PREAMBLE TO DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE

This is the first of seven courses in the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate, which will equip you
with the skills you need to apply to entry-level roles in these fields. People who work in digital marketing and e-
commerce help their organizations attract new customers, engage customers through various digital channels, and
drive transactions like purchases and customer loyalty. In this course, you’ll explore entry-level jobs in digital
marketing and e-commerce and identify the roles and functions that those jobs play within an organization. You’ll
also learn about the marketing funnel and how it shapes the customer journey. Google employees who currently
work in the field will guide you, providing hands-on activities and examples that simulate common digital marketing
and e-commerce tasks, and helping you build your skills and prepare for the job. Learners who complete the seven
courses in this program will be equipped to apply for entry-level jobs in digital marketing and e-commerce. No
previous experience is necessary. By the end of this course, you will be able to do the following: - Define the fields
of digital marketing and e-commerce - Describe the job responsibilities of an entry-level digital marketing
coordinator and e-commerce analyst (and similar job titles) - Summarize how this program will help prepare you for
a career in digital marketing and e-commerce - Identify the roles and functions that digital marketing and e-
commerce play within an organization - Understand the customer journey and the function of journey maps -
Explain the concept of a marketing funnel - Understand the elements and goals of a digital marketing and e-
commerce strategy.

INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE (VIDEO 2)

Hello, and welcome to the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce Certificate. I'm so excited that you're
here! My name is Joi, and I'm a Product Marketing Manager at Google. I'll be your instructor for the first course of
this certificate program. The demand for digital marketing and e-commerce specialists is growing at an incredible
rate. In about a decade, the global e-commerce market grew by over 600%. And as more of the world starts doing
business online, more people with varied backgrounds and experiences are entering the field, which means e-
commerce is adapting to serve new markets and different cultures. With so much global growth, digital marketing
and e-commerce offer high-paying jobs—with or without a college degree. But while the demand for digital
marketing and e-commerce skills is higher than ever, employers are struggling to find candidates with the right
experience. That's exactly what this program is designed to do—to give you the knowledge and skills to start or
advance your career in digital marketing or e-commerce. It doesn't matter if you're beginning a new career journey
or already working in a similar role. By the end of this program, you'll be ready to find a job in these high-growth,
high-impact fields. If you've ever bought anything online, you're familiar with e-commerce from the customer side.

But what do digital marketing and e-commerce specialists actually do? Well, think about the last time you purchased
something online—big or small— it doesn't matter what it was. How did you end up buying that particular
product? Maybe you needed something specific, like a new lamp or a piece of software, and you searched online to
find just the right one. Or maybe it was something you didn't know you needed until you learned about it from a
friend or an online ad.

Digital marketing and e-commerce specialists probably played a role in helping you get what you needed. Whether
it's through social media outreach or making sure the checkout process runs smoothly, they're always thinking about
better ways to connect you, the customer, with the solutions and products you need. And in doing so, they help
businesses of all sizes succeed and

grow in the online marketplace. One of the best things about digital marketing and

e-commerce is that there are so many different career paths you can take, each with their own set of skills and
responsibilities. So no matter what your background is, you'll probably find that you already have some relevant
experience. For example, I work full-time in digital marketing and have experience running e-commerce stores
outside of work. I studied public relations in college and eventually interned at Google, which turned into a full-time
position. I also spent years helping my family run their online store, which eventually led me to start my own e-
commerce beauty business. If you're not sure what direction you want to take, that's okay!

This program will give you an overview of different types of available jobs. It will also let you explore certain
specialized skill sets to help you figure out where you want to take your career. The program includes several
courses where you'll cover topics like attracting customers through search engines and online ads, engaging
customers on social media, and creating email campaigns. You'll also learn about measuring and analyzing results,
managing customer

relationships, optimizing an e-commerce store, and preparing for jobs.

Completing a Google Career Certificate like this one will help you develop skills and learn how to use tools that will
make you ready for a job in a fast-growing, high-paying field.

You don't need any prior experience or knowledge in digital marketing or e-commerce because this certificate is
going to start with the basics and build on the skills you already have. I'll be by your side throughout this first
course, making sure that you're learning the foundational knowledge needed to succeed in the field. You'll also have
a supportive network of peers taking the certificate at the same time as you. This program is also really flexible. You
can complete all of the courses in this certificate on your own terms and at your own pace—all online.

In addition, the Google Career Certificates were designed by industry professionals with decades of experience here
at Google. You'll have a different expert from Google to guide you through each course in this certificate.

We'll share our knowledge in videos, help you practice with hands on activities, and take you through real scenarios
that you might encounter on the job. You'll make customer personas, write marketing emails, use analytics tools,
build a portfolio— even create a mock e-commerce store. The certificates are designed to prepare you for a job in 3-
6 months if you work on the certificate part time. And once you graduate, you can connect with over 150
employers who are interested in hiring Google Career Certificates graduates. Whether you're looking to switch
careers, start a new career, level up your skills, or build a business, the Google Career Certificates can open doors to
new opportunities. We've gathered some amazing instructors to support you on your journey, and they'd like to
introduce themselves now.

Hello, hello, my name is AK. I'm a Sales Excellence Lead here at Google. I'll be teaching you about attracting and
engaging customers. We will cover topics like the marketing funnel, search engine optimization, and search engine
marketing.

Hey there, I'm Cindy. I'm a Product Marketing Manager for Google Ads. I'll be your instructor for social media
marketing and advertising, which is about incorporating social media into your marketing campaigns.

Hi, my name is Miriam, and I'm a Product Marketing Manager for Google Ads. I'll be taking you through what goes
into an email marketing campaign from start to finish. I'll teach you all about preparing, crafting, and sending emails
to optimize your business's brand. I can't wait to get started!

Hello there, I'm Michael, and I'm a Senior Account Executive on Google's mid-market growth team, which partners
with businesses on their Google advertising strategies. I'll be your instructor for marketing analytics. I'll teach you
how analytics tools are used in performance marketing. You'll learn how to monitor key metrics for marketing
campaigns and e-commerce.

Hi, my name is Cindy. I'm a Sales Excellence Lead at Google. I'll be guiding you through the course on e-commerce
and selling online. Together, we'll explore how e-commerce stores work and how to engage customers.

Hello, I'm Mike, and I'm a Global Performance Curriculum manager here at Google. I'll be your instructor for the
final course of the program. There, we'll discuss how to build customer loyalty and other e-commerce topics.

And my name is Erica. I'm a People Consultant at Google. My job is to help managers, leaders, and Google
employees grow in their roles to help our organization reach their goals.

Program and Course overview

Hello and welcome! This program has been specifically designed so every type of learner can be successful
completing the seven courses for the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Career Certificate. These courses
will help you prepare for an entry-level digital marketing coordinator or e-commerce specialist role. No prior
experience in marketing or e-commerce is required.

Become job-ready

Why are skills in digital marketing and e-commerce in such high demand? One reason is that the world is
undergoing a digital transformation. A growing number of people get their news and information online and through
digital subscriptions instead of from television, radio, or printed publications. As a result, marketing professionals
recognize that they must connect with potential customers using digital media. Similarly, for some businesses,
revenue from online sales can equal or even exceed revenue from in-store purchases. Businesses must grow their
online sales competitively and retain both types of customers.

During each course in the program, you will complete activities that include practice in tools that many marketing
and e-commerce specialists use every day. In doing so, you’ll gain experience to effectively engage customers along
each stage of their customer journey. By the end of this program, you’ll understand how to work on search engine
optimization projects, digital marketing campaigns, e-commerce strategies, customer loyalty programs, and more.

Course progress

The entire program has seven courses. Foundations of Digital Marketing and E-commerce is the first course in the
series.

Course flow

Foundations of Digital Marketing and E-commerce—(current course) Learn about the fields of digital marketing
and e-commerce and the skills needed for associate-level roles.

Attract and Engage Customers with Digital Marketing—Apply the marketing funnel concept to stages of the
customer journey, including engagement, conversion, and loyalty. Learn methods for search engine optimization so
potential customers find your products or services.
From Likes to Leads: Interact with Customers Online—Learn how to create marketing content and ads on social
media platforms and evaluate their effectiveness using social media analytics data.

Think Outside the Inbox: Email Marketing—Learn how to execute email campaigns, use mailing lists, and automate
customer communication and workflows.

Assess for Success: Marketing Analytics and Measurement—Learn how to collect, monitor, analyze, and present
data from marketing campaigns using analytics and presentation tools.

Make the Sale: Build, Launch, and Manage E-commerce Stores—Learn the process to create a new e-commerce
store and drive traffic to the online business through advertising campaigns.

Satisfaction Guaranteed: Develop Customer Loyalty Online—Learn strategies to build customer loyalty in e-
commerce and use specific tools to help develop and maintain client relationships. This course also closes out the
program with professional development topics to help you prepare for a job search.

What to expect

Each course offers a series of lessons with many types of learning opportunities. These include:

Videos for instructors to teach new concepts and demonstrate the use of tools

Readings to introduce new ideas and build on the concepts from the videos

Discussion forums to share, explore, and reinforce lesson topics for better understanding

Discussion prompts to promote thinking and engagement in the discussion forums

Self-review to practice tasks and check your results for accuracy or correctness

In-video quizzes to help your comprehension of content presented in videos

Practice quizzes to prepare you for graded quizzes

Graded quizzes to measure your progress, give you valuable feedback, and satisfy program completion to obtain a
certificate—Following program guidelines, you can take a graded quiz multiple times to achieve a passing score of
80% or higher.

Tips for success

It is strongly recommended to take these courses—and go through the items in each lesson—in the order they appear
because new information and concepts build on previous knowledge.

Participate in all learning opportunities to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible.

If something is confusing, don’t hesitate to replay a video, review a reading, or repeat a self-review activity.

Use the additional resources that are referenced throughout the program. They are designed to support your learning.

When you encounter useful links in a course, remember to bookmark them so you can refer to the information later
for study or review.

Understand and follow the Coursera Code of Conduct to ensure that the learning community remains a welcoming,
friendly, and supportive place for all members.

DIGITAL MARKETING (MODULE 1)

Foundations of Digital Marketing and E-commerce (Course 1 content)

This course has regular assignments. You can complete them at your own pace; however, the assignments are
designed to help you finish the program in six months or fewer. Refer to the information below about progression
for this course. Congratulations on choosing to take this first step to build your skills for a career in digital marketing
and e-commerce. Enjoy the journey!

Module 1: Introduction to Foundations of digital marketing and e-commerce

You’ll find out what’s in store for Course 1 and the whole certificate program. You’ll also learn about the Coursera
platform, procedures, and content types, and meet other learners in the program. Then, you’ll learn about digital
marketing and e-commerce basics, the tasks that people who work in these fields do, and the transferable skills you
might already have. Finally, you’ll get some tips for embarking on careers in this field.

Module 2: The customer journey and the marketing funnel

You will learn what digital marketing and e-commerce roles and departments do within organizations and how they
create value. You’ll also be introduced to marketing concepts, like the customer journey and the marketing funnel,
that form the basis for much of what these roles do.

Module 3: Digital marketing and e-commerce strategy

You will explore the relationship between digital marketing and branding, and how businesses can leverage both to
be successful. You’ll investigate the elements of a digital marketing strategy, including goal setting, channel
selection, and content planning. Then you’ll learn about commonly used channels and platforms, like search engine
optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), display advertising, social media marketing, and email
marketing.

Module 4: Measure performance success

You will learn the importance of measuring results and common metrics to track. You’ll also examine how digital
marketers and e-commerce specialists use data to assess and improve performance and tell stories with data. You’ll
end the course by participating in optional content if you’re interested in preparing for a job search.

{VIDEO 3}

Now that you have some idea of what to expect in this program as a whole. I'd like to tell you a little more about
what's in store for you in this course. We'll start with the basics, exploring what e-commerce and digital marketing
are and what people in these industries do on a day-to-day basis. We'll also cover some of the core skills for success
in digital marketing and e-commerce roles, including some you might already have, and how this program will help
you build them.

Then we'll explore the current landscape of job opportunities. You'll learn about some of the opportunities available
for entry-level job seekers and the responsibilities that go with them. This information should get you thinking about
your interests and how they can help you find a fulfilling career path.

Later on in the course, we'll explore some tools for engaging potential customers and driving online sales. We'll find
out what goes into creating digital marketing strategies and discover some tactics they can use to reach customers
like digital ads, email, and social media.

Lastly, we'll cover why it's important to measure and interpret the results of those tactics and

how businesses use those insights to improve their overall strategies. We'll also provide a few more career tips to
keep in mind as you continue on to the next course. That's all coming at you down the road. Right now, we're going
to go over some resources that will help you get
the most out of this program. I'm so excited for you to start this journey. Let's get right to it.

Overview of program survey

During this certificate program, you will be asked to complete a few short surveys. These are part of a research
study to understand how effectively the certificate meets your career training needs. Read further for a summary of
what each survey will cover.

Your survey participation is optional but extremely helpful in making this program as effective as possible. All data
is kept confidential and is aggregated for review. Your name is separated from your data when it is stored.

There are no right or wrong answers, and your responses or personal data:

Won’t affect your program experience, scores, or ability to receive a certificate or job offer

Won’t be shared outside of our research team unless you give permission to share your contact information with
hiring partners

Thanks for your consideration and time!

Entry survey

Up next, you will have an opportunity to submit a brief survey to help us understand why you enrolled in this
certificate program. If you don’t fill out the survey now, you will receive an invitation to fill it out after completing
your first video or assignment.

The survey will ask about your experiences leading up to this program and the goals you hope to achieve. This is
critical information to ensure we can meet the needs of learners like you and continue offering this program in the
future.

Individual course feedback

After you complete the last graded assignment within an individual course, if you are asked to complete a survey, it
will revisit previous questions and ask what you have learned up to that point in the program. Again, filling out this
information is voluntary but extremely beneficial to the program and future learners.

Certificate completion survey

After you complete the last graded assignment in the final, seventh course of the certificate program, you will be
asked to complete a survey that revisits some earlier questions and asks what you have learned throughout the
duration of the program. This survey also asks if you would like to share your contact information with prospective
employers. Filling out the survey and sharing your contact information with prospective employers is completely
optional and will not affect your course experience, scores, or ability to receive a certificate or job offer in any way.

DEFINITION OF DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE (Video 3)

Did you know that the first sale made completely online happened in 1994? A man named Dan Kohn sold a CD for
$12.48 over an encrypted website he built himself. These days, it's a lot easier to sell things online— whether you're
an individual, a small business, or a massive retailer.

E-commerce has come a long way since the 90s, growing into a global, multi-billion dollar industry. That's because
e-commerce is generally cheaper, more convenient, and more accessible than storefront sales. And, as the online
marketplace has grown, also launched entirely new industries, and career paths, like digital marketing.
In this video, we'll start exploring e-commerce and digital marketing and how they create value for businesses. Let's
start with some definitions.

E-commerce is a broad term that refers to the buying and selling of goods and

services online. Most e-commerce purchases fall into one of the following four categories:

physical products, like books or home goods;

digital products, like ebooks

online courses; services, like vacations or doctors' appointments; and

software, like word processing or photo editing programs.

The ability to buy or sell just about anything, big or small, through computers, tablets, and phones has completely
transformed the way we do business. For one thing, you don't need a physical storefront to start an e-commerce
business. Many retailers maintain physical stores alongside e-commerce websites, but others are completely
online. Without the cost of maintaining a store, it became easier than ever to start a business, which meant more
people around the world began entering the online marketplace. But it also meant that the e-commerce market got
crowded really quickly.

To set themselves apart, and get customers attention, businesses brought their ads online too, which is how we got
digital marketing. Digital marketing is the practice of reaching consumers online through digital channels with the
aim of turning them into customers. A digital channel is any communication method or platform a business can use
to reach their target audience online. They are things like websites, search engines, email, or social media platforms.
If the aim of e-commerce is to sell products online, then digital marketing helps businesses make that happen.

But there's more to it than that.

Digital marketing also helps businesses build trust, inspire loyalty, and better serve their customers. In that way, it's
similar to traditional marketing like print advertising, or billboards, but it has a few added advantages for both
businesses, and consumers. First, digital marketing is cost-effective. Advertising budgets go a lot further online than
they do on television, radio, and print media. That's because digital marketers can be very specific about serving the
right ads,

to the right audiences, at the right moments. But there's also the potential for customers to spread the word through
platforms like social media. At the same time, digital marketing can reach more people than traditional campaigns,
which rely on local platforms like newspapers, and radio stations. It creates brand recognition in new (sometimes
even global markets, which can drive sales and make products and services accessible for a variety of different
people.

Digital marketing can also produce faster results. If a customer encounters a product they want in a print newspaper
ad, they may or may not remember to buy that product later on. But digital ads allow customers to take action in the
moment, which can increase the chances that'll make a purchase. It also allows businesses to build relationships with
customers through direct communication. Channels like email and social media allow a level of personalization that

traditional marketing just can't compete with.

You'll learn more about the advantages, and challenges of digital marketing, and

e-commerce later in this course. For the moment, let's review what we've learned. Over the last few decades, e-
commerce and digital marketing have fundamentally changed business. While the goal of e-commerce is to generate
sales, digital marketing helps businesses do just that by connecting with customers and building relationships. Up
next, we'll find out about some of the major roles and responsibilities in digital marketing and e-commerce.

