over. There is still room for these big ideas for some brands, but for most companies, marketing messages must get more granular in order to be relevant enough to resonate with customers. To put it down in simple terms, all customers are not convinced with the same message. Marketing teams should understand that what exactly a customer is looking for and target him or her with only relevant information.

So, now that we understand why exactly we need data-driven marketing, let us move into the next part where we should discuss where exactly data-driven marketing is leading us to.

Data-driven marketing has led us to the introduction of many ideas of marketing and reaching out to the customer in the best possible way. It also led to the introduction of many software. One out of them is the CRM. CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, allows marketers to track who individual customers are, including the name and contact information. CRMs enable direct mailing and therefore direct marketing campaigns. Batches of customers may receive different types of messages based on whether the marketer thought the segment was a good fit and what the customer cares about. The CRM gained new prominence in digital marketing with Salesforce's innovation to bring it to the cloud. This, in turn, started the age of sales and marketing automation.

Digital data-driven marketing came out of the CRM, gave birth to a new category: marketing automation software. Example leaders in this space include marketing automation companies like Marketo and Eloqua. They pioneered building individual marketing profiles built on customer interaction tracking on the website and email. This profiling of customers enabled automated emailing based on certain triggers and activities, as well as scoring and prospects into segments. SaaS began a new age of marketing automation. As marketers began segmenting their customers using marketing data, they ran into a new problem around the amount of data on tracked users being accumulated. Customers were now being tracked not only on own media, on marketer websites and emails, but also increasingly in paid media where ads were running. What's now known as pragmatic advertising solutions like Trucks and Newstar Arrows to help marketers aggregate the data in a more manageable manner and produce new insights for new targeting and creative plans. Thus began the age of data management platforms.

Today, marketers are spending over $6 billion annually on data-driven targeting solutions like data management platforms and demand-side platforms. However, the majority of marketing teams are not yet fully activating their data. They have so far been mostly limited to optimizing media with their data. The next stage is activating marketing data through creative and not just media.

We will have a briefing about creative, data, and media. First up, creative. Creative is just a message, what you create. Followed by that, the data. Data is who will see the message, and what do we know about the people as far as characteristics and their past interactions. The next is media. Media is where the messages appear, and which is also to dictate their creative requirements.

In data-driven digital marketing, you must combine all these three elements. Depending on the media channel, you can either combine creative and data into a dynamic creative unit that operates independently of the media, or combine creative, data, and media within the confines of the media platform into a campaign that targets.

Before data creative was produced, once with one version for everyone. Traditionally, you only needed one final file or ad. This file was self-contained. It could run on any publisher in the media channel. Designers essentially produced a creative file and controlled its rendering. Once the file was passed along, its destiny was set in stone. Flashy ad formats like rich media ads were used to get consumer attention. In recent times, some publishers like Facebook have created new formats that require multiple separate assets to be loaded for the publisher itself to render the final ad. This became known as publishing a native ad or creative. The message is a combination of creative assets presented to the customer in the context of the medium it is running in. Native ads rose just a new depth of customer data was being generated on social media. Social media quickly surpassed other types of customer data in quality.

Now, with creative, media, and data coming in together, marketers want to personalize the messages based on who is seeing it and where they are seeing it. Intrusive rich media ads are dying, giving way to nutrients in more consumer-friendly formats that use message personalization, not intrusion, to gain attention. Social media isn't the only channel where all of this is possible anymore. With pragmatic advertising and marketing automation, nearly every aspect of the customer journey can be personalized.

Keep in mind that data-driven advertising doesn't necessarily require individualized one-to-one messaging, like what someone's name appearing in the ad. Marketers must be careful to balance the customer's experience or the "cree factor" in the ad marketing message. Instead, it means knowing what we know about the targeted person who may belong in larger audience segments of shared characteristics. What would we do differently in the creative? But data-driven marketing does mean creative needs to be personalized based on some data attributes of the viewer. This may be a large shift in mindset for some agencies and advertisers.

We will move ahead and understand how to approach data-driven marketing. Whether you're getting started or looking to improvise your existing marketing strategy, there are certain elements that you should be considering. These include the following four stages: automate and integrate, collaboration across teams, monitor industry changes, continued measurement.

We will understand each one of them. Firstly, automate and integrate. Integrating new tools and technology into your marketing strategy can be overwhelming at times. By creating an automated process that still allows presentation, you will stay true to your objectives and avoid complicating results.

Followed by that, you have collaboration across teams. Because data is something that needs to be managed across the entire organization, marketers must ensure information is being shared across departments and teams.

The next important thing is monitor industry changes. Keep a close eye on the competition so that you can either follow suit or learn from their mistakes. Like every other area in the industry, data-driven marketing is constantly changing. Staying up to date on the latest trends will only help you with your own brand strategy.

Continued measurement. Data-driven marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It should be constantly monitored and adjusted based on the results that you are seeing. This will help identify which tactics are working and encouraged by and from organizational leaders.

We shall move ahead and understand some of the real-time examples of data-driven marketing. If you are still unsure how data-driven marketing might fit into your business strategy, here are a few examples that should offer some inspiration.

Retargeting. Retargeting is important for all digital marketers. If someone has previously purchased from your e-commerce site or shown some significant interest, why not look for them again? Let's pretend that a member of your target audience is a travel enthusiast who has recently booked a vacation trip. From this data, you can automatically offer relevant deals based on traveling and lodging, flights, and similar other vacation ideas that would be appealing to your target audience.

Next is dynamic advertising. Use social media to your advantage by creating ads across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Connect your audience by allowing them to sign up and receive more information with one click. By turning your social media outlets into two-way communication channels, you have now obtained valuable information that feeds directly into your database.

Followed by that, optimized paid search. Analyze your preferred customers based on types of keywords they search for and consider what the competition is targeting as well. Leverage this data to position yourself at the top of the most relevant search results and drive valuable traffic to your website.

The next one is targeted email campaigns. Is email marketing a part of your existing strategy? Take a data-driven approach to email campaigns by grouping together your desired target audiences. While this data will allow for automation, you will also be able to easily personalize messages to make one-to-one connections with each and every customer.

We will enter the next phase where we will understand some of the major challenges faced in data-driven marketing. Like most valuable business strategies, there are also challenges to successful data-driven marketing. Let's take a look on some of the most common struggles.

They are: their right team. Due to the complicated nature of the job and analytic skills required, it can be challenging to attract the right type of staff that specializes in predictive analysis or audience amplification. Learning more about data-driven or becoming a data scientist may benefit you and your team.

Followed by that, the next important challenge is departmental silos. The success of data-driven marketing is largely dependent on having high-quality and integrated data, which is not an easy task to obtain. Frequently, different departments will acquire data with goals that contract one another.

Followed by that, you can see commitment. It would seem foolish to incorporate a data-driven marketing strategy if you aren't completely committed to it. Yet, there are some companies that continue to make that mistake. Even though they might possess a defined strategy, it won't mean much if they are not assimilated with the tools needed to succeed.

Finally, integration. In 2019, brands on average are using 15 different data sources to run their operations and campaigns. But data usage is growing exponentially. Though our state of marketing reports, Salesforce has been tracking brand data usage for the past three years, we've found that the data is increasing exponentially. The massive amount of data we've been collecting and will collect in the future is creating a massive data glut. Making sense of it all is for artificial intelligence. All of this data can be analyzed by AI and leveraged in real-time to create personalized customer journeys. It's necessary for all brands to move towards a future where every interaction with customers is customized to them. If data is like the natural ore, then applying AI to it is like applying some refinement to it and bringing out steel. Hence, this is the reason why we see widespread adoption of AI by major brands.

Moving ahead, the next important stage of the future of data-driven marketing is data management platforms. More than 55% of marketing leaders are currently using data management platforms, and an additional 35% plan to adapt one within the next two years. Although many marketers only see the DMPs as useful for solving basic issues like content personalization and frequency caps on ads, high performers have begun to unlock additional DMP features.

The next important stage for data-driven marketing is to find a balance between personalization and privacy. Today's consumers are increasingly empowered by technology and by government privacy regulations. It's now the first order of business for brands to obtain permission to use consumer data. Without this permission, you cannot use to create personalized customer experiences.

Last but not least is to hire a Chief Data Officer. One-third of marketers say it's difficult to meet current data regulations like the EU GDPR, and data regulations are only going to get stricter in the future. That is why today's leading organizations have started putting someone in charge of managing customer data, that is the Chief Data Officer. So, hiring a Chief Data Officer would be crucial to have a bright future of data-driven marketing.

So, what exactly influences mean in the area of digital marketing? It's basically the ability to create an effect, drive outcomes, outcomes which are discerning, outcomes which are distinct, and which can actually influence consumer behavior online, and which can change consumer behavior online. It's a mix of trust and reach. It's a combination of what we call relevance, reach, and resonance.

So, influencer marketing is a form of collaboration. What we see is that a brand or a business collaborates with an influential person to promote a product, a service, or an idea. So, how exactly does it work? Now, social content creators with niche audiences can offer more value to brands. These people have dedicated and engaged groups of followers on different channels.

So, yeah, where do you find these digital marketing influencers? This is a question for you. Where do you find these digital marketing influencers? Oh, yes, yes, indeed. You find a lot of them on social media. Okay. Celebrity endorsement was the earliest form of using a person's popularity to reach a broader audience. Now, the early forms of digital influencers were found on blogs and forums, and people used to follow them. People used to follow their advice. People used to look up to them for fixing some of their issues, etc.

Now, what an influencer today is someone who: one, has the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, or knowledge, or position, or relationship with the audience. Also, an influencer is someone who has a distinct following in in a particular niche with whom he or she engages. Now, the size of the following would be a factor of the kind of topics or the area that that influencer is interested in or the influencer endorses.

