Top 77 Social Media Marketing Interview Questions & Answers: Ultimate Guide 2024

Updated on 17 May, 2024

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Social Media Marketing Interview Questions & Answers

Attending a Social Media Marketing Interview and curious about what are all the interview questions will be asked? Prior to attending a social media marketing interview, it’s always recommended to research about the company, about the position prepare yourself for the social media marketing interview questions so that you can ace the interview.

Worry not! To help you boost your confidence and preparing you well to nail your interview, I have personally crafted this Social Media Marketing Interview Question and Answers Guide to help you understand the real-intend of paid Social media marketing interview questions. If you want to learn gain expertise on social media and digital marketing, check out our digital marketing programs.

Bookmark this article if needed and let’s get started.

Social Media Marketing Interview Questions and Answers 2024

Let’s segregate the article into three sections:

  1. Basic Level Social Media Marketing Interview Questions
  2. Advanced Level Social Media Marketing Interview Questions
  3. Personalized Social Media Marketing Interview Questions

Basic Level Social Media Marketing Interview Questions

A list of relevant social media questions asked during an interview will set the foundation for a lucrative career. Some of the standout social media interview questions are:

Q1. What is Social Media Marketing?

Ans: Social media marketing is a process of attaining attention, build your brand, increase website traffic and sales through social media websites. Brands and individuals simply achieve this by publishing engaging content on their social media channels, engaging with their followers, and running social media campaigns.

There are thousands of social media websites are available as we speak. Most important social media channels based on user base are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest.

The five pillars of social media marketing are

  • Strategy
  • Planning and publishing
  • Engagement
  • Analytics
  • Advertising

Q2. What are all the social media platforms I should use for my business?

Ans: The answer to this social media marketing interview question is totally dependent on the type of the company you are interviewing for. Whether if it’s an eCommerce, Local, B2C or B2B company. So, before attending the interview, prepare yourself for the answer.

Q3. What is the impact of social media on marketing?

Ans: First of all, the consumption of social media is so high and people use multiple social media platforms in a given day. So, it is important for brands to use social media marketing as one of their primary marketing strategy to reach their targeted customers, converting them into users, keep existing customers brand loyal, solve their problems with the product, answer their queries, and more.

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That’s one of the reason, social media marketing is one of the areas where companies are investing now. Social media reaches and connects with targeted audiences which were never possible before. Also, social media increases social traffic to your website.

It plays a part in improving your SEO ranking, brand authority, helps you understand the behaviour of your customers, builds relationship with them, improves sales and leads, make you an authority in your market, and if you want one more reason, your competitors are already spending a good amount of money trying to be the market leader.

Q4. Why social media is so popular?

Ans: Social media is so popular because there are multiple reasons people around the world use social media. Primary reasons are:

It gives the possibility to stay connected with friends and family.

It gives the opportunity to find and connect with new people.

Social networking sites are free, and they implement various algorithms to find the type of content users might like and display similar type of content on their feed section.

People use social media sites like Twitter to stay updated & connect with the brands they like.

People use sites like LinkedIn for professional networking.

Looking at beautiful visuals from people all over the place, share their photos with the help of sites like Instagram

To learn new things, to kill time with the help of video entertainment.

According to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.

Q5. List down some of the popular social media tools.

Ans: Following are the top social media tools to use:

Social Clout: Social clout is a social media analytics tool which helps advertisers to track engagement and ROI.

OptinMonster: OptinMonster lets the advertiser engage with visitors at the perfect moment.

Audiense: Audiense is a social tool let’s you find new target audiences and categorize them.

Tweepi: Tweepi helps you find relevant users interested in the topic of yours. You can engage with the users, following them and eventually make them follow you.

Socedo: Socedo finds people who come under your buyer persona radius. After you find your audience, you can segregate them into multiple divisions, so you can promote content accordingly.

Socialbakers: Socialbakers is a set of tools to help you make decisions based on your followers. It lets you measure the performances against your social competitors.

ZeroFOX: ZeroFOX is a tool that helps companies to be safe against hackers.

Followerwonk: Followerwork helps you optimize your audience. It recommends you the people to follow.

CrowdBooster: This tool gets real-time data. You can then make reports with your KPI.

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Q6. How can LinkedIn be used for marketing?

Ans: LinkedIn is one top social media platform to promote oneself or business. It has 310 Monthly Active Users as of now. First of all, the business account needs to be optimized for search. Publishing engaging content on company page regularly can increase the followers. Rich content has proved themselves to be pretty useful and will be helpful in increasing the engagement rate.

Periodically sponsoring your posts will give regular hikes which the page needs. We can use LinkedIn analytics to regularly monitor your performance and improve your strategy.LinkedIn is the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute content at 94%.

Q7. How will you boost Tweets or Twitter posts?

Ans: To best practices to boost tweets are:

  • Find out the best time to post on Twitter
  • Reach out to influencers and connect with them. Try to engage in a cross-promotional activity.
  • We can use twitter paid ads to quickly reach out to our targeted audiences.
  • Use hashtags properly. Not too much but the right ones to get more reach.
  • Schedule your tweets and use calendar to organize everything.
  • Use images, links, GIFs to increase retweets.
  • Use twitter polls to let users engage with your content.
  • Creatively participate in twitter chats to increase your brand awareness.
  • Share good content from across the web to increase follower count.
  • Use video in the post to improve the reach and engagement rate.

Best Digital Marketing Manager interview questions.

These are the best digital marketing questions for students and freshers preparing for an interview!

Q8. How social media can benefit a business?

Ans: Social media helps business by building awareness of the business and their products. Social media can be used for customer engagement as customers can communicate directly with brands. Social media organic posts don’t cost anything so even smaller companies can afford them. And, social media paid campaigns are relatively cheaper than many other online campaigns. Social media reaches all demographics. According to MarketingSherpa, Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%)

Social media users are active and sharing among their friends and family can help you reach more audience. Regularly engaging with your brand, makes you loyal thus it increases brand loyalty and value. Social media humanizes your brand. Apart from all these, it also increases your website traffic, generate leads, boosting sales, helps you reach influencers and improve your visibility, helps you promoting your content, helps you tackle negative comments about your brand, a medium to understand more about the sentiment of your customers, and helps you keep an eye of your competitors.

Also Read: Must Read SEO Interview Questions & Answers

Q9. How do you measure social media success?

Ans: Option 1

Social media success depends on the goal of the campaign.

If you would like to get conversion, it is the number of online leads, online purchase, content downloads, registrations for webinars, ebook downloads the campaign got.

If you would like to get engagement, it is about how many people comment, like, share the posts.

If you would like to get awareness, number of reach of the post is the primary metric.

If you would like to get traffic to your website, how many clicks you get to the website is the success factor.

Option 2:

The following are the metrics we can track to understand the success of the campaign

  • Follower growth
  • Likes and reaction to the posts
  • Track Mentions
  • Reach of your posts
  • Comments and replies to the posts
  • Sharing numbers of the posts
  • Social traffic to the website

Q10. What are best practices on Twitter?

Ans: Following are some of the best practices on Twitter

  • Don’t keep the tweets too lengthy that users won’t even read. Tweets are supposed to be crisp and hitting.
  • Don’t use too may hashtags. Stick to maximum 2.
  • With the help of Analytics, find what kind of tweets work and improve your strategy.
  • Twitter advanced search can help you manage your marketing activities.
  • With the help of twitter tools, schedule and plan your tweets.
  • Use multimedia to create more engagement.
  • Find the right time and day to post.
  • Engage with your audience.
  • Measure results and make decisions based on your experiments.
  • Search and add valuable followers.
  • Optimize your Twitter profile.
  • Use Twitter tools to schedule tweets.

Q11. How to use Social Media to help website blog promotion?

Ans: We can use the following strategies to utilize social media for blog promotion.

  • Sharing and promoting content across various platforms such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Create a short video about the blog post and share on video sharing platforms such as YouTube.
  • Conver them into infographics and share on sites such as Instagram
  • Use different titles and descriptions based on the social media platform.
  • Make different boards on Pinterest and promote on Pinterest.
  • Use sites such as Slideshare and give a backlink to your blog post.
  • Implementing social media sharing buttons on the blog.
  • If the blog post mentions a popular celebrity, mentioning him/her might let him/her share the blog post from his/her social account.

Q12. When do you not to engage on social media?

Ans: It is one of the common social media marketing interview questions. Few negative comments are just for attention. You need to know which one really needs attention and which one is not. People do anything to get attention nowadays and we don’t need to waste our resource on those kinds of comments.

If you really need to attend some hateful comments, one needs to be polite, not to engage in social media arguments but just to answer their comment as a business with a human touch.

Q13. What is the best time to post on social media?

Ans: It depends upon the social media platforms.

Facebook

The best time to post on Facebook is 9 am to 3 pm on Weekdays.

Sunday has the least engagement.

Wednesday has the best day to post on Facebook.

Instagram

The best time to post on Instagram is from Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 3 pm.

Wednesday has the best day to post on Instagram.

Best time to post on Instagram is Wednesday at 11 am and Friday 10-11 am.

Twitter

The best time to post on Twitter is Wednesday 9 am and Friday 9 am.

Consistent performance is your requirement? Monday to Friday from 8 am to 4 pm.

Saturday gets the worst engagement.

LinkedIn

The best time to post in LinkedIn is Wednesday 9 to 10 am and 12 pm.

The best day to post is Wednesday

From Tuesday to Friday from 8 am to 2 pm, good engagement guaranteed.

Q14. What are some general tips for social media success?

Ans: Some general tips for social media success are:

  • Find the best platforms for your market and business
  • Find and connect with influencers for cross-platform marketing
  • Grow your audience by publishing quality content consistently and at the right time.
  • Engage with your audience. Connect with them to understand better.
  • Set goals at the planning stage and measure results periodically and tweak wherever needed.

Q15. How long will it take to see results from social media marketing?

Ans: It depends on a lot of factors.