WHAT DO DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE SPECIALISTS DO? (Video 4)

Now, let's explore some of the things people who work in these fields do on a day-to-day basis. The first thing you
should know is that the digital marketing and e-commerce industry is kind of like an engine--there's a ton of moving
pieces and a lot going on inside. Different parts of the engine do different jobs, but at the end of the day, they all
work together to keep things running smoothly and efficiently. Now, at a big organization, you might specialize in
one or two different areas,

while at smaller companies you could be responsible for a little bit of everything. With so many different jobs to do,
there's no single set of responsibilities that applies to everyone. That's part of what makes this industry so exciting—
no matter what your strengths are, there's probably a role to fit them. It also means you'll have tons of options when
deciding where to take your career. I'm a small business owner, so I take responsibility for a lot of activities, like
strategizing and executing marketing campaigns, website management, and product development. But I'm also able
to outsource some of the activities I'm less experienced at, like customer service and order fulfillment. We all have
our particular interests and strengths, and identifying yours can help you figure out what you want to do.

So, if you like writing, you might enjoy working on marketing emails or blog articles. If you're more visual, you
could end up working with image assets or website layouts. If you have a talent for organization, you might enjoy
managing an e-commerce store. Or, if you're more of a numbers person, you might spend your days working on
pricing strategies or analyzing data to spot trends and customer engagement. This program will help you prepare for
a variety of jobs in the digital marketing and e-commerce space, with titles like digital marketing coordinator or

e-commerce analyst. Even though those roles might seem really distinct, there can be a lot of similarities between
them depending on where you work. Because the responsibilities of digital marketing and e-commerce specialists
often overlap, they tend to share some of the same skills and use the same digital channels, like social media, email,
and ads. So no matter what your title is, you might find yourself doing audience research, planning, creating or
publishing content, updating product descriptions, or analyzing data to understand the results of your efforts. And
your goals might include everything from reaching and engaging potential customers online, building
trust, demonstrating value, driving sales, or creating a great customer experience. Of course, there are many more
types of roles within digital marketing and e-commerce, and you'll learn more about specific job titles and
their responsibilities later on in this course. But no matter what kind of role you're aiming for, it helps to understand
how their goals and responsibilities fit together— from raising brand awareness to driving sales to managing
inventory. Fortunately, that's exactly what this program is designed to help you learn.

Coming up, we'll explore some core skills for digital marketing and e-commerce, and some ways you might have
practiced them already.

Core skills of Digital Marketing and E-commerce specialists

The skills you will gain from completing the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce certificate are used in
many entry-level digital marketing and e-commerce roles. This reading provides an overview of the topics in the
certificate program and matches them to sample job requirements.
Comparison of core skills in different roles

Similar skills are required for roles in digital marketing and e-commerce. However, these skills are often applied in
different ways. The following table gives you an idea of how job responsibilities might differ slightly between entry-
level roles in digital marketing and e-commerce.

Area of Focus Digital Marketing Coordinator E-commerce Analyst

responsibilities responsibilities
Business objectives Identify campaign business Ensure customer interactions align
objectives with business objectives
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Follow SEO best practices Use SEO to determine traffic to
website
Social Media Marketing Draft social media copy and obtain Ensure social media ads increase
approvals traffic to website
Email marketing Execute and monitor email Ensure email ads generate desired
campaigns results on website
Marketing analytics Analyze data from marketing Analyze data from website or
campaigns mobile app
Content design and copywriting Assign content development and Edit content on website
track progress
Loyalty programs Monitor activities of returning Execute and monitor loyalty
customers programs

Key takeaway

Many career counselors recommend that you customize your resume for each job you apply for so that your
experience and skills align as closely as possible with the job description. By the end of this program, you’ll be able
to customize your resume based on the skills you learn for either digital marketing or e-commerce roles.

My Path to Working In E-commerce (Video 4)

Hi, my name is Melba, and I am a Product Marketing Manager at Google. I help communicate the what, the why,
and the when of the products that we are developing, both internally to cross-functional teams and externally to our
defined target audiences. I would say my trajectory has been very unconventional.

When I was 16, I actually had to drop out of high school to get a job and help out my mother financially. I grew up
in a single parent household, and if I'm honest, when I was 16, I never really thought that going to college, let alone
getting a job at a place like Google, would be possible for me. It's interesting the way that things ended up working
out because after getting a job, I eventually found myself dealing with a very incredible, powerful Latina leader. The
very first time I saw a Latina leader; I was blown away because it's not something that I used to see often. And when
I did, I realized if she could do it, so can I. I went home that exact same day, and I started researching a career in
marketing. And so, I really had to start from the ground up. I started to go take classes to get my GED. After I got
my GED, I went and I got my undergraduate degree while maintaining a full-time job. As part of my education and
continued learning, I took several online classes, and I also did a lot of courses that were available for free
online. One of the biggest reasons that I did this is because I found that, oftentimes, I needed to sit with the materials
and be able to do it at my own pace. For me, this was instrumental because since I did drop out of high school when
I was in college, I actually found that everybody else was at a more advanced pace than I was. I didn't have a lot
of the foundational knowledge that they did, and so because of this, I often had to go back, take some online
classes, take some additional courses, and really gain that foundational knowledge in order to be able to set myself
up for success in the future. I knew I made the right decision of pursuing a career in marketing when I launched my
very first campaign.

My first campaign was actually targeting underserved populations. As a Latina, it's really important that in the work
that I do, I am able to give back to my community and really make sure that their voice is being recognized. In
addition to the work that I do at Google, I also founded a company called Mujeres on the Rise, and Mujeres on the
Rise is a community that helps Latinas rise through resources, community, and coaching. Again, being from a
marginalized community myself, I realized that there are so many barriers that are keeping us from pursuing what
we want. And a lot of times those barriers are our own internal voices that are telling us that we're not capable of
doing what we want to do. As part of the work that I do, I really started this community to share what I've learned
along the way and help others do the same. I used to believe that where I was in life would forever dictate where I
would be in the future. Having made so much progress from where I initially started, I know that's not necessarily
true. You can change the direction of your life, but it all starts with one decision. You have to take that first step
without necessarily thinking about the super-long journey that might be ahead of you. Just take one step, one day at
a time, and eventually, you'll look back and realize how far you've come.

My Path to working in Digital Marketing (Video 5)

My name is Andrew, and I am a Partner Operations Program Manager for ad support teams at Google. As a Partner
Operations Program Manager, I work with our ad support teams who are providing direct support to our advertising
customers. When I was graduating high school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, or I guess,
what I wanted to be when I grew up, so to speak. So I was fortunate enough to attend the United States Naval
Academy for four years, where I graduated with a college degree, but also with a background in leadership to enter
the navy as an officer and lead sailors. The team that I joined was the submarine community, and left Annapolis to
go to Charleston, South Carolina, where I entered our nuclear power training program.

It's a pretty grueling six months of theoretical nuclear engineering and then six months of hands-on reactor
training. It being a very difficult program, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out for me, and nuclear engineering is
something that still challenges me a bit to this day. I ended up getting out of the navy a little bit earlier than I
expected to, and so I had to reassess where I was and what I was doing and really figure out what I wanted to do
after the navy— much sooner than I had originally anticipated. When I left the navy, I was fortunate enough to have
a friend who was actually working at Google at the time and understood a bit more of my background and helped

me to really understand where I might be able to leverage my skills outside of the navy and as I entered the civilian
world. So I put together my first resume and started applying to jobs, but it really took me a couple of months to
figure out how to apply for jobs well. I didn't have a ton of direction on where I wanted to go or what industry
I wanted to be in, and I spent probably five or six months applying to jobs that interested me or jobs that looked like
they could be a fit. It was a bit taxing. You know, you apply for a job and you wait and you wait and you wait and
then you finally get that rejection letter and you just hope that one day somebody kind of takes a chance on you. So
when I started connecting with a few more of my peers to understand what they were having success with, that's
when the light bulb clicked for me that I needed to do a better job of telling companies why they should hire me and
why I would be a good fit at their company.

I think I learned that the most important thing for me was going to be not just telling people about my military
experience, but telling people about how my military experience makes me a good fit for the role that they have
open. Really trying to translate some of the skills that I did have, even if they weren't directly related in experience
— translating how those skills would make me

a good hire or would make me a successful member of their teams. Once I started making a better effort to tell my
own story and own my experiences, I started to see more success when I was actually interviewing. I think it's
important to always be looking for new opportunities to learn. I didn't have a formal background in digital
marketing, and yet I still was able to get into this industry and find success by being willing to learn, keeping an
open mind when approaching new opportunities, and asking a lot of questions. For anybody who's transitioning out
of military service, my number one recommendation would be to talk with people who are in the civilian world
already. Whether that's other military folks who have transitioned previously, or just friends, family, acquaintances
who are already in the industry or in the area that you want to be in— whether that's asking for
informational interviews to get to know more about a role or more about an industry or asking for somebody to look
over your resume to give you feedback about what's confusing or what could be clearer or how do you better
describe some of your experience.

Don't be afraid to ask for help from people who are already in the role who had that experience and can share some
of that knowledge with you as somebody who's just joined the team.

Launching your E-commerce or Digital Marketing Career

Hi there. My name is Erika, and I'm a people consultant here at Google, known elsewhere in the industry as an HR
business partner. I help employees, leaders, and managers solve problems and focus on their career goals. I also
provide guidance along the way, and I'll be doing the same thing for you in this program. My journey to working in
HR wasn't a straight line. Early in my career I held several roles in other industries, including restaurant-server and
cashier. I even handled auto insurance claims for a while. These jobs might seem really different, but they all taught
me something about myself and what I wanted to do. When I realized I had a passion for helping others in the area
of learning and development, my path became really clear. Now, I'm excited to share my knowledge with you as you
embark on the next stage of your own career. I'll be popping in occasionally to introduce career resources and
discuss job searching and interview tips to help you on your journey.

In this video, we'll cover some things you should know about the job landscape and a few things you can start to do
right now that will help you advance your career. Digital marketing and e-commerce are some of the fastest growing
industries out there today. Right now, there are thousands of open roles around the world and millions of people are
already working in similar positions. Many of those jobs didn't even exist five or 10 years ago, and even more will
develop as new technologies emerge. If you search any job board, you'll find digital marketing and e-commerce
roles at organizations of all sizes in just about every industry, not just retail and consumer goods. With opportunities
in so many fields, people in these roles can make an impact in a lot of different areas, from education to healthcare,
and finance. It also means you can pursue jobs and industries you care about. Love fashion, technology,
entertainment, all those industries need digital marketing and e-commerce specialists. At the same time, try to keep
an open mind when searching for jobs. Your next role probably won't be your last. Even if you don't start out in your
ideal industry, it can still help you build the career you want. In addition to targeting certain industries, you might
also find you prefer some aspects of digital marketing or e-commerce more than others, and that's great. The
strongest candidates have a broad knowledge of the fundamentals and a deep understanding of one or two specific
areas. As you move through the program, pay close attention to the topics and courses that engage you the
most. Reflect on your strengths and think about what you want to do with them. You might not have the answer
yet, but these questions will help you target roles that align with your career interests later. Even if you're not quite
ready for a job search, there are things you can do during this program to improve your prospects later on. For
example, it's never too early to explore job descriptions for open roles.
As you consider your skills and the parts of the program you like best, search job boards for roles in those
areas. Make note of terms and skills that come up frequently. For example, you might find that certain roles often
mention data analysis and reporting. This information will help you learn industry terminology and find out where
you might want to expand your skills. Once you have an idea of the roles you want to target, you can start to identify
past samples of work that demonstrate relevant experience. Have you written an essay or a story, designed a
website, managed a budget or organized information in a spreadsheet? You'll build a portfolio later in the program.

Keep track of these items in case you want to include them. If you don't have any samples yet, that's okay too. You'll
create some as you complete the activities in the upcoming courses. By the end of this program, you'll have concrete
examples of work that can help you demonstrate your experience to potential employers. Another way you can put
what you're learning into action is by starting to shape your public persona as a digital marketing or e-commerce
specialists. In other words, by building your personal brand. You can demonstrate your knowledge and skills
through your social media accounts or personal website and might even end up with a few samples of work for your
portfolio. Finally, be sure to keep up with this program bit by bit until you reach the end.

By completing this series of courses, you're investing in yourself, your skills, and your future. You're doing it right
now. Just keep going. Good luck, and I'll check in with you again near the end of this course.

Agency roles vs In-house roles (video 6)

So far, you've learned about some of the skills and responsibilities, digital marketing and e commerce specialists
might have and you've discovered a little about the job landscape.

Now, let's go a little deeper and explore two of the main paths you can pursue in your career, in-house and agency
positions. Some marketing roles are in-house, meaning you work for a single company to market and sell their
products. For example, I'm an in-house product marketing manager at Google, so I work on creating compelling
video and social content for the Think With Google brand. But if you'd like a little more variety working on
different projects across multiple industries, an agency role might be a good fit.

Agencies partner with companies that don't have in house marketing teams to

fill their digital marketing and advertising needs. There are pros and cons to both agency and in-house work and
which one is right for you depends on what you want out of your career. Of course you don't have to commit to one
forever, in this program will help you prepare for both paths. But there are some differences you should keep in
mind as you consider your options. As an in-house employee, you get to know one company and its products
extremely well. You also gain deep knowledge and expertise in a specific industry. So, if you work for a cosmetics
company, your experience will translate most directly to a similar company. On the other hand, if you're the sort of
person who likes working on a lot of different projects, working with one company on one type of product might not
be for you. And if you do want to move to a different type of business, your specialized experience can make it
harder to break into a new sector. Now, if you work for an agency, you're unlikely to get bored, because agency
work is project based, you get to collaborate on a variety of initiatives and multiple industries. By working with
different clients, you can develop a broad and flexible expertise that will serve you at a variety of companies. But
that doesn't mean you can't specialize.

Agencies tend to focus on a few different areas within marketing, like social media or brand building, so you can
get to know certain skill sets very well. But there can be downsides too. The same variability that keeps agency work
interesting, can also make things unpredictable. Sometimes, clients can surprise you with unexpected requests or ask
you to do things in an unfamiliar way. The hours can be longer too, especially toward the end of a project. Of
course, every workplace is different and they won't all have the same advantages and disadvantages. Whichever path
you choose, whether it's the deep knowledge and

stability of an in-house role or the broad knowledge and flexibility of agency work, you'll gain valuable experience
that can lead you to the next great opportunity.

Roles and responsibilities in digital marketing and e-commerce

In another reading, you were introduced to examples of job responsibilities in digital marketing coordinator and e-
commerce analyst roles. This reading summarizes other associate or entry-level roles and responsibilities in digital
marketing and e-commerce. At the end of the reading, you’ll find advice on how you can potentially progress from a
starting role to roles with further growth opportunities.

Associate-level roles in digital marketing

Below are some examples of responsibilities for associate-level roles in digital marketing. These lists aren't
comprehensive but are intended to showcase a variety of responsibilities in each role.

Digital marketing coordinator*

Coordinate marketing activities and initiatives

Identify target audiences through research

Run campaigns

Monitor metrics to evaluate trends

* Also described in another video and reading

Marketing associate

Prepare reports on marketing and sales metrics

Collect and analyze customer behavior metrics, such as web traffic and search rankings

Coordinate with marketing teams to generate digital advertising materials

Assist with ongoing marketing campaigns

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist

Develop optimization strategies to improve search rankings

Implement keywords for SEO

Monitor metrics to understand SEO performance

Update links for optimization of search rankings

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) specialist

Identify customer personas to enable marketing to identified audiences

Perform research on keywords for SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) ads

Monitor metrics to optimize paid search performance

Identify and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for SEM

Social media specialist

Develop, implement, and manage a social media marketing strategy

Collaborate with sales and marketing teams on social media campaigns

Create content to build customer connections and increase brand awareness

Monitor metrics in social media campaigns for customer engagement and content optimization insights

Email marketing specialist

Create email marketing campaigns to promote products or services

Create an archive of emails for lead generation

Purge non-deliverable and unsubscribed email addresses

Use metrics to monitor the performance of email campaigns

Associate-level roles in e-commerce

Below are some examples of responsibilities for associate-level roles in e-commerce. These lists aren't
comprehensive but are intended to showcase a variety of responsibilities in each role.

E-commerce analyst*

Implement e-commerce strategies to support business goals

Set e-commerce goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for key attributes like audience, acquisition, behavior,
and conversions

Monitor and analyze e-commerce metrics

Leverage e-commerce data for operational insights

* Also described in another reading

E-commerce specialist

Develop and run campaigns to increase digital sales as part of an overall digital marketing strategy

Optimize paid advertising campaigns using SEO and other tools

Manage an online marketing presence, including social media platforms

Monitor metrics for spikes in website traffic or sales

Advance to roles that further your growth

Starting an entry-level role in marketing or e-commerce is exciting, but after you gain practical experience and
hands-on work using tools in that role, you might be eager to advance your career.

If you’re ready for a new role, below are a few possibilities and a sampling of responsibilities for each.

Digital marketing manager

Plan and execute digital marketing, including SEO/SEM, email, social media, and display advertising campaigns

Measure and report performance and return on investment (ROI) for digital marketing

Plan, execute, and evaluate A/B tests and experiments

Evaluate and improve the end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels and customer touchpoints

Social media strategist

Manage and oversee social media content

Measure the success of social media campaigns

Monitor and analyze metrics to recommend effective content optimization solutions

Network with industry professionals and influencers using social media

Account manager

Build and maintain client relationships

Ensure the timely and successful delivery of advertising solutions based on customer needs and objectives

Clearly communicate the progress of initiatives to internal and external stakeholders

Forecast and monitor key account metrics

E-commerce product manager

Conduct market research

Develop a product strategy for an e-commerce business based on analytics

Define website and mobile app functionality, and deliver an optimal user experience for both

Understand business objectives and coordinate efforts to increase sales

Key takeaways

Career progression is very individualized. Sometimes it can take less than a year to be ready to advance to the next
level; often it can take a few years. Here are three signs that you could be ready to progress to the next level.

