Revision

Question 1

*Define Intelligent Marketing

Answer 1

Intelligent Marketing embraces many different marketing approaches (such as customer-centricity, data-driven marketing, testing and learning and multi-channel campaigns) with the ultimate goal of prioritising customer needs and interests and adding value to all customers and prospects through every communication.

Question 2

*How can you ensure marketing communications are customer-centric (four ways)

Answer 2

Ensure every communication has value

Ensure every communication is relevant

Reach out for customers on their preferred channel

Align frequency of communication with customers’ needs and expectations

Question 3

Why is data important in intelligent marketing?

Answer 3

Using data effectively is key to making a business more efficient and effective. By looking at the data sources available, you can develop a better understanding of your audience and predict future behaviour, ultimately increasing customer engagement and improving long-term sustainable revenue growth.

Question 4

Define Omnichannel Marketing

Answer 4

Omnichannel marketing is an approach that integrates and optimises marketing communications and seeks to enhance the customer’s recognition and perception of your brand. It does this by:

• Collating your data, especially channel data and audience insights
• Ensuring a consistent customer experience across all your channels
• Providing consistent messaging across all communications

Question 5

What is the difference between multi-channel and omnichannel campaigns?

Answer 5

A multichannel approach means selling on many channels, while an omnichannel approach means selling on all channels.
Multichannel marketing might mean different campaigns run across different channels simultaneously, but an omnichannel campaign would operate cohesively between various channels, integrating experiences and adapting to the customer’s behaviour.
Omnichannel marketing revolves around the customer while multichannel has a product at its core instead.

Question 6

Why is an omnichannel approach more important than ever?

Answer 6

In the modern era, people are accessing the internet with an average of four different devices. A study by Harvard Business Review (2017) found that the more channels used by a customer, the more valuable they became. As internet use continues and more devices and platforms come into play, it is important to maintain a cohesive approach to communicating with customers through them all, and to make it as seamless as possible for them to interact with your business through their various devices or touchpoints.

Question 7

What are the benefits of omnichannel marketing?

Answer 7

• Provides additional data and insights
• More effective customer-focused strategies that enhance customer journeys and experience
• Improves brand consistency
• Enhances conversions, revenue growth, and CLV
• More cost-effective

Question 8

Expand on the following benefit of omnichannel campaigns:
- Provides additional data and insights

Answer 8

Data and intelligence gained about the buyer and their preferred method of communicating with your business can help to create a persona journey and provide insights that can help deduce what customers want from each channel, ensuring they provide a powerful and unique set of experiences.
Tracking interactions across channels and touchpoints gives you a detailed understanding of your customers. You can use this information to optimise marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.
Understanding customer preferences and their pain points gives your team more ways to improve the journey from start to finish. Accurate data also helps you make informed decisions about products, services, and campaigns.

Question 9

Expand on the following benefit of omnichannel campaigns:
- More effective customer-focused strategies that enhance customer journeys and experience

Answer 9

• Relying on a combination of customer data, technology, and personalized content served up at the right time, this enhanced customer journey can reduce friction so it’s easier for customers to complete their desired actions. And when customers have a good experience, they’re more likely to buy from you next time.

Question 10

Expand on the following benefit of omnichannel campaigns:
- Improves brand consistency

Answer 10

• Omnichannel marketing aligns your logos, colors, typography, marketing content, voice, and messaging to present a recognisable experience on every channel creating familiarity across different touchpoints. This increases brand recognition, helps people trust your brand on new channels, and keeps you top of mind.

Question 11

Expand on the following benefit of omnichannel campaigns:
- Enhances conversions, revenue growth, and CLV

Answer 11

Can bring initial conversions faster and at higher rates, which sends revenue up in the short term.
HBI’s study found that omnichannel shoppers spent an average of 4% more on each shopping occasion in-store and 10% more online than those who use only one channel.
According to a 2021 survey by Sprout, over two-thirds (77%) of customers are more likely to increase their spending with brands they feel connected to.
And at the same time, lifetime value for each customer grows with every positive experience people have with your brand.
Loyal customers make repeat purchases, refer others, and provide valuable feedback. This leads to a lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) and a higher ROI for marketing efforts. According to Google, omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value when compared to those who shop using only one channel.

Question 12

Expand on the following benefit of omnichannel campaigns:
- More cost-effective

Answer 12

• As you bring together all of the data about your customers to inform your approach, you will understand more about where your customers are and how you can help them. This gives you a better picture of where you should be investing your time and money

Question 13

What are the challenges and barriers of omnichannel marketing?

Answer 13

Managing and analysing a complex web of channels can be challenging in omnichannel marketing. It can cause problems such as:

Budget constraints.
Resistance from senior stakeholders
Difficulty tracking the customer journey
Difficulty adapting siloed processes and enabling collaboration between teams
Adversity to change

Question 14

What is the 13 step marketing communications planning framework used for?

Answer 14

To lay the foundations for a harmonised omnichannel strategy, showing the necessary steps from preparing to implementing then measuring a communication plan.
Omnichannel planning takes time to create, but plays a vital role in ensuring organisation-wide involvement, clarification of roles and objectives, and eliminating confusion.

Question 15

What are the 13 steps in the marketing communications planning framework?

Answer 15

1. Context Analysis
2. Objectives
3. Strategies
4. Communications Mix
5. Creative Assets
6. Legal Compliance
7. Scheduling & Implementation
8. Testing
9. Budget & Forecasting
10. Customer Responses
11. Campaign Calendar
12. Measure & Control
13. Feedback

Question 16

What is involved in the first step of the 13-step plan (Contextual Analysis)?

Answer 16

Contextual Analysis is used to analyse the internal and external environment in which you are communicating.

The PESTLE framework can be used to consider the relevant macro environmental factors that may influence a campaign. These factors cannot be controlled, but by identifying them in the preparation stage, you can plan for how you will adapt and deal with them.

Other important aspects of the contextual analysis are:

Internal Analysis - what are the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses relevant to running this campaign (GIVE E.G)

Competitor Analysis - look at who your competition is and how they do their business. What can you learn from them and how can you use this information to position yourself uniquely?

Customer Analysis - what patterns can you observe using the data from your own customers: their needs, perceptions, motivations, attitudes, decision-making characteristics, and channel preferences

Market Trends - what is happening specifically in the market you will be speaking to. (E.g. shift in customer behaviour, rising popularity of a particular service, etc.)

SWOT - useful to organise all the information gathered into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This can help to identify the most appropriate direction of action and highlight areas to avoid or improve in order to achieve success.

Question 17

Why is objective setting important? What is the value of objectives?

Answer 17

Value of objectives:
Focus and coordination - They help to orient everyone involved toward a common goal

Guide for strategy formulation - They serve as criteria for developing strategy and making decisions

Measurement & control -They provide the standards and benchmarks for evaluating results

Question 18

What is involved in the second step of the 13-step plan (Objectives)?

Answer 18

Three levels of objectives should be set in your omnichannel campaign:

Corporate Objectives: These should refer to the vision and mission of your organisation and the business segment you are aiming to be successful in (e.g. appealing to a new customer base, moving into online sales)

Campaign Objectives: Derived from the overall company objectives. These should be SMART. Address the question: what is the objective for this campaign? Am I trying to increase marketing leads? Drive downloads of content? Increase customers coming to the stores? Resist the temptation to focus solely on your sales conversion goals.

Marketing Communication Objectives: Also need to be SMART; they may include much more in-depth KPIs for objectives that aren’t focused on revenue, e.g. database growth, engagement measures or brand measures. Each objective and KPI should be a building block towards your campaign and business objectives. Within this, each of your channels needs its own strategy to determine how they will contribute to the overall objectives.

Question 19

What is involved in the third step of the 13-step plan (Strategy)?

Answer 19

Guided by objectives, the next step is to determining the strategies to set you towards achieving the goals.
Determining the target market, proposition and positioning are key to this stage.
A framework such as DRIP can be useful in supporting marketing communication planning.

Question 20

What is the DRIP framework in relation to comms planning?

Answer 20

DRIP stands for Differentiate, Reinforce, Inform and Persuade

Differentiate: businesses need a unique value proposition that tells customers how they differ from competitors. This should be conveyed consistently through all communication channels.

Reinforce: consistently reinforce the brand’s message through all the channels, consolidating and strengthening the message and demonstrating your brand’s unique value.

Inform: Make people aware of your brand and educate them on its merits, uses and features. This could include telling your prospects or customers about new features or showing how an existing customer benefits from your product or service.

Persuade: Encourage your audience to take actions such as visiting your website, downloading content or taking part in a free trial.

Question 21

What is involved in the fourth step of the 13-step plan (Coordinated communications mix)?

Answer 21

This step focusses on how you will present your position to the market and the key messages your business wants to convey. It involves selecting your campaign media and working through what content you will distribute across, as well as channel selection - which online and offline channels will you use?

Question 22

What is involved in the fifth step of the 13-step plan (Determine creative assets and team)?

Answer 22

This step focusses on the creative assets required for your campaign and how you will manage its production and distribution. Will it be done internally or outsourced to agencies or freelancers?

Which of your teams will be involved? Not just digital / marketing teams - E.g. product managers and sales managers will be important in developing the campaign and providing feedback.

Question 23

What is involved in the sixth step of the 13-step plan (legal compliance)?

Answer 23

It is important to consider the strict laws which ensure the protection of brands, IP, and customer data. You need to ensure your marketing is compliant before you take your campaign plan further.

This includes ASA guidelines and data protection regulation.

Breaches of both can have profound effects on a firm’s financial performance as well as reputational damage.

A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) should be used to document your data collection and usage for each campaign you run. It is very important that you understand where your customer data is coming from, the agreements given with that data, where it is going, and how it is being used - because YOU are accountable for it.

Question 24

What is involved in the seventh step of the 13-step plan (scheduling and implementation)?

Answer 24

This stage is crucial for executing your integrated marketing plan effectively.

Your schedule should factor in opportunities to adapted and modify activity after launch (if required), so your organisation can be truly agile, responding to any changes in market conditions to stay on track towards goals.

It should include key dates in the campaign, e.g., launch date, product availability date, campaign end date, etc.

Importantly the channel experts should work together to design a journey on a timeline through the campaign, using their knowledge of how audiences use each channel to utilise the greatest benefits of each channel. E.g. aligning your social media and TV advert schedules

Question 25

What is involved in the eighth step of the 13-step plan (testing)?

Answer 25

A testing plan should be agreed with all your channel experts and creative contributors in advance on a single timeline to avoid any confusion over the true cause of any changes. For example, this might include multivariate testing on a new website’s home page headline in the week after launch.

Question 26

What is involved in the ninth step of the 13-step plan (budgeting)?

Answer 26

Confirm the anticipated budget spend for every channel.

Prepare detailed forecasts of your omnichannel campaigns, so you can assess how you are performing against set targets and whether you are on course to meet your ROI (Return On Investment) goals.

Include your financial KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) here and monitor on a daily, weekly, monthly and/or quarterly basis.

Question 27

What is involved in the tenth step of the 13-step plan (customer requests)?

Answer 27

Determine how to complete customer requests from your marketing campaign.

Excellent fulfilment is crucial for any marketing campaign.

Some typical campaign fulfilment actions include:
Handle inbound calls
Respond to emails
Process orders
Send mail piece

Question 28

What is involved in the eleventh step of the 13-step plan (create your omnichannel campaign calendar)?

Answer 28

Identify the key dates of your campaign and milestones or deadlines.
Pull together all of the key dates for the campaign into one place, so you can see the full customer journey. This should be a live document that your team and your stakeholders can access and integrate into their workflow. E.g. a Gantt chart or an online tool such as Trello.

Question 29

What is involved in the twelfth step of the 13-step plan (measurement and control)?

Answer 29

Determining control measures is important to let you know you are on track to achieve objectives. This section of the plan should detail which KPIs are measured daily/monthly/quarterly, by whom, and what should happen if you are significantly off target.

Both qualitative and quantitative KPIs should be tracked. Qualitative KPIs include measures of customer satisfaction, while quantitative KPI’s refer to a number of customers reached, sales generated, pipeline created and results.

Each piece of communication should have at least one KPI, so its effectiveness can be measured.

Question 30

What is involved in the final step of the 13-step plan (feedback)?

Answer 30

Feedback should cover:
The effectiveness of the campaign:
- Did the campaign meet the SMART campaign objectives, which areas excelled, and which areas were below target? Consider by channel, objective, creative and audience.

Effectiveness of the processes:
- Were deadlines met? Was your communication sufficient? What problems arose? Do we have sufficient processes in place to prevent similar problems in the future? What went well, are we in a position to replicate the effective elements of the process?

Bringing together all this information creates a full picture of effectiveness and how future campaigns can be improved and where marketing budget can be best invested in future.

Question 31

Why are offline channels still important for an omnichannel campaign?

Answer 31

When integrated effectively, your offline channels will amplify the impact of your digital marketing by reinforcing your message and can be more effective in driving conversion.

Question 32

Expand on the barrier of ‘budget constraints’ for omnichannel planning. How can this be overcome?

Answer 32

Many companies feel that they do not have the resources to implement a strategy and acquiring them can be expensive. E.g. an OCC can require technological upgrades for a company, which can be costly.

OVERCOME: Work with the finance team and department leads to find new budget or divert form existing activity.
Phase the roll out to start small and grow across more channels over a period of time.

Question 33

Expand on the barrier of ‘resistance from senior stakeholders ‘ for omnichannel planning. How can this be overcome?

Answer 33

Navigating the implementation of an OC approach can be complex if you don’t have buy-in from senior management or directors. It can be a struggle to persuade management of the benefits of integrated planning.