It also depends on what results actually means to your business. Engagement and leads might take longer and it’s about how good your content and strategy are. If you are looking for shares, fans, comments, other engagements you should see results in a month provided how engaging you and your content is.

It also depends on your budget. If you are ready to spend more money, the results will come way faster.

It also depends on the level of commitment and consistency.

Q16. Why did Google Plus fail?

Ans: Some of the online social media marketing interview questions and answers guides still not updated the answer and they talk about how good Google plus for the business. Google plus has been shut downed last year and Google plus didn’t take off because Google didn’t have a clear strategy when they launched Google plus. They started because they were afraid of Facebook which had been around for a while and was getting popular. But unlike, Facebook Google plus was not simple and clear to the users.

Circles in Google plus was not clear enough like Facebook groups. Its symmetric sharing system was confusing and less transparent to many users. When people started to use smartphones to access the internet, unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus wasn’t super mobile-friendly which further stopped it’s growth.

Q17. How to improve Facebook organic reach?

Ans: To improve Facebook organic reach, you need to share content which is specially designed to generate shares and attention. Take time and effort to engage with your audience. Increase your organic reach with paid promotion. Use Facebook as a community hub to connect with a lot of people. Collaborate with Facebook influencers so your business will be in the eyes of their followers. Find the right time to post on Facebook to improve your EdgeRank.

Q18. What is Facebook EdgeRank? Why is it important?

Ans: Facebook EdgeRank is an algorithm created by Facebook to determine what users see in their news feed.

It gives value to each Facebook post depends on various factors. Facebook EdgeRank helps users to get content they will most likely to like and lets them spend more time and return to Facebook more often.

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Through EdgeRank, Facebook decides which publisher’s content will appear on your targeted users’ newsfeed.

To make sure your content reach most of your followers, you have to follow some methods:

Post when your target users are online.

Post rich content like Videos, Images and GIFs.

Make them interact with your content (Like, Comment, Share)

Post content regularly

Q19. How to improve your Facebook EdgeRank?

Ans: Post rich content: Use photos, videos, GIFs to attract more users.

Post regularly: Affinity is an important factor in EdgeRank

Keep it short: Social media users don’t like to read paragraphs on social media. So keep it short and crisp.

Find the right time: Fresh content always get good EdgeRank so find the right time and schedule your post accordingly.

Engagement: If users engage with your content more, they will most likely to see your content again in their news feed, so design your content engagment friendly. Likes, Shares and Comments increase your EdgeRank.

Q20. How social media helps SEO?

Ans: Social media content gets indexed in search engines. Social media profiles rank in search results. Social media channels act as search engines so, people search about a brand/business in social media. So, having a good social media profile is essential to increase brand awareness.

Making your website and blog posts social media sharing-friendly let them reach more people and increase your social traffic. And, more links and more traffics, of course, make search engines notice you, in a good way.

Read, Social Media Manager Salary in India in 2024

Q21. How do you get more retweets?

Ans: One of the most expected Social media marketing interview questions. We can get more retweets by following few methods like

Tweeting at the right time

Asking for retweet,

Tweet links which our followers would like to share with their followers,

Retweeting others’ tweets,

Use hashtags,

Talking in audience language,

Ensuring you leave enough characters so that users would retweet,

Using visually appealing images,

Providing useful information like infographics,

Creative or funny content which would make them laugh and then repost,

Posting realtime news.

Q22. How do you deal with negative comments or an online reputation crisis?

Ans: There is a list of things I do follow in order to tackle negative comments or an online reputation crisis such as:

Acting quick – Before the issue becomes big and become viral, respond appropriately and provide or promise a solution to the user or users. Respond to the posts or comments in a polite way with a relevant and convincing answer.

Not deleting it – Deleting it makes it look like their claim is real and we are afraid of truth going out.

Informing the management – to let them know the situation and let them share any of their ideas

Responding to each complaint – to let the world knows you are not just a business to make money but care about their customers and trying best to give the best service possible.

Making one-page answer to all the questions they have – and promoting the page to rank on organically so when people search about it, they will be taken to the page instead of your social media channels. Even if users directly come to your social media page to ask about the issue, shift them from social media pages to take off the spotlight.

Showing the human side – by personalizing the message, not sounding like a bot, apologizing sincerely, don’t over-promise and show your human side.

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Q23. Why YouTube is important for marketing?

Ans: As video consumption is increasing day by day, YouTube is the King of the jungle which is actually the second most popular search engine. It gets more than 3 billion video views per day. If you need to promote videos, YouTube is one of the top places you should be looking for. If your video gets wildly popular, it will be featured on YouTube homepage which will make further improving the reach.

Q24. Is Social Media Marketing Better For B2C Or B2B Businesses?

Ans: Social media is important to all kinds of business. But the end goal and strategy should be different. B2B companies need to use some serious tone and share valuable content which helps users. B2C companies can share some lightweight content, hilarious social media posts to engage with their targeted audience.

B2B brands mostly target lead generation while B2C targets awareness, traffic and sales.

Q25. How does customer service fit in social media strategy?

Ans: Social media is generally to connect with friends and family. To find new people and engage with them. So, even when businesses enter into social media, it’s primary purpose is customer service as the platform is basically about people and not about brands. When companies have started their social media channels, customer service may not have been an intention.

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Now 74% people use social media to connect with the brands when they have doubts, complaints or anything else. Companies with faster and effective responses have an edge when it comes to customer service on social media.

Q26. How about we run a free contest on our FB page where fans like and share our posts to win?

Ans: Facebook doesn’t support posts that encourage users to like and share to win something. Because it is like cheating Facebook EdgeRank algorithm to improves it’s ranking. So, we should not run a free contest on Facebook page where fans like and share posts to win.

Q27. What makes a piece of social media content successful?

Ans: One of the primary reason a content go viral is how much people can relate themselves to the content. For example, a funny or emotional video of brother/sister makes real-life brothers and sister share it with each other. So, the content should be relevant to your target users so they can relate to the content.

It should evoke emotion. It can be awe, wonder, humour or sad. If it evokes emotion, it will go viral more likely.

Positive message content mostly gets shared more than content with negative messages.

Content which shocks people, content which make them look smart if they share, content which defines themselves to others, to grow relationships with others if they share it with them, gets more viral.

People share content when it’s from trustworthy source. So, citing trustworthy sources make them believe in the content.

Q28. How LinkedIn should be used to promote business?

Ans: Companies can gain social media advantage through LinkedIn by:

  • Participating with relevant groups.
  • Creating a group and nurture it.
  • Sharing relevant industry and business updates.
  • Sharing ideas, tips, tricks to targeted audiences which makes them follow your page and engage regularly.
  • Trying showcase pages.
  • Using LinkedIn ads to attract more audience.
  • Learning from LinkedIn analytics.

Q29. How to use Instagram for social media marketing?

Ans: We can use Instagram for social media marketing by

  • Utilizing product teasers that could urge people to purchase.
  • Using sponsored ads to reach more targeted audience.
  • Finding and connecting with influencers.
  • Crafting a consistent brand on Instagram.
  • Conducting competitor analysis and find their strengths and weaknesses.
  • Posting at the right times.
  • Making use of Instagram analytics.

Advanced Level Social Media Marketing Interview Questions

Q30. What are social media calendars and How did you create one?

Ans: It is one of the most common social media marketing interview questions. Social media calendars are apps or excel sheets used to schedule posts in advance. It will help you track which content will be shared so you can plan accordingly for the future.

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Social media calendars help you to organize otherwise a chaos task. It helps you save time and analyze your results easily.

I create a social media calendar by setting monthly social media goals, deciding on a content mix for your channels, adding content to the calendar.

After it’s ready, we can use it to create, schedule and publish social media posts.

We can use excel which is cost-saving or we can use external software with automation feature that can greatly reduce your effort and time needed.

Social media calendars use to track the performance of the posts which will be helpful to plan future campaigns and posts.

Q31. What are all the elements of a viral video?

Ans: There are numerous elements to consider when making a viral video:

The strategist needs to figure out the target audience for the video. If the video appeals to masses instead of narrow or niche-targeted people, the possibility of going viral is high.

The first 30 seconds is the important time where the maker has to hook the audience and let them decide to watch the entire vide

Eye-catchy titles are important to make users click the video. This is the first layer of attraction. If the title is interesting enough, the CTR rate will be high.

How are we promoting the video plays an important role. How are we pushing it online like sending them to influencers, journalists, bloggers, vloggers, social media platforms, etc.

The video should not be too lengthy.

Videos which are getting released on Mondays or Tuesdays work better because people love to watch videos when they work. (oops)

Create a catchy and interesting thumbnail.

Videos that provoke emotion has the ability to get shared easily.

Q32. What are all the skills required to become a social media manager?

Ans: Social media manager should have the following skills:

  • The ability to plan a strategy for the business.
  • Very good communication skills and convincing skills.
  • Very good verbal communication and copywriting skills.
  • Creativity to develop innovative campaigns and content
  • The ability to provide customer service and responding to complaints
  • The ability to organize and schedule posts and campaigns
  • The ability to connect with influencers, industry experts and leaders.
  • The ability to analyze the data to understand user behaviour
  • The ability to build and maintain a social media publishing calendar
  • The ability to strategize and look after social media campaigns, making changes when necessary
  • The ability to use tools to report, analyze social media campaigns
  • The ability to be both data-driven and creative while being people’s people.

Q33. What are the responsibilities of a social media manager?

Ans: Social media manager has the following responsibilities:

  • Understanding the company’s goal.
  • Understanding the business model, products, market and competitors.
  • Planning, strategy and goal setting.
  • Online reputation management.
  • Work with internal stakeholders.
  • Designing various social media strategies.
  • Recruit, manage, guide social media marketing team.
  • Collaborate with other marketing teams to integrate social media optimization.
  • Communicate with followers, respond to their complaints and queries.
  • Stay up-to-date with current trends, technologies, tools and applications.
  • Help the website’s blog by promoting them on social media.
  • Create new innovative strategies to increase brand awareness.

