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First Name: Saffron

Second Name: Brady

Individual Learning Portfolio

Graduate Certificate in Management, Dublin City University Business School

1th September 2014

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Disclaimer Page:

I hereby certify that this material, which I submit for assessment on the programme of

study leading to an award of Graduate Certificate in Management is entirely my own work

and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has

been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work.

Saffron Brady – Student ID 14101505 ______________________ 1st September 2014

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Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Section one: Blogging 5

Section two: Inbound Marketing 18

Section three: LinkedIn Marketing 25

Section four: Twitter Marketing 32

Section five: Website Usability 44

Section six: Email Marketing 51

Section seven: Search Engine Optimization 65

Conclusion: 75

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Introduction Marketing is constantly evolving and has been transformed into a digital capacity with the

emergence of customer centric web 2.0 and “Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved

from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0)”,

(Philip, Kotler).

Like everything in life experience comes with practice and the more hands on approach you

take the greater the learning outcome. As part of the graduate certificate in management

course at DCU I have completed an individual learning portfolio. The areas covered in this

document include Twitter, LinkedIn, inbound marketing, search engine optimization,

blogging, web usability and email marketing.

Although a theme was not consciously chosen for the campaign, naturally when one

campaign was set up it led to the other having the same theme. iBeacon technology by

Apply is a theme you may see appearing throughout the campaigns I have completed. Other

themes you may see include Paddy Power and Snapchat. Along with the campaigns an

extensive review of academic and trade literature was carried out.

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Section one: Blogging

The introduction of web 2.0 has given rise to user generated content, inbound marketing and

blogging. Google have changed the rules. Search rankings are now biased towards the context of

content (Clarke, 2014). Delivering content to the search engines that is in tune with consumers

searches if key. Blogging is an inbound marketing mechanism and a form of content creation used

to attract the right type of people to your homepage. The overall ethos of inbound marketing and

blogging is creating and driving organic traffic to your company’s online channels, primarily your

website.

Description:

I started the company blog that I work for, which was the very first inbound marketing activity.

The topics I included in the blog relate directly to mobile marketing; with categories including

iBeacon technology, Snapchat, Twitter and Mobile engagement. I also created a blog on Paddy

Power from my own personal blog. The target personas for the company blog are digital

marketers, mobile app developers and small business owners. The blogs have been created using

WordPress and the objective is to achieve two to three blog posts a week.

In total I created twenty blog posts over a six month period from February to August. Careful

consideration has been given to the personas the blog is targeting, the language used, the styles,

timing, categorising and tagging. The majority of these posts was on the company blog. I also have

my own personal blog which I started back in 2011, of which one blog post was created during

this time, which is linked to the email campaign I also did.

The styles I have used for the blog include link blogging, list blogging, piggyback blogging, insight

blogging and video blogging. Which are listed below.

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Blog type Blog Title

Piggyback blogging

5 tips to optimise your new Twitter Layout

Mobile trends happening right now in the world cup

Steve met Paddy in Dicey’s lastnight

Link Blogging 5 Brand using Snapchat to engage their target audiences

Picture Blogging 10 Awesome mobile Infographics

Video Blogging Should have gone to Specsavers (personal blog)

List Blogging 10 Apps stats that will blow your mind

Headliner Blogging

Consumer Wearables, Beats by Dre and Google Glasses

Capturing the Customer in the Moment: from Customer Hijacking to

iBeacon Hunting

Event Blogging Key Takeaways from DMX Dublin

Other How to use Snapchat for mobile marketing

Five ways to drive engagement in your app

The benefits of having a mobile app for your business

iBeacon and mobile engagement in the home

Personal Motivation and Relevance:

I decided to take blogging as part of my portfolio without a doubt. Personally I am a detail

orientated person and writing comes naturally to me. I have included two blogs in my

portfolio. One blog is my own personal blog and the other is the company blog of which I have

started from scratch. The majority of the blog posts I have written are from the company blog.

The overall theme for the company blog was specifically on mobile marketing, push

notifications and ibeacon. The blog is very important for inbound marketing.

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Academic and Course Relevance

Although I had already been blogging and felt that I had mastered Wordpress before

undertaking this course, the course allowed me to identify shortcomings. I was unaware that

there were a lot of different blogging styles you can take advantage of, from an SEO

perspective, in previous blogs I had failed to optimise them, which is where tagging and

categorisation was introduced.

Academic and professional literature

Marketing has changed significantly in the past few years, the consumer simply ignores

advertising, the search engines have changed their rules and favour organic traction to a

website. According to Ramsey (2006) there is a growing resistance among customers towards

marketing messages, “Customers respond more favourably to marketing messages when they

have control over what they see, when they see it, whether it can be personalised to fit their

needs and when they can be active participants in the marketing process”. The main point

here is that people are more receptive to marketing messages when the messages are

personally relevant to them.

With search engines at the customer’s fingertips brands have the power to let the customer

find them. This can be done by adding tags and keywords to a blog so the search engines can

help the person ploughing through the search engines find you.

The paper by (Singh et al., 2008) evaluates the potential of blogs. Blogs have been described

as one of the leading roots of the next generation of the internet tools in web 2.0. And the

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influence of blogging as a tool will occupy a significant amount of marketing budget in the

coming years.

As stated by (Baker and Green, 2005, p56) in Singh et al., 2008 on blogging for a business,

“You cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re...the most explosive outbreak

in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about

every business. Blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite.”

The benefits of blogging is that content is infinite and blogging is interactive, dynamic, cost

effective and has a longer term lifespan in comparison to social media posts. Research by

Brown (2014) in terms of consumer influence reveal that blogs outrank social networks for

consumer influence.