You consistently meet or exceed job-related performance goals.

You’re assigned tasks associated with a higher-level role.

You recently asked for more work while performing your job.

Keep in mind that your career can advance at a speed that is right for you. Always be ready and open to new
opportunities by demonstrating a positive attitude and a growth mindset in whatever role you’re in!

A Day in the Life of an entry level Digital Marketer (video 7)

I'm Zuri, and I'm an Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google. I got into digital marketing in an
unconventional way. A part of my story is growing up and not necessarily knowing about digital marketing
or marketing as a whole, in general. How I got into it specifically is through an amazing internship with Google—
the BOLD internship. Before I got into digital marketing, a few of the jobs that I had were not relevant to digital
marketing at all. My first job actually was at Chick-fil-A. In my hometown, I served as a waiter and took
orders, served our customers, and made their food and their beverage. And that in itself had a lot of transferable
skills to what I see now as a digital marketer. Whether it's putting the customer or consumer first, or whether it's
managing your time diligently and effectively. At its core, in my opinion, it teaches you how to interact with
people. I am confident that if you look hard enough, you can find transferable skills and key characteristics that are
transferable to an entry-level digital marketing role.

The specific team that I work on within Google Ads is the Brand Architecture team. We think strategically
about what is important to call out in the copy and the text that is in Google Ads. We have to keep in mind the
advertiser who will interact and who will see the copy and the text shown within the ad's portfolio. As an entry-level
marketer, I work with a lot of teams to make sure the customer voice is heard. The majority of my day, I'm being
resourceful, looking through different documents, different presentations, and decks to gather the information that I
need to do my job, and that's the first half of it. The second half is pulling that information that I have gathered
and going to talk to specific Googlers to ensure that one, I understand what I read, but also two, in understanding
what I read, that I'm appropriately applying it to the task at hand. In addition to that, doing different trainings
throughout the day and throughout my role that relate to and help me become a better Googler and help me execute
my role more effectively. What I like most about working in digital marketing has to be creativity. I'm able to
operate as a creative, as a strategic thinker, and also as a problem-solver with the end goal and mind of helping and
promoting our brand to customers who love and use our products and services. And that's a key characteristic
to have as a digital marketer— to know and understand customer behavior, to understand persona, and to be able to
play to that. If you work and interact with people, if you promote and spread awareness about a brand or a
product, you have a place in digital marketing.

A Day in the life of an entry level E-commerce Account Manager (video 8)

My name is Jebb Rickets, and I'm an Account Manager on Big Box Retail at Google. An Account Manager
basically works with companies that have already invested in Google to spend more money with Google. So think of
large retail companies— could be apparel, could be electronics, could be groceries, or a supercenter. When I first
started at Google, I was working with small to medium-sized businesses, both e-commerce and lead generation.
But on the e-commerce side, we worked with anything and everything. It could be apparel, it could be knickknacks
— one of my favorite clients sold custom-made cards. So we had everything from small-ticket items to items that
might cost $1,000,

$2,000, $3,000. A lot of companies continue to go online even if they have a brick-and-mortar presence. I think for
e-commerce, it really depends on if you're omnichannel or not. Do you have a storefront property? And how can you
expand your storefront by also selling online? And then if you don't have a storefront property, how do you increase
your brand awareness to get people to go to your website versus going to a competitor website or to a brick-and-
mortar business? I love with e-commerce that we can see the impact of what we're actually selling and working
on. So through data analysis, all the analytics piece, we can determine— we ran a campaign for $10 million, and it
brought us $30 million in profit. And that's an awesome feeling that you oftentimes don't get with other
media channels—think about television— it's very hard to prove whether or not that brought in money for the
company. So I love seeing that bottom line and top line success with what we're able to do through digital
marketing. Usually we'll have weekly projects— we're working on a presentation deck for a new product that we
think our clients should use. Or we're doing data calculations on a campaign that was just run, and we're trying to
determine that final return on ad spend.

The common task for entry level e-commerce people depends on what client they're working with. At a small
company, you know, you might be on Excel or Google Sheets, calculating what your spend has been for the past few
weeks. And then trying to calculate again that return-on-investment piece and then thinking about what new
strategies can we come up with to improve that. So maybe that's having meetings with internal stakeholders that say,
"Hey, we should do XYZ if we want to increase performance over time." For a larger company, it can be a little bit
more difficult to know the day-to-day, because a lot of times it's reactive. You get an email from the in client who
says, "We need you to look into this, and we need you to look into that." So you often have to jump around on a lot
of small tasks while tackling a larger project, such as, "We want to adopt $100 million campaign over the course of
a year." And that takes several weeks to months to pitch an idea like that.

To be a successful account manager, you need both hard and soft skills. The hard skills would be the data analysis
piece—you know, can you look at the data and determine what needs to be done to improve the project or

what we can take from the project after it's been ran. Soft skills could be as simple as just being personable in a
conversation where you know, you're talking about the small stuff, small chatting, and then going into very deep,
complex situations with that customer. It's really about building trust and earning that rapport early on. I let my
clients know I'm open to them. If they have any issues or problems, they should email me, they should call me,
and I'll be able to answer those questions. And then when it comes to my time for a huge pitch, they already know
me, they trust me, they've seen me answer all these tough questions. And now I have this new product idea that they
love, just because we've been working together for the past several weeks or several months.

My number one piece of advice, which is simply: Be patient, but be hungry. There's so much to learn about digital
marketing. There's so much to learn about an individual client. Take time to hear that client's needs, as well as take
time to learn about the products that you're working on or that you're selling. There's so much to learn and you have
to be open to it, you have to be hungry for it, and you have to be patient enough to learn it because it does take time.

E-commerce, ecommerce, or eCommerce?

Which is the correct term: e-commerce, ecommerce, eCommerce, or just ecomm for short? The name and spelling
of e-commerce has evolved over the last 30 years, and so have the technologies and job skills required to work in
this field. This reading provides a summary of e-commerce's evolution by describing the history of the term and by
laying out the four distinct models within e-commerce that have emerged over the years.

Like most everything on the internet, e-commerce — although it hasn't been around that long — has evolved and
changed a lot. What started as electronic commerce, quickly progressed into e-commerce, ecommerce, or
eCommerce. But how can you know which one to use? In this course, you'll see e-commerce used. That's, in part,
because Google Trends — a website that analyzes popularity of top search queries in Google Search — shows most
people prefer using e-commerce, as opposed to ecommerce or eCommerce. Since the word is a combination of two
words, the use of the hyphen makes that more clear. Now, let's talk about the four distinct models within e-
commerce:

Business-to-consumer (B2C)

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)

Business-to-business (B2B)

Consumer-to-business (C2B)

Note: When a government entity does business online, substituting business with administration results in
additional e-commerce models like business-to-administration (B2A) and consumer-to-administration (C2A). An
example of B2A is a company selling software solutions for a government entity that does permitting. An example
of C2A is a company that allows consumers to interact directly with a government service, such as paying their
utility bills.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce

Business-to-consumer (B2C) is the most common form of e-commerce. This is the online process of businesses
selling products or services directly to consumers. Some credit the U.S. company Pizza Hut for the first e-commerce
transaction (selling a pizza online). However, historians also recognize that before that pizza sale, Dan Kohn sold a
CD album to a friend in Philadelphia on August 11, 1994. That friend sent his credit card information to pay for the
album and shipping costs using encryption technology. Others couldn’t steal his credit card information because it
was encrypted!

Today, B2C e-commerce generates billions of dollars in revenue annually, with encrypted transactions as everyday
occurrences. With B2C marketing, you have opportunities to apply your digital marketing skills in very specific
ways. For example, you can become a specialist in experiential marketing or social media marketing, or even a
subset of social media marketing called influencer marketing.

Experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing, encourages consumers to not only purchase a brand
or product but to experience it. Experiential marketing campaigns draw out emotional responses from their
audiences.

Social media marketing creates content for different social media platforms to drive engagement and promote a
business or product.

Influencer marketing enlists influential people to endorse or mention a brand or product to their followers on social
media.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce

With consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce, individuals sell products or services to other individuals. In other
words, consumers buy items from each other. Boston Computer Exchange created the first platform for C2C e-
commerce in 1982. An online community of people used this platform to sell their used computers to other users.
However, the best-known early C2C e-commerce platform is eBay, founded in 1995.

Today, C2C e-commerce still occurs on platforms like eBay and Etsy. Business-to-consumer platforms like Amazon
also host C2C sales. Social media platforms like Facebook also entered C2C e-commerce with Facebook
Marketplace. Digital marketing for a C2C business prioritizes skills in search engine optimization (SEO), content
creation, and social media since most C2C consumers find each other through blogs and social media posts. Their
shared interests lead to C2C transactions to buy and sell items.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce enables businesses to sell products and services to other businesses. The
rise of services, particularly software services, accelerated B2B e-commerce. This type of service is known as
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). One example of a SaaS company is Salesforce, founded in 1999. SaaS companies,
like Salesforce, provide other companies subscription access to business-critical services over the internet. For
example, Salesforce provides customer relationship management (CRM) software that unifies sales, marketing, and
services for a personalized customer journey.

Today, digital marketers for B2B companies use many of the same skills as digital marketers for B2C companies.
However, B2B marketing campaigns require more precise identification of their target audiences. Selling to
businesses requires a focus on communicating an immediate value to potential customers. Therefore, digital
marketing for B2B companies tends to be more strategic. There may be fewer opportunities to specialize in one type
of marketing, like social media marketing, and a greater emphasis on marketing analytics and data.

Consumer-to-business (C2B) e-commerce

The popularity of small business ownership helped establish another model for e-commerce, C2B. With C2B e-
commerce, consumers sell their products or services to businesses. Specialized platforms also fill a need for these
online transactions. For example, Upwork, founded in 2015, connects freelancers to businesses that may need their
skills and services.
Consumers who are influencers may also fall into this category of e-commerce because they may sell their services
to promote a company’s products. With social media continuing to expand its influence on consumer decisions, the
C2B e-commerce model will likely grow as well.

Key takeaway

This exploration of e-commerce models demonstrates that e-commerce has evolved and will continue to change
rapidly. Knowing how to apply and gain new digital marketing skills is vital in advancing your career in this
industry.

Glossary terms from module 1

Terms and definitions from Course 1, Module 1

Agency: An outside partner that fulfills a company’s digital marketing and advertising needs

Business-to-business (B2B): Refers to when businesses sell products or services to other businesses (when
businesses purchase from each other)

Business-to-consumer (B2C): Refers to when businesses sell products or services to consumers (when consumers
purchase from businesses)

Consumer-to-business (C2B): Refers to when individuals (consumers) sell products or services to businesses
(when businesses purchase from consumers)

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): Refers to when individuals (consumers) sell products or services to other
consumers (when consumers purchase from each other)

Digital channel: Any communication method or platform a business can use to reach their target audience online

Digital marketing: The practice of reaching consumers online through digital channels with the aim of turning
them into customers

E-commerce: The buying and selling of goods or services using the internet

Engagement marketing: (refer to experiential marketing)

Experiential marketing: The process of encouraging consumers to not only purchase a brand or product, but to
experience it

Influencer marketing: The process of enlisting influential people to endorse or mention a brand or product to their
followers on social media

In-house: Within a single company

Social media marketing: The process of creating content for different social media platforms to drive engagement
and promote a business or product

Transferable skills: Skills from other areas that can help someone progress a career in marketing
DIGITAL MARKETING (MODULE 2)

(Video 8)

Earlier in the course, you learned how digital marketing and e-commerce are continuing to change the business
landscape. You found out a little about careers in these industries including core skills, day to day responsibilities,
job titles, and career paths. Finally, you considered some of the skills you already have that can help you
advance your career. Now it's time to explore the ways that digital marketing and e-commerce create value for
companies and for their customers. In this part of the course, you'll learn how companies use digital channels to
reach customers and explore foundational concepts that can turn potential buyers into loyal customers. Lastly, you'll
learn why measuring marketing performance is so important to success.

Digital marketing is constantly growing and changing. That's part of what makes it an exciting field to work in. But
some things are always important. Like raising awareness, fostering trust, and building loyalty. The methods may
change, but learning the fundamentals can help you adapt and grow along with the field. Are you ready?

How Digital Marketing and E-commerce create value (Video 9)

Did you know that over 60% of the global population is online, and more people are joining them every day? That's
why every business, big or small, needs an online presence to be competitive. But it's not enough just to have a
website. There may be a lot of people online, but there's also a lot of companies that want their attention and their
business. Your target audience needs to know you exist, how you can help them, and what makes you different from
the competition. Breaking through this crowded field and actually reaching potential customers— that's where
digital marketing comes in. Now, you might have noticed, I haven't mentioned anything about selling products yet.
That's because digital marketing is bigger than sales. It's not that selling products or services isn't important, but it's
only one piece of what digital marketing can do for companies. Individual sales are easy to measure, but they don't
mean much if your target audience doesn't trust your brand or your customers don't come back for a second, third, or
fourth purchase. A successful digital marketing effort guides all of the company's customer interactions. It allows
companies to think strategically about how to reach customers through digital channels before, during, and after a
purchase. It can be harder to measure the value of these activities, but a well-coordinated strategy allows businesses
to thrive online and even grow. Let's think through an example: Imagine a company that makes running shoes
decides to invest in digital marketing. They create some video ads and place them on a popular news site. They
create accounts for several social media platforms and start posting content. But their posts don't get much
engagement, and their ads don't attract many new customers. What's worse, they don't even know why they aren't
getting results. They've wasted time, money, and resources on a digital campaign that doesn't work.

Now, let's think about what could have happened if that same company made an effort to learn about their audience.

Instead of posting ads on a news website, they targeted sites that focused on running. Because they did research,
they knew where to find their new customers online. That knowledge also let them create tailored content for their
social media accounts that reach the right audience. And, because they researched their audience, they were able to
set meaningful goals for their strategy. With clear goals in place, they knew exactly how to measure their
success. The information they measured allowed them to adjust their customer communication and improve their
video, social, and email campaigns. They were able to recognize opportunities to reach potential customers
and engage with them effectively. Yes, sales went up, but their well-planned digital strategy also built awareness,
trust, and loyalty. You'll learn more about how marketers create and execute strategies like this one throughout the
program.

For now, let's recap: Digital marketing is more than running ads to drive sales. It's a set of practices that can affect
a company's customer interactions at all levels and during every stage of the purchase journey. By learning about
their customers, digital marketing teams can reach their target audience in a crowded online marketplace and nurture
customer relationships over time. Coming up, you'll learn more about the value digital marketing creates
for businesses and some of the challenges marketing teams face when planning and executing strategies for online
engagement.

Advantages and challenges of digital marketing (Reading)

Traditional marketing is marketing that isn't online. Marketers reach potential customers through printed media,
television, radio, direct mail, phone calls, or billboards. Digital marketing is marketing that is exclusively online.
Digital marketers focus on potential customers who engage with online content, including search engine results,
email, video, blogs, or social media.

This reading describes the advantages digital marketing has over traditional marketing and some definite challenges,
too.

Digital marketing advantages

Digital marketing has certain advantages over traditional marketing because it:

Reduces wasteful spending

Adapts to new technologies

Reaches target audiences with more precision

Spending

Digital marketing uses content in a variety of formats that can be easily converted from one format to another,
making spending more cost-effective. Digital marketing also reduces wasteful spending. For example, television or
billboard ads are equally seen by those who have an interest in your company or product and those who don’t.
Traditional marketing always wastes some budget on people who will never buy a product or service. In contrast,
digital ads can be selectively shown to people who are more likely to have an interest in that product or service.
Digital marketing that is more strategically focused on the right people yields a better return on spending.

Technology

Various technologies enable organizations to engage and interact with customers more effectively, which is a big
part of digital marketing. Developing a good online relationship with customers makes them more likely to find your
business, become loyal customers, and even share their recommendations with others.

Digital marketing tools also enable companies to collect data and measure the results of their marketing efforts more
effectively. When marketers receive data faster, they’re able to change direction easily if a marketing effort isn’t
producing the results expected. Measuring the success of digital marketing campaigns is key to ensuring that you get
the results you want.

Digital marketing adapts to new technologies. There are always new opportunities to reach customers in different
ways, especially compared to traditional marketing.
Target audiences

Digital marketing tools and data enable you to expand your customer reach well beyond that of traditional
marketing. Ad visibility and audience coverage can be tailored to meet your specific business needs and goals.
When you reach the right audiences, you’re more likely to increase sales and develop sustainable customer loyalty
programs.

Digital marketing challenges

Digital marketing also has certain challenges that are associated with spending, technology, and target audiences.
For each advantage previously identified, there are also associated challenges.

Spending

Advantage: Digital content is easier to create.

Challenge: Organizations engage in omnichannel marketing—the integration or synchronization of content on

multiple channels—so customers can have a consistent brand experience. This increases the amount of content
required, so even if it’s easier to create digital content, much more content needs to be created overall. Furthermore,
it’s not just about the amount of content created, but its quality. Advertising is a crowded space. Content must be
distinctive to positively impact customer awareness and change their behavior.

Advantage: Digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing.

Challenge: If an organization is working towards an omnichannel presence, the cost for marketing on all channels
adds up quickly. Getting support or buy-in for extra or additional budget to cover the cost can be difficult.

Technology

Advantage: Digital marketing adapts to new technologies.