Q34. Mention few common social media marketing mistakes by brands

Ans: Some of the most common social media marketing mistakes brands make are:

  • Not having a social media strategy in the first place
  • Not understanding what their user wants
  • Ignoring negative comments
  • Publishing content like a faceless corporate instead of showing a human side
  • No customer service with the help of social media
  • Just posting some random stuff
  • Just promoting the services or products without sharing any useful information about the business
  • Not tracking or analyzing the performance of the channels.

Q35. Which key performance indicators do you consider to measure the performance of your social media initiatives?

Ans: There are various KPIs I consider important to measure the performance. It is important to target the right KPIs to get the desired result.

Some of my important KPIs are:

1) KPIs for Reach

Followers or Subscribers count, Number of Impressions, Amount of traffic to the website, Audience growth rate, Post reach, Share of voice.

2) KPIs For engagement

Number of Likes, Number of Shares, Number of Comments, Number of Mentions, Average engagement rate

3) KPIs for conversion

Sales revenue, Conversion rate, click-through rate

Q36. What is the difference between social marketing environment and social customer service environment?

Ans: Social customer service environment needs the ability to fix conflicts, empathy and a very good level of patience. The executive has to be able to recognize situations where he needs to contact and discuss with the management as doing anything on social media is not to answer one customer but to the whole follower group in some way.

Social marketing environment needs an executive who understands the customer journey, understand where a specific customer in that cycle, and guide them accordingly to help the business.

Q37. How to increase leads with social media?

Ans: The interviewer would like to know your abilities to increase leads for the business. At the end of the day, every business would want to increase sales or leads from every marketing campaign. You need to explain how much social media can improve their leads for the money they are investing in.

The answer should be customized for their business. Some strategies would not work for some types of business. Running contests can benefit some companies and not for other companies. Social media advertising is a widely used strategy multiple companies use today to increase their number of leads. You can explain how Facebook lead ads, Instagram lead ads, or LinkedIn lead gen forms can help their business.

Some of the other popular methods are Facebook custom tabs, hosting a hangout or webinar, using influencers to increase visibility and leads, sharing links to gated content, using geo-targeted search, and more.

Q38. How important is online reputation management in social media?

Ans: A good social media manager understands how customers view their brand and consider online reputation management is one of the top priority task and nothing about it should be taken lightly as it is vital to improve the brand loyalty. As a social media manager, you are supposed to find problems at their earlier stage and tackle them with diplomacy.

Explain how well you can handle ORM software and how much of a people’s person you are to handle this task.

Q39. What are the advantages of social media marketing over traditional marketing?

Ans: This is one of the social media marketing interview questions where the interviewer expects you to share the advantages of social media. Some of the advantages of social media marketing are:

Cost: Comparatively social media cost is much lesser than traditional or even search advertising cost.

Feedback: With social media, you get feedback from the targeted audience and can design future campaigns accordingly.

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More targeted: Being one of the inbound marketing methods, it’s more targeted.

Immediate results: You can make a product popular within a day.

Q40. What is the use of Google Analytics in social media marketing?

Ans: Google Analytics helps to track the amount of traffic directed towards your website from various social media channels.

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Personalized Social Media Marketing Interview Questions

Q41. Why did you choose social media as a career?

Ans: This is one of the most common social media interview questions. Every interviewer would like to know why did you choose this field? Just to earn money or you are passionate about what you do?

If you are passionate about social media, explain why you like social media, what made you choose social media, why your skills can help you make you a better social media manager.

Direct your answer in a way that explains how you can be a fit for social media as well as the position you are applying for. List out all the things you genuinely like in social media such as how unpredictable it is – in a good way so you will be up for changes and challenges all the time.

Q42. How to stay updated in Social Media?

Ans: I do follow a good number of industry blogs and forums to update myself with the latest trends, news, research, ideas and more.

I implement my knowledge into my day to day activities to understand how they work.

I attend seminars and workshops periodically to network with fellow social media experts and get more knowledge through their experiences.

I use LinkedIn groups to find current issues and solutions.

YouTube Channels, Podcasts and webinars help me keep updated.

Q43. Describe the most successful social media campaign you have run.

Ans: This is the most complex version of ‘What is your strength’ question. It’s time for you to shine. Talk about the most successful campaign in terms of impact (not just ROI or recent). Don’t just throw the numbers but share it as a beautiful story which anyone can understand without going too much about the stats and numbers.

Tell them what’s the idea behind the campaign, what you wanted to achieve and how you planned the strategy for the campaign, how you executed it, how you tweaked to improve the impact, how successful it was, how you tracked the success, how you analyzed and learned from the campaign, how it changed your viewpoint of certain idea/metric. Especially, let them know what kind of impact or profit it made for the company. They should not think you are just bragging so, be enthusiastic but don’t exaggerate. Finish it with the insights you gained from the campaign and how it will be helpful in your future campaigns.

Q44. How to evaluate the social media presence of a company?

Ans: We can evaluate the social media presence of a company with the following parameters

If the company has a strong presence in primary social media channels, especially the channels which would be beneficial to its type of business.

How frequent they are publishing posts.

How many followers they have and how much they are engaging with the brand and vice versa.

If the information provided in social media accounts are updated.

Do they use social media just to post news about them or they are actively connecting with their user base to engage and solve their problems.

How much effort they put to publish posts.

Q45. Explain about the least successful social media campaign you have run.

Ans: This might be one of the toughest social media marketing interview questions you might face. But you have to be honest with the answer. Let them know what was the least successful social media campaign of yours and why did it fail. The mistake can be as simple as a broken link or misplacing a tracking code. The question is to learn how you handle your failure and what you learn from it. So, explain the reason for its fail. And, most importantly, share what you taught from the mistake you made and how it helped you never make similar mistakes ever again.

Q46. Which online content has impressed you recently and why did it impress you?

Ans: This is one of the social media marketing interview questions where the interviewer wants to check how updated you are. You can either describe a content you have written or a content you checked online for this answer. If you are describing a content you viewed online, explain why did you like the content.

Try to explain the psychological reason behind it like how it provoked your emotion or how it made you relate to something or someone, etc. And, don’t mention a very old content when they explicitly ask for a recent content otherwise they might mistake you that you are not very much updated yourself in social media.

Q47. How to set a budget for social media advertising?

Ans: The first step is to determine the overall budget for all digital marketing efforts.

Then, we will need to determine the percentage of the budget we would like to spend on social media advertising.

Of the digital marketing budget, I recommend spending 30% on paid social media advertisements. But this one is a general one. Only after the ROI and potential, a clear plan must be made for the budget. The strategy should be adjusted every quarter in order to align with overall marketing goals.

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While creating social media strategy, there are few things which need to be considered like buyer persona profiles, calendars, branding profile and strategy, response plan, goals for determining the performance of the strategy.

The budget will be spent on:

Advertising

Content creation

Follower growth

Outsourcing

Q48. Have you had the chance to handle online reputation crisis?

Ans: First, let them know what online reputation crisis means to you and what kind of online reputation crisis you faced.

Describe the steps one by one starting with the type of problem you faced, how you analyzed the problem, type of strategy you created to tackle the issue, how you executed the strategy, how it panned out, what kind of post-crisis analysis you have done to learn from it and avoid those in the future.

Describe, what are all the steps we can take to avoid an online reputation crisis for the company you are getting interviewed. Check their online profiles thoroughly before the interview to find if somethings can be avoided, reduced or modified to avoid any such problems in the future.

How you define crisis and the methods you take to tackle can clearly say about your experience and the way you look at them. Tell them your experience of one or multiple crises you handled and how you managed efficiently. If you have not had any experience as such, tell them how would you manage in the future. Sometimes, they have a situation in mind and would want your explicit answer for that. Listen to the question and understand it clearly. Then share your answer. This is one of the social media marketing interview questions to understand how well-versed you are with ORM.

Q49. How did you grow traffic in your previous roles?

Ans: Let them know the real numbers and what are all the strategies you created to achieve those numbers. Also, share how they helped the company to increase the number of leads or sales which increased the overall ROI of the task.

Q50. What are our competitors doing in social media?

Ans: This will be one of the important social media marketing interview questions. It is to understand how well you analyzed their business and market which would show your homework and dedication to the interview. So, analyze their top 3 competitors and find out how are they promoting their business on social media. What kind of strategies they are using, List down their strong points as well as weak points.

Q51. What is the most important task of you as a social media manager?

Ans: This one of the common social media marketing interview question just to judge you on how you choose your priority on this task.

A social media manager has a long list of tasks to do but which one single task is very important that should be always on the top.

If you think about it, social media is about people. It’s all about the connection and networking. So, your primary task of a social media manager is to connect with your followers, solve their product related issues, help them to understand about the business and the products more and make them understand you care for them. It should not be a one-way communication but should always be the two way.

Q52. How active are you personally on social media?

Ans: The recruiters would like to see your social activeness while hiring for a social media professional. So, it is important for you to have a strong presence on major networking sites and share the details with the recruiters about the purpose of each networking site you are using and how much success you have been gaining against the effort you put.

Q53. Which is your favourite brand on social media and why?

Ans: Mention your favourite brand and share some details about the brand. Let them know why you like their account. The important part of the section is to share the reason behind their success because that will show you how much knowledgable you are to understand what goes into making a successful brand like the one you are mentioning. This is one of the social media marketing interview questions to understand if you know how the market works.

Q54. Which channels were most effective in your previous experience and what made it most effective?

Ans: To make them understand completely, let them know the type of brand you were running campaigns for. So, prepare your answer based on the analytics you made post-campaign. Explain how effective the channel is and what kind of strategies you made which increases the effectiveness of the channel. And, explain why other channels could not get that level of success and the reason behind it.

Q55. Explain a successful social media campaign you created and executed from the beginning to the end.