So, what is the difference between a celebrity endorser and an influencer? Okay, so, yeah, a celebrity influencer is more of a person who kind of endorses your brand, promotes your brand for a certain amount of money. All right. It's important to note that these individuals, the influencers, are not merely marketing tools, but they are social relationship assets, and brands can collaborate with them to achieve some of their marketing objectives. And these are not people who work with you just for the money part alone, just for a short duration, as long as the money is coming. They can be people who can work with you for a longer duration, and it can really be a long-term association. All right.

So, the question is, who has the largest number of Instagram followers? Who or what or whom? Which brand or which person has the largest number of followers? Well, it's a tricky question. Instagram has the largest number of followers at about 370 million. And if you look at the number of top influencers or top people with followers on Instagram, you would find a mix of sports persons. Cristiano Ronaldo is big, and a mix of musicians, actors, reality stars, and also there are some brands which are there, which is very interesting. Brands like Nat Geo and Nike, they are amongst the top 20 brands which are interested, which have the largest number of followers on Instagram.

Can you guess the profile or the person who has the largest number of followers in India? Again, I see that in India as well, it's a mix of sports persons and movie stars, and of course, Mr. Modi, right? So, that is what the largest profiles or the biggest influencers look like on Instagram in India.

Okay, so people do look up to influencers on social media to guide them with their decision-making process. And influencers on social media, people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic, they make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views. So, that's what an influencer is. So, that's who an influencer is, and that's what they do.

So, let's look at some of the influencer marketing trends that's happening across the globe today. Okay, some stats. Okay, influencer marketing is said to make about $31.7 billion by 2025, and this is almost three times of what it is today. So, that's the kind of growth that's going to happen in this space.

Now, let us look at, let's look a bit more closely at the different aspects of influencer marketing, starting with what are the different types of digital influencer marketing? So, influencer marketing can be classified based on the number of followers. So, there is mega influencers. Mega influencers are people with a vast number of followers on their social networks. Although there are no fixed roles on the boundaries between different types of followers, a common view is that mega influencers are people who have more than 1 million followers on at least one social platform. Many mega influencers, if you notice, like Mr. Modi and Priyanka Chopra and Virat Kohli and Ariana Grande and Kim Kardashian, etc., have gained their fame offline. So, they could be movie stars, they could be sports people, musicians, even as you saw in the case of the Kardashians and Jenners, reality television stars, you know, most of the Kardashian-Jenner family is actually one of the biggest, some of the biggest Instagram influencers. Some mega influencers have gained their vast following through their online and social activities as well.

Now, the thing for brands to take away is that only major brands should approach mega influencers for influencer marketing. The service cost is high. Some of them charge up to, you know, $1 million per post kind of a thing. And also, they are likely to be more fussy about the brand they would choose to partner with. And in virtually every case, mega influencers will be working through an agency. They are not likely to be working directly with you. And also, it means you have to jump through lots of hoops to reach them.

Macro influencers, on the other hand, are about a level below the mega influencers and may be more accessible. As influencer marketers, you can consider people with followers in the range of about 500,000 to 1 million as macro influencers. Now, this group tends to consist of two types of people. They are either B-grade celebrities who are yet to make it big, or their successful online experts who have built a significant following. Than the other type of influencers like micro or mid-tier, etc.

Now, this kind of macro influencers, basically people who are online experts, they are likely to be very useful for firms for engaging in influencer marketing. They have a very high profile and are excellent at raising awareness. And also, there are more macro influencers than mega influencers. So, it is relatively easier for a brand to find someone who matches with their requirements, who has the same kind of target segment, and hence, and hence then collaborate with them.

Micro influencers are ordinary everyday people who become known for their knowledge about a particular niche area. As such, they have usually gained a sizeable social media following amongst devotees of that niche. And, you know, it's not just about the followers that indicates a level of influence. It's the relationship and interaction that a micro influencer has with his or her followers.

Now, although views differ, you can consider a micro influencer as somebody having between 10,000 to 50,000 followers on a single social platform. A micro influencer, at times, may not even be aware of the existence of a company. You know, so in that case, the company has to first convince the influencer of what the collaboration is worth. Micro influencers have built up specialist followings, and they will not harm their relationships with their fans just for the sake of promoting a product which does not align with their values or their image. The requirement for the relationship between micro influencers and brands to align with the target audience means that influencers are often picky about whom they work with. Some micro influencers are fairly happy to promote a brand for free. Others will expect some form of payment. Regardless of the price, any influencer is unlikely to want involvement in an inappropriate brand for their audience.

Now, the nature of influence is changing. Micro influencers are becoming more common and more famous. In fact, some of them have risen from virtual obscurity to being nearly as known as some of the traditional celebrities. Now, this is particularly the case for Generation Z, who spend more time on the internet than watching television or going to movies or going through sporting-related events. In all reality, micro influencers are going to be the influencers of the future. The internet has actually led to fragmentation of media into many small niche areas, and it is these niche groups and boards that micro influencers establish themselves as genuine influencers.

A mid-tier influencer is somebody who has followings between a micro influencer and a macro influencer. All right, so that will be about 50,000 to about 500,000 followers. In addition to this, the newest influencer type to gain recognition is the nano influencer. These people only have a very small number of followers, but they tend to be experts in some obscure or highly specialized field. You can think of a nano influencer as being, you know, the big fish in a small pond kind of person. In many cases, they may have anywhere between a thousand to about 10,000 followers, but they are very keen, very interested followers, willing to engage with the nano influencer and listen to her or his opinions. You know, while many brands would consider nano influencers as being inconsequential, they can be of extreme importance to firms which make highly specialized or niche products or niche services. For most firms, however, nano influencers lack sufficient influence to be of much use. They may be cheap and carry tremendous sway with a small number of people, but it's in small niches. So, as a brand, you might have to work with hundreds of nano influencers to reach a broad audience. Particularly, mass brands like L'Oreal, PNG, etc., might not be very open to that kind of a tie-up where you really need to work with a large number of small influencers. They would prefer to work probably with one mega influencer who has a much broader reach of the target audience.

This was actually one way of classifying influencers. The other ways include based on type of content. So, it can be bloggers, it can be YouTubers, it can be podcasters, or social media influencers. You can tag them based on the content. You can also classify influencers based on the level of influence. So, that would mean step one is, of course, celebrities.

Now, celebrities were the original influencers. If you look at the journey of influencer marketing, and they still have a role to play, although their importance as influencers is on a wane. It's it's waning actually. Now, influencer marketing grew out of celebrity endorsement. Businesses had found for many years that their sales usually rise when a celebrity promotes or endorses their product. There are still many cases of companies, particularly high-end brands, using celebrities as influencers. You might probably have noticed brands like Patek Philippe and, um, the Oriental Mandarin, who use celebrities, movie stars, etc., to promote their product. At times, you might also have seen, um, a different kind in the sense like, um, where brands will work with people who are already in that space.

Now, the problem for most brands is that there are not so many traditional celebrities willing to participate in this kind of influencer campaign, and they are unlikely to come cheap. Now, the exception will be if a firm makes a product that a celebrity already likes or uses. In that situation, the celebrity may be prepared to use his or her influence and say how good she believes the product to be. Product or service. You would have noticed that a lot of celebrities, movie stars, etc., actually campaign for, um, UN-related activities. So, there is the World Food Program, which Liam Neeson endorses. Priyanka Chopra, in fact, works for some of the UNICEF programs. So, that is one area how brands can actually work with celebrities, but it's, it's not an easy thing to do, and it's not a very common and prevalent thing to do. Also, many musical instrument producers do that kind of an association because many musicians use some of the brands, and hence they are used for promoting as well.

Now, one common problem that is there with celebrities as influencers is that they lack credibility. They lack credibility with the target audience. Do you recollect the brand of car that Shah Rukh Khan used to endorse? Yeah, do you guys remember that brand? Yes, he used to endorse a Hyundai brand, i10, I think, yeah. So, do you really think he rode that car in his daily life? Did he really run his errands in that car? Did he go to Pune or Goa in that car? Extremely unlikely, right? So, there is a question of credibility when it comes to celebrity endorsement.

In addition to celebrities, there's also key opinion leaders who can be influencers. Industry experts and thought leaders can also be considered as influencers, and at times, they hold important positions for brands. Industry leaders and thought leaders gain respect because of their qualification, their position, their experience about a particular area, and often this respect is actually earned more because of the reputation of where they work. Now, these experts include journalists, academicians, industry experts, and professional advisors. You would have noticed that bloggers and content creators often work with industry leaders and thought leaders, and it is not uncommon to see them quoted in blog posts and even used in social media campaigns.

One of the developing things is that the line between traditional media and the social media is blurring. The best influencers at times have also built their reputation for being expert in some particular niche area online. Now, they are similar to key opinion leaders, but usually have gained their reputation more informally through their online activity, and they have created that reputation through the quality of the social posts they make, the blog posts they write, the podcasts they speak, and the videos they craft and post on their YouTube channels.

This is an agency in the UK which has come out with the term called "Cromo influencers." Now, these are basically the top 10% influencers of a particular brand, and they have scored all these influencers based on some 46 crucial factors that impact consumer behavior. That's a very interesting way of putting influencers out there and using influencer marketing and measuring it to see how effective it is.

So, let us look at some of the other trends. Now, the thing that comes to everybody's mind is, so what exactly do they do? What does an influencer do? Right? So, contrary to the popular belief that some of us have, an influencer is not somebody who spends all their time on social media taking selfies and trying, in general, trying to sound important. They make regular posts about specialized topics which are of interest to them. Now, these postings are on their preferred social media channels. They engage with their followers and pay close attention to their views.