Challenge: As a marketer, learning and keeping up with new technologies and tools is a constant requirement.
Marketers must also stay up-to-date with and follow all user privacy and data sharing regulations worldwide.
Omnichannel marketing also makes it more difficult to track where sales come from. Marketers must rely more
heavily on analytics tools to help them do that.

Target audiences

Advantage: Digital marketing tools expand customer reach using specific audiences.

Challenge: The digital space is a crowded field that’s getting even more crowded. It’s harder for marketers to stand
out with their advertising, even when they are targeting the right audiences.

Key takeaways

Various technologies make digital marketing more cost-effective and adaptable than traditional marketing. Digital
marketing tools also enable more advanced and targeted audience selection for marketing campaigns. However,
these benefits come with some challenges. In a digital space that’s both crowded and noisy, it’s harder for a
company’s brand and advertising to stand out. Marketing professionals must keep up with technological advances
and customer behaviors that change rapidly.

Diversity in Digital marketing (Video)

Hi, I'm Jen, and I'm a Shopping Specialist here at Google. I work with large retailers to help them improve their
marketing performance with Google products. One of the things that I love about my role is that it's really
quantifiable and measurable. The products that I actually bring to market—I can see how they transform retailers'
businesses and how it helps them drive more revenue for their company and meet their bottom line. I was recruited
from Howard University, which is a historically Black university, which is really cool because, at the time, there
was not as much diversity, I would say, within the tech and e-comm industry specifically. When I think about DEI
in the space of e-comm, I really think about how we're connecting to our customers. We have to remember that
we're representing and we're trying to reach a diverse customer pool, so our teams also have to be diverse. I would
think that we want to shape our teams, our community, our culture to be as open as possible, to reflect society. I
came without any e-comm experience, without any digital marketing background. I really think that e-comm is a
place where you can come and grow in the role, and most folks that come from nontraditional backgrounds are
not classically-trained in e-comm or digital marketing and are able to ramp up and add value to their clients
really effectively within a short amount of time. When I think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I really like to
put it in the context of people.

Diversity specifically, I think about the breadth as well as the depth of people. So having the same opportunity
set. And diversity is making sure that everyone has access to that. When I think about equity in terms of people, I
think about compensation. We all want to make sure that we're being paid at a similar rate for the skill set that we're
bringing to the table. When I think about inclusion, I really think about belonging, and really for me, that has to do
with whether my opinion is valued and whether my input is accepted by the team and sparks a dialogue
and conversation in the same way that someone else's would. If we think about society and we think about
sometimes how folks are just trying to check the box, sure, we can have a diverse environment around us, but if
everyone is not being compensated fairly, or if people don't really feel like they belong and they are coming from
different backgrounds, it's not really making a dent and not really contributing to the overall goal, which is, again, to
be representative of society. It's important that we have all three because we can have a diverse room, but that
doesn't mean that everyone has an equal voice. The way I make sure folks who may not look like me or talk like me
or act like me are heard is sometimes I just like to take a step back and listen. We often can fill up a room with our
thoughts, and you miss the input from some of our more quiet, or reserved teammates. So sometimes I just like to
take a step back, take inventory of the room and take

a couple of meetings to just listen, and that allows other folks to have more room to voice their opinion and to
provide their input. And sometimes I even like to ask folks directly who I know may not be more
comfortable sharing their opinion directly like, "Hey, X, what do you think about this specific topic?" That's a way
that you can make it open and friendly for someone to contribute without them feeling uncomfortable, kind of
cutting other people off who may

be a bit more boisterous.

I think the goal is for e-comm companies and marketing companies to look just like society. That is the ultimate
goal, but the way that we can do that is through action. So rather than using words and saying what we believe we
stand for, the way that you can demonstrate that you believe in it is through actions and through creating

that change that you want to see.

Inclusive marketing (Reading)

As a digital marketer, being inclusive is an essential part of making deeper connections with your customers.
Inclusive marketing is the practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising
materials that an organization creates.
In this reading, you’ll discover why inclusive marketing is important and how a company can make inclusion part of
their marketing and advertising strategies.

Why inclusive marketing matters

In digital marketing, the creative choices a company makes can impact how people view them and how they view
other people. Sometimes marketing campaigns (especially those that are older or more traditional) can reinforce
stereotypes and leave out the perspectives of underrepresented groups of people. Inclusive marketing, on the other
hand, seeks to represent a variety of perspectives, particularly those that have been marginalized in the past.

If a company focuses its marketing exclusively on a specific age group, gender, ethnicity, or other identity traits,
they’re likely missing out on reaching potential customers. By approaching marketing decisions with a focus on
inclusion, a company can positively and authentically market to the diversity that exists in their audience, and the
world.

Making inclusive choices and avoiding stereotypes

Digital marketing requires getting to know your audience in a deeper way. With inclusive marketing, you can take
this a step further by seeking to understand how parts of your target audience have been excluded, stereotyped, or
misrepresented in the past.

Sometimes you might unintentionally overlook certain aspects of diversity, even if you remember to consider others.
Here is a list of some identity traits that are helpful to keep in mind when you’re creating marketing or advertising
materials for the people you’re trying to reach:

Race

Socioeconomic status

Age

Ability

Gender

Sexual orientation

Religion

Geographic location

Culture

Political perspective

Military status

Languages spoken

Gathering information about your audience’s demographics can help you broaden your perspective. It’s also
important to consider the demographics of people who are not currently customers. These people may not use or
even know about the products or services your company provides because the company’s marketing efforts haven’t
reached them. By understanding their needs and desires, you can find a way to reach this group of people in a
manner that matters to them.

As an example, at least one billion people in the world live with a disability. If your product or service isn’t
accessible to these people, they likely don’t use or even know about your product or service. And if your company’s
marketing efforts don’t feature people with disabilities or address their needs, they may not view your company’s
products or services as relevant to them.
That’s why it’s important to think deeply about your audience and their needs and to make sure their perspectives
and stories are brought to life through the company’s marketing and advertising materials.

Key takeaways

Whether you’re developing marketing goals, researching your target audience, planning a marketing campaign, or
analyzing data, keep in mind the principles of inclusive marketing. Maintaining a broader perspective of your
audience will help you establish a deeper connection with your customers.

Inclusive Marketing (video)

My name is Janice, and my role at Google is a Product Marketing Manager on the Grow with Google team. Grow
with Google's goal is to create economic opportunity for everyone, and through inclusive marketing, we can really
make sure that we're representing everyone accurately and authentically. My favorite part about my job is that I get
to work directly with people that we impact and serve. On Grow with Google, I get to be the person that partners
with non-profit organizations that can directly go up to people and say, "Hey, I have an opportunity for you that will
open up doors for a new job and a career that you probably thought wasn't possible before." Representation is really
important, not just because it is the right thing to do. It's important that people can see themselves in your work, so
that they feel like they matter, so that they feel visible, but it's also the right business decision. We did a study on
inclusive marketing that proved that people who saw themselves represented at work were more loyal to that
brand and actually more likely to purchase or use that brand's products and services.

If you're new to inclusive marketing, there are a few things that you should think about when practicing inclusive
marketing. I think the first thing is saying, "Am I representing a group in a way that can be harmful to them?" That
is number one. Make sure that you're not offending a certain group. The second thing is to think about, "Who am I
trying to reach, and are they represented in this piece of work?" And then I would also say to ask yourself, "Who's
missing? Who is not in the room? Who are we trying to speak to that we haven't spoken to before and that we're not
representing in our work?" Understanding your audience is absolutely critical to informing your inclusive marketing
strategy. You are not going to be able to accurately represent a group of people unless you truly understand more
than just what they look like. You need to understand their environment, you need to understand their actions, their
behavior, what influences them. I would start with the research, and then from there, build your idea, build your
solution, build your plan, because only then will it be authentic and speak to your users. And so it's really important
to that work up front to understand not just one type of person from this group but many different kinds of
experiences from that one group when you're looking into inclusive marketing.

The customer journey and journey maps (video)

Welcome back. So far, you've learned about some of the things digital marketing and e-commerce can do for e-
commerce businesses. You know the advantages of digital marketing and the challenges of reaching customers and a
crowded online field. You also know that the first and most important step to any marketing strategy is learning
about your customers. Let's get deeper into that last point. It's easy to think of a business' marketing efforts as being
all about them— about ways to bring in customers, boost profits, or grow their online presence. But a really
effective marketing strategy starts with learning about customers needs and pain points. Pain points are the specific
problems customers

and potential customers want to solve.

Instead of asking, "How do we sell more products?", the most successful businesses want to know, "How do we help
customers address their pain points or achieve their goals?" One is about the company's goals, the other is about the
customer journey. What is a customer journey? Well, think about the last time you recommended something to a
friend. It could be a product, like an app or a tool, or a service, like a restaurant or a contractor. Now think about
your journey with that product or service. How did you first find it? If you had questions, how did you get
answers? What convinced you to try it? How did it help you solve a problem or achieve a goal? Finally, what made
you decide to recommend it to someone else? The path you take from learning about that product to getting your
questions answered

to making a purchase is your customer journey. From your perspective, the goal of that journey wasn't necessarily to
purchase a specific product. It's just the thing that you ended up purchasing happened to fulfill your needs. Here's an
example: Let's pretend you're in the market for a new weather app. Maybe the one you have isn't reliable and you
keep getting caught in the rain without an umbrella, so you search online for best weather apps and find some
options. One stands out because the name is familiar. You think a friend might have told you about it recently or
maybe it was online ad. You narrow your options to a few candidates and start reading reviews. Two have all the
features you want,

but you pick the one with the familiar name. It tops several best of lists, and it has a trial subscription. You
download the app, but it's not working right. You go back to the reviews and find out this is a known issue. You
contact the support through live chat. They help you fix the problem quickly, which makes you feel good about the
company. You start the trial and after a month, you've always had your umbrella when it rained. You get an email
reminder that your trial is about to expire, and you're so happy with the app that you purchase a subscription. Now
you're a loyal customer. Each interaction with the brand during this purchase journey is called a touchpoint. From
the search to the customer reviews, online ad, trial subscription, live chat, and follow-up email, every touchpoint had
the potential to help or hurt your impression of the brand and its product. A bad experience at any point can mean an
abandoned journey, so it's in a company's best interests to make sure you get information and answers you need
along the way.

With enough customer research, marketers can use these touch points to create a customer journey map. A customer
journey map is a visualization of the touch points a typical customer encounters along their purchase journey. You
can even have multiple journey maps based on the patterns and behaviors of different types of customers. Of course,
it's impossible to know exactly what route each person will take. But journey maps aren't about predicting the
future. They help you understand how and why customers are interacting with your business. When you know how
customers are finding you, how they're learning about you, and what problems they want to solve, you can work to
make their experiences better. Better customer experiences ultimately mean greater success for your business. There
you have it. By understanding customer journeys, you can create better, more user-friendly experiences.

Coming up, you'll learn how journey maps work along with another tool, the marketing funnel, to target their
marketing efforts and encourage potential customers to make purchases.

What is a touchpoint?

You learned that before a purchase happens, each interaction with a brand during a customer journey is called a
touchpoint.
Customer journey map with touchpoints, including search, reading reviews, live chat, trial subscription, email
reminder, and purchase.

Touchpoints are important to monitor because they reveal the kinds of decisions customers are making during their
customer journey to purchase your product or service. Touchpoints occur when a customer engages with your
website or mobile app. But they also include customer interactions on all media channels before a customer
discovers your website.

This reading explains how to classify touchpoints for media channels, and how to use these touchpoints to learn
more about your customers.

Touchpoints relate to a specific context or need

When you identify touchpoints, you may be tempted to list social media or display ads. These channels may be the
mediums in which touchpoints occur, but actual touchpoints provide much more information. When you identify a
touchpoint, think about how the interaction might satisfy a customer need.

For example, instead of classifying social media as a touchpoint, classify a customer’s response to a flash sale
announcement on Twitter as a touchpoint. When they click the link, they are interested in knowing what they can
purchase at a discounted price.

From the example, notice how much contextual information is lost if you simply lump every social media
interaction under a single touchpoint called social media.

Touchpoints have context and reflect customer needs. In the example, the context was curiosity, and the need was
saving money.

Touchpoints are customer-centric

Touchpoints should also be customer-centric. Going back to the previous example, imagine if you viewed
touchpoints from the perspective of the business instead of from the customer experience. If increasing sales is a
business goal, touchpoints can easily become part of a rolling calculation, like a ratio of touchpoints to purchases.

While a ratio of touchpoints to purchases is still informative, notice how a customer-centric versus a business-centric
analysis can provide more insights about buyer motivations.

Key takeaways

Use touchpoints to your advantage. To get the most from touchpoints, carefully define them for all media channels.
Touchpoints that are customer-centric and relate back to their needs will yield the most useful data about customer
motivations, preferences, and behaviors.

Mark as completed

The Marketing Funnel (video)

Now that you know about customer journey maps, it's time to introduce a related concept: the marketing funnel. The
marketing funnel, also called the sales funnel or conversion funnel, is an idea that's older than the Internet. In fact,
marketers have used it for over a 100 years. If it's been around that long, it must be a pretty powerful tool. What is a
marketing funnel, and how does it work? A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the process through
which

people go from first learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers. The funnel is wide at the top and narrows
toward the bottom because a lot of potential customers will enter the top of the funnel, but only some of them will
reach the bottom to become loyal customers. Of course, people will drop off at every stage in-between, so you want
to make sure you're doing everything you can to keep them moving through the funnel.
There are a lot of different versions of the marketing funnel, and you'll learn about a few of them later. Right now,
I'm going to introduce you to a simple version of the funnel that has four stages:

awareness,

consideration,

conversion, and

loyalty.

At the top of the funnel is the awareness stage. This is when a potential customer encounters a brand for the first
time, maybe from an ad or a recommendation. At this stage, the customer probably doesn't know enough about that
company to form an opinion. They're just aware it exists. Awareness is the widest tier because even though a lot of
people might know about a company, only some of them will think about doing business with them. That's why it's
important to raise as much awareness as possible among target audiences. A target audience is the group of
people most likely to purchase a company's products. They're the ones whose attention your digital marketing efforts
should capture. Things start to narrow at the next stage: consideration. This is when some potential customers
from the awareness stage start to think about doing business with a company. At this point, they could be actively
browsing the website or comparing different brands, so making a good impression is key. Those who move
beyond consideration go to the conversion stage. Conversion is when someone decides to make a purchase and
become a customer. To increase the chances of conversion, businesses should demonstrate their value and provide a
user-friendly experience. The last stage is loyalty. It takes a huge amount of effort to move potential customers from
awareness to conversion. Once a customer completes a purchase, you want to give them reasons to return. Making
current customers happy can increase trust and keep them coming back for years to come. If you're thinking that this
all feels pretty similar to a customer journey map, you'd be right.

Marketing funnels and journey maps are related concepts, and they're best when used together. Here's how they
complement one another. First, you know that a journey map traces the customer's path to purchase along specific
touchpoints. But a marketing funnel is part of a business's plan for moving

customers along their journey. A journey map adopts the customer's perspective, but a funnel considers that same
process from the position of the business. Second, the structure of a marketing funnel is simpler than a journey map.
Customer journeys are complex because they demonstrate how customers might interact with the brand. Their paths
to purchase are unique, and they can repeat or loop back on themselves. In contrast, the funnel is a linear model that
breaks this journey into broad stages. It's not about how specific customers reach consideration or conversion but
what a company can do to move lots of customers from one stage to the next. Remember the weather app
example? Let's think about a few of the touchpoints our hypothetical customer encountered and how they might fit
into a marketing funnel. The customer was reminded of the app by the online ad in search results, making these
awareness activities. The trial membership could be a consideration offering since it helped the customer learn about
the product. But it was the reminder email that finally got them to commit, so that's a conversion tactic. Funnels like
this one help businesses focus their goals and marketing efforts, making their path from awareness to loyalty as
smooth as possible. They drive engagement and make it more appealing for customers to do business with a
company. When used together, journey maps and marketing funnels help marketers understand and serve their
customers better than either can alone. Let's review: Along with customer journey maps, a marketing funnel is a
powerful tool that allows businesses to focus and coordinate their marketing efforts. To get the most out of a
funnel, they should try to optimize their work at each stage. From awareness to consideration, conversion, and
loyalty, a carefully--planned funnel can help businesses succeed online.

The traditional marketing funnel to the digital marketing funnel

A marketing funnel is a powerful way for businesses to focus and coordinate their marketing efforts. To get the most
out of a marketing funnel, businesses must optimize their work at each stage of the funnel to reach desired
outcomes.

The marketing funnel video in this course introduced you to a simple and generalized funnel design with four stages:

Awareness

Consideration

Conversion

Loyalty

You also learned that there are multiple versions of marketing funnels. Marketing funnels have been revised over
time to reflect changes in business, technology, and even customer behavior. This reading provides a brief history of
the funnel’s evolution.

Evolution of the marketing funnel

How is tofu related to a marketing funnel? Actually, ToFU (not the bean curd product) is an acronym for Top of
Funnel. There’s also MoFU and BoFU which stand for Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel, respectively. When
using any funnel, the aim is to get the most desirable outcomes for ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU. As you read about
different funnel designs, you can also think about how the desired ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU outcomes for each are
similar or different.

Traditional sales funnel

Funnels probably took shape first as sales funnels. A simple sales funnel has awareness, interest, decision, and
action stages as depicted in the following graphic.

Desirable outcomes for a sales funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.

Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches,
comparison shops, or thinks about options.

Decision (MoFU): The customer chooses your brand, product, or service over your competitor’s.

Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service.