This is one of the most favorite social media manager interview questions you’ll face, irrespective of the type of industry you’re applying for. Get a sense of how your social media professional approaches their work because they will be in charge of creating and carrying out campaigns. Creative individuals should be able to clearly describe the issue they were seeking to solve, the goals they established, the strategies they employed, and the metrics they used to assess their success.

Being an intricate process, developing a social media strategy demands a thorough grasp of your target market, brand, goods, and rivals. It’s critical to keep your brand’s objectives and your audience’s demands front and center throughout the whole process.

Additionally, a social media questionnaire like this also expects you to master the following process:

Build the creative and content:

It’s time to develop the content once you’ve established your understanding of the “why” behind your campaign. Here are five places to get creative inspiration to help you create a genuinely unique social media campaign:

  • Influencers and creators
  • Align your campaign with customers’ journey
  • Share relevant user-generated information
  • Ensure your content formats align with customers’ needs

Choose the relevant metrics to measure success:

To accurately assess the performance of your social media initiatives and how effectively your campaign translates to achieving business goals, it is crucial to select the right metrics to track and evaluate. Make sure to select metrics consistent with your goals, given the vast quantity of social data already available.

Q56. What is the Most Challenging Assignment you Handled Successfully?

This is one of the most crucial social media marketing interview questions that expects you to have a clearcut answer.

You have a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate to the interviewer your capacity for problem-solving and crisis management with this question. Pick a situation where you faced great difficulty and conquered it. 

Establish the context of your response by mentioning the company you worked for, the time period, your key performance measures, etc. This is one of the top social media questions where you can give a succinct account of the difficulty you encountered and how it affected the company.

Be sure to explain how you solved the difficulty. Give them as much background information as possible so they understand how you approach situations like these. Telling the interviewer what you took away from the experience and how to use it for this particular job is also crucial.

Advanced and Personalized Social Media Marketing Interview Questions

Q57: How should ethical issues in social media marketing be handled? What are some ethical considerations?

In social media marketing, ethical factors to take into account are responsible data use, privacy concerns, and openness. It is imperative for marketers to emphasize user privacy, seek agreement for data usage, and be truthful about sponsored content. Respecting moral principles improves the brand’s reputation and fosters audience trust.

Q58. What are the advantages of using social media for employee advocacy?

Encouraging staff members to post and share the brand’s content on their own social media accounts is known as employee advocacy. This increases the brand’s trust, authenticity, and reach. Benefits include the ability to reach new audiences through employee networks, enhanced employee engagement, and increased brand visibility.

Q59: Describe the idea behind a social media crisis management plan and its significance.

A social media crisis management plan delineates protocols for prompt reaction and group mobilization in adverse circumstances. In order to reduce harm and regain trust, it places a strong emphasis on message consistency, protecting the company’s brand. When responding to “what is social media interview questions,” it is imperative to recognize the significance of these plans in order to demonstrate a calculated approach to upholding a great online presence.

Q60: What is the best way for firms to use hashtags in their social media campaigns?

On social media, hashtags make it easier to find and classify material. Companies can use relevant and current hashtags for their campaigns, develop custom hashtags for them, and challenge their fans to use them in challenges. The effective utilization of hashtags boosts a social media campaign’s discoverability, engagement, and overall success.

Q61: How does social media fit into the customer relationship management (CRM) framework?

Because it offers a channel for direct client communication, social media is essential to CRM. Social media platforms allow businesses to interact with customers, get feedback, and establish rapport. A full picture of client interactions across channels can be created by integrating social media data into CRM systems.

Q62: What steps do you take to guarantee brand coherence on different social media channels?

Keeping a consistent look and message on all social media channels is part of brand consistency. Make use of unified speech, texting, and images. Put brand rules and templates into practice, and periodically check profiles to make sure the data is accurate. Maintaining consistency strengthens the brand’s identity and promotes brand recognition.

Q63: How can companies conduct market research using social media?

Businesses can use the abundance of real-time data available on social media for market research. To comprehend consumer preferences and industry dynamics, keep an eye on discussions, examine patterns, and get feedback. Utilize social media channels for surveys and polls to obtain insightful data for tactical decision-making.

Q64. When making a social media content calendar, what are the most important things to keep in mind?

Take into account elements like content themes, posting frequency, scheduling, and platform-specific details when making a social media content schedule. To keep viewers interested, balance the content schedule with your overall marketing objectives and provide a variety of content kinds (such as instructional, amusing, and promotional).

Q65. How can social media strategies make use of influencer marketing, and what does it mean?

Influencers with large social media followings are used in influencer marketing to advertise goods and services. Businesses incorporate this tactic into their social media campaigns by interacting with relevant influencers, building relationships, and negotiating deals for sponsored content. Gaining an understanding of influencer marketing is essential for answering digital marketing interview questions and demonstrating your proficiency with modern marketing techniques.

Q66: What are some ways to employ user-generated content in social media marketing?

By encouraging clients to produce and distribute brand-related material, you can make the most of user-generated content (UGC). To increase UGC, businesses can host competitions, employ unique hashtags, or display client endorsements. This engages the audience and fosters trust and authenticity.

Q67: How does narrative fit into the social media marketing mix?

In social media marketing, storytelling entails developing relatable narratives, establishing emotional ties, and humanizing the business. A gripping story improves attention span and content recall. It’s crucial for applicants facing social media manager interview questions to show that they understand the power of storytelling.

Q68: How can companies enhance their social media strategy with social listening?

Social listening is keeping an eye out on social media sites for brand mentions, conversations, and comments. Businesses may comprehend consumer feelings, spot patterns, and modify their social media strategy by examining this information. It facilitates remaining sensitive to the wants and demands of the audience.

Q69: Could you elaborate on the idea of A/B testing in relation to social media marketing?

A/B testing, compares two versions of the same advertisement or social media post to see which works better. Also known as split testing, A/B testing helps maximize engagement and conversion rates by using elements like headlines, pictures, and call-to-action buttons. Social media material is improved and refined through this iterative approach. A/B testing is directly related to digital marketing questions , with a presence on the digital workspace A/B testing can be much easier.

Q70: What is your approach to managing a crisis on social media?

It’s critical to communicate quickly and clearly during a social media disaster. Acknowledge the problem, give accurate information, and demonstrate your resolve to find a solution. Address client concerns as soon as possible, and if needed, move the discussion to private channels. Candidates answering social media interview questions must have a solid understanding of crisis management, which emphasizes the capacity to overcome obstacles and protect brand reputation.

Q71. What are the most important developments in social media marketing that you are seeing right now?

There is a high change your interviewer will ask you SMM interview questions like these.

Trends may change after my last update in January 2022, but some recurring themes are the proliferation of video content, the emergence of ephemeral content, the growing significance of social commerce, and the significance of authenticity and openness in brand communication.

Q72: What are the differences between organic and paid techniques for social media advertising?

Paid social media advertising needs money, whereas organic approaches try to gain popularity without investing any money. The efficacy and reach of combining both tactics are frequently increased.

In order to prepare for these social media interview questions and answers for freshers, recruits should understand the differences between paid and organic techniques.

Q73: What is the best way for a company to use Facebook Groups for marketing?

By fostering a community around a company or industry, Facebook groups can be used for marketing. Interact with the group’s members, distribute insightful information, and use it as a forum for customer service. Members develop a sense of loyalty and community as a result, which eventually helps the company.

Q74: Could you clarify the notion of social media algorithms and their influence on the visibility of content?

This is an example of advanced social media optimization interview questions that you may come across.

Relevance, interaction, and timeliness are just a few of the variables that social media algorithms take into account when deciding what information consumers see in their feeds. Comprehending these algorithms is essential to maximizing the visibility of your content. Wider distribution of interesting content is more likely when it conforms to algorithmic preferences.

Q75: How do you modify your social media tactics to reach a variety of target demographics and platforms?

Changing a social media strategy means adjusting the approach to the specifics of the platform and the preferences of the target audience. It takes demographic research on platforms and keeping up with industry trends to run an effective social media advertising campaign. Examining social media marketing questions and answers can provide professionals looking to maximize their tactics with thorough insights.

Q76: How can visual content be enhanced for more interaction and what role does it play in social media marketing?

Since visual content grabs attention and spreads information quickly, it’s essential for social media marketing. Use attention-grabbing designs, make sure your photos and videos are of the highest quality, and make sure your content fits the recommended size of each platform. For accessibility, alt text and captions should go well with the visual components.

Q77. What are some ways that companies could utilize user analytics to improve their social media strategy?

User analytics offer insightful information about the interests and behavior of audiences. Through the examination of analytics like demographic information, engagement rates, and click-through rates, organizations can see trends and modify their social media approach. This data-driven strategy aids in the development of more successful and focused marketing.

Conclusion

With this, we finish our Social Media Marketing Interview Questions and Answers Guide. We hope our guide is helpful. We will be updating the guide regularly to keep you updated.

If you wish to explore and become an expert in Digital Marketing, check out MICA and upGrad’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing & Communication. Become an expert in social media marketing, content marketing, branding, marketing analysis and PR.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How is social media marketing different from traditional marketing?

Social media marketing is completely different from traditional marketing and is a lot better.
In traditional marketing, the primary channels of marketing are TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, and magazines. It provides a wider reach, but it cannot be used effectively in customer targeting and only provides one way of communication- brand to customer. Traditional marketing is no longer considered effective in this rapidly evolving market scenario.
Whereas social media marketing provides convenience in posting, revision of strategy, better user targeting, two-way engagement (B2C and C2B), and the performance of all marketing initiatives are measurable.

2. What are the things to take care of in social media marketing?

Social media marketing is effective and can bring you a lot of potential paying customers and give you the reach that no other marketing forms can provide. The following are the things to take care of before starting your marketing campaign: be clear about your goals, research about your target audience, be authentic, set up a social media calendar, use automation tools, humanize your brand and be aware of changing trends.