Now, the storytelling part must be carried out in a simple way that the audience can relate to, understand, and is incited enough to share it with their network. Let's talk a bit about content, okay? Now, content that an influencer uses can be in the form of text, it can be in the form of images, or videos. The videos are growing as the largest category of content across the digital media. It's growing at about 30% plus percentage per annum. So, it's, it's really a very important type of content that social media influencers look at.

Let's explore some of these platforms which are good for videos. For short-format videos, there is, of course, Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok. And for long forms, there is definitely Instagram TV, YouTube, and Facebook. Now, once TikTok has been banned, there's quite a bit of movement of influencers. So, TikTok influencers from TikTok to Instagram, because Instagram has also come out with Instagram Reels, which is a short video format, which is quite useful for those small videos that used to run on TikTok. Videos have the maximum engagement rate on social media, and live videos of brand products get the highest ROI. So, that's something brands really love about it. In addition to videos, there's also motion content like GIFs, which are in high demand and which is actually growing. What's also seen is that, um, in terms of performances, videos get a very good lift of 135% over other formats, other types of content. And in general, we seem to be spending three times more amount of time watching live videos than other forms of content.

You would be wondering how exactly do influencers get paid? So, brands can engage with influencers for sponsored posts, images, videos, and of course, brand campaigns. You know, this depends on the social platforms where the influencer operates, right? Now, some of the common ways that influencers get paid are in terms of products. So, there can be free products. For example, in the case of beauty products, let's say L'Oreal has identified an influencer, and there is a new product launch that has happened. L'Oreal can send a set of the new range to the influencer, and the influencer can do a demo, create a video, talk about the product, etc. There can also be co-created products. Where I have seen it in the quilting space, where a lot of quilters...

Collaborate with Brands. Sewing machine brands, long machine brands, and there are new features and new additions added to sewing machines at times. There are small, small tools that get added or introduced based on feedback from the quilting community. So, this is an opportunity for how brands can collaborate and what the influencer can get in exchange.

There can also be sub-brands. Again, I'm going to give you the example of the sewing machine brand. So, there is this Swiss machine called Bernina, which works with a quilter/designer called Tula, and they have come out with this entire sub-brand called Bernina Tula Pink. So, it is a pink-colored machine which is promoted by Tula. And yeah, that is the sub-brand that the leading Swiss sewing machine came out with.

There's also about merchandising opportunity that comes out at times where the brand or the influencer can have merchandise, merchandise items, and they can sell it and they can co-brand it and reach out to their fan base. So, that's about how products can be used in exchange for the content that the influencer is creating.

It can also be based on fees. Of course, this can be your good old "transfer it to my bank" kind of a thing, or it can even be payments to a Patreon account. I don't know if you have heard of Patreon. Patreon is a website, patreon.com is a website which actually helps creators and fans come together on one particular platform. So, you can pay and you can see some of the very exclusive contents that would have got created.

It can also be in peace. It can also be in terms of payments to a charity that an influencer supports or likes or works with. Payments can also be in terms of revenue share arrangement. If you would have followed, I'm not sure you would see that a lot of photographers actually collaborate with Nat Geo, and maybe whenever you make a sale in terms of a photograph or a video, there can be a rev share which can be planned between the brand and the influencer.

Now, talking about the rates, the hard cash kind of a thing. An influencer who has over 500,000 followers, the rate proposed on Instagram can be around seven lakh per post. That's a decent, good amount of money, actually. For a nano-influencer, it will be about a thousand rupees per post. And for a micro-influencer, it can be up to about 18,000 rupees per post.

Now, the interesting thing I want to call out here is the fact the way it has grown. Now, that is the most interesting takeaway from this. It's not the absolute value, but the rate of change that's happening. Basically, it's an indication of how important influencer marketing is beginning to look for brands.

Now, we talked about in the previous slide, we talked about influencers with over 500,000 followers. So, do you remember what's the term for this influencer? What do we call this kind of influencers who have more than 500,000 followers? This is a pop quiz. Okay. Yes, it is a macro-influencer, right? You are right.

So, what do brands gain from this collaboration with influencers? Why do they work with influencers? What's in it for them? Let's look at some of the reasons why brands want to collaborate with influencers. Influencers have both reach and influence on their audience. That makes it an ideal situation for brands which need the same kind of target audience. Brands love social media influencers because they can create trends. They are creative and also they encourage their followers to buy products that they promote.

So, for a brand, it's about brand visibility. It's about generating leads. It's about increased product sales. And let's admit it, some of these influencers are very creative in terms of product usage, in terms of the content they are putting it up, and in terms of the other collaborations they do. Also, it brings a certain amount of loyalty by virtue of the loyalty that the audience has towards the influencer. And sometimes, you know, rarely, but sometimes the brand might be going through a battle in terms of a scandal, in terms of some environmental issue, a political issue, and they can also use an influencer to create a certain amount of positivity around the brand by trying to talk to the audience and telling them it's a reliable brand, it's a good brand, kind of a thing.

Under a couple of other reasons, other reasons could be word-of-mouth. It could be referral programs. It could be running contests. It could be giveaways that the brand is planning, etc.

So, if you are a brand, if you are a brand manager, if you are running a brand, how will you go about the entire influencer marketing part? How would you get started with it? How will you get going?

So, step one is often about having a strategy. Your influencer strategy should align with your social media strategy, which in turn should align with your digital marketing, your overall marketing, and your entire business strategy.

Step two is plan your budget. Plan how much you are going to spend on your traditional marketing channels and your online marketing channels, and what share of your online marketing should be your influencer marketing.

Step three, spend time on research. Find out more about the industry. Find out more about the topics that matter in the industry. Find out about influencers and find about, find out about areas that's common between you and the influencer.

Step four, how to approach your influencer? Will you find them organically, or are you planning to work through an agency? Right? Are you going to use some kind of a tool, look at data that's coming in, and then go and choose your influencer, or you will hire an agency and ask them to find an influencer for you?

Step five is, of course, shortlisting your influencer and engaging with them and finding common grounds to work on. All right, then discuss the modalities, the type of content, the frequency of post, etc.

Step seven will be integrating with the rest of your marketing calendar. This is very important, step in fact. So, you need to make sure that your influencer strategy aligns with the rest of your marketing calendar in terms of your product launches, your public relations, your other social media activities, etc.

Step eight is, of course, discuss the financial part, if there is any, the do's and don'ts that the influencers should be aware of, and the terms and conditions of the engagement.

Now, remember to do a periodic review of the association from time to time. So, that can be every month, or every three months, a quarterly review, or a half-yearly review, and see where you stand in terms of the engagement, where you stand in terms of your metrics, and how you want to proceed from there. And if there are learnings that needs to be brought into both your strategy as well as that of the content plan that the influencer has.

You need to remember that influencer marketing isn't about, isn't just about finding someone with an audience and offering them money or exposure so that they can say good things. That's what celebrities are for. That's what celebrity endorsement is for. Influencers are people who have spent time and energy building their own brand and cultivating their audience. So, they are going to be quite protective about their reputation and the people who trust them. So, that's what's there for the brand.

Now, the thing that comes to one's mind is, what does it take to be a digital marketing influencer? Let's look at the other side of it. All right. So, the thumb rule is to ensure that you know your area of expertise well. Three, one is, one is that you need to know it as of now. Two is that you need to be passionate about it, to know more about it, to dig more about it, and to continuously keep improving yourself.

So, what are those steps involved in becoming a digital marketing influencer? It all begins with creating content. Step one, create content. Step two, promote your content. Share your content and be consistent in your postings. Be consistent with your topics. Research on other influencers. Keep an eye on the following versus follower ratio. And be careful about your hashtags. We will look into each of these areas a little bit more in detail as we proceed in the net, proceed to the next couple of slides.

Let's start with content. Step one is definitely about identifying your niche area. You cannot be a jack of all trades if you want to be an influencer. Select an area which plays to your strengths and your passion. That way, you will constantly be adding to your knowledge and you will be looking for newer creative ways for reaching out to your audience.

Now, your topic or your area can be anything from travel, lifestyle, fashion, food, beauty, sports, gaming, entertainment, technology, health and fitness. It can be any of these things. And you don't necessarily have to stick to, stick to just these established and fairly well-known niches. You can move into something really obscure as well. For example, vegan travel, or you can combine some of these topics like gaming and technology, beauty and lifestyle, travel and food. So, these are some of the ways in which you can find your niche area.

Step two is, of course, decide on your audience. Determine who is your audience and develop a unique persona for that audience. Today, there are enough and more tools available which will help you to get an understanding of the wants, the needs, the challenges, and goals of your ideal follower. So, that you can use that to help solve and address some of their challenges. And it, it will also point you to the right niche area where you should establish yourself as an, as an influencer.

Promoting your content. Plan your channel. It's important to pick the right social platform where audience with interests that align with your areas of interest are present and are willing to engage with you. So, question: Which are the biggest social media networks for influencers? Okay. Right. So, two of the most prominent social networks where influencers are really thriving today are, of course, Instagram and LinkedIn. Right? However, you need to choose a platform based on where your ideal audience is. Your ideal audience may not be spending most of their time on LinkedIn or Insta. They might be spending it on YouTube. So, YouTube is what you should be choosing.

Let's look at sharing content. Okay. Now, your area of interest and your audience profile will influence your content plan. If you want to quickly grow your following and establish yourself as a social media influencer, you need to make sure that you choose the right social media channel based on your niche and ideal audience. For example, although LinkedIn is gaining more traction with lifestyle content, influencers can succeed on this platform when they focus on career or academic tips or job-related content. But LinkedIn does offer video posting options. Influencers can also embrace text more heavily on this platform by publishing either blog-styled posts or regular text posts.

