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Digital Marketing Certificate – Inbound Certified

Which certification did you complete?

The one I chose for this assignment is the “Inbound Certification ” of HubSpot Academy.

How long did it take to complete?

Since this one is not that complicated as others like social media certification and Inbound Marketing Certification, It only took me about 3 hours to walk through the lectures and another 40 minutes to complete the test. As a result, I got 94/100, which is pretty satisfied for me.

What did you like best/least?

Personally, I feel like one of the best parts for me is the process of getting this certification is some sort of “review” for part of my final exam in this class. Since most of the lectures or contents are included in the textbook we use for this semesters. And this certification’s lectures enhance my knowledge for inbound marketing, I am not going to lie, some of the content did re-educate me some content that was ambiguous for me such as the difference between “Conversion Funnel” and “Inbound Funnel” and how did that better connect to the “Flywheel cycle”. I love Hubspot made the lectures very simple and understandable for people who take the test, this is really amazing and enjoyable to walk through all the content in this certification.

Were there any disappointments or frustrations?

I wouldn’t say I encountered any disappointment or frustration during the test. I prefer to say I neglected some crucial points that were later presented in the test. For example, some of the questions need a very well-understanding of the content such as the SMART strategy of “how to set a business goal”. Every word was well-defined by the HubSpot Academy and I only understood the surface of them. As a result, some of the questions really break me in some aspects. I had to spend a few more minutes before I make the choices. Additionally, I think if they can show whether I answered the questions right or wrong, I could understand more in this field.

What did you learn?

As I stated previously, most of the content of this certification is something I have learned through the course. However, in the buyer persona section, there were some details that really amazed me. For example, tutors encourage us to create each buyer persona as different as possible, from ages to educational level or even to the financial background. If one company can create buyer personas in various aspects, it means the company has a wild range in target customers’ segments. In that case, the company has the ability to create more content that can be more specific and be more accurate when one ad been published.

Do you believe this certification program is useful for other marketers?

Indeed, I truly believe this certification has almost every surface level of Inbound marketing knowledge. In other words, if one wishes to take one step into inbound marketing, this certification will be an excellent way to start. Additionally, since inbound marketing relative to all the business in the world, I believe this certification can be the “requirement” for individual or company who desires to acquire more customers or corporate who want more impressions.

What value will this add to your resume/career?

I wouldn’t say this certification is able to add any value for my resume since as I stated above, this knowledge of this certification is the foundation of all the marketing strategies. This is more like a requirement for a marketer like me, currently, I have started another certification lectures in “Social Media Certification”, that one is more difficult and more interesting for me. I would love to finish that up within the few weeks and earn more value from it. Thank you!

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Why Nike Has Mastered the Art of Online Brand Management?

Nike, as a household name in the U.S or even around the world, conducts a pretty good job of constructing its brand images. Although from time to time, serval negative impacts stroke Nike a hard punch, it still maintains its own brand reputation of the company, especially on speak up for minority groups of people. So today, Let’s talk about how it is that even possible for such a huge band to ensure its reputation within this crazy network storm.

So Let’s start with the keywords research, shall we? Speaking about Nike, what will be the first keywords jump into your thought? There are probably lots of them such as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), brave, sneakers, athletes,  sport wears, racial issues e.g. After we list out those keywords, do anything relative to news or messages date back from your experience? In my aspect of view, here are something I found interesting that connects back to the keywords above:

Nike made a great change in making its shoes, this time Nike made shoes, not for superstars on the court, it made shoes for the superhero who help to save lives – nurses. These shoes are more comfortable and purposeful to help nurses getting away from common conditions like plantar fasciitis. Most importantly, 100% of the profits from those shoes will be donated directly to OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon.

Nike was seeking designers to deliver a unique design on the company’s classic sneaker. University of Minnesota student Taoheed Bayo who came from Nigerian participated in this competition. He reached back to his Nigerian roots for inspiration, designing a shoe that could be his legacy. For the shoe material, he chose suede leather as the representing of Africans can endure time and numerous situations.

A fan took to social media to communicate to La Flame and the Nike camp his perspective on the authentic fan of Travi Scott feeling not able to purchase the shoe collaboration of their idol. Nike and Travis Scott team decided to send a free pair of the shoe to the fan.

Okay, after reviewing all the news above, finding anything in common? That’s right, they are all positive news to Nike! Let’s set aside from the “sweatshop” issues, do you find yourself that it is rare to receive negative images from Nike through internet or media, right? The reason why Nike did a great job of creating good images to the public not only because it really spends millions of money on creating a good CSR, but spent money on securing any “controllable information” that could impact the brand ideas. I am not saying you should spend millions of dollars on this subject too. My point is: you should be really careful about every message you sent out to the public, even one small flaw can create a chain reaction by the “power” of people who like to be picky about anything – Haters. Remember, the internet is a two-sided sword, it can bring you huge benefits, but it also can crash your works overnight!

