Class 9 - Digital marketing & WOM Flashcards
Why does website design matter?
A website is often a customer’s first impression of your brand
- Seeing a poorly designed or confusing website can lead people to leave (“bounce”) without ever encountering your content
Consumers think that well-designed are more credible and trustworthy
Web design affects engagement — people spend longer on well-designed websites.
What makes a good website ?
Well-organized
Well-designed
Good-content
Well organized
Ease of Navigation
- There should be a navigation bar that is in a consistent place on the webpage
- There should be a search feature
- Pages should be accessible through multiple pathways, with limited clicks
Structure
-website should have a hierarchical structure that is consistent across the site.
The website should have meaningful labels, headings and titles.
Keywords should be included for searchability
Designed to work with, not against, consumers’ brains
Good design should be based on principles of consumer cognition (e.g., memory, attention, heuristics) – see Lecture 3
Test your website design with real consumers: Observe how consumers use your website, Ideate on what problems consumers face and possible solutions, Prototype what a better solution might look like, and Test that solution with real consumers.
Well-designed
Good Web Design: Basic Visual Elements
The Fold Line
Divides the visible part of the website from the part that is only visible after scrolling.
Important messages should be placed above the fold.
Consistency
Branding (i.e., logos, colors, images)
Page layouts
Text (fonts, seriation)
Buttons
Use a design system!
White Space
Allows the eye to travel easily between chunks of information
Makes your pages as simple and easy to understand as possible
Good Web Design: Accessibility
Impaired vision:
Text should easily converted to audio, including a descriptive image caption
Make sure your site has high-contrasting colors that work for colorblind people (most common colorblindness is red-green)
Impaired motor skills: Website can be navigated with a keyboard and not just a mouse
Impaired hearing: Have captions available on all video or audio files
Literacy: Use simple language and graphics to depict important information
13% of Canadians do not have English of French as their first language
50% of Canadians have below high-school literacy level
Good Web Design : Expressing your Brand
- What’s my color palette?
What fonts do I use?
Serif
Traditional
Respectable
Reliable
Sophisticated
Sans Serif
Clear
Modern
Efficient
Straightforward
Script
Elegant
Unique
Personal
Emotional
Decorative
Casual
Creative
Original
- Themes in photography and graphics
Composition
Rule of Thirds. Consumers pay most attention to image features occurring on the lines and intersections of a 3x3 grid
Balance. Symmetry in brand photos and logos is associated with calmness and stability, where asymmetry is associated with excitement.
Lighting
Bright vs. Dark (Day vs. Night). Brightness is associated with transparency and openness. Darkness is associated with mystery and magic.
Direct vs. Diffuse (Sunny vs. Cloudy). Direct light has bright high points and shadowy dark points, it’s associated with drama and intensity. Diffused light is more serene and calm
Movement
Movement is conveyed through blurring or context cues (e.g., products in the air must fall)
Static = stable, trustworthy
Moving = exciting, changing, more emotional
Depth of Field
Depth-of-field is the longest distance between the camera and the furthest in-focus object (blurred background = short DOF)
Shorter depths of field lead to more attention and better memory for in-focus thing (great for products)
What is content marketing ?
Definition: A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
This is not content just for the sake of content (e.g., a brand thinks it should be ok TikTok). The content is purposeful and planned, and benefits the bottom line.
The content is not a sales pitch — we are not explicitly focused on selling the product — rather, the focus is on what the viewer wants or needs.
Types of Content Marketing
How-to Guides
Useful tools
Opportunities for Self-Expression
Entertaining Videos and Blogs
Content marketing
The content itself is the advertisement, you should not be explicitly promoting a brand or product
You can include your products, but they should not be the focus
You are developing content to develop your brand – every piece of content should align with your branding stratehy
you are very successful, the content itself might generate additional revenue for your business (e.g., ads on popular blogs and Youtube pages)
How to do content marketing well
- Match your content to your 3Cs analysis
- Match your content to your marketing objectives.
- Do an audit of your current content
- Develop a workflow to create more content
Match your content to your 3Cs analysis
Customer
What content appeals to our target customer?
How might the content provide them value (alongside our product?)
Company
Who are we? What is the brand personality and aesthetic we convey?
What content will consumers trust coming from our brand?
Competitor
Do our competitors do content marketing?
Do we want to mimic their content or come up with our own?
Match your content to your marketing objectives.
Different types of content will support different objectives.
- Do an audit of your current content
Conduct an audit of all existing content supplied by the brand (e.g., website, articles, videos, social media, etc.) and determine how aligned the existing content is with the overall marketing objectives
Identify what tweaks can be made to improve existing content
Identify which content should be removed or remade altogether
- Develop a workflow to create more content
Content marketing is an ongoing process. Putting out one piece of content is “making content” but it is not “content marketing”
Your best strategy is to have a continual stream of new content
It may be helpful to get a “Content Management System” (CMS) to help schedule and publish your content across channels (e.g., Canva’s content planner)
Develop a workflow of how content should be created.
STEPPS Model : What types of content go viral ?
Social Currency
We share things that make us look good
Triggers
“Top of mind, tip of tongue”
Emotions
Positive and high-arousal content is more likely to be shared
Public
We imitate other people, but can only do that if they act publicly
Practical Value
We are more likely to share content that helps others
Stories
We are more likely to share content inc. stories or narratives
Social Currency
“Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting your products and ideas along the way.”
Be Remarkable (like Snapple)
People share things that are extraordinary, novel or entertaining because it makes them seem more interesting.
Integrating a remarkable content into consumer’s experience makes them more likely to share
Give people something to brag about (like Apple)
People like to brag about their achievements
Brands create achievements (frequent flier tiers, fitness achievements, reposting fan’s photos) for consumers to brag about earning.
Make People Feel Like Insiders (like Bodega Boston)
Products that are scarce and exclusive make people feel cool when they get them
People will talk about experiences that make them feel cool
Triggers
Things in our environment (sights, sounds, smells) trigger related thought and ideas—making them top of mind. In “small-talk” we usually just say what’s top of mind.
Create a product that is inherently linked to something that happens often (like Mean Girls)
Use marketing to create links between your product and something that happens often (like Michelob)
Improvised Marketing Interventions
Social media managers must be given the chance to respond to what’s going on in pop-culture right now.
Waiting for approval from corporate can take days, meaning the “triggering” event is - no-longer top-of-mind for people
“Improvised Marketing Interventions” (IMIs) are social media actions that are composed and executed in real-time, proximal to an external event
A good IMI is quick witted (i.e., relies on situational humor), unanticipated, and timely (i.e., occurs soon after the event)
IMIs are much more likely to go viral, and can also affect stock prices by up to 3.1 million USD.
Triggers : seemingly rangh (Kelce et Swift)
Emotion
Positive and high-arousal content is more likely to be shared
Public
Consumers want to imitate other people, but can only do that if the behavior is public. A product is much more likely to go catch-on if it is consumed publicly.
Have a product that promotes itself (like iPhone)
- Make it evident to people your customer interacts with that they are using your brand
- Every interaction is an implicit endorsement of the product
Make Private Thoughts Public (like ASU)
- Consumers can’t observe other’s thoughts, only their behavior
- Getting consumers to state their preferences aloud is key to getting others to join in
Make Private Consumption Public (like Movember)
- Products consumed in private are not observable to others
- Finding a way to increase the visibility of private consumption will help it catch on