Now, what I would suggest is, stick to using two or three networks. Otherwise, you will be spreading yourself too thin, and you will find it difficult to build your credibility and your following. Follow the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time in marketing your content and 20% in creating it. Push your content on various social media platforms first and encourage your followers to share it in their network and spread the news.

Now, content can be a mix of text, images, videos, infographics, tutorials, etc. You can use a combination of curated content where you can find the best content available on the platform or on the internet and share it with your followers. And of course, you need to do the attribution from wherever you have sourced that. You can also create your own educational and informative content. And also, you can add a few posts about yourself. So, that could be behind-the-scenes posts, or it could be a bit about what you did on Saturday, kind of a thing, which basically helps in building up relationship and making it look as if knowing you're not into it just like another corporate brand.

You should also check out for some of the other best practices. This include looking out for the best days and times when to distribute content for each of the most popular social media networks. Preferably, stick to one theme per social media channel. More importantly, it helps you to categorize the different types of content you publish and helps you keep organized. Customize your messages. If your, if your channels are Instagram and YouTube, make sure that they are distinct. There are certain amount of difference between them. Probably, you can use a short video format on Insta and a longer duration format on YouTube. So, that if there is somebody who is common to both the channels, feels it convenient, feels it good, feels it, um, useful in coming to both these profiles and checking out your content. Make sure to optimize posts for mobile. This is very important because most of us access our social media profiles on mobile, and it's extremely critical right now.

Question: So, how many hours do you spend on the mobile on a day on an average? How many hours do you spend on the mobile? Okay. Here's some trivia. An average person spends over three hours on his or her device, and 80% of it is actually spent on social media. So, you have seen it. How important it is to reach the watering hole. So, the watering hole is basically where your customers, your consumers congregate. So, you need to reach your customers or, or your consumers or your prospective consumers where they like to be at. And yes, of course, maintain your content.

So, these are the three R's of influencer marketing: the reach, the repetition, and the reaction. All right. So, reach is about the number of people. So, it could be the number of people who are following you, or it could be the number of people you are cut and reached. Repetition is the act of creating content regularly. So, that you are consistent in your content post on a particular platform. For example, if you are a vegan advocate, you can start a series for vegans, combine it with travel and tourism, and you need to constantly keep posting about places to travel, description of food to eat, local cuisine, local culture, etc. Reaction, reaction is, of course, the engagement that you have with your audience.

Now, bigger isn't always better. A huge follower count is meaningless if those followers aren't interested in what you have got to say. And a smaller follower count can be very powerful if it is a niche area. Niche influencers can have very dedicated and engaged followers. Okay. It has been found that the engagement rates are often higher for micro-influencers and for nano-influencers. So, basically, they have fewer followers, but their words are, you know, as good as gold for their fans or followers.

Research on existing influencers. It helps you to understand the areas of improvement. It also helps you in finding key areas that are not covered by influencers and hence what you can work on. So, you should not only see the topics that the influencers have managed. You should also look out for where they are sharing these pieces of content. So, it basically shows you the social media channel that you should be focusing on and probably use it for growing your following.

The following and the follower ratio. Okay. So, try keeping your following below your follower count, particularly if you are working with brands that matter a lot. In case if these numbers, the number of you're following somebody is much higher, brands will really question your credibility as an influencer. But you should always follow accounts of fellow influencers who inspire you, add value to you in terms of exploring content, in terms of exploring ideas, etc., and grow your network.

While you're still in the process of establishing your credibility and your expertise as the social media influencer, you will need to actively grow your follower base. One of the most effective ways of doing this is through blogging. Even though more internet users are turning to social media networks for information, the fact remains that you don't entirely own your space there. One misstep and you can easily have your account taken down. Look at what has happened to TikTok. People just lost they all their content and followers, right? Blogging can also help you kick-start your follower base by helping you get discovered. By including social media sharing buttons on each of your posts, your visitors can share your content with their respective networks.

Of course, and remember to engage with your followers. When your followers leave a question or comment on your post, take the time to acknowledge and respond to them. That can make them feel like you know, they are valued and you sincerely want to associate with them, and it brings a sense of loyalty amongst your followers.

Now, of course, not all comments and questions will be positive. As an influencer, expect that, and you will have your fair share of negative comments and criticisms. Make it a point to keep your cool and address them professionally. All right.

Hashtags. Now, Instagram hashtags can make or break your Instagram strategy. Okay. Use them correctly, and you will get your posts seen by more people who are likely to be interested in your products or your brand. But use the wrong one, and you can actually damage from annoying potential followers to getting penalized by Instagram's algorithm. Use hashtags to ensure your content is discovered by the interested audience. Don't use hashtags which you feel can work. Back it up with data. There are many tools available, some free, some paid, which will help you to generate the trending hashtags. So, there is Food Suit, there is Sprout Social, etc., which will help you to identify the um, trending hashtags, which will analyze your pages, and you can use that data to decide on your hashtags. And it's not just the trending hashtags that you can work on. You can also look at the related hashtags. So, people can also choose to follow hashtags. You might be already knowing that, which means they could see your content or your post in their feed, even if they don't really follow you yet.

Okay. Now, um, let's look at some of the types of hashtags that's available. So, it can be about product or service, like, you know, #handbag or #chocolatebar, etc. There can also be niche hashtags. Now, this get a little bit more specific, showing where you fitted the con in the context of your industry, like #travelblogger, #foodblogger, #veganbaker, etc. Now, industry in Instagram community hashtags. These are basically, uh, there are communities which exist on Instagram, and this hashtags can help you find and join them. So, think of hashtags like, um, #gardenersofinstagram, #artistsofinstagram, #painters of Instagram, etc. There can also be special event or seasonal hashtags. Right? You can also use location hashtags. So, even if you geotag your Instagram post, it can still be a good idea to include a hashtag that refers to your location. For example, #DelhiDhabas or #VancouverCraftBeer or #MumbaiEats, etc. Daily hashtags are another way of putting it up. Monday blues, Monday morning blues. Yes. Sunday fun day is very popular. Absolutely.

There can also be relevant phrase hashtags. These hashtags combine elements of product hashtags, niche hashtags, community hashtags. So, this would include hashtags like #Iamawriter, #SheWhoWonders, #SoloWomenBikers. Some of these are hashtags which are, um, phrase hashtags, what we call as phrase hashtags. There's also acronym hashtags. Can you think of an acronym hashtag which is popular with you? Yes, there is #TBT, the Throwback Thursday, or there is #FBF, they Flashback Friday. And you all know about #YOLO. Yes, everybody knows about YOLO. You only live once. And there's also quite a bit of #OOTD that I see at times, which is the outfit of the day, kind of a hashtag. Many people also use emoji hashtags, like, you know, hashtag a couple of question marks, kind of a thing.

So, the question now is, how many hashtags can you use on Insta? You can use up to 30, but it's not really recommended to use so many of it. You can use up to 30 hashtags on a regular post and maybe up to 10 on a story. If you add more, your comment or your caption will not get posted. And it's better to avoid. Even 30 is not recommended. Maybe about 5 to 10 is what would be recommended.

A word of caution, or rather, words of caution. Avoid banned hashtags. Okay. Using banned hashtags can cause a drop in engagement, as your use of legitimate hashtags might also become affected because you will be dropped in the algorithm. You'll be penalized in the algorithm, right? Avoid hashtags that are shamelessly soliciting likes and followers, like for example, #likeforlike, #followforfollow, #followme, #likeme, that kind of hashtags. Avoid them. And third one is, of course, do not use irrelevant or repetitive hashtags. So, if you use the same set of hashtags for every post, you're likely to get penalized by the algorithm that Insta uses.

A couple of other things that you should keep in mind. Evaluate your progress. Most social media channels give you insights and analytics to monitor your progress. Things like, some give demographics, some give reach, some give engagement rate. That will help you to estimate how quickly you are growing and how, what is the kind of scale that you can achieve. It also tells you what kind of content actually brings it the largest amount of engagement and hence what you should do more, kind of a thing. And also, if you're planning to collaborate with brands, brands definitely look for data, read data, and draw insights out of it. Their algorithms, as it comes to postings, particularly sponsored postings, etc. Your base and you can get a content. Now, if there is one thing that surprised and deliver quality, yeah, they will stop following you. As you mentioned, this would suit their Sprout Social, etc., which will enable you to schedule your post without manually having to do it every day.

So, these are some of the tips for being an influencer. One way is definitely a particular apparel or when they are giving a lifestyle. So, have noticed if you're on Insta, you would have noticed that lots of photographers collaborate with Nat National Geographic with their work. Good amount of explore programs like Amazon's Influencer Program, which is an extension of their existing online Associates Program for social media influencers. So, basically, you will have a page on the Amazon site, and you can promote some of the products, etc. Right? DigitalMarketer.com and managing marketing campaigns that promote your kaffai and evaluate new digital and so many other things to better optimize marketing campaigns.

So, in worldwide jobs in the very first quarter of 2019, and also the cops in the year 2019, and are willing to offer a high salary to get a certified candidate. And then booms highly rewarding for you during this hiring process. So, please take up digital marketing because so being more entities join the online bandwagon for a wider market reach. The job opportunities in the field of digital marketing is ever growing. Unlike other sectors of employment, this early to turn a blind eye. Like I mentioned, people actually prefer certification. Course marketing, right? So, 60% of professionals consider that certification led them to get a new job. Hence, it's ideal to have a digital marketing search and also have a grasp over the marketing tools and techniques of the expert. So, this helps you get in touch with the industry experts also get recognized in the field of digital marketing. So, as a digital marketer, you'll be having a lot of respite. You need to be taking up.