Reference

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One Way to Improve Your Marketing Strategy – Persona!!!

Ok … I knew you might ask what is Persona, right?

Before I say anything, let’s go ahead and address three fundamental questions of “Persona” – What, Why, How.

What is Persona?

A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. These representatives must include their own characteristics and behavior such as buying preferences and habits.  A persona is generally based on this user research and incorporates the needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of your target audience. 

Why We Need Personas?

Personas pivotal to crafting effective email marketing campaigns. There was said in Chinese: Know the enemy, know yourself, and in every battle you will be victorious. I’m not saying you should picture your target customers as enemies, I want you to “study” them before you make a move. After you collect the imfo you need, classified them into various personas you created and made them into virtual individuals, same as some people did on social medias. Now, you will have mutiple individuals have significant personality that you can make the stretegies to approach them. A well-design personalizations cater every marketing message to the right person at the right time.

How to Develop Personas?

Personas are created through researches, surveys, and public intervires with your target audiences. This audience include a “mix of customers’ characters”, both “good” and “bad” aspects, and those outside of your contact database who might align with your target audience. You will need to collect both qualitative and quantative data to gradually shaping who are your perfect audiences and what to do to better fulfill their needs in order to create traffics or even geneate revenue to your sites. So, you might still confuse about what should include in your each persona, right? Here is some aspects you can get your hand on:


Background

This should includes the basic details of a persona’s role, key information about where he/she work for, as well as any relevant background information, such as education, interest, title or position, daily hobbies…e.g.

 Demographics

While examining your target demographics, be sure to consider information about who is your audience, including gender, age range, household/ single income, and locations – where she/he live. The reason why we want to know this information is beacause individual’s buring preference can be varied from different location. It is vital for one company to define customers behaviors in a specific region.

Goals

What are the target customers’ goal? Not only inclde their own personal goal, but the purpose why they browsing on the internet? For example, the gymer who want to build a Olympic body shape might want to find quality protien powders, and if your company have such relative products. Bingo! That type of customers are the viewers you want to approach. After listing out all the goals that one individual has, your company can easily find who has the potential to becom your customer and sent them a highly targeted campaign to them.

Challenges

Same as the goals aspect, if viewer has one clear goal, surely she/he will need to face some obstacles or challenges alone the way. What is her/his primary and secondly problems and how your company can help her/him to address this issues. For example, as we mention above, not only protien manufacturers can target on gym goer, the gyms themselves might also want to sell services to this individual to better achieve her/his goal in a more efficiently way.

Marketing messages

What is the core message of your campaigns that will resonate with your persona (target customers)? How should you describe your solution to your persona? Conducting the right messages directly to your personas are crucial to catch their interest and attract them to your webisite or landing pages. Trust me, you don’t want to make your customers confused and click the return bottom after they open your emails.

After you list out all the data you collect from your responders, sort them out, create as many fictional individuals as possible, classified them into different segments. In order to level who has the highest possibility to purchase your products or services. Additionally, you might have a higher chance to figure out which type of customer can be developed into a new customer segment. Also, base on what your persona tells you, you can customize the campaign or strategy for the specific type of customer you have.

Reference:

Using Buyer Personas in Email Marketing Campaigns
Using Personas for Email Marketing
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Whether the current model of online advertising is dangerous for society?

Have you ever wonder how many ads messages we exposed to every day? Recently studies show that normal people receive 20,000 ads/ marketing messages when we stay awake, and the number is going up every day, isn’t it crazy? if you think this is not a big deal as long as we don’t pay attention to those messages, you are so wrong! As one of the marketing people, our destiny is to grab more attention from you in a very short time. Perhaps we are too successful for what we did and simply put the society in danger. As follow, I will demonstrate three different types of hazards hidden in the current model of online advertising. Additionally, I will rate the level of danger on a scale of 1-5 where 5 is highly dangerous and 1 is not dangerous at all.