OVERCOME: Gather evidence through research.
Plan small-scale campaign activity to use as a trial and use A/B tests to test the hypothesis that omnichannel is more profitable. You can then use these results to justify a larger roll-out. Once you have proved the potential to grow your organisation, you will be able to work towards getting buy-in from the stakeholders. The more your stakeholders see it working, the more likely they’ll be to come on board.

Question 34

Expand on the barrier of ‘difficulty tracking the customer journey ‘ for omnichannel planning. How can this be overcome?

Answer 34

Managing data across channels is certainly not an easy task and usually requires technical expertise from staff. Companies must have the data capability to deliver multiple content formats through multiple channels.

OVERCOME: use a customer data platform that can unify customer data from different sources and provide a single view of the customer.
Tools such as customer data mapping can make the bigger picture seem less overwhelming. You can determine different KPIs for each stage of the CJ to break down what can be a very complex picture.
To help employees develop the necessary skills to use new systems and follow new processes, which can be much more technical than they have been used to with traditional methods, an internal onboarding system should be put in place that allows employees to follow a standardized series of step-by-step instructions for learning new tasks or software. This will alleviate employee concern over handling unfamiliar situations and how to go about finding the right answers.

Question 35

Expand on the barrier of ‘difficulty adapting siloed processes and enabling collaboration between’ for omnichannel planning. How can this be overcome?

Answer 35

Many businesses are structured so that activity is scheduled by each separate channel/product departmental lead. However, a consistent brand message may require a great deal of collaboration across multiple departments within a company, which can result in resistance or conflict.

OVERCOME: create a proposal as to how alternative processes can facilitate omnichannel processes without the necessity to completely restructure teams. This might include:
- Scheduled regular meetings
- Shared document storage
- Shared planning documents
- Shared objectives
Patience and understanding will be very important. It will need to be emphasised that every team/channel is playing a vital role in achieving the overall objectives, particularly when it might seem that one is prioritised over another. The emphasis is on a unified goal that can only be achieved collaboratively.
Make it clear to peers leading other teams that you are working to achieve their own objectives as much as your own objectives, and demonstrate how this can be achieved through an omnichannel approach.

Question 36

Expand on the barrier of ‘adversity to change’ for omnichannel planning. How can this be overcome?

Answer 36

A lot of people are inherently resistant to change, particularly when they have been working in a certain way for a long time. At the heart of this resistance is usually:

• Lack of trust in management – if they mess this up, will my job be at risk?
• Control – my job will be less interesting if I have to follow rigid processes rather than make my own decisions
• Time – this new process won’t leave me time to do the rest of my job
• What’s in it for me – other teams will get all the praise for the outcome of this
• Lack of understanding – I don’t see why this new approach is better than the current way
• Perceived difficulty – it will be too challenging to learn new ways of working

OVERCOME: The solution is to provide training and support for employees, and to involve them in the planning and implementation process. Without emotional investment and a clear understanding of the impact of the project, employee resistance is bound to increase. To avoid this, ensure employees understand the impact of the change on their functional areas, understand how they benefit from it and are motivated to acquire new skills to achieve this.
Clear messaging and regular communication is key. Create a vision that the team can believe in and empower them to deliver it.
Address the specific causes of the resistance to change: e.g. provide reassurance, incentives and give credit where it’s due. Regularly engage with feedback to nuture morale and productivity. Be open and transparent throughout the planning process to increase employees’ feelings of involvement.

Question 37

What does customer-centric mean?

Answer 37

At its simplest level, ‘customer-centric’ means creating a business approach that puts your customer at the core of your business.

This is more than simply offering great customer service; it’s offering a great experience which starts when someone first becomes aware of your business, throughout the purchasing process, and continues post-purchase.

Question 38

What are key measures of customer-centricity?

Answer 38

Churn Rate
Customer Lifetime Value
Net Promoter Score

Question 39

Define ‘churn rate’ and how to calculate it.

Answer 39

The number of customers who left in the last 12 months divided by the total customers (during the same period).

Question 40

Why is customer retention so important?

Answer 40

New customer acquisition is tougher and more expensive than retaining customers. This has a direct financial benefit to the business.
Acquiring new customers can cost up to 5x more than retaining customers. Harvard Business School reports that higher retention rates of 5% can increase profits by 25% - 95%.

Question 41

Define ‘customer lifetime value’ and how to calculate it.

Answer 41

This is the value a customer provides - normally revenue - for the length of time they are a customer, less the cost to acquire them.

Question 42

Define ‘net promoter score’ and how to calculate it.

Answer 42

This is a measure of how happy your customers are based on one simple question: “How likely is it that you recommend [your company, product or service] to a friend or colleague?”

Detractors score 0-6
Passives score 7-8
Promoters score 9-10

% promoters - % detractors = NPS

Question 43

What are the benefits of being customer-centric?

Answer 43

More profitable - Deloitte and Touche found that customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer. Why?

Customer-centricity brings:

1. Increase in customer lifetime value and a reduction in churn:
   - loyal customers purchase more products and purchase more frequently, according to InMoment (2018)
   - According to the book ‘Marketing Metrics’, businesses have a 60% to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20%
2. Greater likelihood of promoters for your brand, especially if an emotional relationship is formed
   - Those with an emotional bond with your brand recommend at a rate of 71% (way above the average of 45%)
3. Cost saving opportunities
   - the better you understand your customers and their wants/neds, the easier it is to make business more efficient as you are better able to deliver the right product/service first time, in the minimum time frame. Keeping customers happy reduces customer service resources.
4. Opportunities for growth
   - similarly by getting closer to your customers you are more likely to identify new ways or niches to sell or promote your business
5. Differentiated service & unique competitive advantage
   - Finding out why your customers buy from you will help you to develop and promote your unique advantage to more effectively target great new customers
6. Build a productive company culture: To be truly customer-centric, a business must also be employee-centric and strive to establish ways to engage their workforce, bringing their day to day experiences of delivering value to customers into decision making processes. This will create a more rewarding company to work for, and a more rewarding company culture, as well as improving the experience of the customer.

Question 44

What are the 6 steps to creating a customer-centric strategy framework?

Answer 44

1. Define and focus on your core customers
2. Segment to create relevant marketing
3. Learn the customer’s perspective
4. Create customer personas
5. Map the customer journey and touchpoints
6. Take the customer pulse

Question 45

What is involved in Step 1 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Define and focus on your core customers)

Answer 45

Marketing to everyone tends to lead to diluted messaging and content. Developing a focus on those customers who will benefit most from your product allows super-targeted marketing.

How do you know who your core customers are?

Data analysis will help to identify your core customers. From your data, attempt to answer these key questions:

Who are your customers?
Who is most/least valuable?
What do they buy from you?
Who will be your customers (key prospects)?

This will allow you to start segmenting your customers based on current and potential value.

With this insight you can then begin to create a strategy for each key group to either increase or maintain their value. Or reduce your business costs to increase the profitability of your lower revenue customers.

This takes into account Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) to make sure your plans moving forward are appropriate to the value of the customer.

Question 46

*What are ‘Allowable Marketing Costs’ (AMC)?

Answer 46

The amount that can be spent on marketing while preserving the required profit margin.

Question 47

What is involved in Step 2 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Segment to create relevant marketing)

Answer 47

There are many ways you can segment your audience, from the products and services they use, to how active they are, to how they engage with your business.

Again, data insight will be the foundation of this planning. A useful starting point is to define your customers based on their current life stage with you. (From prospects, through to loyal customers, plus lapsed customers who need ren-engaging).

Clearly the needs of a prospect who has never used you and a customer who has used you several times will be very different. Having the data insight available to you to target each segment with the relevant message at the relevant time is key to intelligent marketing.

Question 48

What is involved in Step 3 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Learn the customer’s perspective)

Answer 48

Viewing the world through the eyes of your customers is at the heart of customer-centric marketing. Anything you can do to enable this will benefit your approach.

Question 49

What is involved in Step 4 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Create customer personas)

Answer 49

A picture of what key customer groups look like, including needs, desires, fears, and ambitions. Once you have created these, show them to customers to confirm your assumptions.

Question 50

What is involved in Step 5 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Map the customer journey and touchpoints)

Answer 50

The creation of a visual illustration process, showing tasks and perceptions throughout a customer’s relationship with your business.

Mapping these moments will enable you to identify the key moments in the interactions between customer and business. It allows a comparison of the experience you want them to have and the experience they are actually receiving.

Question 51

What is involved in Step 6 of creating a customer-centric strategy framework? (Take the customer pulse)

Answer 51

Ask your customers for their opinion and feedback. We mentioned Net Promoter Score earlier, other options include surveys, focus groups, or panels. These can be made really short or in-depth and help give you both a true perspective of your business as well as the opportunity to learn how customers actually refer to you e.g. the language they use, to enable you to mirror this in future communications.

Question 52

What are the three pillars of the customer-centric strategy framework that will help inform many marketing tasks?

Answer 52

Create customer-centric content – content around helping rather than selling to customers. Based on your target customer, what their persona informs you about needs, fears and wants and how can you solve this informs how best to engage and support.

Analytics – Rather than assume, use the customer data available from their actions, behaviours and direct feedback to create the insight needed to guide decisions.

Reporting and Success Measures – ensure that as well as sales and performance measures, there is business-wide reporting on engagement and customer feedback measures. How is the NPS score changing and why? Is the Life Time Value of customer increasing and how is this reflected across any additional spend? What social media or forum comments are being captured and what positive sentiment do these provide?

Question 53

What is a persona?

Answer 53

A persona is a detailed description of a fictional character that represents your audience (or a segment of your audience),
and communicates their primary characteristics, in a way that can be used across the company in a usable and effective manner.
It allows you to think about your future buyer in a human way, so they’re not just a collection of data points.
These things may not necessarily be true of every buyer in your audience, but they help represent an archetype in a tangible way.

Question 54

Why is persona creation helpful?

Answer 54

Different customer groups have different needs, so you need to position your business and offer in different ways.

Personas help you to begin to work out what customers from the different segments of your customer-base want.

Understanding your customers helps you to create more targeted and personalised marketing pieces, developing the relationship you have with them.

Question 55

What data can you use to build a persona?

Answer 55

Compile data from your CRM database, Google Analytics, social media analytics, E.g.:
- age
- location
- spend and frequency of spend
- interest
- job title and sector (for B2B)

Look at the channels they interact with you on

Identify goals and pain points when dealing with you (e.g. by using social listening tools, speaking to customer support team)

Gather further info from sources such as customer surveys, interviews, web exit polls, etc.

Question 56

What kind of questions should persona building raise for a business?

Answer 56

• Do we broadly understand our customers’ interests and habits?
• Do we understand the personal values of our customers and how they influence their purchasing decisions?
• Do we know what our customers like about us, and the things they don’t?
• Do we understand why our customers sometimes prefer to buy from our competitors?
• Do we understand how price-conscious our customers are?

Question 57

What sources of data can you use to match your persona profiles to your data, in order to identify each customer type for activity, such as direct marketing emails, and deliver the right message to the right customer?

Answer 57

Known data
- Collected directly from asking the subscriber such as date of birth, address, company size, and preferences.

Behavioural data
- Tracked behaviour on your website or with your email campaigns, search terms, content consumed.

Purchase/transaction data
- Including what, when, and how many times they’ve purchased or used your service and what they bought or used.

Contextual data
- Info around their interaction with your business – where are they, what device are they using, weather conditions, time of day (all of this can be used to trend and predict future engagement).

Question 58

What are some methods of gaining more data insights on your customers?

Answer 58

Email call to action:

• e.g. link to a dedicated page or online survey

Preference centre:
- e.g. within account settings, you can include an area allowing your customers to define their own preferences (such as channel opt-ins, favourite or preferred content).

Remember customers are unlikely to respond to your questions unless they understand why you are asking and how it will benefit them in the future. So provide a value exchange:
e.g.
- to help us make these emails more personal to you, play our 30 second quiz
- Tell us when we should say “Happy Birthday”, and we’ll send you a treat near the time.

Question 59

What is customer journey mapping?

Answer 59

Customer journey mapping is a method of visualising when and how a customer interacts with your brand.
The process begins by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton.
Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative.
Finally, that narrative is condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform marketing activity.

Journey mapping creates a holistic view of customer experience, conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise and that creates a shared vision.

Question 60

What key questions should the business ask when reflecting on the mapping of the customer journey?

Answer 60

Does the journey join up? If not, where are the disconnects or silos?

How does each touchpoint impact on the experience?

Is the experience defined by your company’s needs, or the needs of your customers?

Question 61

What elements should a customer journey map involve?

Answer 61

Tasks
–
What is the customer trying to obtain at this stage? What is it that they want to accomplish, and what tasks do they need to complete to get them there?

Touchpoints
–
How does the customer interact with the brand at this point? This is an encounter where customers and your business exchange information, provide a service or handle a transaction.

Questions
–
What does the customer want to know at this stage?

Emotions
–
What is the customer feeling at this stage in the process?

Weaknesses
–
Does the brand let the user down at this stage, and, if so, how?

Question 62

What 7 things should you consider when analysing a customer journey map?

Answer 62

1. Look for points in the journey where expectations are not met.
2. Identify any unnecessary touchpoints or interactions.
3. Identify the low points or points of friction.
4. Pinpoint high-friction channel transitions.
5. Evaluate time spent. In your journey map, provide time durations for the major stages of the journey
6. Look for moments of truth (make or break moments)
7. Identify high points or points where expectations are met or exceeded.

Question 63

How can you use marketing automation technologies to enhance your customer-centric activity further.

Answer 63

Build critical segments in your marketing data platform based on the customer profiles by matching these to key moments in the journey. This creates an ‘always on’ set of sends, that do not require the resources of the marketing team to send out each week or month.

You can use your customer data to trigger automated responses. Common examples include: birthday celebrations, tailored offers when a customer has not bought for ‘x’ days, reminders and renewals based on past transactions and abandon follow-ups if a process is not completed.