3. What are the differences between social media marketing and digital marketing?

Social media marketing is part of the larger digital marketing strategy.
Digital marketing strategy includes all online and offline digital channels like social media, TV ads, SMS, email, video marketing, website marketing, Search Engine Marketing to the target audience.
Whereas, social media marketing is limited to online social media channels and it heavily depends on the content strategy to engage with the target audience. It cannot be ignored in any digital marketing strategy, because:
1. It offers the fastest way to reach the target audience
2. It is good for SEO
3. It helps to interact with your customer and know what they want

4. What to Say in a Social Media Marketing Interview?

Highlight your experience with social media platforms, successful campaigns, and strategy development, emphasizing your creativity and analytical skills.

5. How to Prepare for a Social Media Interview?

Research the company’s social media presence, review your past work, and stay updated on current trends and metrics.

6. What is Social Media in Simple Words?

Social media is a set of online platforms for creating, sharing, and interacting with content and people.

Did you find this article helpful?

Dilip Guru

He is a Growth Hacker, Digital Marketer & Blogger. He loves solving problems of scale and long term digital strategy.

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Do you have these 17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills? Questions to ask while evaluating an influencer marketing campaign: 1) Are you working with the right influencers? When it comes to the influencers, it’s not just their incredible number of followers that matter but also the kind of conversations they have with their network. You are working with the right influencers if they love your brand by genuinely tagging/mentioning you in most of their conversations or if they are already talking about your forte/industry and all you need to do is give them a brand name as a plugin to their social chatter. When Amazon India launched Kindle Paperwhite in India, they wanted to inculcate the habit of e-reading among the Indian readers. So, they got bestselling Indian authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi to feature in digital films which showcased the authors’ journey from reading books to e-books. These film spoke volumes to the Indian readers subtly highlighting the features of Kindle. 2) Do your influencers have the right followers? All influencers have extensive reach owing to their massive fan following. But the kind of followers they have plays a crucial role in an influencer marketing campaign as that defines the actual reach of your content. For e.g. if you are a brand selling baby products, let’s say Smart Bottoms Inc, and you have teamed up with mothers, it is essential for them to have other mothers as their major followers with active conversations revolving around babies and motherhood. Only then will your brand mention seem relevant and authentic. How to become a T Shaped Marketer? 3) Are you supporting your influencers? Your collaboration with your influencers doesn’t end at briefing them about your objective and letting them do their work by mentioning you everywhere. As a brand, influencer promotion is your responsibility wherein you leverage the content shared by your influencers by sharing, re-sharing and posting them on your brand pages periodically (with relevant tags and mentions) to appeal to your influencers’ network and attract loyal followers for your brand. Disney Baby’s Instagram account has built its popularity solely by repurposing and re-posting UGC content sent by moms from around the world. By giving out themes and tips on motherhood and parenting, this account has not only encouraged moms from around the world but has also shown them ways to have fun creatively with their babies. 4) Have you set any guidelines? Setting up ‘influencer guidelines’ for all your influencer marketing campaigns is essential as that will influence your sales through top-of-mind brand recall than just increase the number of followers. For e.g. on platforms like Instagram where you can tag brands in the photos, setting up a clause to tag you in the comments/caption will help as the tags are generally not readable on the photos whereas in the caption they are loud and up front. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses 5) Is your campaign social enough? Finally, is your influencer marketing campaign social enough to be talked about in a wide network as opposed to a niche audience? Does your campaign have the potential to be a social media influencer in itself, trend for a while and lead to a V.2.0 purely on the basis of its popularity? Well, let’s evaluate it together by looking at an example. Consider Tata Bolt’s #GetSetBolt. It looks like Tata Bolt had all the answers to the above questions before coming up with an idea for its launch campaign #GetSetBolt. It teamed up with just four powerful twitter influencers and #GetSetBolt to reach out to its social savvy millennial TG (Q1.) – who also happened to be the followers of the said four influencers (Q2). Unlike the usual influencer campaigns where the influencers are asked to tweet and make noise, Tata Bolt created a reality show called #GetSetBolt where the influencers were locked in glass cubicles. To get out of these cubicles, the influencers had to procure the symbolic Bolt key. They had to achieve this by generating maximum buzz amongst their followers (Q4) using the hashtags #GetSetBolt and their team names – #TeamAshwin,#TeamGabbar, #TeamTrendulkar and #TeamRahul named after their twitter handles. During the campaign, Tata Bolt through its own Twitter handle seeded tweets, updates, video snippets featuring the influencers and the progress of the contest regularly to leverage the accelerating buzz created by the influencers (Q3). But what made this campaign a social media influencer in itself was the type of engagement. (Q5). Influencer Marketing is a Silver Bullet if done correctly! The fact that it got the followers to actively participate along with the influencers with gratifications lined up for both the top influencers and followers (here supporters) made this influencer marketing campaign one-of-its-kind. Also, the gamification bit added a lot more fun and frolic to the campaign where the Twitterati actually played along to unlock the key instead of tweeting a cascade of senseless tweets. Simplicity and tact, that’s all it took Tata Bolt to #GetSetBolt and make the best out of an ordinary influencer marketing campaign. So, how do you evaluate your influencer marketing campaigns? Have you come across any unique insights that are share-worthy? Go ahead, spill the beans. We’re all ears! Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – How Marketers can enable Sales for Success? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/abhishek-ballabh.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing  
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by Rahul Karthikeyan

24 Jul'16
How much do you know about Digital Marketing?

7.16K+

How much do you know about Digital Marketing?

Who is this Digital Marketing Quiz for? Are you an Entrepreneur with a fancy for Digital? Or a Brand Manager wanting to focus on Online Marketing? Maybe a domain expert looking to diversify her skill sets? Well, this test is for everyone, conventional marketing professionals who are interested in Digital Marketing as well as new entrants who are looking to make a start in the digital domain. Experienced Digital Marketers between 4-6 years of experience also will find this challenging. Digital Marketing Knowledge is hard to test, honestly speaking, what do you test in a Digital Marketer? Her capability to manage Lakhs of campaign budgets across Google and Facebook? Her ability to create a robust inbound engine that takes away paid marketing heavy lifting to ensure a sustainable CAC? Or her ability to optimize landing pages, create killer email drips and be a pro at Analytics? If you are a beginner in digital marketing marketing, and want to gain expertise, check out our digital marketing courses from top universities.  17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills which will help you Rock! We at UpGrad’s Digital Marketing Program team were pondering the same questions, which lead us to create this Cross-Channel Digital Marketing Program. After some passionate debates among domain experts, we agreed is that a true Digital Marketer is someone who can fit all the pieces back to the puzzle! What to Expect in this Digital Marketing Quiz? Well, we have created an adaptive learning test, which first takes your input on how well you think you know Digital Marketing. The consecutive questions adapt on the basis of your performance. So even for beginners, this test is a great experience to discover the scope of Digital Marketing. For pro Digital Marketers, this may end up becoming an addictive challenge you love to solve.   Be ready to expect anything and everything starting with an email drip campaign to A/B Testing, to Programmatic buying! Friendly advice: Don’t bother searching these questions on Google, you won’t find them! You could try to crack the test multiple times, and we will appreciate your attempts. 😉 Top 15 Digital Marketing Interview Questions Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses What happens if you perform really well? We’ve kept aside some really awesome goodies and gift vouchers for the top scorers. But that’s not it, we’ll also be giving out scholarships to a select few of our 5 Month Digital Marketing Online Program. So spread the word to all Digital Marketing enthusiasts out there! If you want to learn and work on real projects, engage with industry mentors & receive a valuable certificate, check out MICA’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication specialises in Branding, Social Media, Content Marketing and Analysis. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing
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by Nilotpal Roy

12 Sep'16
How to Become a [T] Shaped Marketer in the Digital Age?

5.83K+

How to Become a [T] Shaped Marketer in the Digital Age?