So, why exactly do you need a career in the field of digital marketing? Why not other field? Why not private data? Why not if you manage your work? Now, why the low cost invest? Like the most important part of having a career in the field of digital market, it is that field which has plenty of room for tech and creative thinking. Creative of customizing your strategy, right? So, here are a few reasons why you should shift your focus towards digital marketing right now. So, firstly, I would say digital marketing is more to worry about the money market right now because audience play a vital role in shaping your business. So, having a good interaction or have will definitely marketing also provides a better ROI for your marketing investments. What is this ROI? Why is it used? So, ROI is on investment. This is some a marketing plan. Don't get a better ROI. But when you talk about digital market, which in turn increases the productivity of your company and revenues. So, this is like a cheap and then new for your company, quite a lot of money. So, these people actually make a lot of. And also, it's why you should definitely digital marketing also talking right and fulfilling the needs of the customer on the internet. So, people and the marketers are really going bonkers over this in order to transform which focuses on showing of basic requirement are not only available in metro cities. I think it's going to be digital these days. So, if we talk about digital marketing career in India, it's going to be a hit. And also on our digital marketing, you know, their products are given more importance here. So, this graph clearly shows everything in detail. People using internet between 2015 to 2012, 259 million, which goes up to 331 million in 2000, 117. And also, it is predicted that the internet users across the globe would be doubled by 2022. This is because the trade in which the country is growing in terms of having to a recent report, it is said that the digital economy is growing 10 times faster than the traditional economy. And the firms that engage in online trading are twice as likely to be creating jobs as firms that they aren't. This is exactly why you need to cope up with the current technology trends and also choose digital marketing to have a better future in this field.

So, now that you've understood why should you take up digital marketing as your career option. Now, talking about the certification, you should consider to buy yourself a promising job under this digital marketing umbrella. We have Google AdWords certification, social media certification, Google Analytics certification, and content marketing certification. So, these are the few certified courses that you should take up to become a digital marketer. And Edureka's postgraduate program covers everything from scratch. So, all these certified courses fall under this expertly curated program. You'll be learning about content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, SEO, and digital campaigns. Also, at the end of each module, you have assignments that will increase your chances of being practical and will help you get hired.

Next up, we'll see what are the skills that are required in order to become a successful digital marketer. So, here are the top skills that are required in order to become a successful digital marketer. So, the first and the major skill that you need to possess is, you have to be good with the digital marketing channels like SEO, that is Search Engine Optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, and so many other channels. So, you need to be very familiar with these channels. And also, you need to be good at data analytics. Data analytics refers to the techniques to analyze data and enhance productivity in order to gain business profit. So, this is also a must-known skill, guys. And you need to have certain knowledge of WordPress also. Say, for example, if you're writing a blog, so you need to know which platform to go for and in what way you should put across your points. So, WordPress plays a major role if you want to write a blog of your own. So, this will also help your organization if the company is dealing with content marketing or social media marketing.

Next up, you need to be good with Google Analytics. So, Google Analytics is one such tool which helps analyzing the insights of your website. Now, say, for example, if your company is dealing with online certification like Edureka, so Google Analytics plays a major role in shaping the business for you guys. So, what this Google Analytics tool does is, it gives you a proper insight of how many people are landing onto your website and what is the traffic that is generated through a particular medium. It can be a blog, a video, or any other factor. So, it will analyze the aspects of your website and also it will take a look at the part where you'll also see where you're losing traffic onto your website. So, this particular tool plays a major role in shaping your career in the field of digital marketing.

Now, the next one is basic design skills. So, design skills is a must, guys. In order to generate a website of your own, you need to process some design skills that will eventually help your organization. So, these are the top skills that you should master in order to become a successful digital marketer. All right. So, I think you guys are clear with the skills that are required. So, these are not just the only skills that you should master. There are so many other skills in the market right now, but these are the evergreen skills that one should master to build a career in the field of digital marketing. And also, you need to know the working of Excel, sales skills, objective thinking, creative thinking, and also ability to adapt to any kind of environment. So, these are a few notable skills that you should possess to become a successful digital marketer.

Now, talking about the job role and the scope in the field of digital marketing. Jobs play a major role when you want to pursue a career in a specific domain. Digital marketing is one such domain where you can find evergreen job roles. So, what exactly is the scope for job in this field? Is it easy to get a job, or does it require some special skill in order to get a job? Let's have a look.

So, firstly, let's take a look at the roles and responsibilities of a digital marketer. So, the first responsibility as a digital marketer is to be able to create a marketing campaign on your own. And also, this might generate leads for your organization. So, you need to be well-versed with creating a marketing campaign of your own, right? The next one is assist in the formulation of strategies in order to build a long-lasting digital connection with the customers. So, the ultimatum is connecting with the customers, right? So, you have an organization which deals with customer interaction. So, the first thing you need to be focusing on is generating a good relationship between them. This plays a major role if you're wanting to build a career in digital marketing. You should also be able to plan and monitor the ongoing progress on social media platforms. Social media platforms is one such way through which you can reach your customers in just a second. So, planning and monitoring the way you can handle things on social media is very important. You need to plan accordingly to get more leads from the social media platforms. Always be actively involved in SEO. This SEO is pertained to blog writing. So, SEO plays a major role if you're writing a blog. So, Search Engine Optimization is something that you will be requiring if you want to write a blog on your own for your organization. So, you should be actively involved in writing blogs and creating good content. So, this is more important. Okay. So, creating good content that will help both customers as well as the business is the main agenda for digital marketing. And analyzing the insights of your website using Google Analytics, like I mentioned, this is one of the skill set that is required. And also, this is a responsibility of a digital marketer. Help maintain a good relationship with the customer. So, this is what people are hired for. And this is exactly why you need to be more open to your customers. All right. And also have the ability to be more creative and up-to-date with the latest technology trends. So, digital marketing is a growing platform, right? Technology changes also affect the digital marketing platform. So, you need to be updated with the latest trends in the market.

Currently, the digital marketing job field is highly result-driven and enhances your knowledge and creative skills. There are many digital marketing job roles, but I've noted on a few of them that will definitely help you out. So, the first one that I have on the list is the Digital Marketing Executive. As a Digital Marketing Executive, it is your responsibility to look into online marketing strategies for businesses. You should also be able to plan and execute marketing campaigns and maintain and supply content for a website. Okay. So, this is the responsibility or the role of a Digital Marketing Executive in a company.

Now, the next one is Digital Marketing Manager. The primary role of a Digital Marketing Manager is to brand your product out in the digital space. You are to develop, implement, and manage marketing campaigns that promote the products and services of your own company. So, this Digital Marketing Manager is a key to the success of your organization.

Next, we have SEO Executive. The primary role of an SEO Executive or Specialist is to rank a website page on the search engine result page. And also, the other major factor which influences the traffic in your website. SEO sector is thriving day by day, and the SEO Executive job roles are always in demand. So, please start applying your resumes right away.

So, the next one that I have on the list is Social Media Marketing Expert. So, Social Media Marketing Experts are responsible for combining marketing and social media management in order to enhance the company's social media presence, interaction with target audience, promoting the brand's engaging content, and expanding the opportunities for increasing the revenue. So, the ultimatum is to generate revenue for your organization and also create better content for your people or customers. So, this is the role of a Social Media Marketing Expert.

So, the next one that I have is SEM. So, SEM basically stands for Search Engine Marketing. So, there is a person who's dedicated towards the Search Engine Marketing is called as an SEM Specialist. So, this person helps in mainly targeting the number of leads and clicks from a given marketing budget, marketing bid, keyword research, analysis, and test ads campaign. So, this person helps in following up things.

So, the next is Content Marketing Manager. So, this Content Marketing Manager is responsible for creating valuable content and has the desired skills to market it. Managing blogs, video marketing, marketing campaigns, e-book publications, guest blogging, email communication, and so many other tasks are taken care of by the Content Marketing Manager. Me, as a person, also come under this content marketing team. And also, we make videos or blogs corresponding to the topics that are given. So, this is the role of the Digital Marketing Manager.

So, these were a few notable job roles under the digital marketing umbrella. Now, moving ahead to the next topic, we have pay scale in India and the US. So, first, let's take a look at the salary acquired by a Digital Marketing Manager. So, this digital marketing salary might vary according to your work profile, experience, and also the major part, your talent. If you have all these three combined, you'll definitely be able to barge in the opportunity. So, according to PayScale, a Digital Marketing Manager in the US makes up to $65,488. So, this is the average salary acquired by a Digital Marketing Manager. And also, in India, the average salary for a Digital Marketing Manager is around ₹5,15,124. So, this is the mean average salary, guys.

Now, talking about SEO Manager. So, the salary is divided into the experience level. That is, first comes the manager, next comes the SEO Manager, Content Marketing Manager, Social Media Manager, and so many others. All right. So, the next on the list is SEO Manager. So, the average salary acquired by an SEO Manager in the US is around $67,475. And also, the salary acquired by an SEO Manager in India is around 5 lakhs. So, this is the average salary that I'm talking about, guys. Imagine about the actual salary you'll be getting.

Now, the next is Social Media Manager. And, uh, do note this, guys. The stats that I'm showing you guys is from PayScale. So, this might vary according to your experience level and also the location. So, we're mainly focusing on India and the US. The average salary for a Social Media Manager in the US is around $49,881. And in India, it's around 3.6 lakhs.