These targeted, automated, responses are a very effective way to build and enhance your customer relationships.

Question 64

*What is the difference between strategy and tactics?

Answer 64

Simply put, strategy refers to the plan to achieve a goal while the tactic is how you execute the plan.
Your marketing strategy is your map and your tactics are the bits of kit you use to reach your destination.

Question 65

What is STP?

Answer 65

STP stands for Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. It is one of the most commonly used marketing models used to design and inform strategy in a customer-focused way.
Segmenting means dividing people with similar characteristics into groups

Targeting means deciding which groups to contact and which not to contact, based on actual or potential value and likely Return of Marketing Investment (ROMI)

Positioning refers to the core messages needed to meet your customers’ needs, desires, and wants to make the content of value

Question 66

What is the Media Multiplier Effect?

Answer 66

The phenomenon whereby the combined impact of using two or more media is stronger than using either medium alone. A study from Think Box looked at marketing from Sainsbury’s. When customers were only shown Twitter messages brand recall was 4%, with TV on its own creating 8% recall. However, when Twitter and TV were shown together, the recall jumped to 21%.

Question 67

*What KPIs would you use to measure the effectiveness of the consideration stage?

Answer 67

At this stage, you need to get your awareness-raising content in front of customers looking to make a purchase, at the point when they are ready to buy.

You will know you have achieved this by measuring your branding and engagement metrics. These include:

Impressions
Views
Clicks
Comments
Dwell times
View duration

Question 68

*What KPIs would you use to measure the effectiveness of the evaluation stage?

Answer 68

Once a few brands have been considered, the customer will take their research to the next level, evaluating the buying process, and looking at reviews. Many of these measures could be seen as micro-conversions; they may share their details with you, look for reviews or case studies, explore white papers, or start the online buying process.

At the evaluate stage, you are primarily aiming to encourage your prospects to take some action with you.

This could include:

Downloads
Sign-ups
Wish lists
Items placed in shopping baskets

Question 69

*How would you measure the effectiveness of the buy stage?

Answer 69

The buying stage may seem the simplest to measure, as you are just looking at how much revenue you achieved from the campaign.

But there are many variables to look at, including:

What campaign or communication triggered them to make the purchase?

What other communications influenced them in the consider and evaluate stages?

How will you attribute this revenue?

Which messaging worked for them?

Which audience segment are they from?

Are they a returning customer?

Given that your ultimate goal is to drive revenue, you may question the value of these questions. But, if you don’t capture this information, you won’t be able to measure what was or wasn’t effective for different audience groups. This will make it hard to repeat your successes or avoid failures.

Question 70

*What KPIs would you use to measure the effectiveness of the advocate stage?

Answer 70

Shares
Mentions
Reviews

Question 71

What are the steps to analysing your omnichannel campaign?

Answer 71

1. Establish how your campaign will be evaluated during your planning phase. This should start with a clear campaign SMART objective, which is then broken down into smaller objectives for each of your channels and communications, including KPIs
2. Create a table in order to easily monitor performance against your KPIs. Separate out each campaign into the stages of the buying cycle, so you can compare like-for-like measures. Consider what actions you need at each stage to get you on to the next. Focus in on the key measures, and lay out the targets for each communication at each stage in the customer journey.
3. Update frequently and share/act on any observations you make about the campaign’s progression and adherence to targets.

Question 72

What natural variables should you bear in mind when monitoring your campaign’s performance?

Answer 72

• As your campaign matures, your Consider and Evaluate performances may drop, while your Buy and Advocate performances increase as you move your audience along the buying cycle.
• You will also spot a difference between paid-for activity, like social adverts and affiliate activity. The volumes will be much higher at the front end of the buying cycle, but the conversion to buying will be much lower. So, the quality of responses is as important as the volume of responses.
• Conversion will naturally be higher from organic website traffic or email, as your customers will already have an awareness of your brand or products, so are further along the customer journey. In contrast, social media gives you the opportunity to reach people who you could otherwise struggle to reach during the Consideration stage.

Question 73

What should you consider in your end of campaign analysis?

Answer 73

Use the data to establish what worked, and what you’d change next time around.

Did you achieve your objectives?

Did any external factors impact the results?

What tests did you run and what were the learnings - were your results statistically significant, were they compelling enough to drive a new approach to a channel/segment?

Which channels, audiences and communications generated the most revenue? What is the ROI for each?

What is the customer characteristic or behaviour that is common in many if not most of the people who responded to your campaign?

Don’t base everything on ROI - remember lifetime value is important too. For example the campaign with a lower ROI might have acquired customers that stay as customers for three years, while the campaign with a higher ROI might have acquired customers that buy only once.

Question 74

How can you attribute revenue in an omnichannel campaign?

Answer 74

It is over-simplistic to focus just on the last touchpoint; this fails to give a true representation of the journey your customers have been on. This view can lead you to make damaging decisions about your marketing spend.

Using advanced attribution can solve this problem. This is where each touchpoint along the way is attributed to a percentage of the revenue generated.

Question 75

What do you need to pull all the data from an omnichannel campaign together?

Answer 75

You need to have an end-to-end CRM system in place to capture all the data and make sense of it.

To go further and record individuals’ interactions with your communications on your CRM and apply advanced attribution, you will need some advanced tech such as:

• Google Analytics
• In-platform analysis (e.g. from email and social platforms)
  Advanced tracking tools such as HubSpot and DotDigital

Question 76

*What is the hard data and what is soft data?

Answer 76

Hard - This is quantifiable data that can be counted. e.g. How many people bought the product or service? On what day? Through what channel? Where do those people live? Etc.

Soft - This is based on attitudes or feelings. Examples are focus groups and customer surveys.

Question 77

What five steps should you go through when turning campaign data into valuable insights?

Answer 77

1. Understand key marketing problems
   - A good way to asses this is to benchmark your campaign data against industry benchmarks. Also ask yourself where the gaps are in your understanding/skills/tools and what opportunities are there invest time/money in driving sustainable performance?
2. Spend time studying data
   - Bring it all together into one place, e.g. a table breaking down your target vs. actual KPIs and objectives across the CJ.
   Look for positive and negative trends, or outliers. Don’t look at the data in isolation from the creative or the audience description - this won’t give you a full picture.
   Consider what factors could be impacting any changes.
3. Develop your hypothesis
   Guided by the data, develop your hypothesis about what you have observed.
4. Gather more data to prove or disprove your hypothesis
   Test one variable at a time. If you were to test multiple variants in conflict with each other, you would not know which variant had a positive or negative effect. You should run the test against a control variable so that you can limit the impact of extraneous variables.
5. Implement the correct hypothesis: if your test outperforms the control, implement the change - or of your test does not perform as well as the control, test something else or make no change.
   - if you don’t have the autonomy/budget to implement the change, share your results and create a proposal for increased budget

Question 78

What are the different types of testing?

Answer 78

A/B Testing
- Simply comparing two versions of one variable against each other.

Multivariate Testing
- Multiple versions are rotated, usually in high volume situations, for quicker and more thorough explorations of multiple versions.

Usablity testing
- tests whether the user understands how to use the website, or communication you have developed

Eye track testing
- Where is the customers eye drawn to, are they engaging with your messaging in the way you intended?

Content testing
- Is your message actually clear to the audience in 3 seconds? Remember, you understand the context and have looked at the communications many times, the same is not true for your audience.

Question 79

What are the four simple, logical steps to approaching a business case for marketing investment?

Answer 79

1. Describe the business problem
2. Share the evidence in an easy-to-digest way
3. Explain the options
4. Make your recommendation

Question 80

What are the two distinct investment pots available in business?

Answer 80

OPEX - operating expenses
- Day-to-day expenses. These are the funds that are more readily available and will generally allow you to make improvements to day-to-day marketing activity.
OPEX decisions for investment are usually made within the marketing team
Will use metrics like increase in sales, short term ROI, reduction in costs

CAPEX - capital expenditure
- These are long-term investments. For example, creating a unified data platform across business silos. CAPEX decisions for investment are usually made by marketing and other commercial functions in the business such as finance
Will use metrics such as long term ROI and CLV

Question 81

Delve into the first step of approaching a business case for marketing investment (describe the business problem)

Answer 81

For your organisation to inject additional spend into your marketing activity there has to be a reason why the new activity is required, why it is required at that time, why you have managed without it before, and why it can’t wait for another time. You need to create a concise but clear picture about why this project needs to happen.

You should outline:
Is this an opportunity for growth or a requirement to avoid further declines?

What are the financial benefits that are likely to be seen as a result of the project?

How does the project support organisational objectives?

What are all the benefits to the organisation of completing this project?

Question 82

Delve into the second step of approaching a business case for marketing investment (share the evidence)

Answer 82

Your evidence should be presented in a visual format, which tells the story in a clear, simple, manner. E.g. use graphs/tables
The data should show:
- The current situation
- Demonstrate the changes you would expect to see with the implementation of this project
- Any test data you have to corroborate the projections you expect to see
- Return on Investment

Question 83

Delve into the third step of approaching a business case for marketing investment (explain the options)

Answer 83

List the possible solutions in implementing the changes, with the pros and cons of each. Thinking laterally, you should consider all options and include the three most viable alternatives in your business case.

Consider:
- How each solution would integrate into the current organisational set up
- The cost of each solution vs the potential gains
- Any other advantages or disadvantages

Think about any impact there may be across marketing, and consult with other departments. You want to scope out any issues and costs there may be.

Where possible, involve Finance early on to get their input and support.

Question 84

Delve into the fourth step of approaching a business case for marketing investment (make your recommendations)

Answer 84

Identify which of the options you recommend, having weighted up the pros and cons against the alternatives.
Summarise the reasons why it is the right choice:
- Recap the financial benefits (include ROI)
- List the non-financial benefits to your business and your customer (think about brand image, long term customer relationships, future-proofing, and compliance).
- Emphasise alignment with organisational objectives (e.g. three-year plan, company values, mission statement). If your project supports these, then you are working towards a common goal with your senior managers.
- Outline approach to project. Who will be involved, in what capacity, what are the key timeline dates? You may not know this precisely at this stage.
- Run through key risks and mitigation - things that may derail or hold up the project, e.g. lack of resources, unexpected costs, system integrations. Think about the biggest problems you may encounter and record them here along with the solutions and fixes you will put in place. Consider this section as an opportunity to guess all of the objections someone may have to the project, and detail how you would alleviate the issue.

Question 85

What 5 things should you consider when reviewing your existing channel usage (before deciding on new channels to implement)?

Answer 85

• EVALUATE: analyse historic and current campaign data against a range of criteria that link to your aims and objectives. This might include using metrics such as Cost per Sale (CPS), Cost per Click (CPC) or Return on Investment (ROI). The resulting data can be ranked in terms of efficiency to help identify the top performers.
• BASELINE: the campaign metrics you produce provide baseline measurements, such as your search impressions, visitor or sales, at a specific point in time. These can be used to plan and evaluate your next round of activity.
• BENCHMARK - evaluation of industry standards, best practices, competitor activity or sustainable results from your successful campaigns become benchmarks that you can use to set targets and measure ongoing performance.
• TEST - consider why results might vary. Identify if there are any key variables or elements within the current campaigns that you can isolate and test further. Can you tighten up on the targeting; change the message; or use the channel in a different way?
• OPTIMISE - by reviewing the results from your campaigns and tests on a regular basis you can build on your successes and improve your performance over time and move away from the elements that do not work so well for you.

Question 86

How can you explore HOW your customers are best reached?

Answer 86

• What are their channel preferences?
  Ask your customers when, where and how they prefer to be communicated with. Similarly, conduct research with prospects about their media habits and preferred methods of consuming marketing messages.
• Analyse your data.
  Try to determine which channels your customers engage with the most. Do the results vary by time or day?
• Review the strengths and weaknesses of channels’ characteristics.
  How can they help or hinder you in delivering your objectives? Are you trying to reach out and build awareness amongst new audiences or deliver repeat sales amongst existing customers?
• Consider the environment and context that a channel offers.
  Can a specific environment heighten the relevance of your message by reaching the audience at the right time and right place? Can you build synergies and benefit from being seen alongside a relevant article or video?

Question 87

Give an example of how channel preferences can fluctuate based on purpose

Answer 87

Whether the interaction is receiving messages or initiating messages (phone is much more popular as a method of initiating than receiving)

Question 88

What is generally the most and least preferred method of receiving marketing messages, according to a 2022 study by DMA?

Answer 88

Email - 66% of respondents ranked it in their top 2 preferred methods for receiving a marketing message

Messenger app is the least preferred - just 7% ranked it in their top 2.

Question 89

Why might all channels not be available to you at all times?

Answer 89

Lack of data, permission or because you are waiting for a customer action.

Question 90

How might channel usage be affected by your goals?

Answer 90

If you are trying to reach new audiences with your message, then broad media options, such as display advertising using website banners or videos, can be very useful.
However, when you are trying to develop personal relationships and loyalty, customer-focused options such as email and direct mail can be more effective.

Question 91

What six things should you consider when assessing an individual channel’s ability to deliver your communication goals?

Answer 91

Understanding audience interactions
Researching customer channel preferences
Reviewing the format characteristics
Assessing the impact of time and day
Considering your budget
What data do you need to use this channel

Question 92

*What are the three groups of data types you can use for channel planning and targeting?

Answer 92

Owned/ first-party data
Second-party data
Third-party data

Question 93

*What is owned/first party data?

Answer 93

Data held directly by your business- data your business has collected directly from prospects and customers interacting with you.

Its level of accuracy and relevance makes it the most valuable data set to you.

For this data to be usable, you have to collect it in a way that is compliant with the Data Protection regulations and GDPR.

It is always available and can’t be changed or removed by a third party.

However, there can still be some limitations, particularly in terms of the volume of data you might have or the level of detail you have alongside each record.

Question 94

*What is second party data?