What is the secret to a Successful Marketing Career? (At least 1 of them) See by the time you finish reading this article, two people across India will be placed with a digital marketing job! To give you some perspective of the abundance of supply vs demand. Coming to demand, across the digital landscape, there are several roles that exist like brand management, or content, or SEO; or even PPC. Further, secondary functions like graphic design or data analysis also play an important role in digital marketing. There are tons of questions that people have when they want to upskill themselves from say, traditional to Digital. Many of these revolve around salaries, skill sets, domain knowledge, techniques, strategies and what not! Then there are more fundamental questions like: “should I join an agency? A brand or work as a freelancer? ” Or “Which digital marketing segment is right for me?” Before any of this, how do you envision your Digital Marketing career growth, the answer lies in the T. Who is a T Shaped Digital Marketer? The answer to these existential questions are not simple, some gurus have coined the term a “T Shaped Marketer” which probably makes the closest cut. Rand Fishkin from Moz mentions 4 very interesting insights of T Shaped Digital Marketers which have contributed to Moz & other organizations. Being a T Shaped marketer is highly-desirable these days as we’ve seen in the industry. It means you not only have an in-depth knowledge in one function of marketing (like, paid marketing), but also understand marketing functions overall. This eventually helps you grow towards an all-encompassing role, not limited to a silo. Truth be told, most industries are hungry for T Shaped marketers, not just Start Ups! The Secret Sauce behind T Shaped Marketers? Well we thought so too, a T Shaped marketer is probably a myth! But  at the depths of our research at UpGrad, we realized that at the heart of every successful digital marketer lies 3 essential elements: Having a data driven approach Grasping & solving the business challenge Application & not just digital strategy gyan Now, once we identified these core elements, we made sure that in our digital marketing program was raised on these 3 pillars.  We realized we were not the only ones thinking about T Shaped marketing… Who else is talking about the [T]? T-shape marketer is somebody who has a broad understanding of different marketing channels and a deep domain expertise in either 1 or 2 areas. What you typically find in a market are domain experts, people who specialize in one specific area, but what you need is, and that is where the biggest gap is, people who come with broad understandings of different channels and have specializations in certain areas. – Karan Sarin, Chief Marketing Officer at Razorpay So let’s think out of the box, and argue, why these three elements are required for you to become a digital marketer? Secret Sauce Element #1 : Solving a business challenge All Channels, Tools and Strategies are Useless if You Can’t Solve a Business Problem Whether it’s a brand you’re working for, or an agency, or even as a freelancer; you need to understand how for different business situations; channels & strategies combine to deliver optimum results. How did we infuse business situations in our Digital Marketing Program? Mere Case Studies would not cut it! So we identified business challenges across industries, company sizes and their maturity and picked out 15 businesses. These were facing marketing challenges across one or many digital marketing functions. What did HDFC Life do when their Google Search Channel was proving too expensive? How did layered targeting on Display Channels solve this? Did a Microsite really transform Thomas Cook’s revenue streams with round breaking SEO? How did persona based creatives help in habit generation for Grofers?  All of these case studies were infused at the end of every one of our program modules. But you can just read a 1 pager about 100 such case studies on say, the lighthouse insights blog! The difference is, we actually went to each of these brands, sat down with them, understood their challenges & how they solved them. After multiple interactions we then created a custom, detailed case study. These have data tables of campaign performances too. We’ve kept the format at an Ivy League standard, meaning, you don’t just get the problem & solution to spoon fed to you. Instead, you are given the business challenge with data tables all in videos which recreate the atmosphere the brand was truly facing. You then need to apply the learning from the module to actually solve the business case. Post submitting your answers, you are graded based on our rubric grading systems and finally exposed to the solution. You get to experience the way that brand applied strategies to succeed. Are you a [T] Shaped Marketer? Take the Test Now! Secret Sauce Element #2 : All Gyan means Jack is dull! Digital Gyan is one thing, Applying it for a Real Life Business is what Industries seek After speaking to hundreds of seasoned digital marketers in the industry, we realized that students can only become job ready if they are experiencing real life marketing campaigns for a business. We partnered with GentClub, an upcoming e-commerce apparel recommendation engine that picks out outfits for you based on your requirements. Owing to the digital first nature of the business, it fit perfectly into every avenue of paid and organic marketing. Starting from google adwords, SEO, display marketing, social media marketing, remarketing to content, inbound marketing and much more. Doing this individually at the scale for hundreds of students was a challenge. So we focused on the major elements that a student needs to learn. Primarily: Business goals translating to campaign goals Competency for all launch elements like – Campaign structure, Targeting, Communication & Settings Post Launch optimisation drive If a student is solving the Live Project element of remarketing, he put into the shoes of the marketing manager of GentClub. He will then need to plan remarketing campaigns for GentClub basis their target audience. Once campaigns are launched, there is an optimisation drive, where all students are given the chance to improve the campaign’s elements like creatives, targeting, bids, budget and more, based on the real data of the campaigns. For the same students need to focus on channel level data, and optimise based on his learning from the remarketing module. If his suggestions are chosen as the final ones to be applied on the marketing campaign, then if improves his grades on the Live Project segment. Who else is talking about the [T]? Imagine the alphabet ‘T’. There is a stem which goes horizontally and there is a very deep vertical stem. So, you might be a specialist in search engine optimisation or social media marketing or email marketing but you need to understand all the other components of digital marketing as well. So, if you are not a T shaped marketer, and are very comfortable with (at least aware of) tactics other than yours, you will not be able to contribute effectively to the campaign. Apurva Chamaria, Vice-President & Head – Corporate Marketing, HCL Secret Sauce Element #3: A Horse with Blinds can only Execute! Understanding the Marketing Journey: Depth in Strategy is Key If you are new to marketing, or already a marketing professional in the branding segment, or a domain expert, or someone entirely new to marketing; you need a different approach to understanding channels, buyer personas and digital marketing metrics. In the beginning you need a website and/or app. Be it any brand, you would be building a presence, getting quality traffic across different digital channels like Google & Facebook. Working on your organic strategy with SEO driven content. Working on repeat user acquisition and finally setting up analytics dashboards to optimise your marketing efforts. At the heart of all these strategies lies the customer purchase funnel and it’s importance. While strategies are created on Digital, the target groups and their journeys across the purchase funnel of attract, nurture, convert & delight are always in focus. In the end, the student will be in a position to tie all of these digital marketing channels to create a cross-channel digital media plan that solves the brand’s multi-objective goals. Data elements help. One needs clear application driven questions that test business goals’ premise, the targeting and communication elements across all digital marketing disciplines. The rubric driven assessment layer vouches to do exactly that with more than 200 questions, that has a mix bag of data tables and comprehensions. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses Extra Seasoning #4: Tools will give you the Reality Check! The Digital Tool Artillery Executing channel strategies is only possible if one has clarity on how to use tools over a spectrum of elements in Digital. These start from goals, targeting options, ad formats, bid and budget flexibilities and also the array of optimisation capabilities that different tools & interfaces allow. In our Digital Marketing Program there is a resources section that ties to every channel, and showcases exactly how each interface & tool can be used to launch campaigns and derive insights for a given business goal. Some insightful tools like Unmetric for social listening or Hootsuite for social scheduling has benefited students. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses Are you a [T] Shaped Marketer? Take the Test Now! This 10 question adaptive test will test your skill quotient across top Digital marketing disciplines. How much did you score? upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing
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by Nilotpal Roy

04 Nov'16
How To Make Facebook Ads Work for B2B Marketing

5.28K+

How To Make Facebook Ads Work for B2B Marketing

This is a Guest Post by Deepak Kanakaraju  What’s the secret? Advertising on Facebook is a hard nut to crack. I have seen digital marketers complain that Facebook ads do not work at all. Some advertisers say it works for B2C (Business to Consumer) but not B2B (Business to Business). To be honest, I have seen very few marketers crack B2B marketing with Facebook. The behavior of Facebook Ad Engine is as complex as a person and you will understand it better as you spend more time with it. Recently, I have been running a lot of Facebook campaigns for B2B companies and I have learnt a thing or two about how to make B2B marketing work on Facebook. What does it mean to create the right ad? The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that the mood of people looking at Facebook Ads is completely different than when you advertise on Google AdWords or LinkedIn. When it comes to Google, people are looking for you and they are searching for you with ‘keywords.’ Here, you can directly tell them what your offer is and they will just buy it. On LinkedIn, people are in a serious mood as it’s a professional network. But people log onto Facebook for catching up with their family and friends. Your ad may backfire and could even hurt your brand if you do not get the messaging right. Imagine that you are in a store and someone walks in and asks for a specific product. Google search is like that. Imagine you are in a business networking event and you walk up to a person to talk about your business. LinkedIn is like that. However, think about approaching someone to pitch your product who is having a good time at a bar with his friends. He is sure to get irritated. Facebook ads are like that! You are interrupting people who are just not in the mood for what you have to sell. Now think about what would get a person’s attention when they are hanging out with their friends… Probably an offer that is too good to be true and an offer that they cannot refuse. If you understand their needs and pain points, you can create such an offer. It has to be something that is free, useful, doesn’t require a huge commitment from them and easily accessible. A free e-book, or a free webinar, accessible from a landing page which collects names, email IDs and phone numbers, would work well in this case. Once you generate the lead, take them down the funnel, slow and steady. If you start selling early, people may get pissed off. I have seen people come back to the ad and leave negative comments if you managed to catch their attention with a nice ad but then didn’t deliver on the promise. How can you target the right people at the right places? If you understand your customers, targeting the right people on Facebook would be easy. You need to get your targeting down to a narrow group of people who are your potential customers. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. You can do some good targeting only when you have a lot of details about your customers. You should know about your average customers’ needs, pain points, demographics and psychographics. What’s their age, relationship status, what are their goals and challenges, their household income, what they read and consume online, and more. The more information you have, the better you can target. When you are targeting based on interests, make sure you narrow your audience with the ‘AND’ parameter, rather than the ‘OR’ parameter. For example, if you are targeting startup CEOs in Bangalore, you can target them with their title and interests; for instance, online news sites like YourStory, Inc42 and so on. If you add title ‘AND’ interests to match, your targeting should get pretty accurate. Note that the narrower your targeting, the higher will be your CPM and CPC. But that’s ok, because B2B leads are going to be much more valuable, and FB ads with good targeting will definitely be much cheaper, than LinkedIn Ads. Another way to target potential customers is to re-target your website visitors. With Facebook Pixel you can now re-target your website visitors on Facebook. If you haven’t installed the Facebook Pixel yet, do it right away (here’s an implementation guide). Apart from telling you your capability to re-target, it would give you various options such as conversion tracking, deeper insights into your audience and the ability to create lookalike audiences. With re-targeting, your target may be very small. However, another interesting thing you could do is, develop lookalike audiences based on your website visitors. Facebook will look at all the data they have on your existing website visitors and based on that will create a much larger audience for you, who are similar to your seed audience. Facebook uses its own algorithm to do that and does it extremely well. Work on your funnel and target market If you have a high enough budget, you can reach any target audience on the web. However, since we have limited budgets for advertising, we need to be efficient with our campaigns. The only way to be efficient is to ensure good targeting, good ads and an efficient funnel. What about increasing CTR? If you target the right people, your spillage would be less. Your CTR will be high and your conversions will also be high. In addition, to get a high CTR, you need to also have good ads. These ads should not only attract attention but also communicate the right message to your audience. Once you get your target’s click, you should have a good landing page that converts well. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses You should also have an ace inside sales process, or a drip marketing flow – that converts cold leads into hot leads; and a strong product that sells at a favorable profit margin. Your LTV and profit margin, per customer, will define how much you can spend on your marketing campaigns. The right targeting, the best possible ads, an efficient sales funnel and a strong product are the four main pillars of a successful business. All marketing channels are just a means to reach your target customer. If you get these right, not only will your Facebook Ads work, but any digital marketing campaign will bring you successful results. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – How Marketers can enable Sales for Success? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/abhishek-ballabh.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing
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by Deepak Kanakaraju