The next on the list is Content Manager. In the US, you can make up to $57,734. And in India, you can make up to 5.7 lakhs. Think about the better future. And content marketing is actually a booming field. Make a note of this, guys.

Next, we have SEM Specialist. So, the average salary for an SEM Specialist is around $47,186 US Dollars. And in India, it's around 3.6 lakhs.

So, the first question that I have for you is, what is digital marketing? And explain it in simple terms. Digital marketing is all about the tactics for brand marketing via online channels. It includes various techniques like SEO, that is Search Engine Optimization, SEM, Search Engine Marketing, link building, email marketing, PPC, that is Pay-Per-Click, affiliate marketing, and so many others. Now, when I say digital marketing, what comes to your mind? So, this digital marketing, it encompasses all marketing efforts that help you in promoting your product or brand using electronic devices or the internet. It leverages online marketing tactics like search engine, email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, and so on, in order to connect with current and prospective customers. So, this was about what is digital marketing. Now, moving on, let's take a look at the next question.

So, the next question that I have for you is, what are the different types of digital marketing? So, I've mainly listed out a few of them. So, there are six of them in total. First one is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO is used for blogs or any articles that you want to write regarding your company or your product. So, this basically helps a lot in link building or organic traffic generation. The next one is Search Engine Marketing. SEM is used a lot in terms of optimizing or marketing your content that you create. Search Engine Marketing is analyzing the search engine, how it works, how Google works, and market accordingly. All right. Now, talking about content marketing. Content marketing deals with creating valuable content and creating a blog and guest blogging, and all of it come under content marketing. Now, the next one is email marketing. So, if you want to be a professional in the field of digital marketing, you should know how email marketing works. Email is one of the oldest and the most used form of communication in the business aspect. So, email marketing is another type of digital marketing. So, I wouldn't say types. These are also considered as channels, okay? So, these are some mediums or channels through which you can promote your product. Now, the next is social media marketing. When I say social media, you think of certain applications that would be used on a day-to-day basis, right? So, they're namely Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and so on. So, social media marketing plays an important role in enhancing a company's marketing efforts. So, know how to promote your product on the social media. And the next is e-commerce marketing. You can put up your product on the e-commerce website and you can get traffic from it. Okay. So, these are the different types of digital marketing available.

Now, the next question is, how can you categorize digital marketing? So, this digital marketing is mainly classified into two fields, that is, inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is also called as a magnetic marketing, as it allows the organizations to attract their best prospects and those who are actively looking for something or some solutions online. So, inbound marketing helps pulling the interest of the customer, and it is written according to the customer needs. Natural habitats are some examples to this would be the blogs, social media posts, search, influencer marketing, opt-in emails, and so on.

Now, talking about outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is also referred as the interruption or the push marketing, which uses tactics that gets a message to a lot of people in an effort to make a sale. Okay. So, this is like you're pushing your content so that people would know about it and people would get to know about your organization as well. And this pushes regardless of the user's interest. You might have come across these ads when you're watching a video online, right? So, these just pop up out of nowhere when you don't want to watch it. So, these are called as push marketing or outbound marketing. It is written according to the product's need and not as per the customer's need. And some natural habitat or examples to this would be display ads, directory marketer script, magazines, TV ads, and so on. So, this was about the categories.

Now, talking about the next question, according to you, what are the most effective ways to increase traffic onto your website? So, here are a few mediums or ways you can say that will help you increasing the traffic onto your website. So, the first one would be paid search. So, you're going to be paying to your content so that it ranks on the first page. You might have seen these advertisements or posts which rank on the first page of Google, like the first link which has "Ad" under it. So, these are nothing but the paid ads or the paid search.

Now, the next would be display advertising and email marketing. Display advertising is something that, like I mentioned, push marketing. And email marketing is also very important, guys. This will also eventually help you in getting a lot of traffic onto your website. Send prospective emails to your customers or the viewers who are looking for a solution online. Okay. Now, and content marketing and content optimization. Content marketing, like I mentioned, it is going to help you in creating organic traffic onto your website. So, your content marketing is a must, and you should know how to optimize your content. You should know how SEO plays a major role in optimizing your content. The content that you create must be up-to-date. It should have interesting facts about any of the topic that you'll be discussing. And guest blogging. Guest blogging is also important, guys. If you want your organization to grow in large scale, you need people who are actually willing to write some interesting blogs regarding your topic or your product.

Now, seeking referral traffic. This is because if you write a blog on any of the ranking keywords, you can either link these blogs to another blog that you'll be writing, or you can just promote the same blog in that content. You can either leave a link to your existing blog so that you can get more traffic via that channel. And target long-tail keywords. You should always target long-tail keywords, guys, because these help in ranking the most and it will eventually get more views also. Okay.

Now, the next question is, what is SEO? Explain it in simple terms. SEO is actually a process of optimizing your content, technical setup, and reach of your website so that your pages appear on the top of the search engine result pages for a specific keyword. So, this is a process of increasing the quality of your website traffic, guys. And major search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing, all have a primary search results. Right here, web pages are displayed and ranked based on what search engine selects as the most relevant in accordance with the context. And SEO helps websites achieve a better ranking on the search engine result pages when prospects search for a particular keyword related to your product or service. Eventually, this will increase the quality and the quantity of traffic on your website through organic results. Okay. So, this was about SEO.

Now, moving on to the next question, what are the different types of SEO that frequently used in the market? So, we have namely three types of SEO that are used widely. So, let's learn about them in detail. Yeah. So, the first on the list is a White Hat SEO. This is the most popular SEO technique that utilizes methods and techniques to improve search engine rankings of your site which do not run afoul of search engine guidelines. So, this follows the search engine guidelines, guys. So, it actually follows the Google guidelines as well. So, White Hat SEO uses techniques like high-quality content, link acquisition, website HTML optimization, and restructuring your content. With White Hat SEO, you can expect a long-lasting growth in your ranking. So, like I mentioned, these White Hat SEO techniques are used for high-quality content. So, you will be able to create high-quality content using White Hat SEO, and it strictly follows or it is strictly abided by the guidelines of Google and search engines.

Now, talking about Black Hat SEO. It exploits the various weaknesses in the search engine algorithms to get high ranking. The Black Hat is not in accordance with the SEO guidelines set by the Google search engine or the search engines itself. Some of the Black Hat SEO techniques are keyword stuffing, link spamming, hidden text, hidden link, and so on. So, using these techniques, you can expect unpredictable, quick, but short-lasting growth and rankings. So, this is like white money in black money, guys. White money is something which is abided by the rules of the nation or the country, and black money is something which is illegal. But here, it is not illegal. It is just stuffing or adding more things so that your page.

will rank on the first page. All right. Now, talking about gray hat issues. Gray hat SEO is neither black nor white. It rather combines both of them. It is a transformation from black hat SEO to white hat SEO and vice versa. Okay, so this was about the sixth question.

Moving on, the next question is, explain keywords in digital marketing and how is it important for SEO. A keyword is the most significant and fundamental element of search engine optimization. Keywords are considered as the core of all your SEO efforts. They are crucial for better rankings in the search engine result pages, or SERPs. It is really important to make your website SEO optimized for keywords that are relevant to your business. This would help your website's page to rank higher in the search engine result pages, which will eventually make customers or viewers to find your website very easily.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, what are the different areas or key areas where you can use keywords to optimize your site ranking? Okay, this is an important question. You can use keywords to optimize your site ranking by mentioning them or linking them in your website URL, website title, meta tags, web page context, body text, and headlines. If these contain your keywords, it is for sure that your keyword is ranking and the entire page is pertained to one keyword. If you want to optimize your content, SEO is a must. So by mentioning in all of these, I think you don't have to stuff your keyword in between anywhere.

Okay, so the next question is, what are on-page and off-page optimization? On-page basically refers to the factors that you can optimize on your own website to grow traffic. The main components involved in on-page optimization are title of the page, meta tag description, optimized image with alt tags, URL structure, high-quality content, optimized internal links, and so on. As off-page SEO is all about your online reputation, it includes acquiring backlinks for your page from authority sites in your niche. The main components involved in the off-page optimization are acquiring backlinks, leveraging social interaction with your site, promoting your content via social media platforms, adding social bookmarking, and guest blogging. So these are some major differences between on-page and off-page optimization.

Now, moving on to the next question, what are some useful tools for digital marketing? We have some interesting tools for digital marketing, guys. So I've noted on a few of them. We have so many tools in the market right now which helps in digital marketing. So we have something called keyword research or keyword discovery. This helps in ranking your keyword or analyzing how to make your keyword rank on the search engine result pages. We have RankWatch, which helps in ranking. Most, which is also another platform that helps in analyzing the SEO, Alexa ranking, Google Analytics, Heat Maps, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Add Espresso, Unbounce, and so on. So these are some interesting tools that help in analyzing your content and help you in promoting your product.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, explain PPC or pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click is also one of the most predominantly used forms of marketing. PPC is abbreviated as pay per click, which is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, if I say, it is a way of buying visits to your site rather than attempting to earn it from the visits organically. It is also referred to as sponsored results on the search engine result pages. PPC ads are visible, flexible, and effective for many different types of organizations. With paid search, you can only pay when your ad is clicked. These are the ads that are present on top whenever you search for a particular keyword. Essentially, this is also a way of buying visits to your site.

Now, search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. Now, you must have had this thought when I say ads, what kind of ads am I going to see? These are nothing but Google Ads, which are formerly called as Google AdWords. So, pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines like Google AdWords and Bing Ads. Okay, so this was about PPC or pay-per-click.