Answer 94

This is the first-party data of another organisation that is a trusted partner. It can help you to reach new, or more specific, audiences. For example, a hotel company may purchase the data of a flight company to be able to target relevant customers with a hotel offer.

Like first party data, second party data is accurate, relevant, and high quality - providing you have obtained it from a reliable source which you trust. It is essential that you check that the data has been collected properly and that individuals have given their consent for the data to be used for marketing.

When you target new audiences across social media platforms, you are relying on the data that they have collected from their users. You might also use a combination of your own 1st-party data and their second-party data to identify ‘look-alikes’, i.e. people that have the same characteristics, profiles or interests as your current customers.

Question 95

*What is third party data?

Answer 95

Third party data is data collected by companies that don’t have a direct relationship with the buying party, and can be bought at an online third party data marketplace.

There are many companies that specifically collect to sell data-related services to marketers, such as Experian. Common examples include survey data and interview data or properly consented customer data.

This kind of data is simple and easy to acquire, but you need to ensure that you are dealing with reputable suppliers. Always check out the source and compliance of the data that you use. Another downside is that the data is not exclusive.

Question 96

How/why should you use the RACE framework for channel selection?

Answer 96

To build your conversion funnel. At the beginning of the reach stage, your prospects may not be aware of your organisation, product or service. This would stop you from communicating with them directly and would exclude channel options such as email or direct mail. Instead, broadcast, PR and search options would be more useful. Other channels will be more appropriate at the other stages.

Question 97

What is the See-Think-Do-Care model?

Answer 97

A framework to understand your customer’s journey and align it with your channels and content. Essentially it is a cycle that your customers are constantly flowing through, with each stage reflecting a different state of mind, a different need, and a different level of engagement.

See: This is the largest possible audience, all the folks out there who could potentially be interested in your products or services. They may not know they need your product yet, but we’re trying to catch their eye. At this stage, your aim is to raise awareness and attract potential customers. Content here should be engaging, informative, and shareable, but it doesn’t need to directly promote your product or service.

Think: This is a subset of the “See” crowd. These are the people who are actively thinking about a product or service like yours, but haven’t quite made the decision to purchase yet. Your content should guide them towards your offerings without being overly promotional.

Do: This group is smaller still, made up of people who are ready to make a move. They’re ready to buy, subscribe, download, etc. The content here should be targeted, direct, and persuasive, with clear calls to action.

Care: This last group are your most loyal customers. They’ve bought, they’re happy, and they’re likely to do it again. Not only that, but they’re also likely to tell their friends about how great you are. Your goal here is to keep them interested and engaged with your brand, transforming them into brand advocates.

Question 98

What are three advantages of creating an integrated marketing mix?

Answer 98

A consistent customer experience
- The aim is to deliver a joined-up campaign where customers see a consistent message irrespective of their own channel preferences. You can bring channels and messaging together along the customer journey to allow a smooth transition through the funnel. Delivering a joined-up and cohesive message improves the overall customer experience, which can uplift leads and conversion to sales.

The multiplier effect - Research has proven that when consumers see a consistent message across a number of different channels it can enhance the overall impact and awareness of the marketing message and brand.

Cross channel support - You need to work to ensure that each element reflects and supports the other elements and provides a smooth journey for your prospective customers, whatever stage of the journey they are at and whichever element of your campaign they happen to see first or last.
Does your email content support your social media content? Can you encourage existing customers to follow you on your social media channel and promote your brand to their friends?

Question 99

*What are some differences in use of online and offline channels?

Answer 99

Offline channels have historically targeted broad audience groups in large numbers, which accounts for why they sometimes need quite large budgets to make an impact. Of course, direct mail is an exception here and can be tightly targeted to known individuals and deliver a high degree of personalisation. They also tend to require longer production lead time, which means that campaigns cannot be organised quickly.

Digital media, on the other hand, has very few barriers to entry, with many offering highly detailed targeting options and being quick to access. Because of this, marketers can often get started with small and flexible budgets. Results via digital channels have greater measurability.

Question 100

*What are paid, owned and earned media?

Answer 100

Paid - the platforms where you pay for exposure (e.g. social media ads, google ads, display ads)

Owned - the platforms and channels that you control yourself (website, social media profiles, e-mail marketing)

Earned - the exposure you get when your business is shared by others (Articles, Shares and reposts on social media, Reviews and mentions)

Question 101

*How have digital channels shifted the relationship between business and consumer?

Answer 101

It has shifted from outbound (a business needs to find a customer) to inbound (a consumer finds you).

Question 102

How many people are active on social media?

Answer 102

About 4.9 billion people (well over half the population)

Question 103

Pros and cons of website and landing pages as a channel

Answer 103

PROS:

A content-rich hub of knowledge, providing information across all areas of your business and offering.

Acts as a central resource across all stages of the customer relationship with you.

CONS:

Providing content for all your customers, where every individual can find the information they need with ease, can be a challenge.

Updates can be resource heavy and so creating campaign-specific content (e.g. landing pages) can be tedious.

Question 104

Pros and cons of SEO as a channel

Answer 104

PROS:

Solid way of raising awareness and driving traffic directly to your business.

Traffic is consistent, providing SEO is maintained, and the quality of traffic tends to be more engaged.

CONS:

A technical task - specialist skills are required to manage this effectively.

Reaching the first page of a search engine ranking takes time and resource.

Question 105

What three areas can impact your SEO ranking?

Answer 105

‘on-page’: the content on each page

‘off-page’: links from other sides and the authority of these publishers

‘technical’: focuses on the back-end coding and load speed of your website.

Question 106

What is content marketing?

Answer 106

This activity refers to the creation and promotion of content that creates brand awareness, web traffic and lead generation. Examples include blogs, whitepapers and infographics. Content marketing supports SEO.

Question 107

Pros and cons of content marketing channels

Answer 107

PROS:

Simple in principle to get started and can be relatively cheap.

It builds authority within your industry and can lead to collaboration across staff, clients and consumers.

CONS:

Planning can seem daunting and resource-heavy.

It does require a creative skillset as well as subject knowledge.

Some content, like videos, can become expensive to create, and it can be challenging to attribute spend to return.

Question 108

What are the pros and cons of Social Media as a channel?

Answer 108

PROS:

A reach beyond your known customers

As an open and free platform, there is a great opportunity to build new direct relationships

No geographical boundaries

It allows for new marketing to be tested at a low cost

CONS:

It can be risky as messages and positioning can be misperceived, or negative comments quickly spread

Continual messaging can be time-consuming as social runs 24/7

Return of marketing can be challenging to measure (likes and engagement do not simply track to revenue)

Question 109

Pros and cons of PPC as a channel

Answer 109

PROS:

You only pay for results achieved (e.g. impressions or clicks)

It can be deployed with a high level of segmentation

Results are seen very quickly

CONS:

Once the investment in the activity stops, so do the results

In some markets, the cost of activity can be high.

Question 110

Pros and cons of affiliate marketing as a channel

Answer 110

PROS:

Extends your reach quickly through the trust and authority other businesses and individuals have already built with people in your niche.

Immediate results and a clear ability to track spend versus return

Very scalable and predictable

CONS:

A reduction in revenue as a fee is paid for each successful referral

Once you stop investing the results stop immediately

You can lose control of where your promotion is posted and seen, which may create a conflict with your brand message or values

Question 111

What is affiliate marketing?

Answer 111

A fee-based activity, whereby commission is paid to a third-party for promoting your brand and services to their audience. There are several ways that this can be created from coupon codes to membership services, e.g. a bank’s promotion of offers to its members.
Affiliate marketing allows you to leverage the audience of other businesses that cross over with your sector.

Question 112

Pros and cons of email as a channel

Answer 112

PROS:

An ability to reach an individual directly with a personalised message, based on your segmentation

A clear view of activity, engagement and conversion

A high return of marketing investment

CONS:

Based on permission, limiting who you can send to

Technical expertise is needed to manage the build and send technologies at scale

Many people will ignore your message in an over-crowded inbox

Question 113

Pros and cons of SMS as a channel

Answer 113

PROS:

Immediate reach in rapid delivery time

Most customers will read straight away

Linked to customer data content - can be highly personalised

CONS:

Can very easily be viewed as intrusive

SMS has a limited content length

Requires a technical platform to send

Reporting of engagement and response very limited

Question 114

Which channels typically produce a higher conversion rate and which produce a lower conversion rate - and why?

Answer 114

Conversion rates are significantly higher where consumers have higher intent, i.e. they are searching for products (so paid search and SEO). This compares to social and display referred visits where conversion rates are considerably lower.

2.9% / 2.8% for paid and organis search respectively, compared to

1% and 0.7% for social and display respectively

Question 115

Why should you create a conversion and budget forecast?

Answer 115

It is vital to be able to forecast spend against marketing return. This ensures that consideration is being made from both an activity and budget perspective. For example, a channel may produce a lower conversion, but may also achieve this at a significantly lower Cost per Sale (CPS) than another channel. In this case, a decision may be made to increase volume to reach the target, but at a lower overall cost.

Your conversion and budget forecast then ensures that you have a clear business case for the Return on Investment (ROI) of spend vs revenue.

Question 116

*What are the five types of offline channels?

Answer 116

Broadcast (e.g. TV and radio)

Out of Home (e.g. posters, billboards, fliers)

Print (e.g. newspapers, magazines)

Direct mail (e.g. catalogues, letters, postcards)

Events

Question 117

*What are some advantages of offline over online channels?

Answer 117

Offline marketing has the advantage of maturity. It is well researched, tested, and predictable in its results.

Wide-reaching - Everyone is exposed to offline marketing every day.

There are also audiences who are easier to reach via offline messages than online, for example, rural consumers with poor internet access.

Longevity - ads can be kept for a long time, creating familiarity as well as an ever-expanding volume of audience. E.G: JICMAIL research revealed that 27% of advertising mail remains in the house for over 4 weeks

Easier to understand and more memorable - Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media. Brand name recall was also 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail piece than a digital ad (TrueImpact)

• Some offline channels (such as TV) are seen as more credible than digital methods.
• Address data is more publicly available, enabling door drops to be created without knowing the personal contact details of your send segment. Mailing is based on an opt-out basis via the Mail Preference Service (MPS).

Question 118

*What are some disadvantages of offline over online channels?

Answer 118

• Can be very costly
• Very difficult and expensive to change once finished
• Limited control over who your messages reach
• Difficult to measure

Question 119

*Give an example of a traditional channel’s progression into digital space?

Answer 119

OOH - the evolution of digital displays, providing brighter colours, movement and convivence. Means you no longer need a display to be fixed once posted, as physical media is being replaced with centralised queued multiple ads loaded and ready to show in sequence.

EG. Clarins ran an interactive campaign at Hong Kong International Airport that offered codes for discounts and free samples to people who entered their emails or scanned a QR code.

Question 120

According to DMA research, trust is the main factor behind consumers’ decision to share their data.

What must you comply with to build this trust?

Answer 120

Transparency: You need to make sure consumers know how their data is collected and used

Benefits explained: You have to clearly state what benefits, if any, will come for consumers from sharing their data

Terms and Conditions: Your T&Cs must be easy to read and understand

A flexible privacy policy: Your organisation’s privacy policy has to allow consumers to control the type, and amount, of data they wish to share

Benefits-data link: The link between the data shared and the benefits provided has to be clear

Question 121

What are the three main principles underpinning GDPR?

Answer 121

Accountability
Transparency
Control

Question 122

What is accountability as a GDPR principle?

Answer 122

The principle of accountability requires you to take responsibility for what you do with personal data and how you comply with the other principles. You must have appropriate measures and records in place to be able to demonstrate your compliance.

Question 123

What tools can an organisation use to prove their compliance?

Answer 123

Carrying out a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Employing a data protection officer (DPO)

Question 124

What is the benefit to marketers of complying with the accountability principle?

Answer 124

Businesses that can demonstrate accountability will build trust with their customers, while those which can’t, will see their brand reputation damaged by it, and they could also be exposed to harsher fines.

Question 125

What is ‘privacy by design’?

Answer 125

Privacy by design means considering risks to the data subject due to any processing and taking steps to mitigate those risks before any processing takes place. This makes data protection a fundamental part of any new processing activity, and not an afterthought.

Question 126

What is ‘data protection by default’?

Answer 126

This concept entails new products and services having their privacy settings at the highest level when released. For example, an app on a smartphone facilitates the use of push notifications for marketing. Under data protection by default, the user should have to alter privacy settings to allow marketing via the app, rather than have the app default to sending marketing via push notifications to the user.

Question 127

What is a DPIA?

Answer 127

A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is a tool for you to analyse your processing of personal data to identify and minimise risks to the personal data. The assessment results can then be used to identify ways to mitigate the risks or take another approach to avoid them. When considering the risks, a DPIA takes into consideration both the severity of an impact on individuals and the likelihood of the risk to happen.

Question 128

What measures help to lower privacy risks for individuals?

Answer 128

Data minimisation: This is the idea that marketing teams should only collect personal data that is directly relevant and required to accomplish the specified purpose

Data retention periods: This is where an organisation promises to only hold a piece of personal data for a limited period.

Encryption and hashing: Use these techniques to encrypt the personal data to prevent data subjects being identified in the event of a breach.

Transparency: Examine your privacy and information notices to ensure that they’re written in clear and plain language suitable for your target audience.

Preference Centre: This is about giving people as much control as possible over the personal data you hold about them. For example, an organisation could allow people to access personal data held about them and update it on their website.

Question 129

When do organisations need to appoint a DPO?

Answer 129

You need a data protection officer (DPO) if the processing of personal data involves large scale monitoring of special category data or data about criminal convictions and offences, or requires regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale.

Question 130

What does a DPO do?

Answer 130

The DPO will make sure that:

The business is appropriately advised about how to look after customer data

Avcountability can be shown in relation to the principles of the GDPR

Your business follows the best practice and other regulatory guidance from the ICO.