29 Nov'16
Digital Marketing Careers with Sujoy Golan : Marketers Unite Podcast

5.34K+

Digital Marketing Careers with Sujoy Golan : Marketers Unite Podcast

Welcome to the UpGrad Podcast, ‘Marketers Unite!’ In this post, Neil Roy of UpGrad talks to Sujoy Golan – current head of Marketing at Unbxd & former Global Digital Head at InMobi.   PODCAST Timeline (in minutes): 0-4:00 – Explore Sujoy’s Tech Background 4:00-8:50 – Learning at DirectI 8:50-10:50 – Transitioning to FlipKart 10:50-16:00 – Growth at Inmobi 16:00-21:00 – Vision at Unboxed 21:00-24:20 – Views as an IIM-C Faculty 24:20-26:27 – Parting Advice on Digital Marketer’s Unite Series with Sujoy Golan Neil: First of all, I’d like to thank Sujoy for speaking to us and kicking off UpGrad’s, first ever, Podcast Series. ‘Marketers Unite’ could not have asked for a better and more insightful career journey where Marketing and Digital Marketing is concerned. Sujoy was candid and completely transparent regarding the struggles, challenges and ultimately, victories that have characterized his ascent in this domain. It goes without saying that the world of Digital, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution as some like to call it, is already here and having an impact on businesses like never before. Marketing, has been especially reformed. Sujoy helps us get a sneak-peek into this phenomenon and how it already is (and is likely to) affect how Marketers think, whom they target, how they do this targeting, the medium they use and how they track the impact on consumers, business, etc. So here goes! Hope you enjoy it. Engineer in the Making Neil:  I see that in terms of education, you have had a tech background and you passed out of IIM and you got into a few tech jobs after.  So if you could take us a bit through your tech background and then the transition to digital or marketing that will be great to start off. Sujoy:  Sure, Neil.  Thanks for having me…  So, right out of college I did the regular thing – engineering – which so many students end up doing today. Essentially I knew this was going to be setting the trend for what was to come later in my career. This was also at a time when IT services hiring was really big and IT services jobs were the most coveted on campus. Sujoy:  But this did not excite me too much for a bunch of reasons, and interestingly – maybe I just got lucky with it – the first company that came on campus, was Soliton Technologies.  This was before the IT guys could come and pick up a huge number of students. They said they could fit in an applications engineer. Essentially, this is somebody who would understand the system, go and make a preliminary solution, which would then get sold to the customers and they said there was some amount of sales exposure as well. Tech Learning at Soliton Technologies Sujoy: So I got through. I think I convinced them, came to Bangalore for the job. And again I think I was in the right place at the right time.  It was a company where I was surrounded by brilliant people…  Neil: Ok, so there wasn’t any legacy kind of situation that, this is ABCDEF and this is all you need to do.  Sujoy:  No, absolutely not.  We were able to try out new things.  In fact, I said, hey, I would like to talk to customers, have more interaction with customers.    Back to the Student Life Sujoy: And then I said, hey, the business side looks interesting, and that is when I said OK, that’s maybe the right time for me to do an MBA. Sujoy: B school is a time where you can get as much exposure to different fields and different verticals as possible.  I interned with Castrol – so that was FMCG.  Going and understanding a certain sales channel meant visiting markets across the country. 8 different cities on a bike behind a sales rep. Sujoy: Somebody I know referred me to this company named Directi. This was one of the earliest Internet business pioneers in the country. This was also my entry into digital, I would say. Transitioning to Digital with Directi Neil: So Sujoy, once you have entered into the digital space, I am really interested, And probably I would want to do a bit of a deep dive in each of your roles.  So at Directi, I want to understand what were you initially there for and then how did your journey there and career there evolve. Sujoy: So Directi at that point of time was structured into two different parts.  One part was the suite of web presence products.  When I say that, that means web registrar. And these were products that were not India specific but played on the global stage. So these were some of the world’s largest domain registrars and some of the world’s largest web hosts on the web presence side. The other part of the business was ad-tech, (Digital Advertising Technology). Sujoy: So the first few weeks, months, were spent learning about digital. I did not understand anything, so I spent time understanding what CPC was, what CPM was, what CTRs were, what would a high CTR mean versus a low CTR.  What could it mean? Why do people even click on ads?   It seemed incomprehensible to me how companies could make money by people clicking on ads, because I personally had not clicked on ads.  But we understood that companies like Directi, and also Google and Facebook much later, made billions of dollars through showing users relevant advertising and then users reacting to it.  So essentially I spent the initial part learning the nuts and bolts.  And then started working with customers. I was a strategic partner manager where I managed a few large customers and was responsible for all business with them. Officially, yes. But what I ended up also doing was wearing multiple hats, working on a few special projects with the CEO and a few other people to get things done. While the strategic partner management thing continued, throughout my stint there I did multiple small projects that I worked on, that was the most interesting part of my stint. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Neil: you want to share a few lines on some of these projects and probably how it helped you learn, it would be great for our listeners as well. Sujoy: Sure. To start off, we need to understand the business. How do ad placements impact revenue or impact performance? So we would look at heat maps and determine where on the page… Is an ad on the right side going to be very different from leader-board on the top? Is a skyscraper on the left going to be very different from what is below the fold? So these are technical terms, but essentially that is what we did. There were multiple AB tests running for everything that we tried out. And even to the level of detail to say, ok, if I put a blue border on the ad unit, is the performance going to be different than when I put a green border on the ad unit. And, believe me, there are differences at times. Sometimes there is no difference but you only know when you test. Neil:  So what after Directi? Dreaming with a Unicorn | The FlipKart Saga Sujoy: So that was when e-commerce was growing.  It had started taking off in the path of a hockey stick in India and I decided that it would be good to do something for the Indian market in the new industry that was making so much of a difference.  I joined Flipkart as the category head for cameras and accessories in the beginning, which was the third largest category at Flipkart. Sujoy: Anybody who has worked in e-commerce jobs will validate that e-commerce is like a job on steroids every day.  So it is extremely high-pressure because you are tracking sales of tens of thousands of orders every day and anything that you do, you change a price, you change copy, you add a new product, you run a new promotion, that has direct impact on thousands of orders. Sujoy: Most people who joined e-commerce around that time came from multiple different industries, consulting, FMCG. Again, it was the time of learning and I think this was again a new start in the sense that I had to go to warehouses, I had to go to distribution centers, look at what the picking, packaging, and shipping lines look like, where could the possible improvements be. Sujoy: Then I moved on to a role internally – headed strategy and operations for the consumer electronics category.   Growth at InMobi | Becoming Digital Head Sujoy: I knew somebody from Directi who had just joined this company called InMobi then. Because it was quite unknown, fairly new.  And that is when I joined InMobi.  Mobile, again, at this time was not the hottest thing in the market.  People were still questioning if mobile devices with their small screens would even be used or would have any use for marketers. Sujoy: This was in 2012. So pundits were still predicting if smartphones would be widely adopted. And there was still that open question about whether marketers would find this medium useful at all. Sujoy: So that was the start.  Then they pivoted to advertising as an advertising platform for smartphones actually.  And that was around the time I joined.  I started off in an operations role to get my hands into things.  This was where I managed all ad operations and campaigns for the Indian market for InMobi. Sujoy:  So I worked with a team who would set up these campaigns.  So the campaign setup happened on InMobi’s own ad platform, a known interface where these campaigns would be set up, the ad units would be set up, budgets would be put in, and campaigns would be run but that was obviously not enough.  In the world of advertising you need to monitor your campaigns, figure out what is doing well, what is not doing well, and then optimize those campaigns in order to improve performance.   The entire optimization phase could then go into getting feedback from clients and from customers if whatever we are doing is working for them. There is a feedback loop – if it is working, great, if it is not working is there something we can do better? So we would report numbers and discuss these numbers with customers and then optimize campaigns again.  However, I had not been in the marketing team ever.  I had worked with marketers, I was running campaigns for others, I was helping others monetize, but had never run marketing myself. Neil:  Right. So in InMobi you had kind of the longest time you spent, almost close to 4 years.  So, towards that tenure, I just wanted to understand, what was the importance of team structure and when it came to teams, what was it like at InMobi?  Like, when you were, say, managing teams or a part of teams? Would you like to highlight some insights from there? Sujoy: Yes I think it was extremely important because InMobi was not a small startup and it had grown out of that phase. There were people in the US, working with Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore. So across time zones and different kinds of customers.  So there was a lot of learning in terms of sensitization of how do customers behave differently in Japan vs the US. And very, very interesting.  For example, if we sent an English campaign to customers in Korea, Korea wouldn’t mind.  Some of them consider English to be language of prestige and they say, ok, even though they do not understand what is written they don’t mind being communicated to, even though they do not completely understand English. But Japan; if we sent a global campaign and it also went to Japan and it was in English, there would be a heavy backlash.  They would be insulted that we did not send them something in Japanese but actually sent them something in English. There would be calls to our account managers and to our sales managers saying what is happening. So it was that bad, and that we only learn from experience. Neil: Interesting. Interesting.  So, just so that our listeners connect with the timeline I have kind of jotted that in a flowchart while you were telling me all this, right?  So, you initially had a tech background, you moved into an ad agency where you are managing clients, parallelly doing projects, and then you moved into a brand looking at its operations. Then you again moved back to like an agency of sorts with InMobi managing clients and then again moved back to the brand segment of it. I wanted to highlight this to our listeners. This multilateral environment which exists and the fact that your career has taken full advantage of it.  And I think that brings us to where you are right now at Unbxd. Do you want to share your opening views on that? Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses Thinking Out of the Box with Unbxd Sujoy: Sure. Thanks Neil.  I think some of this was planned but in most cases it wasn’t.  It was just about something that came up as an opportunity and then I was in the right place at the right time.  It was also moving from client facing jobs to internal marketing roles or corporate marketing roles – but I think what is important for the listeners is whatever is on the cutting edge of digital or whatever new that we as digital marketers or we as marketers can learn.  It was initially basic ad tech then e-commerce with the growth of e-commerce in India. Mobile came in and then there was an opportunity to learn with mobile. Sujoy: Unbxd is an e-commerce SaaS platform.  So we work with e-commerce companies to drive product discovery for their shoppers.  Essentially the flagship product is Site Search and this is Unbxd powering site search for e-commerce companies. So this is the search bar on the site on the app. Sujoy: It’s a fascinating space because search for e-commerce, or product search, is very, very, different from the search that Google had pioneered, which is essentially document search, which works on keyword densities, which works on identifying key phrases, etc.  Product search has a lot to do about understanding what your shopper’s intent is, what shoppers are likely to buy if you show them determining ranking across these search results, etc. Sujoy: So it is a complex product but it is a product again that kind of was at the intersection of what I had done before, marketing and e-commerce and digital. Neil: So the next question that I would want to ask is that as Head of Marketing at Unbxd, what are the kind of challenges that you are facing and what are the kind of growth trajectories that you’re looking at, at Unbxd? Sujoy: The objective, which is also a challenge as a marketer, is how do you market something that is very, very technology-heavy and articulate it in a manner the audience understands that is not too heavy and it is just not loaded with technology details alone. Sujoy: Something that I have realized and I have spoken about as well in B2B marketing is that even though you are talking to B2B buyers, they are, very fundamentally, they are consumers first and you also have to appeal to them emotionally, appeal to them and connect with them before just going in with a very bland B2B pitch. So that’s an interesting problem. I won’t say it is a problem that has been solved, but we’re continuously working on it. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses Role of an Educator | Visiting IIM C Neil: Also I think there is a very interesting bend here and like I know that you are a visiting professor at IIM Calcutta… How has the importance of teaching really benefited your students at IIM and why is it more important to teach digital and marketing overall now than so many trends are changing.  What is your viewpoint on that? Sujoy: Yeah, I constantly worry about material getting outdated before the next session starts, which is true.  This happened by chance over the last few years.  I have been loving the chance to talk to budding entrepreneurs, budding managers about marketing and digital marketing in general. And startups as well.  This is a very nascent area and most institutes, Universities, in whatever form have not done this earlier.  So it involved setting up, identifying what the course structure should be, what the content should be, what works, what might work, what might not, and then create that content from scratch. Sujoy:  The fundamental principles of marketing which are age-old also apply here.  Nothing changes.  It’s only the way that we reach, engage these consumers is what is changing, and there are a bunch of superficial things that change, but essentially marketing still needs to be relevant, needs to be enjoyable, and needs to appeal.  That is what we’re all about.  And this is on the same track, which is what is also my association with UpGrad. This is an opportunity to be part of a new program that was just starting up, and help create part of that course, so which is why it has been great. Neil: Awesome, One interesting fact that you mentioned, and I think we keep on harping about it but it is never enough is the importance of constant learning and unlearning, right? Because the rate at which digital is changing and new things are adding and digital has become more and more tech influenced.  So I think what you mentioned about constant learning is very important, right? Sujoy: It is.  It is. Especially since there is so much changing.  So I myself make it a point to bookmark and read a few blogs regularly in the beginning of the day to stay on top of what is happening.  While we learn, I think we spend time learning in college or in course that we do, we spend time learning fundamentals but there are still trends that we need to see.  There are still techniques and tactics that we can learn so much from.  This only comes from staying updated on the topic. Neil: Great.  So Sujoy, before we put a close to this podcast, because you have been talking a lot about different areas of your career and how different components have influenced the growth that you have seen in your career, so any piece of parting advice that you want to give to our listeners before we go from this podcast? Any particular piece of advice — I am sure a lot of it is floating, but if you could just tell us one particular thing that we need to focus on.  If I am a growing digital marketer, aspiring to expand my role towards, say, being a marketing head in 5 years or 10 years, how should I look at it, keeping the current market and industry in mind? Sujoy:  We all need to educate ourselves and have continuous education to stay on top of what’s happening, so that is just hygiene and that’s something basic that we all need to have.  But I would also say marketing or digital marketing is not rocket science.  There are tools and platforms and theories which we will learn as part of structured programs, but it always helps to think of it from the eyes of your audience, or as a consumer. Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course While we are marketers, we are usually consumers first.  We watch TV, we read the newspaper in the morning, or maybe go on Facebook, we see advertising, we see promotions and some of them appeal to us, most of them don’t.  So I think we have got a very innate sense of what is going to work and what is not.  So I would just like marketers to think about that first and to be very consumer-first.  Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think before you plan your campaign or you launch it and you might see a lot of things very differently.  That’s all. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing
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by Nilotpal Roy