Combined marketing and sales funnel

Most likely, combined funnels for marketing and sales grew out of sales funnels. One example is shown below.
Funnel with Traditional and Digital Marketing inputs at the top of the funnel and Awareness, Interest, Desire,
Action, and Conversion as downward-progressing stages of the funnel.

Desirable outcomes for a combined sales and marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.

Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches,
comparison shops, or thinks about options.

Desire (MoFU): The customer has motivation or an incentive to purchase your brand, product, or service.

Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.

Conversion (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.

Digital marketing funnel

As business and technology evolved, more specialized funnels were then developed, as in the case of a funnel
entirely dedicated to digital marketing. An example of a specialized digital marketing funnel is shown below. Note
that the Remarketing stage of the funnel is only for customers who engaged with your brand, product, or service at
least once before and didn’t previously convert. New customers can proceed directly from the Consideration stage to
the Conversion stage.

Funnel with Awareness and Engagement, Consideration, Remarketing, Conversion, and Retention as downward-
progressing stages of the funnel.

Desirable outcomes for a digital marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

Awareness and engagement (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service, and
engages in online activity to learn more.
Consideration (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice after the customer has engaged.

Remarketing (MoFU): The customer who didn’t convert is re-engaged to consider your brand, product, or service
again.

Conversion (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.

Retention (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.

Other marketing funnel variations

Today, specific funnels exist for many individual areas of marketing. Examples include an e-commerce marketing
funnel, a social media marketing funnel, and even a content marketing funnel.

E-commerce marketing funnel

An e-commerce marketing funnel can include the following stages that focus on attracting and retaining customers:

Awareness: Build awareness of your e-commerce business.

Consideration: Build the brand.

Differentiation: Stand out in the business category.

Purchase: Reach shoppers most likely to purchase.

Brand readiness: Increase the potential for shoppers to make return purchases.

Social media marketing funnel

A social media marketing funnel can include these stages that turn a customer with brand awareness into a customer
who is an advocate:

Awareness: Attract potential customers unaware of your brand, product, or service.

Consideration: Stand out among your competitors so potential customers have a good impression of your brand,
product, or service.

Action: Convince potential customers to act and make a purchase.

Engagement: Keep customers engaged after they make a purchase so your brand, product, or service remains top-
of-mind and in the spotlight.

Advocacy: Build trust with customers so they recommend your brand, product, or service to others.

Content marketing funnel

A content marketing funnel can include these stages to help marketers organize and focus their content:

Awareness: Build web pages, blogs, social media posts, infographics, and podcasts.

Evaluation: Focus on surveys, email, webinars, and educational events.

Conversion: Provide customer success stories, webinars, specifications, and demos.

Key takeaways

The key takeaways for funnels are:

There isn’t a single funnel that fits all needs.

Funnels are created for general sales and marketing needs.

Funnels are also created for specialized areas of marketing.

Effective marketing efforts incorporate funnels to optimize desired outcomes.

Finally, as a reminder, although this reading introduced a variety of funnels, the marketing funnel that you will refer
to often in this program is the one shown below.

Case study: How MERSEA structures its marketing funnel

Previously, you learned about the different stages of the marketing funnel. In this case study, you’ll learn the
marketing strategies that the Lenexa, Kansas based e-commerce company, MERSEA, uses to attract potential
customers, turn them into paying customers, and eventually repeat customers. This process represents MERSEA’s
approach to the marketing funnel.

There is no standard approach to building a marketing funnel. The various marketing funnel models often share
similar strategies and structures, but vary based on the needs of the business.

Company background

In 2013, Lina Dickinson and Melanie Bolin founded MERSEA, a lifestyle brand located in Lenexa, Kansas, offering
clothing, accessories, and home fragrances. MERSEA’s products are rooted in the joy of travel and the tranquility of
seaside escapes. Initially, Lina and Melanie focused on selling through retail partners, placing MERSEA in over
1,200 stores.

The challenge

After having a solid presence in retail stores, MERSEA’s founders wanted to increase their e-commerce sales. The
challenge MERSEA faced is like many other e-commerce businesses: acquiring new customers online and turning
them into repeat customers. This is the core of its marketing funnel.

Imagine the perspective of a business owner. You have a functional online store. But, how can you get potential
customers to visit the online store? And, after attracting customers, how can you encourage those customers to
revisit the store and become repeat customers?

The approach

To get the MERSEA brand and product offering in front of its ideal customers, Lina and Melanie used a mix of
marketing strategies such as online paid advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, and text messaging.

It’s important to note that MERSEA is not implementing all these strategies with its own employees. They hired an
outside marketing company to assist with Google Ads. Working with a marketing company outside of the business
allows the founders and its employees to focus on what they’re best at, creating outstanding products.
For busy business owners, it may be beneficial to hire outside of the company to complete tasks, particularly for
marketing strategies that require more technical skills. For example, Google Ads requires a knowledge of its
platform and how to interpret its metrics.

Organized by marketing funnel stages, here are some marketing strategies MERSEA uses:

Awareness

For the awareness stage, MERSEA uses online ads including Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

There are several types of Google Ads MERSEA uses. For example, the company uses Search ads for brand name
and product searches. It also uses Shopping ads for specific types of products, such as “kimono sweater.” For the
Facebook Ads, MERSEA advertises to potential customers from lifestyle-based targeting.

Both of these ads help get the MERSEA brand and products in front of those searching and interested in their type of
products.

Consideration

During the consideration marketing funnel stage, MERSEA continues to apply online advertising, and also uses
social media marketing and email marketing.

For online advertising, a marketing strategy MERSEA uses is delivering ads to people who previously visited their
website. This is called remarketing. After the customer visits the website, they then receive ads specifically for the
products they viewed. This type of advertising is in the consideration stage because the remarketing ads build
interest in the potential customer.

For social media marketing and email marketing, MERSEA tells stories about products and introduces potential
customers to the brand.

Conversion

MERSEA is continually working to improve the conversion stage of its marketing funnel. One strategy it uses is
following up with customers who have abandoned their carts. An abandoned cart is when a customer adds an item to
their cart in an online store but does not make a purchase. If the customer enters their email during the checkout
process, but doesn’t make a purchase, MERSEA automatically sends follow up emails reminding the customer about
the product in their cart. This follow-up leads to an increase in the conversion rate.

Loyalty

During the loyalty stage, MERSEA turns its paying customers into repeat customers.

After making a purchase, the customer receives emails about additional and newly released products they may be
interested in. These emails are typically sent twice a week: one during the week and another during the weekend.

In addition, one unique strategy MERSEA uses to build loyalty is through text messaging. It has success with
sending text messages for order delivery confirmation and updates. When done well, this texting strategy creates a
more personal relationship with customers.

The results

While MERSEA’s success starts with its quality and fashionable products, its well-functioning marketing funnel
approach contributes to its success. Within two years of focusing on e-commerce and building an online marketing
funnel, MERSEA increased its online sales from 10% to 45%.

Additionally, because of the satisfied customers and the well-developed loyalty stage of its marketing funnel, around
50% of MERSEA’s customers are returning customers.

Conclusion
There is no one correct way to structure a marketing funnel. A key to a successful funnel is trying and testing new
ideas. MERSEA has been successful with its online marketing efforts because it didn’t simply set up an e-commerce
store. MERSEA built a marketing funnel to complement it.

A well-made product is important, but a well-rounded marketing approach helps sell the product. A mix of the right
marketing strategies drives customers through the funnel. The customers go from unaware of the brand to interested
to first-time customers to repeat customers.

The future of e-commerce

Since the web first ushered in a new era of e-commerce, marketplaces, payment services, and massive scaling of
shipping and distribution networks have made e-commerce successful. This reading considers how e-commerce
might change over the next decade.

Future trends for e-commerce

No one can say for sure which innovations today will be used tomorrow. However, a few e-commerce trends stand
out:

Specialization of smaller retailers

Immersive customer experiences

Distribution and delivery innovations

Specialization of smaller retailers

Large online marketplaces and retailers will still probably account for most online purchases. Smaller retailers may
increasingly become more specialized by offering highly customizable products, niche product categories not
offered by the larger retailers, and more personalized service.

Immersive customer experiences

Today, many customers still like to go to a physical store because they want to handle or try on an item before they
buy it. Virtual and augmented reality can provide immersive experiences online so customers feel like they’ve
handled an object or tried on a garment without actually making a trip to the store.

Virtual reality (VR) is fully immersive. By putting on a VR headset, users are able to view a simulated physical
world with audio-visual feedback. Imagine putting on your headset and going to the virtual dressing room to try on
clothing items before buying them. That is an example of a VR experience.

Augmented reality (AR) is semi-immersive. Users may not need to enter a simulated physical world. AR adds
audio-visual feedback to your existing world. What if you could automatically view sunglasses in your shopping cart
overlaid on a virtual image of yourself on your phone? What if it saved items from any e-commerce store so you
could “try them on” again? This would be an AR solution to shopping at different stores in person.

Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users. They can ask you if
everything is fine and if you need help. This would be an online version of a sales associate asking you the same
questions in a physical store. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning by chatbots using data from actual
conversations may improve the overall experience for shoppers.

Distribution and delivery innovations

You might have heard or read about the possibility of drones or self-driving vehicles making the last-mile trip
between a warehouse and a residential home or office. These methods of distribution and delivery may be
commonplace in the next ten years.
Key takeaway

No matter which technologies end up being adopted over the next ten years, e-commerce will continue to grow, and
our daily lives and habits will change, too.

MODULE 3

HOW COMPANIES USE DIGITAL MARKETING TO BUILD THEIR BRAND (Video)

Hi there, glad to have you back. In the last part of the course, we explored what digital marketing and e-commerce
can do for brands. You learned how customer journey maps can help companies understand their customers
and nurture relationships over time. You also discovered how they use digital marketing funnels to raise
awareness, encourage consideration, drive conversions, and foster loyalty. By learning about these concepts, you're
starting to build a strong foundation for the next phase of your career. In this part of the course, you'll learn that a
funnel fits into a larger digital marketing strategy. You'll explore the relationship between branding and digital
marketing and some specific ways companies can build their brands. You'll also find out what goes into planning a
digital marketing strategy and get to know some of the most common channels and tactics they involve, like search
engine optimization, social media marketing, and email marketing. Using these channels, businesses can attract
customers, drive sales, and maintain relationships over time.

Creating a digital marketing strategy is one of the most effective things brands can do to reach customers. So, it's
crucial to understand how they work, even if you're just starting out in the industry. In fact, one of the first things I
did when starting out as a product marketing manager was collaborating on digital marketing strategies for social
media. I worked hands-on in developing ways to reach and engage our target audience. Digital marketing strategies
are so important because they ensure that a brand's digital marketing and sales activities all work together toward a
common goal. I'm so excited to get started, and I hope you are too.

The Value of Brands for Digital Marketing (Video)

So far, I've said a lot about brands, how they find their audiences, how they engage with customers, and how they
build loyalty and boost sales. But what exactly is a brand? And how does it relate to digital marketing and e-
commerce? In this video, we'll explore why understanding brands is so important for digital marketing. A brand is
how a business or organization is perceived by the public. There are a lot of factors that can influence a brand, like
values, culture, design elements, and tone of voice. And companies can do things to build their brands. But a brand
isn't a physical asset, like a product or service. Products and services are the things that a business sells, like
clothing, software, or entertainment. A brand is more like a personality or a reputation. It's the sum of who you are
and what people think about you and your products. So why is it important to know about brands and their
value? Because a company's brand guides all of their marketing and sales efforts. Before they can even start thinking
about ads or promotion, companies need to understand their mission, values, and unique offerings. Marketing efforts
can, and should, change with the times. But a brand identity is permanent.

Think of it this way. If a brand is who you are, marketing is how you get people's attention. So a company can pour
tons of resources into a digital marketing strategy, but without a strong brand identity, no one's going to remember
who they are. Likewise, they can have great values and amazing products, but they still need marketing to build
brand recognition and drive sales. A brand is the foundation of a successful digital marketing strategy, but digital
marketing can also affect public perception of your brand. You can't have one without the other. A strong brand can
be incredibly valuable, and digital marketing can make it even stronger. For example, digital marketing campaigns
can help increase value through brand equity.

What is brand equity? It's the value consumers attribute to one brand's offering when compared with similar
products from another brand. When a brand has positive equity, it means consumers feel good about the brand and
might pay more for it than an identical product from another company. For example, let's say we have two bottles of
sunscreen with identical ingredients— one from a known and trusted brand, and the other from a lesser known
brand. Brand equity is how much more customers are willing to pay for the brand they know and trust than the other
one, even though they have the same ingredients. The trust people have in the familiar brand adds to its overall
value. Digital marketing is one of the ways businesses build that trust. When they run an ad campaign, those ads
don't just get consumers to take notice. They can also help shape public perception of the brand. Digital marketing
can communicate a brand's values, personality, and perspective, which can influence how people think of them. All
right, time to review. A brand is more than just another word for a business. It's how customers think and feel about
a company and its products. It's also the foundation for successful marketing and sales strategies. Digital marketing,
in turn, can help build brand equity, recognition, and trust.

Moving forward, we will begin to explore how brands create digital marketing strategies that support their larger
goals. A brand is more like a personality or a reputation.

Brand safety (Reading)

Brand safety is a major priority for digital marketing teams. Ensuring a brand is in good standing with consumers is
important to the heart and the mission of a brand. In this reading, you’ll learn what brand safety means, and how
companies execute brand safety.

What is brand safety?

Brand safety refers to the practice of keeping a brand's reputation safe when they advertise online. This might mean
ensuring the brand’s ads aren’t placed next to or on inappropriate or inaccurate content and making sure no
copyrighted materials are used without permission.

If you place ads within the display network, and those ads appear on a website that is spreading misinformation,
your brand may be damaged because you are automatically associated with brands that are pushing inaccurate
information. For example, if your brand values inclusivity, you wouldn’t want your brand’s ads to appear on a site
that holds hateful or controversial views.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has designated 13 topics that brands should avoid associating themselves
with to maintain brand safety. Those are: military conflict, obscenity, drugs, tobacco, adult content, arms, crime,
death/injury, online piracy, hate speech, terrorism, spam, and fake news. In addition to those, your brand might want
to stay away from other topics. For instance, if your brand sells baby toys, you probably don’t want to appear on
gambling sites.

So, as a digital marketer, how do you make sure you’re avoiding being associated with topics you would prefer your
brand not be associated with?

Ensuring brand safety

As a digital marketer, there are steps you can take to ensure your brand is maintaining brand safety. First, you’ll
want to define what is considered to be “unsafe” for your brand. Consider what topics might be harmful to your
brand. Then, make sure you and your team understand that scale isn’t everything. Ending up on every single
website on the internet isn’t worth the risk and harm done to your brand safety. Next, use trusted technology. When
you’re submitting ads to display networks or social media, make sure you’re using brand safety tools to maintain
brand safety. For instance, with the Google Display Network, you can opt-out of specific sites that you want to stay
away from.

Some strategies marketers take to maintain brand safety are:

Buy ad space directly from reputable publishers. This will ensure your ads aren’t placed where you don’t want them.
Note: doing this may mean you miss out on potential sales since you’re limiting yourself to certain customers.

Use image recognition. This will identify images that deem content unsafe for your brand.

Select keywords to avoid. Publishers will allow you to choose keywords to avoid, so you can include those when
you submit your content.

Apply geotargeting. This means making sure you know which regions your ads are running in, which helps you
make sure you are remaining sensitive and relevant to all your customers.

Key takeaways

Because it’s so integral to your brand’s success, brand safety is a topic that takes a lot of careful consideration. Make
sure you know what types of topics and content you don’t want your brand associated with, and then take action.
After you’ve carefully considered how to maintain brand safety, publishers and tools will help you take your brand
safety measures to the next level.

Resources for more information

The following resources can help you maintain brand safety if you’re using them to publish your ads:

Facebook brand safety controls

Google Display & Video 360 help: Brand safety targeting

Create a Digital Marketing and E-commerce Strategy (Video)

Now that you understand the relationship between branding and marketing, it's time to get deeper into how brands
use digital marketing strategies to reach business goals. When you're just starting out in digital marketing or e-
commerce, you probably won't be responsible for creating a digital marketing strategy unless you're working at a
small company, setting a strategy is usually a broad collaborative effort. But, you'll definitely help execute the
strategy even if it's set by others. That's why it's important for you to understand what a digital marketing strategy is
and what goes into building one.

Simply put, a digital marketing strategy is a plan for achieving specific goals through online channels to support
and advance business objectives. So now, let's discuss what actually goes into creating a digital
marketing strategy. Before you can start planning things like ad campaigns or social media outreach, you need to
research your audience and set meaningful goals. These steps will tell you who you're trying to reach and what you
want to accomplish. You'll learn more about how to do these things later in the program. All you need to know right
now is that they're essential to the success of any digital marketing strategy. Once you've completed your research
and set your goals, it's time to work out a strategy. That means you're using what you've learned to guide customers
through each stage of the digital marketing funnel with the most effective tactics and media mix. Media Mix refers
to the combination of digital channels used to reach your goals and how you divide your budget among them. These
are all the activities that go into your marketing funnel. To select your media mix you'll first review your existing
media content to find out if there are any gaps after that, you can decide which channels to focus on what content
and campaigns to run on those channels and how to allocate your budget.
Let's try an example. Imagine you're part of a team that's working with a high end jewelry retailer who wants to
drive a 30% increase in revenue within three years. You know that jewelry customers can take a long time to go
from awareness to purchase. So you pick marketing goals that support movement through the funnel, bringing in
new customers and nurturing existing leads more effectively. These are upper and middle funnel concerns that
should boost sales over time. That means you'll need to concentrate on raising awareness and encouraging
consideration to achieve them.