They should put policies and procedures in place to monitor compliance with the GDPR and other data protection laws, including managing internal data protection activities, advising on data protection impact assessments, training staff and conducting internal audits.

The DPO is the first point of contact for supervisory authorities such as the ICO and for individuals whose data is processed, like employees, customers etc.

Question 131

*What are the 6 valid lawful basis to be able to process personal data under GDPR?

Answer 131

Consent: you receive clear consent by the individual for the processing of their personal data in regards to a specific purpose.

Contract: you have to process an individual’s personal data as a necessary requirement for a contract, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

Legal obligation: outside of contractual obligations, the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law.

Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.

Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless the individual’s interests override those legitimate interests.

Question 132

What are the two most relevant lawful bases for the processing of personal data for marketers?

Answer 132

Consent
Legitimate Interest

Question 133

What does the GDPR say about consent?

Answer 133

Consent under GDPR must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes”. It should be made “by a statement or by a clear affirmative action” - therefore you need to get the individual to do something, like tick a box or provide their contact data for marketing purposes.

Question 134

What is meant by ‘legitimate interest’?

Answer 134

Legitimate interest is an alternative lawful basis to consent. It is a risk-based approach, where marketers must balance their interest in processing the data with any risks to the individual’s privacy. Marketers must offer a clear opt-out, inform the individual of the processing activity and have a compelling case for why someone may be interested in their goods or services.

Question 135

What does PECR stand for?

Answer 135

Privacy Electronic and Communications Regulations

Question 136

What are the 3 steps to carrying out a Legitimate Interests Assessment?

Answer 136

1. Identify a legitimate interest

the GDPR specifically lists ‘direct marketing’ as a legitimate interest. This may satisfy much of the processing you plan to conduct as a first step. Your business only needs to identify a single legitimate interest, but it’s a good idea to consider all those possible. Examples of where legitimate interests may apply in addition to direct marketing include personalisation to improve customer experience and for analytics to improve future campaigns.

2. Is it necessary?

In this context, ‘necessary’ could be considered to mean ‘reasonable’ or ‘desirable’ from the customer’s point of view.
Begin by asking: “Is there another way to achieve your plan?”. If so, and if this method is not disproportionately difficult, you must use that method instead.

3. Is it balanced?

Do the rights of the individual override the legitimate interests of your business?
Businesses need to make unbiased assessments of whether their legitimate interests tilt more towards business or customer.

Question 137

*What is profiling?

Answer 137

Profiling is the automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain things about an individual.

Typical applications of profiling include use of online behavioural advertising (such as targeted online ads based on browsing behaviour), credit scoring as part of a mortgage or finance application and the use of artificial intelligence and machine-learning (for example, for Internet of Things applications).

Question 138

Why is a detailed brief important?

Answer 138

It gives all parties a solid foundation to work from, minimising the risk of misunderstandings and mistakes, keeping to time and budget, allowing for targeted creativity, and maximising opportunities for success against objectives and deliverables.

Question 139

What are the six steps for creating a campaign brief option?

Answer 139

Overview: Background, objectives, outcomes and platforms
Data and research: what data do we need?
Audience: think about personas
Tone & voice: brand essentials
Big idea: the creative spark
Project fundamentals

Question 140

What is involved in the first step of creating a campaign brief document? (Overview)

Answer 140

This should set out the scope of the project. Ask the client for a brief description of the company, project, channels and expected outcomes. Is this an acquisition, retention, donor, or awareness campaign? Where will it appear?
Summarise alongside the campaign’s SMART objectives.

Question 141

What is involved in the second step of creating a campaign brief document? (Data and research)

Answer 141

Look at your customer data and insights, consider what is happening culturally, and is of relevance to your products and your audience. This should include a competitor analysis, learnings from previous projects, channel insights, and campaign insights.

Question 142

What is involved in the third step of creating a campaign brief document? (Audience)

Answer 142

Explore your audience’s habits, digital behaviours, likes, dislikes, brand interactions, and anything else that’s relevant to the project. Collate competitor analysis, learnings from previous projects, behavioral and platform data to form personas.

Question 143

What is involved in the forth step of creating a campaign brief document? (Tone & voice: brand essentials)

Answer 143

Simply put, this is all the things your creative team needs to know.
Ask the client for their corporate branding (brand voice, project tone, and colour pallet). You could flesh this out with examples of their previous work.

Question 144

What is involved in the fifth step of creating a campaign brief document? (Big idea: the creative spark)

Answer 144

Ask two questions:
What is the problem?
How can this product/service/campaign solve the problem?
(List the benefits to the audience, not the features of your product or campaign)
Include key messages, create your proposition, provide CTA

Question 145

What is involved in the fifth step of creating a campaign brief document? (Project fundamentals)

Answer 145

The ‘must know and mustn’t forget’ part of your process (this can be a supplementary document). E.g. key dates, timeline, contacts, budget, sign offs, team responsibilities.

Question 146

A good, thorough brief should…

Answer 146

• give all stakeholders should have opportunity to input to the project before work begins.
• make it possible to flag any misunderstandings or issues at an early stages
• clarify the project’s objectives and goals
• keep all creative team members on the same page by creating a single location for all essential design details and key brand messages

Question 147

*Explain the ‘relevant’ part of SMART objectives

Answer 147

A relevant objective is one that is directly derived from and aligned with wider marketing or business goals.
Does it drive forward those broader aims? Is it the right time for this?

Question 148

*Three tips for goal settings

Answer 148

• Describe outcomes, not activities
• Avoid objectives that maintain a status quo
• Weed out any ambiguity in the wording of your objectives (it should be clear to anyone whether or not that goal was achieved, without the need for subjective opinion or judgment).

Question 149

*Explain why hierarchically linked objectives are important

Answer 149

Your objectives do not sit in isolation. It is crucial to ensure that your activity is aligned and integrated within the wider organisation.

This is achieved by developing hierarchically linked objectives to clearly show where your activities fit in and how they will help to deliver the overarching business goals.

This will help move the organisation in the right direction.

Business goals - goals for annual growth
Marketing objectives - actions to achieve growth
Campaign objectives - awareness, sale or engagement outcomes

Question 150

What is a value proposition?

Answer 150

A value proposition pinpoints a relevant message that speaks to your audience while communicating the purpose of your organisation, product or campaign. It should outline your audience, their problem, and the solution your product is offering.

Your values proposition will underpin the creative design and execution, drive the campaign and might even appear as part of the creative itself.

Question 151

What five things are most important for a successful value proposition?

Answer 151

A successful value proposition should:

• Be clear and unambiguous
• Tell the audience exactly what they will get from purchasing and/or using the product and/or services
• Show how it’s different or better than your competitor’s version
• Avoid hype, superlatives and jargon
• Be understood in five seconds

Question 152

List five structured approaches to giving feedback

Answer 152

Team assessment: Use the original brief, value proposition and checklist as a basis for constructive group conversations with project stakeholders.

Unofficial focus group: take the creative outside the business to ask for opinions amongst friends or even random strangers. Be careful to ask simple questions to elicit useful responses. This is your instant impact assessment.

User testing: Create simple scripts for sample digital users to follow to see if there are any customer flow or funnel issues attributed to the creative. You can also blind-test new concepts with VIP customers.

Market research focus group: Set up targeted focus groups to test creative messaging. Get feedback on the look and feel from different personas and targets.

A/B split testing: Soft test different versions of the creative to see which gets the better response.

Question 153

What should you check for in an evaluation checklist of a creative brief? (8)

Answer 153

Does the creative:

Answer the core brief?
Capture the value proposition?
Target the right persona/s?
Stand out as interesting, inspiring, useful, different, etc
Get a positive response when tested?
Make any expected action easy to take
Stay within campaign parameters for budget, platforms etc?
Contain all brand assets and follow any corporate guidelines?

Question 154

What is the best format for sharing feedback

Answer 154

Written feedback is essential, as it also functions as a reference document for all the stakeholders involved in the project. However, where possible, try to use the written document to support a face-to-face conversation, as communication is complicated and tone of voice is key.

Question 155

What are the eight important things to remember when giving feedback?

Answer 155

Be specific
Identify the problems but don’t give the solutions
Concentrate on your business goals
Used science based research or backed up facts
Always ask questions
Get the timing right
Consolidate feedback
Be nice but honest

Question 156

What four things should a marketing budget allow you to do?

Answer 156

A marketing budget will allow you to:
- define what you are going to do next year
- review the data of what worked last year and what did not
- link your business objectives to your marketing plan
- demonstrate a return on marketing investments.

In summary it provides a framework in which to make decisions and examine the impact of those decisions on the business.

Question 157

What three influences should you be concerned with when creating a budget?

Answer 157

External influences – for example, how the economic climate will affect sales; what competitors are doing

Internal influences – for example, new growth targets set by the business; increased capacity; more focus on managing customer data; review of new and/or existing products and services

Historical influences - for example, what happened last year; what activity drove growth and sales; which events run by the company worked

Question 158

Give seven important factors for successful budgeting

Answer 158

Cooperation and communication
Set realistic targets
Set consistent targets
Accuracy (everything adds up AND everything is included)
Easily understood format
Timeliness
Frequent reviews of progress

Question 159

What is the annual marketing budget?

Answer 159

In simple terms, the annual marketing budget is the sum of all the campaign budgets during the year, plus the overheads needed to run the operation.

Question 160

What is incremental budgeting?

Answer 160

This starts from last year’s budget and adds or subtracts a percentage based on how well the company is doing.

Question 161

What is activity based budgeting?

Answer 161

Activity-based budgeting is a planning system under which costs are associated with activities, and expenditures are then budgeted based on the expected activity level.

Question 162

What is zero-based budgeting?

Answer 162

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period. The process of zero-based budgeting starts from a “zero base,” and every function within an organization is analysed for its needs and costs. The budgets are then built around what is needed for the upcoming period.

Question 163

What are the seven steps to building and delivering a marketing budget?

Answer 163

1 Carry out a review of your existing marketing programmes - how effective were they at achieving last year’s objectives? What is working well and what isn’t? What areas can you not measure or justify in terms of revenue?

2 Assess last year’s marketing programmes against this year’s SMART objectives

3 Review last year’s activity against the insight that you have gained with your external analysis, for example, what the competition is doing and how that may have changed. What technology is now available to you?

4 Create the plan with input from internal and external sources. Do the maths based on last year’s performances tailored according to the changes that you are making for the new budget period

5 Arrange the budget month by month when the spend will occur

6 Get business sign up for the plan

7 Deliver the plan - make sure the plan is constantly reviewed and the numbers are checked in terms of spend and performance

Question 164

What might a sensible ratio for companies to set around budget allocation be?

Answer 164

Invest:

70% on established programmes - what you currently do.

20% on new trends - for example, a new technology which has already been tested and that other organisations are adopting as well.

10% on ideas that have not been tested - these are high-risk projects where it is hard to establish whether the final result will be a success or a failure.

Question 165

How should you organise your budget? By activity or by spend type?

Answer 165

Group together your marketing by activity and not by spend type. In this way, for example, you will be able to see all of the online and offline activities and any other associated costs for an individual campaign. This makes it easier to understand the full cost of that campaign and to ensure that you haven’t missed off any associated costs.

Question 166

What mustn’t you forget to allocate in your marketing budget?

Answer 166

Budget for continuous activity such as keeping the website updated, hosting costs, etc

Question 167

*Describe ROI

Answer 167

ROI measures the gain or loss generated on an investment in relation to the amount of money invested. It is usually calculated as a percentage.

ROI can be calculated with a simple formula:

(Return – Investment)/ investment = X

As it is a percentage, the result X will have to be multiplied by 100.

Question 168

What are the corners and axes of the content marketing matrix? What is its purpose?

Answer 168

L-R entertain, inspire, educate, convince
Y - rational to emotional
X - awareness to purchase

The content marketing matrix will help you to direct your marketing activity based on your content goals. It’s a tool that guides customers along their path to purchase in the most effective way.

Question 169

What is content marketing?

Answer 169

Content marketing is the creation and sharing of content in different formats such as videos, blogs and social media posts, to build interest in your brand and offering. Rather than promoting to them, you should create media which meets their needs, in the hope of forming a valuable relationship.

The purpose of content marketing is to drive inbound customer engagement and organic searches (using SEO) froma defined audience, which can then be nurtured to convert into valuable customers. Content is strategically created or curated, and distributed in key channels across the internet to attract customers.

Question 170

What is the main difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

Answer 170

The biggest difference between the two types of marketing refers to who starts the initial approach. Inbound marketing is a strategy where brands use content marketing to attract customers. The key driver of inbound marketing is ‘consumer intent’ as potential customers actively seek out the brand’s content. As a result, consumers are more engaged and open to taking action.
Outbound marketing, instead, is when the brand pushes its messages out to as many people as it can within a target audience. The brand believes that this audience is a good match for the product or service being advertised, but, unlike inbound, is not based on intent and therefore will normally achieve lower conversion rates.

Question 171

Describe the Hero, Hub, Help model of content marketing

Answer 171

The Hero-Hub-Help Model is a very simple, yet effective tool for content planning. It helps you to structure your content into three categories, each with their own different style and purpose.

Hero content - the big tent-pole moments in the year that create high levels of awareness among a much broader audience. The least targeted campaigns with more wastage but the only way to achieve mass reach. E.G. John Lewis Christmas ad

Hub - your regular, recurring content. It’s something that your audience expects — they know that it’s coming and they’ll come back for it. Because they look forward to it. This type of content is of specific interest to your target group. The aim of hub content is to bring users back to your company’s website again and again and to positively influence their buying decisions. Hub content should be created on a regular basis to keep in touch with your customers and build trust. E.g. blog or video series that address a specific topic from different perspectives, as well as reports, interviews and seasonal content.
In social media terms, hub content is tied to new initiatives, products and campaigns that give a fresh perspective on your brand.