Endless messaging (Hazard level 2)

Marketing especially advertising marketing is both pervasive and invasive. It has all types of form any appears everywhere while we searching something on the internet. Campaigns running into our eyes with bright selling messages. Pop-up ads ruining all types of website experience, often slowing the site down to feed you with ads you don’t want to see. Making the ads hard to close by modifying the close button smaller and insignificant. Ads’ messages are on the radio, SERP (Search engine result page), and even on the product we purchase (The delivery box often came with coupons for next shopping). It’s hardly surprising that people are paying monthly subscription fees to avoid ads shows up when they using the services on YouTube, Hulu, and other streaming platforms. As a result, the browsing experience is terrible (annoying), you might feel harder to find what you want in a short time (inefficiency). Nevertheless, you can easily spend too much energy on surfing and end up with a lack of concentration on something that is more important in your life.

Generating unnecessary demand (Hazard level 4)

As far as we know, human consumption is way over than we actually need and the waste. This creates a high-intensity level of the planet resources shortage. Most ads out there push products that very few people actually need. This sounds confusing, right? Let’s try another approach: Any product or service that people actually need to survive and thrive is not necessarily needed an ad for advertisement, in other words, consumers are actually seeking them out. That is the reason why you rarely see ads for gasoline or utilities. But for other stuff that we fill our lives with, we have literally been convinced by the ads which can imply the “desire” part of our brain. For example, some ads like “You need this new BMW.” “Your life can be fulfilled by these fancy suits.” “iPhone provides a better life and you cannot live without it”. From new cars to iPhone, advertising is built to make people desperate to own something they didn’t even know they wanted.

Misguiding children’s mind (Hazard Level 5)

“Children are the future of our world”, most of you understand this concept really well. So what if I told you our future is been destroyed piece by piece with the most common tools that we let our children use every – if you don’t know, Google it! There is one topic I think it is the most important for the parents or elders. This is the one that been neglected by society is “unrealistic body image expectations”. Most men in ads normally have perfect body shapes with a charming smile on their faces. However, take a good look at the people around you, do all the men look like this? Furthermore, when the issue hit on women, it is even sadder to say that the standard of beauty is almost impossible to achieve for ordinary women in the real world. Therefore, the misguided images that create by the ads can heavily influence our children mind while using internet services. Sarcastically, we let our children use the internet to gain more “realistic” knowledge and information, but the ads create those images to restrict or misleading how children conduct the images of humans’ physical appeal standard.

So, how can we fix the problems above? There is something called “the code of ethics for digital marketers” that might help to mitigate the problems.

  • Tell the truth no matter what
  • Stay independent
  • It is your right to voice your opinion
  • Use the power to protect your surroundings
  • Admit and correct your mistakes immediately.
  • Avoiding remarks that may constitute defamation
  • Don’t count on anonymity too much
  • Stay away from biases

Reference:

https://www.business2community.com/social-media/7-fundamental-ethics-social-media-marketing-01571504.

https://medium.com/@moonstorming/how-advertising-has-become-an-agent-of-social-change-148aa0ef303a

https://www.vieodesign.com/blog/new-data-why-people-hate-ads

https://searchengineland.com/google-hates-obnoxious-pop-ads-heres-need-look-ads-site-280970

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What to do when your webpage doesn’t rank?

Wondering why your products or services are not selling as the way you expected they should be? I believe your stuff is brilliant enough and it just not caught attention as your stuff quality. Maybe it is because your webpages just don’t show on browsers’ view! This feels like you put a Lamborghini in a warehouse, how can you expect people buying your stuff if this product not having a chance to sell?

Before I start throwing a bunch of tactics to your face, let’s turn the aspect around, make yourself a browser who is looking whatever your webpages serve for. Did you find anything you missed? Alright, I know this is kind of hard to diagnose your website if you already know what to type in the search engine. Therefore, I will demonstrate some categories for you to define whether you missed anything or not.

Keywords

  • URL: Words in URL receive heavy weighting in the calculation result of the search engine, make sure you put the right keywords that can maximize the relevance to reach on every target viewers on the searching result.
  • Title tags: Title tags show up at the top of a browser and the when one navigates to that page, sometimes, a great title tag can be a determining factor for viewers to decide whether they should stay or click the “back” button
  • Nich Title: Sometimes, your title keywords are fine, but most of the time, you just pick keywords that show on other webpages! For example, if you sell bespoke suits, you cannot simply put a ” bespoke suit” on your title! Add some extra texts like ” hand-made bespoke suit” or put something crazy like ” Suits that make you charming”. to differentiate your webpages to others.