Here's a simplified version of a digital marketing strategy for these goals. To increase awareness and draw in new
customers your team puts 40% of its budget towards upper funnel efforts. From your research you know that video
ads are the most effective way for raising awareness among your target audience. Another 40% of your budget goes
to driving leads in the middle of the funnel, use this money to engage customers across different channels like social
media and a paid ad campaign to reach customers who are actively researching jewelry purchases. The last 20% is
for serving product focused ads to website visitors and email marketing.

The goal of the email campaign is to turn those leads you nurtured in the upper funnel into paying customers. Each
part of your funnel is important, but most of your budget goes to the top and middle sections to help you reach new
customers and nurture leads. Once you have a strategy in place, you can start creating the content you'll need to run
your campaigns. That includes everything from email templates to video animations, ad copy, and banner
images. You'll learn more about creating all that content later in the program. Lastly, you'll need a plan to measure
and analyze the results of your efforts so you know how you can improve in the future. That one is really important
and we'll explore some ways to do that later in this course and there you have it. There's a lot that goes into creating
a digital marketing strategy. But remember this is a team effort. You may only be responsible for things like aligning
budgets to marketing activities or analyzing the results of a campaign.

Let's recap; To plan an effective digital marketing strategy: You first need to research your audience and set goals
that support the business overall. Next, you review your existing media for gaps, select marketing channels and plan
the content you'll use to reach your goals. Finally, you'll create a plan to measure and analyze results. And if all this
seems like a lot, don't worry, we'll break everything down for you over the course of this program. Coming up, we'll
learn more about setting effective goals for your marketing strategy.

Find your Audience and Understand your Customers (Reading)

Find your audience and understand your customers

In this reading, you will learn about creating customer personas to reach your intended audience. By analyzing
certain customer data points, you will be able to determine the type of content your audience engages with.

Why is it important to know your audience?

When you identify your audience, you can create digital marketing campaigns that interest and engage them. This
can lead to brand growth and increased awareness.

Knowing your audience involves learning details about their lives, such as their geographic location, interests,
online activities, and preferences. It’s important to understand what content your audience likes and how they like to
consume it. For example, do they enjoy receiving humorous content via email? Maybe they like to be introduced to
new products via social media ads. Perhaps they are more likely to engage with an ad if they see it while they’re on
a website they frequently visit. There is a lot to consider when you are thinking about your audience, but start by
learning who they are.

Who is your audience?

Understanding customer personas

Customer personas represent a group of similar people in a desirable audience. They are profiles of your likely
customers, based on data and research. Creating customer personas can help a company figure out how to reach
people at the right time and with the right message, offer, or products. Personas allow you to focus your time and
energy on prospective leads that may actually turn into customers, rather than random people who may not have any
interest in your company at all.

There are a few ways to create customer personas. Marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Xtensio, and Up Close
& Persona have persona generators built in. However, if you prefer to create your own, you will need to conduct
some research.

Asking the right questions

Using surveys, interviews, and/or data that already exists in your automation tools, you can find the information
needed to create your personas. That information will most likely be demographics like gender, age, geographical
location, income, education, and job type.

If you collect this information through surveys or interviews, it’s important you ask questions based on your
business’ goals. Sometimes, it’s as simple as finding out your customers’ personality traits, hobbies, and which
social media platforms they use to engage with brands.

Note: Your customer personas may not look exactly like this. They may be more or less detailed or include different
information. It’s all about what is right for your company. You will get more in-depth instructions on how to create
customer personas in a later reading.

Key takeaways

Customer personas represent a group of similar people in a desirable audience. They:

help a company figure out how to reach people at the right time and with the right message, offer, or products

allow you to focus your time and energy on prospective leads that may actually turn into customers

can be created manually or using automated tools

Define your Marketing Goals (Video)

So far, we've covered the basic elements of digital marketing strategy, the importance of customer research, and
what goes into customer personas. Now, let's think about the next part of the process: setting goals for a digital
marketing strategy. We all set goals, whether in our professional or personal lives, but we're more likely to reach our
goals if we're clear about why they matter and what they involve. That's as true at all levels of a business as it is for
individuals.

Every company, department, team, and employee benefits from setting clear and relevant goals to guide their work.
You already know that digital marketing goals should support a business's larger goals. But what's the difference
between a marketing goal and a business goal? And how do you make sure they're aligned? Let's start with business
goals. Business goals are desired aims, achievements, or outcomes for a business. They are typically big, long-term,
and have the potential to affect an entire company. They include things like increasing profits, gaining new
customers, improving customer service, raising productivity, or launching new products or services. Marketing goals
tend to be smaller, more targeted, and—you guessed it— related to marketing activities. They're specific objectives
in a marketing plan or strategy that should support a business's larger aims. Some common marketing goals include
raising brand awareness, increasing web traffic, generating new leads, and driving sales or conversions. So how do
you connect a marketing goal like raised brand awareness to a business goal like increased profits?

For starters, both your business goals and your marketing goals need to be specific and measurable. So, for example,
let's say there's a company that makes photo editing software, and they want to expand their customer base. A well-
defined version of this business goal could be something like: Grow our number of active customers by 25% over
the next two years by adding five frequently-requested features to our software. That's way more specific, right? It
tells you what they're going to do, how they plan to do it, and when they want to get it done. You'll learn more about
setting well-defined goals later in this course. For now, let's consider this goal from a marketing perspective. What
kinds of

digital marketing goals could help this company expand its active user base? How about increasing website traffic?
After all, people need to visit the website to sign up for an account, but more website traffic doesn't necessarily
equal more new users. It would depend on how many of those visitors are new versus existing customers and what
they're doing once they get to the site. So increasing website traffic might work, but maybe there's a better option.

What about generating new leads? Since a lead is someone who is already interested in a company, lead-
generation is more likely to result in more signups than general website traffic. A well-defined version of that goal
could be: We will increase our lead generation by 40% in the next year by running upper-funnel ads that highlight
our new features

and increasing our mid-funnel budget by 20%. By raising awareness of the new features and increasing the budget
for activities that create new leads, the marketing goal supports the business goal of growing its user base. That's one
example of how a marketing goal can support a business goal, but there are a lot more. In fact, you can think of
business goals like the top part of a pyramid— there are a lot of different goals below that support them. So a digital
marketing strategy can even have multiple goals that build towards that top business objective. And you may also
have goals for each part of your strategy. For example, you can set goals specifically for your social media or email
marketing efforts. When all these smaller goals are aligned to the big things that a business wants to achieve, they
are much more likely to reach those aims.

Let's recap: Well-defined goals are important at all levels of a business. Business goals are long-term aims that can
impact a company at all levels. Marketing goals are specific to marketing efforts, but should always contribute to
business-wide aims. In the next lesson, we'll explore some of the tactics and channels brands can use to advance
their marketing and business goals. Meet you there!

How to set SMART goals (Reading)

Throughout this program, you will learn about SMART goals. In this reading, you will gain a very broad
understanding of what SMART goals are. Later in the course, you will build on that understanding with more in-
depth readings, videos, and activities.

What are SMART goals?

Before you create marketing campaigns, you need to evaluate what your company’s goals are. You may want to
boost brand awareness, increase customer satisfaction, or increase conversions, but those hopes aren’t necessarily
your goals yet. For them to be goals, they need some additional details and specifications.

When you set your goals, you’ll want to refer to the acronym SMART. SMART stands for specific, measurable,
attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Ensuring your goals meet this criteria will help keep you organized, give you
a sense of direction as you move through your campaigns, and provide you with a time frame to work within.

SMART considerations

To make sure your goals are SMART, consider the following factors:

Specific: What do you want to accomplish?

Measurable: What are the success metrics that will determine whether the objective has been met?

Attainable: Is this a realistic goal that you think you can meet?

Relevant: Is this specific marketing goal aligned with your company’s overall objectives?

Time-bound: What is a realistic time frame that this goal can be met within?

Example scenario

You’re a digital marketer for a photography and photo sharing company. Users can upload their photos onto your
website and, using your design templates, make scrapbooks and other items to commemorate events, trips, loved
ones, and more. You are setting new SMART goals in preparation for the upcoming financial quarter.

You know the company wants to focus on increasing scrapbook sales for this next quarter, so you start thinking
about goals. You decide to set a SMART goal to give you something to compare your progress against. You come
up with:

We aim to increase scrapbook sales by 15% by the end of the next quarter through a robust social media campaign
where we focus heavily on influencer marketing.

This goal fits all of the SMART goal criteria, which means you’ll be able to easily track your progress and make
adjustments as the social media campaign progresses.

Key takeaways

This is just the beginning of your journey in learning more about setting SMART goals. As you move along in the
course, you’ll gain some additional context for your SMART goals. For now, remember that SMART goals should
always be: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Paid, owned and earned Media (Video)

In the last lesson, you learned all about creating a digital marketing strategy. We covered customer and competitor
research, setting marketing goals to align with business goals, and what to consider when selecting digital channels.

Let's expand on that last point. There are a lot of digital channels to pick from when planning strategies and
campaigns—from email to social media to video and beyond. But all those channels fit into three main categories of
digital media— paid, owned, and earned— and a strong digital strategy takes advantage of all of them. You'll find
out more about each one as you move through the program, but let's start with a quick overview.
First, paid media is exactly that— it's any form of digital promotion a brand pays to put online. Some examples of
paid media include banner ads, video ads, social media ads, shopping ads, and pop ups. You'll learn more about
some of these types of paid ads later in the course. The big advantage of paid ads is that they produce results
quickly. The downside is that those results go away instantly when you stop paying for them— and paying for ads
can get expensive over time. That's why paid media is just one piece of a larger digital strategy. Paid ads can lead
directly to purchases, but they also help drive traffic to a business's owned and earned media channels, as well.

Now, let's move on to the second type: owned media. Owned media refers to all the digital content a brand fully
controls. Owned media content can be persuasive, but unlike paid media ads, it doesn't advertise or sell products
directly. Instead, it provides value by giving customers what they need in order to make informed decisions. Think
of it this way: If paid ads bring consumers to a company's website, owned content is what convinces them to
stay. Owned media includes things like website content, blogs, eBooks, and social media content. Documents like
whitepapers and case studies can also inspire confidence by explaining why brands make certain decisions and
conveying the results through real-world examples. The thing about owned media is that it can't do much on its
own. No matter how great a company's website or case studies are, they can't educate customers who don't know
they exist. Businesses can bring customers to their own content through paid ads and ranking highly on search
engine results pages. We'll break down some ways to improve search rankings in a bit.

Right now, let's move on to the last type of digital media: earned. Earned media is any positive digital exposure
generated through personal or public recommendations. Companies don't create or own earned media, and they can't
pay for it directly. It's generated by customers in response to things like product quality and customer service, in
addition to successful marketing campaigns. So, if a brand starts a formal partnership with an influencer, that's
paid advertising. But if a customer likes a product so much that they tell their friends about it for free, that's earned
media. Basically, it's the reputation a brand builds for being great at what they do. Earned media can take the form
of social media mentions, blog posts, written or video reviews, or positive press coverage, like product profiles or
best-of lists.

Customer-generated content can help businesses sell products, but it does way more than that. It also helps brands
reach new markets and build public trust. Before we move on, let's review: To be successful online, brands use a
combination of paid, owned, and earned media. Paid media is advertising you pay for, like banner or video ads.
Owned media is content a brand creates and controls, like website content, blogs, or case studies. Earned media is
positive, customer- generated content that raises awareness and enhances a brand's reputation. Now that you know
about the different types of digital media, you're ready to learn more about the specific tactics and channels brands
used to reach customers.

Attract Customers with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) [Video]

Have you ever wondered how a search engine decides which results go at the top of the page and which go at the
bottom? What about the results that end up on page 2, 20, or 200? Search engines work by exploring and indexing
the content of billions of webpages across the internet. When you search for a term, the search engine uses an
algorithm to rank the results by relevance and quality. Those rankings matter because search engines are the
most common method people use to find products and services online. And the internet is a crowded place.

Let's try an experiment. Say that I want to buy a plant for my home office, maybe a small cactus. If I search the web
for the phrase "potted cactus for sale," I get over 26 million results. That's more than two million pages of links. And
just how many of those results do you think I'm going to click on before I find the cactus I want? It's a lot less than
26 million. So ranking in search results is essential for reaching customers. But how do you make sure you're
producing content that a search engine recognizes as relevant and high quality? The answer is a process called
search engine optimization, or SEO, for short. SEO is a set of practices designed to increase the quantity and quality
of traffic to a website. At the most basic level, it involves optimizing content around commonly-used search
terms, also called keywords, to improve a website's position in search engine results pages.

Search engine results pages, or SERPs, are the pages of results produced when someone performs a
search. Typically, the higher a site ranks in these search listings, the more likely customers are to click on it. And the
more visitors you have, the more chances you have to drive sales, establish authority, and build your brand. SEO and
paid ads each have advantages and disadvantages. You've already learned that ads produce results quick, but those
results disappear when you stop paying for them. With SEO, it's the reverse. The exposure you get from good SEO
can last much longer than paid ads. But rising in the search rankings can take time and effort, which is why SEO and
paid ads are often used together. SEO has been around since the early days of the internet, and it's evolved a lot in
that time. These days, it involves a lot of different activities.

Let's go over a few SEO basics now: keyword research, quality content, and website structure. First, keyword
research is the process of identifying common search terms and phrases consumers use to find products or services
online. For example, some common keywords for a company that sells musical instruments might include "guitar,"
"drum set," or "grand piano for sale." Part of SEO is finding the keywords that are most relevant for your audience
and products and making sure they're part of your content. But you can't just pack your website full of keywords and
expect good results. You also need quality content that's useful and usable for your customers. That means not only
writing great content but keeping it up to date. You want website content to match your business's current offerings
and reflect keyword trends. Quality content is a win-win because it's helpful for customers and tends to rank better
in SERPs. Your content should also be easy to find, so organizing the site in a user- friendly way is important too. A
well-structured website makes it easier for both search engines and customers to navigate your content.

Time to recap: SEO is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search
engines. Businesses can improve their search engine results, page rankings, or SERPs in a few different ways,
including keyword research, creating useful, usable content, and a clear website structure. Of course, there's a lot
more to good SEO than we've covered here. In the next part of the course, you'll find out more about SEO,

as well as some paid advertising strategies.

Reach Customers with Seach Engine Marketing (Video)

So far in this lesson you've learned about three types of digital media: paid, owned, and earned. You also discovered
how brands use SEO to rank in search engine results pages and increase traffic to their own content. Now we're
going to explore paid advertising in a little more depth. You'll recall that paid advertising is any form of digital
promotion

a brand pays to put online. A big part of that promotion is Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. SEM is the process of
generating traffic to a website through paid ads that appear on search engine results pages. SEM ads are the ones
that appear above or below the regular search listings in a SERP. A quick note on terminology here. Some
companies think of SEM as a broad umbrella that includes both paid ads in search engines and SEO.
We're going to simplify things and say that SEO has to do with the ranking of search listings within SERPs, while
SEM happens through paid ads. SEM starts out the same way that SEO does: with keyword research. So, if your
company sells vitamins you might want to serve an ad to customers who search for the phrase "vitamin C." Once
you have your keywords you enter an ad auction to bid on them. An ad auction is how a search engine determines
which ads to display, and the order they're shown, when someone performs a search. When you bid on a keyword,
you decide how much you're willing to pay when someone searches for a term and clicks your ad. This is known as
pay-per-click, or PPC, because you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. The amount you pay when someone
clicks on a PPC ad is called the cost-per-click, or CPC.

Now just like in every other auction it's possible to lose your bid. That means your ad won't come up every time
someone searches for your keyword. Search engines decide which ads to display based on factors like quality
and maximum bid amount. And you'll learn more about them later on in the program. SEM is a great way to reach
specific customers quickly, but it has other advantages too. When a customer finds a website through search
listings, they'll usually end up on that website's homepage. But paid ads give you control over where those visitors
land on your site, whether that's a sign up form or a specific product page. But one of the biggest benefits of paid ads
is that they create opportunities for remarketing. Remarketing allows you to identify previous customers or visitors
to your website and serve them paid ads on other sites and social media platforms. Have you ever browsed the
website for a pair of jeans and then noticed those same jeans popping up on other sites? That's remarketing. It's a
way of recapturing the attention of people who are already interested in your brand. And that's really important
because most website visitors leave before completing an action, like making a purchase. Maybe they want to
consider their options or do more research before buying. Remarketing encourages those people to come back by
reminding them why they

clicked on your ad in the first place. Website visitors and previous customers are also the segment of your audience
that's most likely to convert. So those extra reminders can have a big impact. You'll be able to explore all of these
concepts more later in the program.

Right now, it's time to review. SEM is a way for brands to generate traffic to their websites by placing paid ads on
search engine results pages. It uses a model called pay-per-click advertising, which charges you when someone
clicks on your ad. Paid ads have some big advantages like reaching customers quickly, controlling where visitors
land on your site, and remarketing. Next up, you'll learn about some other types of paid advertising for attracting and
converting customers.

Display advertising (Reading)

The purpose of this reading is to introduce you to a common type of advertising: display advertising. Display
advertising is used by millions of companies around the world because of its effectiveness.

What is display advertising?

Display ads are visual ad formats placed on webpages or apps. Display ads are images, text, videos, or GIFs that are
submitted to display networks and then placed in front of your ideal audience to promote your brand, service, or
product.