Help content - always on content for your most engaged audience. Designed to assist them in the use of your product or give them some other info or entertainment relevant to your topic areas.

Question 172

What should your content strategy include?

Answer 172

Your strategy should outline:

Targets: SMART objectives and the KPIs that determine whether they have been met

Research: Persona development - who the audience is and what their entertainment and informational needs are

Planning: Content or creative strategy and content schedules - the what and when

Production: What we will create, when, and by whom

Distribution: SEO, social, paid media, and other scheduling

Measurement and analytics: How we will measure campaign performance

Question 173

How would the marketing funnel help to guide content marketing strategy?

Answer 173

It enables you to map your content to key decision points in the consumer journey and address their needs.

The relationship between stages of the funnel and a content marketing strategy is as follows:

1 Begin with ‘awareness’ content for the top of the funnel to get the word out there and educate people about your existence and your products.

2 Create ‘consideration’ content for the middle parts of the funnel, when people are assessing options in the market.

3 Produce high-impact ‘conversion’ content for the end of the funnel. This drives people to take action.

4 Create ‘retention’ content for past purchasers to turn them into repeat purchasers, or even brand advocates.

5 It may also be worth creating ‘re-engagement’ content for people who’ve dropped out at different stages of the consumer journey to entice them back.

Question 174

Describe the key considerations when project managing a content strategy:

Answer 174

Scope of production
– Identify the type and quantity of assets and formats you plan to deliver.

Timeline for production
– When will you deliver each part of the strategy? Plan your timeline carefully and ensure you’ve allowed enough time for each stage of production.

Budget and production resources
– What is required in terms of money and people to deliver your content efficiently?

Upstream dependencies
– What has to happen for the strategy to progress? Try to identify any potential issues in advance and put a solution or alternative plan into place.

Downstream dependencies
– What must the strategy deliver for something else to progress?

Risks
– What could happen to derail the plan? Factor in some contingency time for unexpected delays or complications.

Question 175

What are the benefits of using buyer personas to inform your content creation?

Answer 175

TARGETING - helps you to adjust and focus your content so that it is strategically positioned to target consumers who are likely to be interested in it. Personas provide valuable insights that you can use to convey your message to the right audience at the right time. They also enable you to perform market research, targeted advertising, usability testing, and keyword research more efficiently.

FORMAT - personas give you the information and perspective you need in order to make objective decisions about how to craft your brand messages through the most relevant, useful formats for your audience - e.g. videos, social media posts, articles.

HELP YOUR AUDIENCE DISCOVER YOUR CONTENT - by exploring where your target audience is already having conversations or exploring topics they are interested in, you can distribute your own tailored content to where your audience is already active, thus leveraging their online behaviours to the maximum effect for your business and your content marketing.

Question 176

What factors should a persona include to assist content marketing decisions?

Answer 176

Objectives (what do they want to achieve by interacting with you?)
Location
Demographic
Buying behaviours (what steps do they take when considering a purchase?)
Job details
Platform
Devices
Interests
Issues (what issues do they have and how can your business solve them?)

Question 177

How can keyword research help guide content development?

Answer 177

By discovering the keywords used by potential customers to find your products, you can then pick the most relevant keywords within your reach that have a good search volume. This research can help you to decide on themes for your content. If you base your content on high-ranking keywords, it is more likely to appear in the search results.

Question 178

What does keyword research allow you to do?

Answer 178

Get the right kind of visitors to your site.

Identify keywords with high search volume to use as a guide to content topics.

Identify content gaps on your website by comparing new keyword topics to your existing content topics.

Provide an unbiased statistical rationale for pursuing content themes.

Identify new opportunities with emerging themes and trends based on what people are searching for.

Use SEO difficulty metrics to identify quick wins and high impact opportunities.

Question 179

What should guide content creation and how can you bring it to life?

Answer 179

Content development should be guided by audience, competitor, and keyword research. However, it’s important to remember that creativity is also required to add a splash of colour to those research findings and bring your content to life.

Question 180

The creative process should involve what 8 steps?

Answer 180

1 Get to know your audience – assess your brand personas if you have them or create your own

2 Understand what your audience wants from you – carry out a keyword search

3 Brainstorm suitable content ideas and identify themes

4 Critique or validate your ideas - in terms of your objectives, audience, and strategy

5 Test your ideas - creating prototypes or content samples (where possible) to explore and test your content in its simplest form before investing further

6 Decide on content formats

7 Plan the repurposing of your content

8 Curate and add additional value to the content

Question 181

What kind of questions should you ask when validating/critiquing your content?

Answer 181

Is this content useful for my audience?

Is it fit for the platform I’m publishing on?

Can I accurately measure the impact of this content on my campaign?

Is this content consistent in appearance and style with my brand?

Is this content aligned with my business goals?

Question 182

What might motivate users to share your content? How can you use them to make your content more shareable?

Answer 182

Incentives
–
Offer your audience incentives such as competitions, or a loyalty scheme.

Fame
–
Give your audience sharing options so they can show their friends and connections on social media that they have donated to a charity, or won an award, for example.

Utility
–
Provide your audience with content that will be useful to them or help them in some way. For example, tutorials, toolkits, or templates.

Topicality and trends
–
Create content that is topical and based on trending themes that people are likely to want to discuss or find out about.

Question 183

What is content curation? How is done well?

Answer 183

This involves using or sharing third-party or other people’s content in a fair and selective way. It’s a quick, easy, low-cost, and high-impact content marketing method, when done correctly.

It should be selective; pick high-quality content that reflects well on your personal brand and adds genuine value to your target audience.

It’s good practice to provide your own commentary on any content you curate. For example, you can give some additional insight, an opinion, or some context. In this way, even though you may not have created the content yourself, you’re still establishing yourself as a source of knowledge and an expert commentator.

Question 184

What are the main benefits of using curated content?

Answer 184

It can make your brand appear less promotional and show that you care about the wider industry in which you operate.

It can make your brand seem more relatable and accessible to your audience.

It can generate overall goodwill because it shows that you, as a business, care about what is happening in the wider industry from a content perspective, and what your consumers are engaging with, and interested in.

It can position you as an industry leader, giving you a voice in the space so that you can add credible opinion or discussion around trending industry topics.

Question 185

What is meant by repurposing content?

Answer 185

Repurposing content means adapting it or breaking it up to use for another format. For example, you might take an infographic on your website and turn it into a number of individual images for Instagram.

Question 186

What are the benefits of repurposing?

Answer 186

It saves time: It’s quicker than creating content from scratch.

It’s low cost: It’s more cost-effective than purchasing or creating new content.

It reinforces your message: If content appears in more than one place, it can reinforce the message.

Question 187

*Describe the concept of tofu, mofu, bofu.

Answer 187

TOFU - (Awareness) Uses methods to reach large, loosely defined audiences based on gender, age, interests, media consumption habits and the like. The message in this kind of advertising will often be more brand-led, communicating who a company is, as well as some key benefits of products.

MOFU - (Consideration) - As people self-select, through engagement, they move down the funnel to the consideration stages. In this middle funnel (‘mofu’) stage, you can start being more specific in your advertising about what you want people to do, incentivising them with more product benefits, pricing or voucher incentives.

BOFU (Decision stage) - Once you move people to the bottom of the funnel (‘bofu’) you deliver the most sales-focused messaging, with clear purchase-focussed calls to action.

Question 188

How can content marketing be used for retention?

Answer 188

From ‘VIP’ email newsletters to Facebook groups, marketers should always be considering how they can make customers feel part of a club where users of your products can be supported by you and each other, getting the most out of your products.

E.g. brands that use FB groups for a community to post and answer others’ questions and share relevant useful content. This super-serving of the customer base makes it increasingly unlikely that they will move their business to a competitor.

Question 189

What are the two most important metric categories associated with measuring content marketing campaigns?

Answer 189

Engagement metrics and conversion metrics.

Question 190

What engagement metrics would you look at for a successful content marketing campaign?

Answer 190

Higher average time on site

Reduced bounce rates

Increase in the number of returning visitors

More pages viewed per session

Deeper scroll depth – value in pixels (px) of how far down the page visitors scroll

Growth in discovery through organic search or social visitors – more people coming through non-paid channels

Increased number of people searching for your brand – more impressions for your brand terms (company name etc) in the search engine results page

Higher channel engagement metrics (e.g. social shares, email opens, brand mentions, and links to your content) – proof that your content is becoming more interesting and therefore clickable or eliciting engagement such as likes, comments and shares.

Question 191

What conversion metrics would you look at for a successful content marketing campaign?

Answer 191

A higher number of goals achieved – more website visitors making their way to pages you have defined as ‘goals’ (e.g. a ‘thank you’ page, or purchase confirmation page)

Higher conversion rate – higher % of people making a purchase or other valuable action

A shorter path to purchase – purchasers making fewer visits and pageviews before they buy

Reduced cost per sale or lead – less ad budget required to drive each sale, on average

Question 192

What should a content marketing report include?

Answer 192

All the content that was produced, and the cost and campaign metrics associated with each

Overall performance in relation to campaign KPIs or objective

Metrics for aspects of the campaign that worked well (headlines, channels, content schedule, and so on)

Aspects of the campaign that were less effective

A summary of the insights that you have derived from the data

Your recommendations for the next campaign based on this data

Question 193

What three things should your social media strategy articulate?

Answer 193

Who your audience is,
Which channels to use to target them
What content resonates with them.

Question 194

What sort of features and tools should you consider when contemplating which social channels are best suited to you needs?

Answer 194

Long-term content
Live video
Real-time conversation
Lead generation
Search optimised
Talent acquisition
Social commerce
Visual brand storytelling
Customer service
Authority building
Great for influencers

Question 195

What are some stats related to the demographic makeup of users for different platforms?

Answer 195

Twitter more males than females (56.4% male)
Pintrest more females than males (76.7% females)

Question 196

What are the two types of benchmarking to take into account when benchmarking against your competitors?

Answer 196

Aspirational benchmarking - industry leader whose results are achievable to your business within time
Direct competitor benchmarking - who you are most similar to right now

Question 197

What are the sections for a social media CHANNEL strategy template?

Answer 197

Business goals - The key company goals, from which marketing and social media objectives are derived. Keeping these at the top of the strategy document ensures you remain aligned to these throughout your efforts on social media.

Marketing objectives - These detail how the marketing department is contributing to the business goals and will refer directly to driving awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty through communications-led activity.

SM objectives - Create SMART objectives for your strategy based on the marketing objectives. Create any number of them, as required by your overarching marketing goals, and ensure they are specific to each platform. Benchmarking is a good place to start when setting your KPIs.

Audience - Define the core audience or audiences you will be targeting with this strategy. There are two main sources of this information - your social media platform insights, and existing organisational personas. Compare the two; do they match?
Don’t let your social insights drive you towards an audience thta is too broad (e.g. men 18-35). Look at individual profiles to characterise with them. If they differ from your organisation’s personas, create new ones.

Channels - based on your goals, objectives, and target audiences, decide which channels meet your needs. Detail each channel’s role and objectives. Make sure you include, for each:
1. How will your business leverage the functionality, the culture, and the reach of this platform?
2. What aspects of your brand’s personality will come out strongest on this particular social platform?
3. Which subset of your audience could you reach here?
Overall, it should be clear what the key opportunities that operating on each platform presents to your business.

Question 198

How does a social media channel strategy and social media campaign strategy differ?

Answer 198

Most organisations will have a plan of key campaigns throughout the year, in particular around a new product launch, sale, or event. This is separate from planning your channel strategy, as it will have its own objectives and budgets, but should still support or contribute to the channel objectives and channel success.

Your campaign strategy should ensure the campaign is still focused on pushing the social media channel goals as set out in your ‘social media channel strategy’.

Question 199

How do the concepts of hub, hero and help feed into channel/campaign strategy?

Answer 199

Help content falls into your channel strategy, whilst hub and hero content fall into individual campaign strategies.

Question 200

What are the sections for a social media CAMPAIGN strategy template?

Answer 200

1 Business goal - What are the organisational brand goals for this campaign? (e.g. raise awareness of new car offering)

2 Campaign objectives - These objectives can relate to any aspect of the campaign and any channel that it might affect. (create a disruptive social media campaign that will get the brand trending during matches)

3 Social media objectives - Define the social objectives that this piece of activity will contribute to achieving (e.g. achieve 250,000 interactions connecting AutoTrader free giveaways with the World Cup)

4 Audience - whilst you have already defined the audience targeted with your social media platform/s, a campaign may have a more specific, or even broader, target audience (usually, it is likely to be the former, as social media is particularly well suited for highly-targeted campaigns). Describe your audience beyond simple demographic terms. Do mention their likely age, gender and location, but to really tailor your campaign creatively, find out more about your audience:
- Interests
- Attitudes
- What content publishers they consume and engage with
- When and how do they like to consume content
- Their information needs

5 Channels - A social media campaign does not necessarily have to live within all your chosen social media channels. Depending on the campaign objectives and targeted audience, you may want only to use some of these channels. You may even decide to use a platform which is not part of the core brand channel strategy, such as Snapchat or YouTube, to run a temporary campaign on.
- Pick the channel/s you want to use for the campaign and specify how you plan to use them.
- Give the rationale - explain why each one will effectively carry your campaign message to the target audience and contribute to your campaign objectives.

Question 201

What sort of Social Media metrics should be referencing at each stage of the customer journey?

Answer 201

Awareness - Reach, impressions, views, shares
Consideration - Likes, comments, interactions, shares
Conversion - clicks, conversions, shares
Loyalty & Advocacy - reach, impressions, views, shares

Question 202

*Describe the loyalty loop

Answer 202

The Loyalty Loop is an adaptation of the Marketing Funnel, cutting steps that are designed for new leads to optimize and accelerate the journey of already converted customers — so they can be encouraged to keep buying from you, to be loyal to your brand.