27 Dec'16
32 Marketing Ideas from a Marketing Growth-a-Thon

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32 Marketing Ideas from a Marketing Growth-a-Thon

In this post, learn the following about a Marketing Growth-a-thon: Objective Plan Flow Outcomes – Yes 32 Ideas (check the end of the write-up) Bonus – How to prioritize ideas based on scoring If you’re in a marketing team, especially that of a start-up, there must have been many ideas you or your peers would have ‘slacked’ or mailed to your team, or the marketing head. No? Well, more often than not these are likely to be shot down, by the day to day micro tasks, CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) or revenue targets. In the fast-moving start-up space, ideas and experiments often stay half-baked, which has happened with me and many in the marketing team at UpGrad too. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. So, what do you do? Forget about these experiments? Forget about non-linear growth? NO! Start a Marketing Growth-a-thon! (Yes, conceptually it is like a hack-a-thon. We DO owe it to the tech team *bows down*) So, what’s the objective of a Growth-a-thon? I don’t know for sure, but reverse engineering the process as a participant, I think it’s along the lines of: Discover the top “must haves” and “can haves” of a company’s growth from a marketing dimension Look for Sitting Ducks or low hanging fruits that require a sprinkle of innovation and intiative to test out Look for Logical Tangents or ideas that are out of the box but resonate with the brand objectives/goals Get some Free Pizza (Wait, No… scratch that!) IMPORTANT: Create a Template for experiments & growth, and plot these out on a “goal completion” vs “feasibility” quadrants.  How do you plan a Growth-a-thon? #NeedInitiative First, set the date. We did it on a Friday, which did not impact regular workflow. We had some quarterly and yearly goals for marketing, like getting 1,00,000 visitors to the Blog or building our YouTube subscriber base to 10,000 and so on. This gave us some direction to cluster our ideas. We had around a week to simulate the experiment and hypothesis, make excel projections and finally bring it to critical mass! Executing Phase 1: Marketing Growth-a-thon Focus: Ideate, Brainstorm, Critique, Reality Checks & Validate Even though before the growth-a-thon some of us had half-baked ideas, some what ifs and some were well-prepared; once we entered the room, we were all ready. Creating a Structured Thought Process – #ThrustAreas So, our marketing head, divided the whiteboard into quadrants, and labeled each one of these as – Reduce CAC Increase Direct & Organic Traffic Awareness & Reach Building Communities & Networks P.S: These were our goals from an overall business perspective, (always important to be mindful of even while working within teams and not get stuck in a silo). However, UpGrad is an ed-tech company, it is possible that if you are working in E-commerce or BFSI industries, your quadrants may be different – but the process is key. Basis these thrust areas, we began our hunt… to the center of our brain. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4   Putting on the Thinking Cap: Fill up the White-Board! As we went from one idea to another, we realised that most were very high impact. Focus areas ranged from optimizing mobile landing pages to reducing performance marketing CAC by more than 30%, to more wild ideas like integrating with Uber or Airtel and package existing content for extremely top-level brand awareness. There were product-centric ideas like building a career chat bot, to even hosting a viral video series for each of our learning segments like Data, Marketing, Product and Entrepreneurship. While these ideas were plotted and creative juices flowed, some ideas went through a few iterations in real time – sharpened, aligned to the brand, our target audience, desired scale and efficiency of paid & organic/viral efforts. Tip: As I kept crying out “implementation road-map,” I was told that, ‘let’s decide that part in the next phase, using a template.’ I realized that implementation or execution often limits our mindset. Over the next 3 hours, we boxed ourselves in with out-of-the-box ideas and soon the board was filled. And yes, after that we did have pizza! 😀 Executing Phase 2: Marketing Growth-a-thon Our marketing head collated all these ideas and shared them on an excel sheet with all of us. Every idea that made the cut (32) were sliced across the following dimensions: Impact Time Resource (manpower) Cost Cross team functionality or dependency This sheet is now to be filled by all 10 team members. Each member was to assign a value to all these ideas across all the above parameters – values of high, medium & low; and ideas that would have the perfect fit, would be now chosen as quarterly projects. Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification Executing Phase 3: Marketing Growth-a-thon Implementation Plan Once the projects are decided, the project owners will form teams. These 2-4 member teams would present a detailed step by step implementation plan with overall costs plotted against business goals. The weekly progress of the projects will be evaluated, similar to sprints. The pilot would be evaluated and would require support from other teams like tech or video production and would be assessed before the project starts. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs Outcomes: 32 Marketing ideas you can also use We’re now at a very interesting stage of the Growth-a-thon! We’ve compiled all the ideas and given our viewpoints. Sharing the list of ideas below.. Next steps? Prioritizing your growth projects based on scoring If you remember the 6 constraints we spoke about earlier, you could float out an excel to all the team members who can rate ideas “Low,” “Medium” & “High” across these. These could all assume numeric values as 1,2 & 3. Once all the sheets are filled, you can simply add these and you will get a total score of each of the growth projects across these fields. Example: Say “impact” as a metric is given 50% weightage, versus the other dimensions like “cross-functional dependency,” “time,” “resources” & “cost” which could be given weightage of 10%, 10%, 15% & 15% respectively. You can then subtract all the other scores from the impact score for each project and that would give you the final numeric value of the true priority. Basis the final scores, the founders and heads can then take a call to either take a project further in the current quarter or in the next quarter. There could also be some projects which would not be taken forward, basis the scores. A sample of what such an excel sheet could look like: Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing
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by Nilotpal Roy

20 Jan'17