Now, moving ahead, we'll see what Google AdWords is and what do you know about them. So, Google AdWords is an online advertising service by Google to help marketers reach their customers instantly. Businesses use this service to display ads on Google and its advertising network. It is the most famous pay-per-click advertising system in the entire world. AdWords allows businesses to set a budget for ads, and the payments happen when people click on the ads. So, Google AdWords service focuses on the keywords that you select. This is about Google AdWords.

Now, explain Google AdWords remarketing. So, Google AdWords remarketing is referred to as a targeting marketing strategy that assists marketers to help reach out to people who visited their site previously but did not complete the purchase. Remarketing helps in targeting the right people at the right time with the right ad. It helps increase conversion rates as the past site visitors may already be familiar with your brand and turn into prospective customers very easily. This is how Google AdWords remarketing is used, or this is exactly how it plays an important role in digital marketing.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, name some of the Google AdWords ad extensions. Okay, some of the Google AdWords extensions would be called extensions, callout extensions, promote extensions, structured snippet extensions, site link, affiliate location, and app extensions. So, what are these ad extensions? Ad extensions are extra snippets of relevant information about your business that can be added to your AdWords text ads. So, these can include your business's location, phone number, business ratings, and so on. In these, there are two categories, namely ad extensions that are automatic and manual ad extensions.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, what can be the ideal approach for an effective PPC campaign? So, how do you approach or how can you make good use of PPC campaigns? So, follow these instructions to have an ideal approach for effective PPC campaigns: Add more PPC keywords to expand your reach. Split ads into smaller segments to have a better click-through rate, that is CTR. So, you can just split some ads into smaller segments. I think people would have watched serials or some series where you'll just get an ad in between when you're watching a series, right? So, these are nothing but the smallest segments you can divide it into segments and place it in a way that they can click your content. Now, also review non-performing PPC keywords. Reviewing is important because you wouldn't know what might rank, what might click. Refine landing pages to align with the search queries. Editing your landing pages at times to make it aligned with search queries is a must. So, if somebody is searching for a particular keyword and it is not there in your landing page, they would definitely not look for it on, or they would not go further with the search, right? So, refining your landing pages is at most. And improve marketing relevancy by adding negative keywords. So, why exactly do we need negative keywords? So, these negative keywords prevent advertisements from displaying for particular phrases. So, this type of keyword prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or a phrase, right? Your ads aren't shown to anyone who's searching for that phrase, and this is also known as negative match. Okay, this is also required for an ideal PPC campaign.

Okay, now moving on to the next question, we have, explain responsive web design with an example. Okay, responsive web design is an approach that suggests the design and the development that it should respond to the user's behavior and environment based on the screen size, platform, orientation, and so on. It makes web pages perform well on different devices like desktop, mobile, tablet, and so on, and it ensures that the user has a great viewing experience no matter what device they are using to access your website. The practice of responsive design consists of a mix of flexible layouts, images, grids, and a little use of CSS media queries. So, this is how you can make a simple web design out of it.

Now, talking about the example, you can consider our website, that is EduRecap. You get a different experience when you are viewing it from your phone or tablet, and you'll be getting a different experience if you're going to be using desktop or laptop, right? So, this is something which is required, which is called responsive web design, that it changes accordingly, and the user experience is good even if they are using different devices or different forms to reach out to your website.

Now, moving on to the next question, what is the difference between direct marketing and branding? Now, when I say branding, the advertiser has to expose his brand to websites and applications that have a higher audience reach. This is something which is called as praising your own brand or keeping up your brand's name high, right? Now, in case of direct marketing, the advertiser is interested mostly in establishing communication with his target audience through different mediums. And even here, there is a little bit of branding which happens, but still, it is called as direct marketing because you are going to be focusing only on the communication with the prospect. So, the basic difference between them is that branding is done to build awareness about your product or your company, whereas direct marketing helps companies to reach out to their customers directly.

Now, moving on to the next question, what are the limitations of online marketing? So, internet has its own limitations, right? And also, every good thing should have some limitation so that it could catch hold of it and get back on track. So, what are the limitations of online marketing? Since online marketing is a platform where everybody is using and it is also so easy to use, we have intense competition in the market. As it is easily accessible and cost-effective, it has become a preferred method for most of the brands. Therefore, it has an uphill task to get noticed amongst the intense competition. It is also overwhelming at times. There is so much information and data and an onslaught of tools that it's easy to get overwhelmed and get confused. It takes a lot of patience and practice and experience to get your head around it all the time, to get your head around all of it. And also, analytics is only as good as its user. I mean to say that analytics depends completely on the user. There is analytics for everything, but you can't do anything with plain data unless you know how to read it and make use of it. It is becoming misleading sometimes, and you can get stuck in chasing vain metrics and burning cash at the wrong places. So, these are some notable limitations of online marketing.

Now, the next question is, list some of the most popular PPC tools. We have SEMrush, Optimizely, Unbounce, Keyword Planner, AdWords Editor, and AdWords Wrapper. So, these are some notable tools for PPC marketing.

Now, the next question is, how can you use social media for marketing? Any idea, guys, how can you use social media? Social media marketing involves creating and sharing content on the social media channels to achieve your marketing and branding goals. It includes different activities like posting images, videos, and other content that drives audience engagement. And social media marketing can also help you by increasing website traffic, building conversations, increasing brand awareness, and improving communication and interaction with the target audience. So, this is exactly how you can use social media for marketing.

Now, moving on to the next part of the session, that is, executive level interview questions. So, here, the first question is, what do you know about email marketing? Email marketing is a highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to target leads and customers. Effective marketing emails convert leads into customers and turn one-time buyers into loyal fans to your website. Email marketing is one of the oldest and the most professional ways to communicate with your clients and prospects. It is also the most direct and effective way of connecting with your leads, nurturing them, and turning them into customers consistently, winning out over all the other marketing channels.

So, the next question is, what is the difference between SEO and SEM? SEO enables your website to appear in the search engine result pages, while SEM is search engine marketing, which helps in purchasing a space in search engine result pages. So, this is some important difference between SEO and SEM. Search engine result pages help in enabling your website to appear on the result pages, whereas SEM is search engine marketing. It helps you in purchasing a search engine result page. Okay, so you can buy the entire page using SEM. All right.

Now, moving on to the next question, we'll talk about content marketing. So, what is content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing relevant and consistent content in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action. The key reasons for enterprises to use content marketing are increased number of sales, the cost you have saved throughout, and better customers who have more loyalty. So, these are some major reasons why content marketing is still booming in the recent days.

Now, moving on to the next question, why is online marketing preferred more over offline marketing? We have some major reasons over here, guys. People do not use offline marketing much these days. Everything is online. You need something, you need to buy food, even that you can order online. If you want to buy something, you need clothes, accessories, and so many things which you get online, right? Because you can tap a larger audience and expand geographically very easily. Information is immediately available online, so you don't have to just wait for it, wait for another person to come and inform you about the product. Interaction with the customer is also made very easy, and you can get in touch very fast. And also, another added advantage of online marketing is better tracking. You can track where your product is, when it is arriving, what is the cost, all of it you can get it online. So, these are some major reasons why online marketing is preferred over offline marketing.

Now, moving on to the next question, what are the five D's of digital marketing? The five D's in digital marketing define the opportunities for customers or consumers to interact with brands and for businesses to reach out to their audience in different ways. So, the first D is digital devices. Your audience experiences your brand as they interact with websites through digital devices, including mobile phones, desktops, tablets, gaming devices, and so on. The next D is a digital platform. Most interaction on digital devices is through browsers or applications from the major platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on. The next D is the digital media. Many different owned, paid, and earned communication channels try to reach and engage with your audience through the digital media. The next D is the digital data. The insights that businesses collect about their audience and their interaction with the business is called or turned as digital data. The next D is the digital technology. Businesses use to create interactive experiences from websites and applications to install email campaigns, and so on. Okay, so these are the five D's of digital marketing.

Now, the next is, what is the role of digital marketing for your business? Why do you think you need digital marketing? Having a digital marketing strategy for your business lets you be a dynamic part of the unavoidable and lucrative online marketing strategy. So, in order to understand what is the role of digital marketing, you need to have great exposure. Digital marketing gives you a fair chance to all businesses that prefer online branding and advertising, and also it will help you in generating traffic. Digital marketing allows you to see the exact number of people who viewed your website's page in real-time by using digital analytics software. Content performance and lead generation also play an important role. With digital marketing, you can measure how many people exactly viewed your page where it's hosted, and you can also collect some contact details of the person who downloaded it using forms.

Now, attribute modeling. Attribute modeling or attribution modeling is an effective strategy for digital marketing that allows you to trace all your sales back to a customer's first digital touchpoint with your business. It helps you identify the trends in which people research and buy your products, which helps you make informed decisions about what parts of your digital marketing strategy deserves attention. Okay, so this is exactly why digital marketing is required.

And moving on to the next question, what are the different types or ways to approach SEO to generate traffic to your website? Okay, so these are some techniques which are used to generate more traffic to your website. So, these are sometimes also referred to as types of SEO. It is not types, it is a different approach or techniques to generate more traffic. We have something called on-page optimization or on-page SEO. So, it focuses only on creating content that exists on the page of the website by researching keywords for their search volume and intent. You can answer questions for readers and rank higher on the search engine result pages to those questions produced.

Now, talking about off-page SEO, this focuses on all the activities that takes place off the page when looking to optimize your website. What are these activities that are not on page but affect your ranking? The answer is the backlinks. The number of publishers that link to you and the relative authority of the publishers affect how you rank for specific keywords. You can earn the backlinks by networking with other publishers, writing guest posts on their websites, and generating external attention.