As with any purchase, the stages of consideration and evaluation are still present. But the loop gains three new steps: Enjoyment, Advocacy, and Bond.

Enjoyment
The Enjoyment stage is all about experiences. It is the moment the customer consolidates their expectations. The more you meet them, or even surpass them, the more positive the impact on loyalty building is.

Advocacy
If that first impression is successful, customers go to phase two, the Advocacy stage. They are so satisfied with the purchase that they talk about it, recommend it, show it to family, friends, and followers.

Bond
The client is happy with the purchase and talking about it. At this moment, you’ve identified it and acknowledged it in meaningful interactions. An emotional link is formed and loyalty is built.

If you did everything right in these three steps, it is not a matter of straightforward consideration anymore.

The customer doesn’t want just a new product, they want to repeat that experience with your brand. And after the next purchase, the loop resets to reinforce that connection even more.

Social media maximises the level of engagement throughout the loyalty loop. It can be used to build increasingly loyal two-way relationships for continuous engagement before, during and after purchase.

Question 203

Why aren’t social media metrics comparable between platforms?

Answer 203

While the metrics on key social media platforms are very similar - likes, comment etc - their meaning and ultimate value are not directly comparable. For instance, a like on Instagram happens in a different context, via a different interface and for different reasons than a like on Facebook.

Similarly, off-platform metrics such as ‘traffic’ and ‘conversions’ are hard to compare between platforms, as their ecosystems work in different ways to retain users.

Question 204

What is the first step in developing your website / brief for website?

Answer 204

Establish your objectives. Understanding the role of your website in delivering your marketing strategy will help you to identify what functions you require and therefore what type of website you need.

Establish:
- what top-level category does your website fall into? (informational, entertainment, data-capture, ecommerce)

• will it be a website or a microsite?
• what are the broad marketing objectives? To increase awareness (e.g. brand in general, promotions/offers, new audience)
  To increase engagement (accessing tools and contents, customer satisfaction level, drive to offline journey)
  To increase consideration (purchases, completing data-capture forms, downloading content).

Question 205

What is the difference in value/use between microsites and websites?

Answer 205

Typically a website will provide comprehensive details of the organisation and how to contact them, together with information about the products and services that they offer.

A microsite is smaller with more targeted content. They are a convenient way to focus on a specific topic or theme, such as supporting an advertising campaign for a new product or service or designing content to target a new audience.
Downsides of microsites:
- first-time visitors might be confused or not realise that you offer more than they can see, which could undermine future sales.
- Wider data collection and integration with CRM systems can be an issue
- a relatively expensive way to deal with a single objective

Then develop your smart objectives from here.

Question 206

What kind of data sources should you use to inform your website design?

Answer 206

Both quantitative and qualitative data.

Focus groups and in-depth interviews provide an open forum for discussion and are a very effective way to explore thoughts and feelings and what is behind the behaviour you see online. These can help guide and shape your various customer personas. Focus groups can also be used tp explore stimulus material - i.e. other website designs, functionality cards or content examples - to see what they like and to explore what works best for them.

Online surveys reach a wider range of potential users and allow you to generate more specific or statistically reliable results.

Web analytics, such as those provided by Google, can deliver useful insights into your users and how they interact with your website. You can see demographics and customer insights based on google’s info and also track customer journeys across your site (where they enter, scroll, click and leave a page, etc).

Question 207

Define UX

Answer 207

User experience - a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service.

User experience includes all the users’ emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviours and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use.

Question 208

What is meant by Online Value Proposition

Answer 208

The online value proposition (OVP) could be described as the addition of online value that a web offers to its customers or potential clients to differentiate itself from other competitors. In a more colloquial way, we could define it as the online USP (unique selling proposition), or what you can give people so that they will choose your website out from the rest.

Question 209

What 4 stages must you go through, in conjunction with creative design, to ensure you are designing a useable website that is intuitive and easy to use?

Answer 209

Information Architecture - A blueprint of the site layout. The menu, where it is and how it works, etc.

Wireframes - Wireframes are the outlines of the page layout – they do not include any imagery or design. Their purpose is to establish: Information hierarchy – making sure the most important information and content to the user and the business is featured in the optimal place. Design patterns – how the elements of the page are laid out on the screen. (e.g. where the basket icon goes etc)

Interaction design
- the consideration of how elements within the page react. For example: How does the menu work – drop down, slide out etc.? How does a promotional carousel work?

Prototype testing
- Wireframe prototypes are often developed to bring the page layouts to life and enable an initial programme of user testing.
This can give confidence that the website delivers a good user experience before you begin the design/build stages.

Question 210

What website platforms should you consider along with your website?

Answer 210

Content Management System (CMS)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

eCommerce platform

Customer services platforms

Website analytics

Hosting and technical support

Question 211

How does your website support marketing campaigns and in what specific ways?

Answer 211

Your website sits at the heart of your digital marketing. Your website design and user experience have a large impact on your brand positioning and how your audience perceives your organisation.

They provide the details and information relating to products, services and organisations that people are specifically searching for. In addition, websites are perfect for supporting online advertising, by using hyperlinks, etc., to take people directly from an ad/ post to the relevant product pages.

Provides a platform for content
–
Many channels are restricted by size, space, and flexibility of what you can include. Websites can provide more in-depth content.

Data Capture
–
Websites are a platform for data capture as they can include forms to collect customer data for any marketing campaign.

Product pages
–
Particularly for eCommerce and retailer websites, product pages act as a platform to show all the products and services associated with a campaign. Often a customer will click on an ad for one product, but after exploring the website will buy another.

Contact channel
–
Websites, especially with live chat functionality, can support campaigns by giving potential customers a very quick and easy communication channel with the brand.

Tracking and measurability
–
Websites enable a greater level of tracking and analytics, helping us understand customer behaviour after their first click through to their last. They also join up the omnichannel customer journey from social, to mobile, to web, to store, to sale. This can guide future marketing campaigns.

Question 212

Explain the types of personalisation seen in the personalisation matrix

Answer 212

Prescriptive/Explicit

When you personalise the content for the visitor based on what they tell you they like, either through preferences or their profile. You also make it obvious that this is content specifically for them.

Adaptive/Explicit

This is when you personalise the content based on the visitor’s behaviour, such as other content they click on and consume, again you would make this obvious to them.

Prescriptive/Implicit and Adaptive/Implicit

This is when the website’s personalised content is based on what the visitor says they like (Prescriptive) and on their behaviours (Adaptive) but rather than making it obvious by labelling the content, it is just displayed.

Question 213

What are the two main techniques marketers need to consider when it comes to optimising their websites?

Answer 213

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Question 214

What is SEO?

Answer 214

Search engine optimisation (SEO) focuses on ensuring that your website is discoverable, or findable, to prospects and customers at the most relevant times. The goal is to appear at the top of all search results pages that relate to your products or services.

Question 215

What three main areas does SEO comprise?

Answer 215

1. Technical SEO – ensuring that the website is built in a way that makes it easy for software (search bots) to access and index it correctly. This includes how well your site loads onto different devices, particularly mobile devices and the clarity of headings and tags.
   Technical is very important but, in itself, will not achieve a high “quality” rating to ensure a prominent organic position. The next two areas are more the consideration of the marketing team.
2. On-page SEO – this is where the web page itself needs to be relevant and well laid out. Search engines judge the quality of content by a number of different indicators, including the ratio of text to images, the number of times relevant keywords are mentioned (known as the keyword density) and the number of people who stay, or bounce away, when the page is found.
3. Off-page SEO – this means ensuring that your site and content are shared and linked to other good quality sites. Backlinks [where other brands or sites, including social media posts, use hyperlinks to point to your website] are the most valuable and search engines prefer quality over quantity.

Question 216

What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Answer 216

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) focuses on designing the customer journey to make sure you retain and convert as much traffic as possible. You need to identify the key messages that they should see and ensure that the next steps offer something of value to them and that your call to action is clear.

Question 217

What must you consider for successful CRO?

Answer 217

Destination - where are you going to take your visitors to start their journey: to a specific page on your website or to a dedicated landing page, reflecting your current campaign?

Drivers – what is on the page that will motivate a visitor to take the desired action.

Barriers – what is on the page that may detract or stop a visitor from making the desired action.

Hooks – what can we add to the page to create a sense of urgency, encouraging the user to take immediate action.

Question 218

*What two things did the DMA Consumer Email tracker reveal to be the top reasons for email unsubscribes and how can you tackle this in your email strategy?

Answer 218

Excess frequency and lack of relevance

Consider your customers’ needs and wants in relation to your products and services and ensure that you are sending the right message to the right person at the right time.

The best way to do this is to segment customers by the recency, frequency and value of their purchases so you can establish a more personalised approach to the messaging and targeting criteria.

Question 219

What did the DMA Consumer Email tracker reveal about customers preferences in receiving messages at key touchpoints?

Answer 219

Email marketing is the preferred one-to-one channel for delivering pre- and post-purchase messaging, customer service updates, and exclusive content and events.

Question 220

What three key elements should underpin your email strategy?

Answer 220

The right audience

The right message

At the right time

Question 221

What should you consider when creating an audience strategy for your email campaign?

Answer 221

Firstly, identify what you need to achieve – what is the objective? Are you planning to acquire new customers or sell extra products to existing customers?

Next, look at what data you have access to. To acquire new customers, you need to identify if you have email data on prospects or new leads that you can use. If you are looking to sell extra products to existing customers, are you able to determine what people have bought before, what products they are most interested in, any key purchase habits?

From there, segment. Audiences can be broad or highly segmented on key indicators such as customer journey stage, product interests, high-value VS low spending customers or perhaps life stage indicators.

Identify relevant measures and metrics to help you track your effectiveness.

Good signs:
Increasing open, click-through and conversion rates
Static or declining unsubscribes
Very low complaint rates

Question 222

What should you consider when creating the messaging for your email campaign?

Answer 222

Next you must consider what messaging will be most relevant for your chosen audiences.

Find a clear rationale for why you would communicate with each recipient, based on their relationship with you. E.g. an anilmal charity running an email campaign asking for donations for rescue dogs would only select people who signed up on the back of a dog-related campaign, or has donated for a dog campaign in the past. Or, maybe, it’s Christmas, and the contact has donated at Christmas previously.

Your email volume should decrease, but by targeting the right people, you should see an increase in the percentage that converts to action.

Question 223

What should you consider when determining frequency of your emails for your email strategy?

Answer 223

When is the best time to send out your information and how often you can repeat messages before it makes customers feel that you are bombarding them?

Signs that your emails are getting too frequent:
Open rates: excess frequency can lead to a decline in open rates
Unsubscribe rates: excess frequency can lead to an increase in unsubscribe rates and may show that the audience is getting annoyed

Question 224

Why is managing your sender reputation proactively important for your email strategy?

Answer 224

The higher your reputation score, the more likely your emails are to go straight to your recipient’s inbox instead of their spam folder.

Question 225

What are some reputation indicators?

Answer 225

Hard bounces that result from fake or deregistered email addresses, the volume of emails you send, the open rates, click rates and the number of people who complain or servers that block you.

Question 226

What are three ways that you can ensure the quality of an email list?

Answer 226

Data Compliance: Consider carefully the processes and rules that dictate whose details you collect and why they are on your email marketing list. It might be that your list is made up solely of contacts who have opted into your email programme. This should mean that they are all happy to receive your emails. If your list includes customers who have an existing relationship with the wider organisation, you need to make sure that the planned marketing messages are within the scope of expected business relations and whether your privacy policy explains divisional or department-wide data sharing. You should also weigh up whether this means they should be in a different segment so that you can reflect their relationship in your messaging.

Double opt-in: To ensure subscribers are clear about what they are signing up for, you can use a double opt-in process when collecting data. This is where users who sign up for email marketing have to confirm their subscription via a separate confirmation email or landing page action before they are officially added to the list.

Data Hygiene: Cleaning your data regularly to remove inaccuracies and duplications will help to improve the quality of your mailing list. You should also run the list against a suppression programme to ensure you take out all contacts who have unsubscribed or sent you a direct request to be removed from email lists.

Question 227

How can you adjust your emails to be suitable for non-engaged customers?

Answer 227

Reduce frequency as fewer emails are opened or clicked

Use different subject lines for engaged and non-engaged reader segments

Increase offers, discounts or bundles for less engaged readers (this protects your revenue from those who are purchasing without discounting)

Change channels away from email (e.g. direct mail) for your high-value non-engaged customers to try and lure them back online

Question 228

How can you avoid the problem of multiple overlapping emails from different departments to an individual customer?

Answer 228

Creating a contact calendar of sends and form there applying supression rules applied at the point of sending (e.g. applied at the point of sending to help automate this process; If [email address] is receiving ‘email A’ then do NOT send ‘email B’) based on whichever email ought to take prioroty.

Question 229

Why do you need an email campaign strategy?

Answer 229

It is critical to ensure that you are contributing to the overarching campaign goals and that messaging is complementary and consistent across all channels.

Giving your customers a consistent experience across several channels is shown to boost your campaign results across the board; this technique is known as the multiplier effect.

Each multi-channel campaign should have an overarching campaign strategy set by your marketing management. Your email campaign strategy, along with the other channel campaign strategies, will work together to create one effective, comprehensive, multi-channel campaign.

The email campaign strategy will form a brief for the creative teams and marketing executives to create email tactics.

Question 230

How should you organise your email campaign strategy?

Answer 230

Objectives
Audience
Messaging
Format
Data brief

Question 231

What is included in the objectives stage of the email marketing strategy?

Answer 231

Identify what you want to achieve and spell out clearly the role that it is going to play within the wider marketing plan. Generally, this will mean supporting either acquisition or retention-focused goals.