A display network is a group of websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. Some display networks may
include up to two million websites. Display networks allow marketers to target ads to particular audiences, contexts,
locations, and more. Some examples of display networks are the Google Display Network, Taboola, and Criteo.
However, there are many options, and we encourage you to research as many as you can in order to determine which
is best for your company.
There are also ad exchanges, digital marketplaces where buyers and sellers come together and enter into a real-time
bidding process to buy and sell ad space. Ad exchanges pull ad inventory from multiple publishers and display
networks. Agencies and advertisers typically bid on impressions from ad exchanges via a tool called a demand-side
platform. Xandr, OpenX, Magnite, Pubmatic, and Google Ad Manager are examples of ad exchanges.

Types of display ads

Image ads are static JPG, PNG, or animated GIF files that appear on websites. Reaching customers through visuals
is an effective approach because users can see the usefulness of your product.

Text ads are general ads that appear on websites as text only. These aren’t the most dynamic ads, since they are text
only.

Responsive ads automatically adjust their size and format to fit the available space around them. The flexibility and
capability of responsive ads makes them very popular. They can also appear as native ads, which means they are
designed and formatted to look like a native piece of the website’s content.

App promotion ads are ads that drive app downloads and engagement from users by getting them to download
apps. App promotion ads are great because when clicked, they send users straight to their app store to easily get
whatever app your company wants them to download. These ads will only appear on devices compatible with your
content.

How do display ads fit into the marketing funnel?

As you create digital marketing campaigns and aim to introduce your company and engage with potential customers,
you may opt into using display ads to ensure an effective and successful marketing strategy. At Google, display ads
are employed during the awareness and consideration buckets of the funnel because of the potential to drive
awareness and increase the customer base. However, we also enlist display ads further down the funnel to remarket.
Remarketing delivers paid ads to customers who have visited your website or social media profile. This helps
increase conversions and keep loyal customers.

Introduction to Social Media and E-mail Marketing (Video)

Now that you've learned about SEO, SEM, and display ads, it's time to introduce two more channels businesses can
use to reach their digital marketing goals: social media marketing and email marketing. Social and email each have
different strengths, which makes them much more effective together than separately. So before we discuss each
channel on its own, let's go over what they do well and how they can work together to raise awareness and maintain
customer relationships over time.

Brands can do a lot on social media. Because so many people are on social media, it's one of the most effective
channels for finding new audiences. With social media accounts, companies can engage with customers, run ads,
and even generate earned media through viral content. But social media also has one big drawback: businesses can
control what they post to their accounts, but they can't control the platforms themselves. So if a particular platform
shuts down or changes their algorithm, it can affect a brand's ability to reach their followers overnight. The good
news is that social media can help brands grow their email lists which they own completely.

Email marketing doesn't have the reach of social media, but it also doesn't need to. That's because email marketing is
about nurturing relationships with people who are already interested in a brand. And because businesses control
their email lists, they can nurture those relationships over time. Email marketing is also incredibly cost effective. On
average, it brings in more than $40 for every dollar spent. And there you have it. Together, email and social media
marketing helps brands increase their reach, raise awareness, and connect with customers online. You'll learn more
about both of these channels and how they work together in just a bit. Meet you there.

Social Media Marketing Basics (Video)

Throughout this course, we've stressed how important it is to find and connect with target audiences where they are
online. One of the best places to do that is on social media. Well over half the people in the entire world are on
social media, and that number is only growing. Maybe one audience likes Twitter more than Tiktok or another
prefers Facebook to Instagram. But no matter what a business sells, chances are good that social media is a key part
of their marketing strategy. Social media marketing is the practice of creating and publishing content for social
media platforms in order to drive engagement and promote a brand or product.

Creating social media content might seem simple. After all, people post interesting, funny, or touching content
to their personal accounts every day. But there's a lot more to social media marketing than writing clever or
informative posts. Social media marketing involves a lot of the same concerns as a company's overall digital
marketing strategy. Like increasing engagement, expanding their reach, and building their brand. It just that all of
those activities happen on social media platforms.

Now, let's explore some of the ways businesses use social media to amplify their efforts and reach their digital
marketing goals. We can break down these activities into five categories, known as the five pillars of social media
marketing. These pillars include: strategy, planning and publishing, listening and engagement, analytics and
reporting, and paid social media.

Let's start with strategy. Before planning your content or campaign, you need to know who your audience is, and
which social platforms they use. If your audience is mostly interested in content about home decorating, you might
not post on a platform that caters to business and networking. Posting the right content in the right places can save
both time and money. To know what types of content to create, you'll also need to understand your goals. For
example, if you want to build community around your brand, you might focus on interactive content like polls or
questions and answer sessions. But if your goal is to promote a new product, running a contest or giveaway might
get better results. Understanding your audience and having clear goals will help you create effective, relevant
content. Once you've set your strategy and content, you'll need to consider planning and publishing. That means
deciding when to post content and how often to post content. The goal is to engage followers enough so that they
remember you, but not so often that you overwhelm them. Next up is social listening and engagement. Once your
content is out in the world, you can track and analyze social conversations and mentions related to your brand. This
could mean monitoring direct responses to a brand's social content or earned media, like posts about its
products, which are great ways to find out how customers feel about your business. The insights you gain can help
you decide how to respond to and engage with customers on social platforms. Those responses are important
because they can affect your brand image and customer relationships. Think of social listening and engagement like
a conversation.

First, a business publishes content. Then they listen to how their audience responds. By paying attention to what
their audience says, they can determine the best way to reply. For example, if someone posts about how helpful they
find a particular tool, like a habit tracking app, the brand could respond with thanks and encouragement. But if they
post that the app isn't working correctly, they could share troubleshooting tips instead. Next, you'll use analytics and
reporting to find out how your content or campaigns are performing and communicate results to others. Social media
analytics tools can track and measure things like comments, shares, follows, or clicks. They can tell you how many
people are using a hashtag or the number of positive mentions over time. Businesses can use these insights to
respond to trends, or guide future strategies. Finally, there's paid social media. Paid social media ads have a lot
of the same benefits as paid ads for other channels. It can expand a brand's reach beyond its existing customer base
and allow them to remarket products. But advertising on social media has some other advantages, too. For one thing,
social platforms provide more detailed user information than search engines. That means brands serve ads to highly
specific customer groups. Finally, paid social media is a good way for brands to grow their email lists. By linking
ads to email sign-up forms, businesses can contact their followers directly and send them special offers. Like any
digital marketing strategy, social media marketing involves getting to know your audience, finding them online, and
setting meaningful goals.

Only then can you plan, create, and publish content. Next, social listening and measurement can tell you how to
engage with your audience effectively and refine your strategy. Lastly, with paid social ads, you can expand your
reach, address specific customers, and grow your email lists. Coming up, you'll learn more about social media
marketing and how to use email to maintain customer relationships.

Choose the right platforms for your target audience (Reading)

Even if you have used social media platforms personally, it’s important to understand that using them as a digital
marketer is very different. This reading will introduce how to set and achieve goals using specific social media tools
and platforms.

Goal 1: Build connections with your audience

One goal of brands is to build relationships with their audience. If your brand or business has chosen to prioritize
this as a goal or objective, you will want to consider which social media platforms are best for relationship building.
For example, interactive, word-based platforms where people interact in short messages and where open
communication is encouraged—like Twitter—are well suited to relationship building. This is because the art of
conversation is so encouraged and prioritized on Twitter. It is perhaps one of the only platforms where a brand may
post dozens of times a day, without overloading its followers.

To build relationships with your audience on a platform like Twitter, you will want to be responsive and engaging. If
someone is interacting with your brand, feel free to reply promptly and keep the conversation going. If they are
mentioning you because of an issue with an order, provide them with helpful, empathetic, and supportive customer
service. Possibly the most important thing to remember while engaging with users online is to always make sure you
are being authentic to your brand’s voice. Your followers will come to expect a certain voice, and they will
recognize you for it.

Pro tip: Sometimes, it’s best to be proactive about relationship building. Instead of waiting for users to reach out to
you, actively seek out authentic connections and communication within your community of followers.

Goal 2: Target new customers

If your goal is to target new customers, you may find some success on an image-based photo and video sharing
platform like Instagram. This is a good place to show people your product, rather than telling them about it. To
target new customers, it is a good idea to tell your brand’s and products’ stories using interesting and dynamic
visuals.

Instagram is effective for telling your brand’s story because its users spend significant time on the platform learning,
being inspired, shopping, testing new things out, and so much more. And, it is a unique platform because brands can
leverage other users with large followings to tell their story as well.
For example, leveraging a strategy like influencer marketing is an effective tactic to target new customers.
Influencer marketing involves a brand collaborating with an online influencer to market one of its products or
services. When an influencer introduces your brand to their followers—a group of people who may not know about
you yet—this can be really helpful for targeting new customers. Another example of an effective strategy is running
social media ad campaigns, where your brand’s reach is sure to increase.

Pro tip: If you prioritize influencer marketing, make sure your partners have audiences that will be interested in
your product once introduced to it.

Goal 3: Drive traffic to your website

If you want to drive traffic to your website, consider a social media platform that allows you to share articles, links,
products, images, and reviews, like Facebook. If the content you are sharing feels fresh, informative, and links back
to your landing page, users will be more likely to click on it and end up on your webpage. If users like what they see
on your page, they may share your content themselves, possibly resulting in even more website traffic.

When using a platform like this, it’s especially important to couple your brand’s voice and visuals together in a
cohesive way. Your content all needs to feel purposeful and relevant, and draw users in, if you want to encourage
website visitors.

Pro tip: Not all social media platforms allow you to easily share links to landing pages and other content, but doing
so can be a great way to drive traffic to your site.

Key takeaways

You will likely choose to prioritize certain platforms over others depending on what your company’s goals and
objectives are. However, you should feel free to push the same initiatives and campaigns on varying social channels
as well. If you have goals that you think can be achieved on a few different platforms, you will still want to
customize the content to be exactly what your audience on each platform wants.

Build relationships with email marketing (Video)

So far, you've learned that social media marketing enables brands to extend their reach and build a list of email
subscribers. In this video, we'll discuss some of the things brands can do with those subscriber lists once they have
them. But before we get to that, let's define what email marketing is and what it isn't.

First, most importantly, email marketing is not spam. Spam, also known as junk mail, refers to any unwanted emails
sent out in bulk to a mass recipient list. These are the emails that land in your inbox, even though you never signed
up for them. Spammers might make claims that are too good to be true or send the same content to everyone on their
list, regardless of their interests. They'll often send so many emails that they end up annoying potential
customers. How is email marketing different from spam? Email marketing is when a brand sends messages to a list
of existing subscribers to share information, drive sales, or create community. That means sending relevant, helpful
content to people who've agreed to receive it. When it's done well, email marketing helps brands build and
maintain relationships with potential and existing customers.

How do brands avoid coming across like spammers? How do they make sure they're sending the right content, to the
right people, at the right time? They use segmentation and personalization. Let's take these ideas one at a time. First,
segmentation. Email segmentation is the practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups or
segments,
based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history. It allows brands to customize emails for different
groups and send subscribers content that's relevant to them. The more brands learn about their subscribers, the more
they can segment their lists, which makes it easier to build relationships with customers. So if someone buys cat
food from a pet store, they might appreciate getting ads about other cat-related products like treats or toys. But if
they get a coupon for birdseed, they might delete that email, and they could even unsubscribe altogether, which is
the opposite of what the pet store wants.

Let's move on to personalization. While segmentation helps marketers decide what email content to send to which
people, personalization is a process of customizing email content for individual subscribers. That doesn't mean
running a different email for every single subscriber. If email marketers did that, they wouldn't have time for
anything else. But there are some things they can do to deliver an experience that feels specific to each
individual. Here are a few examples: email marketers can address each recipient directly by putting their name in the
greeting or subject line. Send promotions for special events like birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries. Send messages
that match where customers are in the marketing funnel. For example, an email about a loyalty program
probably shouldn't go to subscribers who are still at the consideration stage. Finally, they can follow up on previous
interactions, like asking a customer to share their opinion on a recent purchase.

Now you know the difference between email marketing and spam, and how brands use techniques like segmentation
and personalization to build and maintain customer relationships. Coming up, you'll learn about some different types
of emails that can engage, convert, and retain customers.

Types of email campaigns

As a digital marketer, you will come across dozens of types of email campaigns that achieve different goals for your
company. The way you define and name them may differ from organization to organization. However, this reading
will give you an introduction to the main types of email campaigns and what they accomplish. In later materials, you
will go more in-depth about each type of email.

Real-life applications

As you are guided through the various types of email campaigns, think about emails you’ve received recently or in
the past. Consider what the sender was trying to accomplish in emailing you. Did it work? Why or why not?

Note: A large portion of email marketing is testing out different tactics to learn what works and what doesn’t. You
might use all or just a few of the email types below, depending on what is most effective for your audience and
marketing goals.

Types of email campaigns

The following are the most common types of email campaigns:

Acquisition emails are sent out to acquire new customers before they start considering the brand. Acquisition
emails fall into the awareness section of the marketing funnel because they engage potential customers. Typically,
an acquisition email provides something for free such as a downloadable guide, free trial, or other educational
material.

Welcome emails are sent out to brand new customers or subscribers. The welcome email most commonly exists
within the consideration stage of the marketing funnel because it encourages deeper engagement and specific
actions.

Newsletters are sent to subscribers regularly. They contain news and informational content relevant to the company
and of interest to subscribers. Newsletters are versatile campaigns because they can fall into several funnel stages.
Newsletters fit in the consideration stage when potential customers are getting to know your brand. They are part of
the conversion stage when customers have decided they like your brand and want to support it, and they fit the
loyalty stage when customers keep coming back for more products and content.

Promotional emails are sent to inform subscribers of new or existing products or services. Promotional emails
usually fall into the consideration and loyalty buckets of the marketing funnel because they encourage subscribers to
take some kind of action.

Retention emails are sent to a current customer with the intent of keeping them as a customer. This type of
campaign fits into the loyalty portion of the funnel.

Key takeaways

Although these common email types are trusted by industry experts, you will still need to test out different tactics to
determine which types your subscribers engage with the most. Consider what you have learned here, but make sure
to be adaptable when something isn’t working.

MODULE 4

Measuring marketing performance success (Video)

Welcome back. Earlier in the course, you learned about the relationship between digital marketing and
branding. You also explored the different parts of a digital marketing and e-commerce strategy, including research,
goal-setting, and selecting the right channels and tactics.

Lastly, you found out a little about some of the channels and tactics like SEO, SEM, social media, and email
marketing. This part of the course is all about data, how you measure it, how you interpret it, and how it can make
your strategy better. We'll explore the concept of performance marketing and examine some ways you might be
working with data in an entry-level digital marketing or e-commerce role. We'll discuss how data can help you find
out what's working well and how to adapt to necessary change. We'll also go over some ways to demonstrate those
findings through data storytelling. Measuring the success of your marketing efforts may be the most important thing
you'll learn in your digital marketing or e-commerce career. No matter how carefully you plan your
strategy, measuring your results can always help you make it better, from building your brand, to engaging
customers, and maximizing sales.

The first time I really worked with data and digital marketing was when I began running paid advertising for my
own e-commerce store. I wanted to understand if the effort I was making was worth the extra cost. This made me
realize that there was a whole world of measurement beyond the paid campaigns I was running. I can measure the
health of my whole store through different dashboards and analytics resources. This is where e-commerce
and digital marketing really gets fun because you can actually prove that your tactics are helping you reach your
goals. You're almost to the end of the course, and I'm so excited for you to cross the finish line. Let's get back into it.

Measure progress with performance marketing (Video)

Throughout this course, we've emphasized how important it is to measure the results of digital marketing tactics,
campaigns, and strategies. In fact, these activities are so important that there is a special term to describe them:
performance marketing. In this video, we'll explore what's involved in performance marketing, and how it allows
businesses to set goals, track results, and improve on their work.

Let's get started. Imagine this: It's 1985, and you work for a marketing agency that's promoting a new breakfast
cereal. You run some focus groups to learn about your target audience and what they like. You use those interviews
and your past experiences as a marketer to create memorable ads for newspapers, billboards, and televisions. And
then you wait. Your sales go up. The campaign works! But what you don't know is which ads were most
effective and how many of the new customers found the product through your campaign. That doesn't mean your ad
strategy is all guesswork— just that there's limited information you can gather. You can keep going with that same
successful strategy. Now imagine you're running that same campaign today, only online. With digital
marketing, there are dozens of ways to measure the success of your tactics and campaigns. So if you place an ad for
cereal online, you can track the things that just aren't possible with billboards, like how many people encounter and
engage with your ad each week. Collecting and evaluating all of that information can help you rethink a weak
strategy or make a good one even stronger. That's performance marketing. It's the process of using concrete
information about customer behaviors to plan and refine marketing and sales strategies. It focuses on measurable
results like clicks and conversions. Performance marketers set specific goals and use metrics to find out if they've
reached them. You're already familiar with some performance metrics like the number of impressions or cost per
click on paid ads.

Another performance metric is customer lifetime value, which refers to the average revenue generated by customers
over a certain period of time. There's also ROAS, or return on ad spend. ROAS is how much revenue is gained
versus how much was spent. So if you spend $100 on an ad, but made $150 as a result of that ad, the ROAS would
be 150%.

So for the cereal example, if you were to set a goal of increasing overall revenue, ROAS might be one of the metrics
used to measure success. There are so many ways to measure performance at every stage of the marketing
funnel, and those measurements are critical because the average customer journey takes about six touchpoints. That
number has doubled more than twice over a 15-year period. Performance marketing lets us gauge how each of those
touchpoints contribute to our goals, which helps us reach and engage with customers more effectively.