Now, the next one is technical SEO. This focuses on the back end of your website. We have something called image compression, CSS file optimization, structured data. These are some different forms of technical SEO that can increase your website's loading speed, that is an important ranking factor for the search engines.

Now, moving on to the next question, what is AMP? AMP is a web component framework which helps in creating user-first websites, emails, ad stories, and so on. It is also short for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is a project from Twitter and Google to make fast mobile pages. AMP is an open-source library that helps create a lightweight and fast-loading web page. It also enables marketers and publishers to create mobile-friendly web pages which can be supported on different platforms and is compatible with all types of browsers.

The next question is, what are the four C's of digital marketing? We have four C's, like we have four D's of digital marketing. We have something called the four C's of digital marketing, that is nothing but customer, content, context, and conversion. Customer is someone who sees the message or views the message. Content is the message that the customer sees, whereas context is something why the customer needs to see the message. And conversion is the communication between you and the customer.

And moving on to the next question, we have, what are the three ingredients of digital marketing? Okay, so the three main factors why digital marketing is required is to generate traffic on your website and also know the insights about your website, how the analytics is, how many people are viewing to your web page, and so on. So, these come under the insights. And finally, the sales. How can you sell your product to a customer? So, these are some three major ingredients of digital marketing.

Now, moving on to the next question, how can you drive digital traffic to your website immediately? Leveraging social media with posts that link back to your site is one key way to funnel traffic to your website within a shorter time frame. Also, posts that include promotions, giveaways, contests, and other engaging and time-sensitive material can be more effective. In addition to this, generating leads through engagement and online public relations, such as answering queries where to function as a subject expert or writing a press release for online distribution. These are some strong tactics for quickly amassing traffic.

Okay, now the next is, what is conversion optimization? Conversion optimization is a practice of determining how a website can increase the ratio of visitors to the actual customers. A conversion is a site visitor who has taken a desired action rather than simply viewing content and leaving it. One way to optimize conversion is to conduct A/B testing. This runs two web pages with altered designs or content to see which yields more conversions.

Now, the next question is, why should you use YouTube for digital marketing? With YouTube, you can present a better picture of the brand by creating interesting and long videos which can help boost SEO traffic, expand your social reach, create brand awareness, and also improve the ROI. You'll be paid more if you're getting more views on YouTube. So, yeah, I think people already know that. So, YouTube is also another major factor or the major revenue generation for people.

Now, the next question is, how do I measure the ROI? When I say YouTube gives you a lot of or better ROI, what do you mean or how can you measure this ROI? ROI is nothing but return on investment. So, to calculate the ROI of a marketing campaign integrated into the overall business line calculation, take the sales growth from the product line and subtract the marketing cost, and divide by the marketing cost, and there you'll have your ROI. So, you'll be having a better ROI if you're going to be using YouTube as your marketing platform.

Now, the next question is, what are the webmaster tools? Google Webmaster Tools is basically a collection of web utilities that help website owners ensure that their site is Google-friendly. These tools have many applications like getting data about incoming search traffic. You can also view crawling and viewing reports using these webmaster tools.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, differentiate AdWords and AdSense. AdWords enables businesses to advertise on Google's network, and AdSense enables publishers to reserve space for AdWords placement on your website. Both these AdWords and AdSense work together to complete Google's advertising network, that is, website owners to put up a space for Google's ads, and businesses set a budget to display ads on advertising networks, that is, AdWords. So, this is some a major difference between AdWords and AdSense.

Now, the next question is, define your journey as an online shopper. Have you ever shopped online? The answer would be yes, of course. People would eventually try to shop something online, right? How should this user experience be? How should a user journey be when you're shopping online? Awareness: The first considerate part or point would be awareness when consumers discover your brand. So, you're that aware of your brand. And the next one would be consideration. So, potential customers search to check if you offer the product that they need. And the next would be the preference. Online shoppers establish a preference in terms of which website they want to purchase it from, and based on their research, they're going to be looking for that particular store or shop. Now, the next one would be the purchase. Customer makes a decision of purchasing the product. So, this is how the user journey of an online shopper is.

Now, the next question is, do you think digital marketing will replace traditional marketing practices in the near future? This question would reveal the level of your professional knowledge, guys. Hence, build your answer with personal experiences. Do not just go with what you've heard. One thing that can be safely said is this, that it is unlikely that digital marketing will completely replace traditional marketing in the near future. Rather, marketers are integrating both the platforms to optimize their plans for optimum ROI. Instead of replacing each other, both traditional and digital marketing are becoming complementary to each other. So, this is one safe answer which you can give.

All right, and the next question is, explain the process of Facebook marketing. For Facebook, sharing valuable content that connects with potential customers is your most important. You can create a Facebook marketing plan by defining your audience, setting goals, creating a business page on Facebook, posting interesting content, and incorporating Facebook ads. Facebook ads also play an important role, guys.

Now, the next question that I have on the list for executive level interview questions would be, how do you set up, track, and analyze whether a marketing campaign you conducted was a success? Here, you can discuss about the campaign's driving goals, which can vary from enhancing brand awareness, lead generation, or boosting up social media followers. You need to know about tracking the campaigns via Google Analytics and other monitoring tools for staying updated with the campaign progress. It is also essential that you mention your visions upon which you can act on. So, with this, we come to the end of these executive level interview questions.

Now, moving ahead, we'll see what are the managerial level interview questions that we have. So, what is your approach to structuring the marketing budget? So, this is the first question that I have on the list for marketing level interview questions. There are critical keys to plan and implement a marketing budget. So, the first thing you should do is calculate the marketing budget and align your marketing goals with your company's strategic goals, and then identify the marketing budget to develop a detailed marketing plan that supports your strategy. After you have identified your marketing budget, allocate your marketing budget dollars and implement the marketing budget plan. So, this is how you can approach your structuring of the marketing budget.

Now, the next one is, what's the strategy that you're following to rank a keyword? How do you make a keyword rank? Ranking for a keyword is a repeatable process, and you won't get the results that you want 100% of the time, especially if your keyword that you're trying to rank is a popular one. But content marketing and SEO practices like keyword research, checking out for competition, conceptualizing the content, optimizing your keyword can help you with rankings. Okay, so this is a strategy that we follow.

Now, the next question is, what are the ways to measure SEM efforts that are successful? So, if your aim is to spread awareness, then tracking clicks and impressions on paid and organic search listings are possible. But if the objective is to quantify the brand performance, then measuring it through conversion rate is a must. So, in order to generate qualified leads, it is better to track emails and queries or online registrations. So, this is how you can measure the SEM efforts that are successful.

Now, moving on to the next question, we have, how are you going to drag the attention of more potential buyers for the product or services that are offered by businesses via social media channels? Okay, so basically, how can you attract viewers using social media? Attention equals innovative content. If you produce good content and display it correctly to the right place at the right time, it will definitely give you the proper output. A few ways to engage your customers through social media are: crafting catchy headlines, posting quality visual media, hosting contests, ensuring that your post has good content, focusing on the social presence, responding to comments in a timely manner. Okay, so doing these, you can attain or you can drag more attention to your product or your website.

Now, the next question is, can you reduce paid media campaign cost without losing traffic? When you answer this question, they will get to know that you can make a big difference in the field of digital marketing. They don't expect you to answer this question in detail, guys, but you must be very crisp. Just research the organization's current objective activity and just think deeper about the 3-14 changes that you can bring to the company. For instance, success. Always outline the points that you get and mention them with more ideas in order to get better ROI or conversion.

The next question is, what are some common social media mistakes that businesses make? One of the worst mistakes that you could make is inconsistency. Only posting sporadically and not responding when customers or consumers reach out to you to engage. Another biggie is using social media as a place to announce your own content and nothing more, without ever engaging in discussions or adding comments to your post that makes your audience want to click or like or share. So, be indulged and be more open in terms of social media because it is a platform where you can gain more traffic and more attention from the users.

So, the next one is, how do you stay updated with the latest marketing trends? Since digital marketing is a dynamic field, it is important to stay updated with blogs, books, podcasts, webinars, and so on, and many more for the go. Some of the most popular resources to stay updated on the marketing platforms are websites like Mashable, WordStream blog, Social Media Examiner, and so on. Okay, so they are using these, you can actually keep updated with the digital marketing trends.

Now, moving on to the next question, how do you decrease the loading time of a website? So, to decrease the loading time of your website, you can use external style sheets. You can also consider using fewer images and optimize images to reduce the file size without affecting the quality of the image. And also, you can consider using CSS sprites to reduce the HTTP request. So, this is how you can decrease the loading time of your website.

Now, moving on to the next question, how much time should social media marketing take? Timing is everything in social media marketing. So, the good news is, using social media, you will have the opportunity to reach your specific audience in time. But even though there are many tools that you can use to schedule and automate posts to save some time, you'll also want to keep a track of the activity on your social media accounts throughout the day so that you can provide timely responses to your audience's questions and comments. Between strategizing, creating and posting content and images, responding to your audience, and checking analytics, social media is done right, and it can be a full-time job.

And the last question would be, where do you see yourself five years down the line in the field of digital marketing? So, you should be very thoughtful in this case. You should know what your future is going to be, and you should know how you're going to be analyzing yourself in the field of digital marketing, and you should know how you can actually expertise or you can prove it to them that you will not be someone who is looking only for money. You will also want to show them that you can see yourself as a successful digital marketer and make them believe that you are totally into this job.

So, with this, we come to the end. Thank you for watching this video. Happy learning. I hope you have enjoyed listening to this video. Please be kind enough to like it, and you can comment any of your doubts and queries, and we will reply to them at the earliest. Do look out for more videos in our playlist and subscribe to Eduureka channel to learn more. Happy learning.