-Acquisition programmes are geared towards increasing revenue through growth and building the size of the customer base

• Retention campaigns aim to minimise churn and increase profit, share of wallet and sales from existing customers

Make sure your objectives are SMART with relevant KPIs, derived form past campaign and/or competitor/industry benchmarks.

Question 232

What is included in the audience stage of the email marketing strategy?

Answer 232

Use your organisation’s customer personas to guide this stage. The persona supports your campaign goals in multiple ways:

• Audience characteristics and motivations will help copywriters and designers tailor the content correctly
• Helping you understand what information you have that can help drive personalisation
• Underpinning the data brief and who the email will be sent to. Your customer database may already have segment tags that you can use, or you may want to combine data fields.

You might want to create ‘look a like’ audiences of profitable customer groups to guide this stage, or look at reaching out and testing new sectors.

Question 233

How can you get people’s email addresses at various touchpoints?

Answer 233

Offline - for sending out further info (e.g. DFS), digital receipts
in-store and online promotions
Competitions
Surveys
Accessing content such as whitepapers
Through events such as conferences/webinars

Remember your methods must be compliant!

Question 234

As your relationship develops with your email subscriber list, you should look to enhance your customer details with rich data such as details of…?

Answer 234

Personalisation details (name, title, pronouns, etc.)
Demographic data (age, income, etc.)
Transaction data (what, when, value, etc.)
Browsing data (indicating interests and intentions)
Reference data (format, frequency, etc.) Where possible wider but relevant lifestyle data

Question 235

What is included in the messaging stage of the email marketing strategy?

Answer 235

Messaging should align with each audience segment and reflect the different stages of their customer journey.

You should research the the journeys taken by different audience groups and establish:
- how they first hear
- how do they purchase
- what happens after?
- what’s the process for repurchasing
- how when do they lapse
- what happens if you reengage with them

Combine this knowledge with information from your database that can help you tailor and personalise messages to the segments you selected.

You can personalise the messages based on:
- Preferences/permissions content (what have they told you they want to hear about?)
- Email fields (to from fields, salutations etc)
- Offers (different incentives for each segment and your goals for them)
- Spend (different messaging based on value segmentation and whether cross-selling, up-selling etc)
- Product/category - related to different transactions, enquiries or browsing behaviour
- Lifestyle/interests - messaging related to browsing and category interests

Other elements your marketing brief should contain include:
- Overall writing style and appropriate use of tone
- The use of banners, logos and graphics.
- the from name and sender email address
- what to include in the footer
etc

Question 236

What is included in the format stage of the email marketing strategy?

Answer 236

How will the overall email campaign come together? This will include details such as:

• The number of emails to be sent out
• If the campaign is to be ‘broadcast’ to all recipients at the same time, or not
• If the campaign is to be automated around specific timings or trigger actions by customers
• The key timing parameters, including day and time of day

Building on this, you need to consider what will happen with the response you generate. Consider:
- likely response volumes
- time period over which the response is predicted to come in
- what other channels will it link to and what are the requirements/resources needed for those?

Organise all your planned messaging into some form of dashboard or calendar of activity so that you can keep a track of what is going out, what has finished and what is planned for the future

For each action within your messaging strategy you should ensure it links to your objectives and that you have sent separate KPIs to measure effectiveness.

Question 237

What is included in the data brief stage of the email marketing strategy?

Answer 237

Define the logic required to generate the data-pull you need to create a targeted send.
Arrange in table
- What is the promotion (e.g. Sunday night offer)
- Purpose - (e.g. send search abandon follow up for sunday night specific searches)
- Logic approach / timing (e.g. segment created based on a) has searched Sun night, b) has not booked
- Content / variations (e.g. include offer code)

Question 238

What is the difference between emails based on time of open and time of sent?

Answer 238

Whether content and action is based on when a reader opens their email, rather than being fixed at the point of sending.

This can influence the content, e.g. count down timers to add urgency to an end of the offer. It can also be used to define content based on the context of the open; if the weather is hot or cold could determine what promotion item of clothing is shown as the main image. Or perhaps an interactive map based on the nearest store location.

This technology also allows flexibility in the next action. EG. Channel 4 used email to promote their coverage of the UEFA Women’s Championship:
- Pre-game
A kick-off countdown timer with all CTAs labelled ‘watch from 7 pm’.
- At kick-off
The timer changed to an image CTA, directing recipients to watch on All 4.
- Post-game
The CTA changes to highlight the ‘on-demand’ watch again content could be accessed.

Question 239

What did the DMA Email Tracker find were the key features that encourage people to open email?

Answer 239

Brand recognition and the subject line

Question 240

What kind of categories of insights should we look for in email campaign performance?

Answer 240

Overall email performance - opens, clicks, unsubscribes, key action conversions
Environment - email client, device, rendering
Engagement - read time, click heat maps, activity segments
Deliverability - Inbox placement, IP reputation, speed and time of open

Question 241

What three places will your email performance metrics reporting come from?

Answer 241

Your email platform
Website analytics
Customer database

Question 242

What metrics should you use to measure an email campaign’s success?

Answer 242

Do not take any single metric as a measure of success; you should have a final conversion metric, as well as positive metrics across the board to ensure that the customer and your organisation’s wants are being met.

Record all your metrics in a consistent way that can easily be referenced and reviewed, in order to report on their effectiveness and inform the direction of future campaigns.

In addition to measuring the performance of individual campaigns, trends from multiple sends should be analysed for insight.

Question 243

What is the danger in separating out different metrics to meet different objectives in emails?

Answer 243

By working to make one area of the email get a specific response, you risk the overall success of that email and your broader email activity. e.g. hawaiian pizza.

Question 244

What is the ROPO effect?

Answer 244

Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO) effect. Today’s shoppers check more than ten separate information sources before committing to purchase; browsing sites and reviews, checking ratings/reviews from other shoppers and checking price comparison sites. Once their research is completed online, they then will purchase offline in-store.

Question 245

What should you consider when attempting to increase your mobile search ranking?

Answer 245

Google’s search algorithm rewards mobile-friendly sites by prioritising them in search results and penalising those providing poor mobile user experiences. Consider:

Reviewing your customer’s search activity, and the volume of product demand -Google’s free Keyword Tool allows you to assess the number of searches on mobile versus desktop.

Using same principles as normal SEO, make sure your mobile site is optimised for SEO. Mobile users still more likely to click organic than sponsored results (as with desktop).

As the majority of search activity relates to location, your search results should find relevant location specific info within one click (i.e. your address with postcode, a link to directions, a call button with the correct dialling code built-in).

Question 246

What is different about mobile behaviour than desktop behaviour?

Answer 246

Consumers have increasingly high expectation from mobile search. When searching for information, users want this to be displayed on the first results page, and not another click or two away.

Mobile devices are often used at home in conjunction with offline media like television and print to search for companies, products, and services.

People often turn to mobile devices to find local information (e.g. businesses, offers, store opening times)

Question 247

What are the 7 steps to creating a mobile app strategy?

Answer 247

1 Justify – make a clear business case for the app.

2 Build – use the most cost-effective build technology.

3 Distribute – get your app approved and hosted in-app stores.

4 Promote – market the app to drive downloads.

5 Engage – communicate with users to ensure repeat app usage.

6 Measure success – monitor usage and make refinements.

7 Update – modify app features in line with customer usage behaviour/feedback.

Question 248

What are some key elements to factor in when optimising websites for mobile?

Answer 248

Location – The way people use their mobile depends on their location (e.g. home, commuting, shops).

Screen size – Menus and site navigation must be quick and intuitive.

Handset interactions – Usage of calling, texting, maps, camera, microphone.

Touchscreen and zoom – Providing dynamic user interfaces.

Download speeds – Varies based on 3G, 4G,5G, WiFi - each affect what mobile users can do.

Question 249

What is RWD and AWD? Compare the two.

Answer 249

Responsive Web Design (RWD) optimises your site experience across different screen sizes without needing to create multiple websites. Using flexible templates, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript, a responsive site immediately adjusts images, template layouts, and content according to the screen size of a device.

RWD is fast and cost-effective

Adaptive Web Design (AWD) customises your site experience based on device type. It does this by building a separate site for mobile traffic, independent of your original desktop site. This can be a web layout that serves different versions of the site to different devices based on common screen sizes and resolutions. The browser detects if a visitor is on a mobile device and redirects them to the mobile-optimised version of your site.

A dedicated mobile site allows you to tailor the site specifically to improve the User Interface (UI) for functions like registration and checkout.
However AWD requires more development time and budget in comparison to RWD.
It also requires multiple URLs, which will reduce page rank (as Google rewards brands with a single URL strategy).

Question 250

What are the stages of Google’s ‘New Mental Model of Marketing’?

Answer 250

Stimulus (heard about brand or identifies their need

ZMOT (zero moment of truth) - The process before making a purchase, where the consumer will seek information about your business, through social media and search engines. This is the newest stage owing to the always-on nature of mobile.

First moment of truth - the point of purchase, when customer encounters your offering for first time

Second moment of truth - The experience. At this point, whether his experience is good or bad, he will now necessarily share his experience with others (contributing to someone else’s ZMOT)

Question 251

What does a Mobile Readiness Index (or a Mobile Barometer) assess?

Answer 251

How mobile-friendly your activities are based on a scoring system for:

Technology - What is your approach to digital innovation and product development? Are you a technology leader or follower?

User experience - Does your business deliver a consistent, seamless mobile user experience across all touchpoints of the customer journey?

Marketing - Is it easy to find your mobile site and apps using search engines and app stores? Does your marketing consider your customers’ previous browsing activity, location, and social media profile?

CRM and loyalty - Are your loyalty programmes tightly targeted, relevant and personalised? Are you using the mobile channels your customers feel most comfortable with (e.g. SMS, email, push-notifications etc.)?

Data - Does your data accommodate the numerous data collection opportunities mobile allows (e.g. location data, app download and usage, social activity and sharing etc.), and how is this data shared with other parts of the business?

Business structure - Does the company support cross-department collaboration or does it operate in silos? Is there a clearly defined mobile vision for the business which all employees understand and commit to?

Question 252

How can you be customer-centric with affiliate marketing?

Answer 252

Being customer-centric in affiliate marketing is more difficult but can be achieved. Because it is a third-party who is referring the customer, for your business to be customer-centric with affiliate marketing your the information you provide them for your affiliate program ads, collateral and promotion material need to be effective.

A library of assets could include:

• “Boilerplate” sales text
• Images and banner ads
• Printed materials
• Guides and PDFs

Question 253

What are the three ways affiliate marketing programmes can be managed?

Answer 253

Self Managed
- Building a tracking and payment system in-house to register and reward successful affiliates. The platform will be administrated in-house, and the technology and systems used will need to be managed internally

Third-Party Management
- The platform is built, managed and maintained by a 3rd party. This means that you will pay an initial registration and setup fee for the privilege of using the platform. You may also be charged a platform fee for every transaction.

Manual Programme
- an agreement is made between you and the affiliate built on trust. Tracking links are made through Google Analytics and payments are made manually to the referrer based on reports

Question 254

How can you recruit affiliates to your programme?

Answer 254

Using a combo of digital and offline outreach methods e.g.
- Promotion via an affiliate platform
- An affiliates page on your website
- Attendance at trade shows to recruit affiliates
- Manual recruitment via phone call and email

Question 255

How should affiliate marketing fit into your overall digital marketing strategy?

Answer 255

The affiliate channel should be a source of additional conversions after you’ve maximised your core digital marketing channels, for example, SEM.

The reason you need good results from other channels is because affiliate marketing relies on a 3rd party introducing your brand, so your conversion rate optimisation needs to be strong in order for the affiliate to find your program worthwhile. If they are generating traffic to your website, and it isn’t leading to conversions and payments, they will lose trust in the program.

The affiliate channel should be able to stand alone as a channel that generates conversions directly at a set cost per sale.

Question 256

*What is the most common ad exchange (how ads get served)?

Answer 256

Google Display network

Question 257

What are the advantages and disadvantages of display ads?

Answer 257

• Allows your brand to reach a large volume of potential customers at a low cost. Typically, a display campaign could reach thousands of potential customers at a low cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
• Great for brand awareness
• Numerous targeting options available
• Danger of banner oblivion - browsers very good at blocking them out
• Failure to control reputation
• Low conversion rates

Question 258

What are the four different types of display marketing campaigns?

Answer 258

Contextual targeting
- uses factors like demographics, keywords and predefined audience definitions to target users who fit your customer profile

Managed placement
- researching which websites within your target niche host display ad space and actively targeting them.

Retargeting
- targeting users with banner ads across the web because they have previously visited your website and didn’t convert.

Programmatic
- uses AI and machine learning to understand the ideal demographic of a user who converts on your website and creates a ‘lookalike audience’ based on existing converted users.

Question 259

How should display campaigns fit into your strategy?

Answer 259

Display campaigns need to be integrated into your overall marketing strategy as a supporter of additional conversions, not the lead source of conversion. Display should support all other channels by identifying new audiences and raising your brand profile, which will lead to direct conversions through SEM or direct channels further down the conversion funnel.

Question 260

Why do you need an SEM strategy?

Answer 260

You need a SEM strategy to:

• Ensure brand discoverability at the right moments by the right person
• Appear in relevant searches
• Reach specific audiences
• Reflect customer journey steps
• Drive quality visitors that convert
• Deliver a better CX than the competition
• Optimise costs between organic and paid search
• Assess if you can use organic search (SEO) to achieve your goals or need to invest in paid (PPC) search techniques

Question 261

What is the difference between a baseline and a benchmark?

Answer 261

A baseline is a measurement or state at a point in time. In this case, the baseline will be the level of search impressions, visitors or sales, etc., that you get to your site before you start putting in place a proper strategy.

A benchmark is a measurement of an industry standard, best practice or competitor that you can use to set KPIs and compare your own performance against.