Time to review: Measuring results with performance marketing is one of the most important things you can do to
ensure success. By tracking metrics like ROAS and customer lifetime value, digital marketers can reach their
goals and refine their strategies over time. Up next, you'll learn more about performance metrics and working with
the data they produce.

Common metrics for success (Reading)

Typically, when you set goals, you track your progress to see how close you are to reaching those goals. If you set a
goal to finish a book every month for 12 months, you will probably check on your progress every now and then to
see if you are accomplishing that goal. You may count pages with excitement as you go from book to book, or keep
a checklist of book titles. The same practices can be applied to measuring marketing campaign effectiveness.

In this reading, you will learn the importance of measuring success. You will get an understanding of what you may
want to track to measure success, and you will be reminded of what a metric is. Then, you will see where various
metrics fit into your marketing funnel.

Introduction to metrics
As you go through this certificate program, you will learn a lot about metrics. For now, know that a metric is a
quantifiable measurement that is used to track and assess a business objective. Metrics help determine the success of
marketing initiatives and campaigns.

Why track metrics?

Tracking metrics helps digital marketers gauge how close they are to meeting goals. Each metric measures
something specific, and therefore each metric tells a marketer something different about their campaign. Metrics can
reveal important information about marketing campaigns, such as return on investment (ROI), return on ad
spend (ROAS), cost per sale, and online and sales revenue.

Metrics in the marketing funnel

You will apply different tactics to track metrics based on which stage of the marketing funnel you are operating in.
For instance, in the awareness stage, you’ll gather audience data and develop user personas. This helps you get to
know who your customers are. During the consideration stage, you will consider metrics like cost of acquisitions
and click through rates. During the conversion stage, you will track and analyze sales conversion rates, average
order values, and cart abandonment rates. And finally, during the loyalty phase, you’ll want to consider customer
retention rate and customer lifetime value.

There are other factors to consider throughout the marketing funnel process, and these may not be familiar terms yet,
but for now, this is a good place to start.

Key takeaways

Tracking metrics is critical to a campaign's success. Metrics help digital marketers gauge effectiveness and audience
contentment while a campaign is happening. They also help marketers gain information and insights they can use for
future campaigns.

Working with DATA (Video)

Performance marketing generates a lot of data, from impressions and clicks at the top of the funnel to conversion
and sales numbers at the bottom. Data is critical throughout the whole marketing and sale cycle. Data is a collection
of facts or information. Your company's total number of social media followers, how many hours a team spends on a
project, or total year in revenue, all of those numbers are data. Marketing data can help you answer questions in a
concrete way by drawing on real customer behaviors and interactions. The insights are useful for planning
campaigns,

predicting future behaviors, and finding out whether your activities are helping you reach your KPIs.

You'll recall that a KPI, or Key Performance Indicator, is a measurement used to gauge how successful a business is
in its effort to reach a business or marketing goal. Your KPIs could be certain metrics, like ROAS. But if you find
that you aren't reaching your goals, you might need to prioritize different KPIs instead. To know if you're meeting
your KPIs, you'll need to collect and interpret the relevant data. The process of monitoring and evaluating data
to gain actionable insights, is called data analytics. It's one of the most important skill sets you can develop for a
career in digital marketing or e-commerce. That doesn't mean you need to be a statistics expert to work in these
fields. What it does mean is that most entry level roles you'll encounter involve working with data in some way.

Let's go over a few of the main data analytics responsibilities you might have. Pulling, reporting, and analyzing
data.
Data pulling is the process of collecting data from analytics tools and putting it into a spreadsheet or
database, making it easy to access and work with. For example, you might have campaigns with similar goals
running on different platforms like Facebook, Bing, and Google. To make it easier to compare and analyze your
data, you'll need to bring it all together. One way to do that is by pulling the data from each source, and organizing it
into a spreadsheet. Data reporting, also called performance reporting, involves organizing and summarizing data
to track performance across marketing and sales efforts. This process makes it easier to identify trends and spot
unexpected results more quickly.

For example, if you've pulled data from multiple sources, reporting makes it easier to tell if one has a higher ROAS
than another. Quality reporting provides a clear picture of the raw numbers. It should help you shape questions
that can be answered through analysis. Data analysis is the process of examining data in order to draw
conclusions, make predictions, and drive informed decision-making. If reporting is the what, then analysis is the
why. It helps you develop insights that explain the reported results and make suggestions for next steps, like shifting
your budget or prioritizing different KPIs. You'll learn lots more about working with the data later in the
program. But I hope you feel like you've got a better understanding of what data is and why it's so important for
marketing and sales success.

Now, let's recap: The data produced by performance marketing is an incredibly valuable resource for understanding
how well your strategy is meeting its goals. In an entry level role, you may find yourself pulling, reporting or
analyzing performance data. Through data analytics, you can find out if you're meeting your goals, anticipate
customer behavior, and make plans for the future. Coming up, we'll get into some ways to interpret data and present
it to others.

Data ethics (Reading)

In a previous video, you learned that performance marketing requires a lot of data. Data can contain information
about user interests and behaviors and even individual customer purchases. This reading introduces you to data
ethics. Knowing how to work with user data responsibly and legally is critical to the integrity of your organization,
role, and projects.

Data ethics

Data ethics is the study and evaluation of moral challenges related to data collection and analysis. When it comes to
data, businesses apply ethical practices so they can:

Follow regulations

Demonstrate trustworthiness in protecting customer data

Ensure the use of customer data is fair and without bias

Follow regulations

Many countries have laws regarding the generation, recording, curating, processing, sharing, and use of personally
identifiable data. Personally identifiable data (PID) is information that can be used to directly identify, contact, or
locate an individual. Make sure you are aware of your organization's data security and privacy protocols. Data
privacy refers to the proper handling of data. How you collect, process, analyze, share, archive, and delete data
should be in accordance with the data privacy laws of the countries where your customers reside.

Protect customer data

One important way to protect customer data is data anonymization. Data anonymization refers to one or more
techniques to mask or remove personal information from data to protect the identities of people. Data anonymization
is often performed on data coming from multiple sources. After the data has been anonymized, it can be more
widely and freely shared in an organization. Types of data often anonymized are names, telephone numbers, email
addresses, photographs, account numbers, and purchase transactions.

Use data fairly and without bias

Another ethical data practice is making sure that the data you collect and use is for legitimate business purposes.
Fair and reasonable use of data also means that you don’t use the data in a biased manner. Data bias is a type of
human error that skews results in a certain direction. Note that data bias isn’t the same as selecting data from a target
audience. For example, let’s say you want to review historical data from customers between the ages of 21 and 45.
That’s not data bias. What would be considered data bias is if you exclude the data from customers who returned
products because you don’t consider them loyal to your brand. However, even when including all available data,
you’re not always free of bias. This is possible if historical data was from an audience that wasn’t representative of
all potential customers. If you create future ad campaigns based on previous customer behaviors, you could
unknowingly perpetuate a bias.

Pro tip: To minimize the risk of data bias, ask for peer review of critical data that you intend to use so you can
incorporate different perspectives right away.

Key takeaway

Data ethics is important because it promotes the responsible use of customer data. Always be careful to follow the
data privacy laws in your country and the countries where your customers live, protect customer data, and avoid data
bias.

Use Data Insights to improve Strategy (Video)

You've set your strategy, picked your channels, planned your content, and measured your results. Now what? You
know all that data should tell you which channels and content are performing well. But what does good performance
actually mean? Is it when an ad gets a lot of clicks? When a Tweet goes viral? What about increased website
traffic? With so many different touchpoints and channels shaping customer brand interactions, how do you know
where to start?

In this video, we'll explore how businesses use reporting data to find out which of their marketing and sales efforts
are the most successful. Success can mean different things depending on your particular marketing and business
goals. But every digital marketer wants to know which touchpoints are getting customers to take action. Say you're
running a campaign for a company that sells art supplies. If tons of people are clicking on an ad for a new line of
paints but only a few of them eventually make a purchase, that ad might not be so successful after all. In order to
optimize a strategy, you need to know which touchpoints are influencing customer decisions the most. Of course
you can't know exactly what your customers are thinking. All you have to go on is what they do. But those customer
behaviors can tell you a lot about where your efforts are succeeding and where they're falling short. The process of
determining which content and channels are responsible for generating leads, conversions, or sign-ups is called
attribution. This isn't something you need to determine on your own.

Most analytics tools include features that can use your data to find out which touchpoints and keywords customers
interact with before taking action. You'll get some practice with these tools later in the program. By accurately
attributing success to specific marketing and sales efforts, businesses can make informed decisions about where to
invest their time, budget, and resources. Now, some people assume that the last touchpoint should get all the credit,
and it makes sense, right? People often think that the touchpoint right before a purchase must be the one that
convinces a customer to take action. But that isn't always the case. You know that the average customer encounters
six touchpoints on their purchase journey, and that the path isn't always straightforward. Say someone is shopping
for a new computer, and they decide which model to buy after the second touchpoint but then they put off actually
making the purchase. Maybe they're waiting for a holiday or for the computer to go on sale. Maybe they just get
distracted. It might take another touchpoint to remind them of the purchase they already planned to make. Both of
those touchpoints deserve some credit, and attribution is how they get it. Businesses have some choices when it
comes to attribution models.

We won't go over all of them here— just a few to give you a sense of how they attribute success: data-driven, first
click, last click, and linear. Data-driven attribution measures customer engagement with marketing content across
channels to understand what's motivating them to take action. It assigns credit to each touchpoint based on statistics
like which ads or keywords most often lead to conversions. Data-driven attribution draws on real customer
behaviors to assign credit. But if you don't have enough meaningful data for this model, they have other
options. Here are a few examples: First click attribution assigns all the credit to the first touchpoint that eventually
leads to a conversion. Let's go back to our art supply store. If a customer's first interaction with the brand is a social
media ad for oil paints, all the credit for their purchase will go to that ad, even if it takes a few more touchpoints for
them to buy something. Last click attribution assigns all the credit to the last known touchpoint before conversion. If
our art store customer makes a purchase after the fourth or fifth touchpoint—maybe a promotional email—last click
attribution would give full credit to that email.

Linear attribution assigns equal credit to each touchpoint along the customer journey. So for our art store customer's
journey, the social ad, promotional email, and all the touchpoints in between share credit for the eventual
conversion. Attribution isn't an exact science, but it can give you a better idea of how customers are interacting with
your content and what's leading them to take action. Using models like data-driven, first click, last click, and linear
attribution, businesses can put their resources in places that will maximize customer conversions. Up next, you'll
learn about communicating the insights you get from your data insights to other people.

Story structure (Reading)

In a previous video, you learned that without a story, data is just numbers. Data storytelling is the practice of
explaining data insights to a specific audience using a clear and compelling narrative. Formulating a story from data
is a very important piece of digital marketing. Each time you tell your compelling data story, it should be structured
using three elements. In this reading, you will learn the importance of identifying story elements from data.
The three-part data story structure
Before you can tell your data story, you will need to analyze the data to determine the story hidden within the data.
In data storytelling, always remember that there are three elements to every story: context, complication, and
resolution. When you’ve thoroughly analyzed your data to determine each element, you’ll be able to tell the whole
story.
Context
Creating context is an important part of storytelling with data, because without context, you have no starting point
for your story. Think of your context as the framing of the situation. For example, imagine your company had a
decrease in both sales and their customer base last year. The company's goals are to maximize profits and grow their
customer base this year. Those goals may be the context of your story.
Complication
Next, you need to identify the complication in your story. This is typically the reason the situation requires action. A
complication isn’t always bad, but rather an explanation of how the situation has changed based on your data. For
example, if your company’s goals are to maximize profit and grow their customer base, and the data shows you are
on track to meet the first goal but not the second one, that is a complication. Any kind of change in metrics would be
an example of a complication.
Resolution
Finally, like any story, it should end in a resolution. The resolution of your data story is the necessary action taken to
solve a problem or leverage an opportunity. It answers the questions: How did the story end? What were the results
of the complication? What do your results tell you about the campaign? For instance, if the results show that you are
maximizing your profits but are not driving new customers, explain the data-driven action you will be taking to
change that.
Example story

Now, review an example data story. Using the graphs above as a reference image, recall the toy company example
from a previous video. Recall that in the video, you measured the results of a new social media campaign for your
toy company.
The context of the data story may be your past social media campaign’s performance. In this past campaign, you
aimed to increase sales by 5% over a three month period through the use of paid social media ads. Unfortunately,
you didn’t reach that goal during your last campaign, and you want to review the data of your current campaign to
see if it is performing better. Now, you’ve set the context for this data story.
When you take a look at your past return on ad spend (ROAS) and conversion rates to compare them to this
campaign’s numbers, you notice an increase in both ROAS and conversion rates. That increase is the complication
of your campaign. Remember that although complication sounds unfavorable, this won’t always be the case.
Finally, the resolution of your campaign tells the story of why ROAS and conversion rates are soaring. Did the
ROAS and conversion rates increase because you changed the copy, switched out the images, ran a promotion in
your ads, or something else? Your findings are your resolution.
Key takeaways
Data isn’t just numbers and figures. Data tells a story that can be integral to your company’s future successes. To
create effective campaigns, you have to find the stories in the data. Identifying your context, complication, and
resolution will help you get there.
Prepare for your Job Search (Video)

Hi again. My name's Erica and I'm a people consultant at Google, known elsewhere as an HR business partner. The
last time we were together, you had just started this course and now here you are, almost at the end. Congrats on
your progress so far and on taking meaningful action to advance your career. Now that you're wrapping up the first
course,
I wanted to let you know about some of the great career building activities and resources you'll encounter in the rest
of this program.

In the next course and those that come after it, you'll have the chance to complete a number of hands on activities
based on real world marketing and e-commerce scenarios. They'll let you put what you're learning into practice
and help you discuss your skills with hiring managers in a concrete way. Be sure to save your work from these
activities. They'll be useful to you as you near the end of the program and start thinking about the next stage of your
digital marketing or e-commerce career. When you get to the last course in the program, we'll go in depth on
preparing for a job search. We'll cover how to find and apply for jobs that interest you. I'll also share some tips to
help you prepare for the interview process, so you'll know what to expect going in. You'll learn how to put together
an online portfolio that will help you demonstrate your knowledge and experience. You'll also complete a scenario
based project, from beginning to end, that you can put in your portfolio and use to present your thought process to
potential employers. Just like a customer journey, your career journey will be unique to you. But whatever path you
choose, the knowledge and resources you gain from this program will give you a strong start. You've accomplished
so much already and there's so much more to come. Good luck on the next part of your journey.

How to find job opportunities (Reading)

As you make your way through this program, you’ll want to consider which tasks you enjoyed or felt you were
successful at. Even though you are at the beginning of the course, it’s a good idea to begin considering which roles
you may want to apply for in the future. If you’re changing industries, this can be a daunting task—how can you
know which roles are the right ones for you? This reading provides you with an overview of how to find job
opportunities and what considerations to make when you find them.
Tips to find the right job
There are several steps you can take to get you closer to your desired job. Change can be difficult. Switching
industries and pursuing new opportunities takes time, dedication, and organization. Be patient as you complete the
tasks below, and aim to keep any notes or relevant documents in one place so you can always refer back to them.
Search job boards and analyze job descriptions
There are many job boards available on the internet. Sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor are all trusted job
boards, and they allow you to find employment in whichever industry you’re interested in. Visit these sites and
search using phrases like “digital marketing” or “e-commerce specialist.” If you’re searching for an entry-level
position, include words in your search such as “associate,” “assistant,” “coordinator,” and “entry-level.” As you
read job descriptions, take notes on which tasks and roles intrigue you the most.
Pro tip: As you comb through job descriptions, write down the words that seem most commonly-used by
companies, as they will come in handy later.
Take a professional inventory
Now that you’ve browsed job boards and know what employers are looking for, take a professional inventory of
yourself. Taking your professional inventory involves considering the traits and qualifications necessary to perform
digital marketing and e-commerce jobs and determining which ones reflect you as a professional. Are you
organized? Are you a natural leader, or maybe a natural innovator? Do you have a knack for all things social media?
Do you excel at communication and reporting to stakeholders? Think about projects, moments, and incidents at
work that you felt were successful—which of your skills contributed to that success?
Include anything about yourself that feels relevant. The format of your notes’ document is completely up to you, but
it could look like a journal entry, a list, or something else entirely.
Refine relevant documents and online presence
This is perhaps the most important task in this reading. You've already jotted down common words in job
descriptions, so now it's time to use those words to refine your resume, cover letters, and social media pages.
Start by reviewing your resume and cover letters. Make sure to highlight your skills and experience that are relevant
to digital marketing, even if you don't have a lot of experience. You can also use the common words you identified
to help you choose the right keywords for your social media profiles.
This is especially important if you're switching industries. By refining your online presence, you can show potential
employers that you're a great fit for the digital marketing job, even if you don't have a lot of experience.
After you’ve tailored your resume and cover letter, create a LinkedIn profile, if you don’t already have one. If you
do, give it a makeover just like you did your resume. Visit the profiles of other digital marketers and e-commerce
specialists for inspiration.
Leverage your personal network
Leveraging your personal network can be a great way to get in front of employers. Sometimes companies offer
referral programs to current employees, encouraging them to refer people they know for open jobs. Reach out to old
friends, colleagues, and people you know who may give you advice on the industry or even refer you for positions.
This step will probably occur after you finish this certificate program, but you can start networking at any point.
Acknowledge the little victories
Before you complete these milestones, you may want to create a spreadsheet to celebrate each step of the way.
Tracking your progress is a great way to hold yourself accountable while acknowledging your accomplishments.
You’re embarking on an exciting and inspiring journey—make sure you give yourself credit where it’s due!