Content

  • Freshness: First, the result usually shows the latest information for the users. I am not saying that you have to make a brand new webpage every week or even days to catch attention. I am saying that you should ” update” the information that lists on the webpage to keep your webpage not only follow the trend of the world but to put your webpage back to the first page of the rank.
  • Quantity: To be honest, search engines love long length webpages based on viewers’ preferences. Viewers are more likely to find as much information as they need in one webpage, so the content length can be a crucial factor that determines your webpage can be listed on the top result of not. The data shows below from SerpIQ might give you some clues about how long does your webpage content should be.
“serpiq content length”的图片搜索结果
  • Quality: Last and also the most important thing, quality, you might wonder how it is that even possible for search engines to define your webpages has good quality or not? The answer is no, they cannot! However, search engines use serval different methods such as “uniqueness”, “keyword frequency”, “multimedia content”, and “Image optimization” to distinguish one good webpage to another (see the link to know more details)

Alright, after a quick scan of your webpages using the tips above, find anything might cause your pages to lose the abilities to show on browsers’ view? If not, congratulation my friends, you basically got everything right! Otherwise, here is one way to do now:

Diagnosis your webpages dipper through this link. I got to warn you, this is a very detailed webpage-design instruction. It might take lots of time, but the outcome can be magnificent. So…

Reference:

https://id7.com.br/quais-tipos-de-site-que-existem-e-qual-o-ideal-para-o-seu-negocio/

https://me.me/i/good-luck-with-that-shit-memegenerator-net-17061501

https://www.jeffbullas.com/13-super-easy-ways-to-immediately-improve-your-seo-ranking/serp-iq-content-length-graph-example-of-how-to-improve-your-seo/

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5 ways to increase landing page conversion

Before we start discuss about how exactly we can do to increase our landing page conversion, let start by discussing: what is landing Page conversion’s purpose? Gaining as more attention as possible! You got to admit, the first picture that showed above is something that make you stay here and read whatever this blog will post next. That is the reason why you should take a good look at 5 ways that might give your viewer a reason to stay on your page same as you do right now.

Attractive pictures or photos

Modern people, especially the younger generation, they scan website and pages within a few minutes or even a few seconds. Therefore, how can a business catch people’s attention in a short amount of time? We might find some answers through ” why is Instagram so popular ( Link) “. In this article, it emphasizes Instagram is an image first app, people use it because it is easy to understand the contents. In other words, people are more likely to read the message through the photographs instead of words. Therefore, a well-designed photograph is the very first step that might trigger the interest of the viewers to discover more about our conversion objectives.

Killer Title

After we catch attention from the viewer among all the ads on the internet, a straight-forward title can be the key factor that decides whether the viewers should click on our ads or ignore it. A killer title is like a 10 seconds interview, we need to impress the interviewers (the viewers) with as lease words as possible and convey our idea properly. Otherwise, they might lose their patience and just said: Next! So we need to pick our words that display on the picture or beside the picture carefully.

Create Curiosity

The next step, give viewers a reason to click on your landing page! Although there are lots of online ads directly say: Click for more details, Want to know more e.g. However, according to our textbook(Section3, Chapter 2, Digital marketing essentials May 2019). Despite the content match issues that it demonstrates later of the paragraph, the sample ad does show something different than others. It points out viewers want to know more about the red fleece vest that was worn by the model without any description of the product! This reminds us one old said: it’s quality rather than quantity that counts.

Content match the advertisement

Alright, we have finally convinced the viewers to give us a chance to see what are we offering in our business. In this stage, we have to ensure the contents we link through the ad are exactly the products(or services) we promote through it. In other words, the very first page right after the viewer clicks on our ad should be the direct detail of the product(or service) itself or at least it should be on the prominent position of the page. If not, the viewer might lose interest and simply just click the “back” button and ruin every effort we put in previously.

Conversion-Centered Sign

According to our textbook( Section 1, Chapter 2, Digital marketing essentials May 2019): a good Website should meet 7 different features. These 7 features are Attention(What’s the action you want your viewers to take?), Context(Where are site visitors come from?), Clarity( Is it clear from a quick scan?), Congruence( Do all the words convey the same idea to the visitors?), Credibility( Can the visitor trust us or the info we provide?), Closing( Use positive messages right before the desired click region), Continuance( Once this section been finished, dose the visitors know what to do next?). These 7 features are like gears that connect to each other, if we failed to achieve any one of them, the whole machine breaks down and we will need to start it over again.

Overall, the 5 steps above are simply suggestions for those who have no idea how to launch a good landing page or struggling in it. In my own opinion, there is no right or wrong answer in the advertising business field. The only difference that makes one good landing page then one bad page is how much attention they attract from this crazy modern world. Therefore, the question is: Are you willing to try?


References:

  1. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/65161525844798989/?lp=true
  2. http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vwg51

https://www.planetminecraft.com/blog/follow-youre-dreams-no-matter-how-hard-it-gets/