An insightful infographic provides socialmediatoday (2013) with some ground breaking

statistics for a company to blog:

23 % of internet time is spent on blogs and social networks.

77 % of internet users read blogs

Companies that blog have 97 % more inbound links

B2B marketers using blogs generate 67 % more leads

And 60 % of consumers feel a company’s positivity after reading the site

There has been a gigantic growth in the number of blogs in existence from 2006 to 2011. 181

million blogs were tracked in 2011, up from 36 million in 2006 (Nielson, 2012). The advantage

of a company having a blog is that it can humanize a faceless business, and give customers an

insight into the company, as well as targeting and brand loyalty.

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Evidence of progress

The main objectives of the blog was to help with the overall discoverability of the company

online and to attract the company personas to the website and generate inbound leads.

Although the blog has made progress it does not have call-to-actions where the viewer can

subscribe to an emailing list to receive notifications of future blogs. In terms of gaining

traction to the blog one effective tactic used was creating Piggyback blogging style type blogs

based on hot topics at the time such as Snapchat and Twitter.

Value

Undertaking this course has proven complementary to the blogs. Although from a blogging

background I have grasped and put into practise best practices in blogging. I know the title

length cannot be over 55 characters, how important the meta-description is and how simply

naming your images can help with your blogs overall SEO. I have one shortcoming from the

course and that is in the area of copywriting of images, it is a contentious issue and one where

the company blog got fined doing so. For the future curriculum on blogging it is very important

that this area is covered.

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References

Brown, D. (2014). The State of Digital Influence 2013 — Influence Marketing: The Book.

[online] Influencemarketingbook.com. Available at: http://influencemarketingbook.com/the-

state-of-digital-influence-2013/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2014].

Clark, N. (2014). Google search changes will push SEO firms and social media marketers closer.

[online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/28/google-

seo-social-media-search-marketing-panda-penguin-hummingbird [Accessed 27 Aug. 2014].

(Nielson 2012) Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2012/buzz-in-the-blogosphere-millions-

more-bloggers-and-blog-readers.html (Accessed 25th of August 2014).

Ramsey, G. (2006). Digital marketing strategies in the age of customer control from http://www.

emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003886&src=article_

head_sitesearch (Accessed 25th of August 2014).

Socialmediatoday.com, (2014). The Blogconomy Blogging Statistics [INFOGRAPHIC]. [online]

Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/blogconomy-blogging-statistics-

infographic

[Accessed 25 August. 2014].

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Appendices

The Blogconomy Blogging Statistics [INFOGRAPHIC]

Source: socialmediatoday, 2013

Source: Nielson, 2012

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Blog: personal blog

Data

Source: wordpress 2014

The blog post “Steve met Paddy in Dicey’s lastnight” was shared on two different occasions.

Once on Twitter when the the news #PPtexts was trending AND then in an email campaign

two weeks later. 25 unique visits were made to the blog post the day it was released with the

majority of referrer traffic directly from Twitter, as can be seen from the Tweet below. And

another 36 views were received from the email campaign.

Source: wordpress 2014

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Audience profiling:

Blog 2: http://www.blog.xtremepush.com

Data

Overall stats

The blog to date has received 1,572 views in the space of six months from the end of February to

the end of August. That includes 1,108 visitors over the six months.

Commentary

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Although the majority of the comments on the blogs originate from spammers, there were

some genuinely positive comments on the blogs. Some of the comments can be seen below,

the majority of the comments are on the most popular posts which is discussed below:

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Most Popular posts:

The most popular post below “How to use Snapchat for Mobile Marketing” received over 362

views since it’s publish date in March gone.

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LinkedIn discussion on a group Mobile Marketing & Advertising with over 100,000 members

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Section two: Inbound Marketing

“In the current environment, outbound marketing effectiveness was diminishing as

consumers are feeling bombarded by the daily deluge of commercial messages, began tuning

out” (Steenburgh et al., 2011, P2). In contrast search engines, blogs and social media started

to gain traction and generate revenue.

Hubspot which is an inbound marketing web enabler for businesses emerged in 2006 by

founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The need for inbound marketing came about

when traditional marketing and sales were losing their effectiveness in the new web 2.0.

Hubspot’s identity is embodied in the philosophy of Web 2.0 and helps businesses attract

prospects, qualify their potential, and convert them into paying customers. Hubspots solution

was to substitute the diminishing returns of outbound marketing effectiveness.

I completed the Inbound Marketing Certification and achieved a grade of 83 %. The course

included eight different sections related directly to the Hubspot inbound methodology. The

certification can be seen in the appendices along with the Hubspot methodology.

Personal relevance and motivation

I chose to undertake the inbound marketing certification as I am currently working in a B2B

start-up company and they are only starting to dip their toes into the inbound marketing

methodology way of life. The majority of the company’s prospects and clients have been

generated using an outbound marketing approach. The blog and social media presence has

helped increase the organic hits to the website but with limited success. The company is

currently only embracing the first stage “attraction” of the inbound methodology, there are

several consecutive stages the company need to embrace if it wants its inbound marketing

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approach to be effective. These stages include convert, close and delight. From undertaking

the inbound certificate and the course I have a better understanding on the inbound tactics

available to a company to employ. A whitepaper is planned for the conversion stage (currently

there are no call-to-actions on the site). Furthermore an email campaign will also be used to

help nurture existing customers and inform and educate prospects.

Academic and course relevance

Inbound marketing is a requirement in doing business in today’s customer focused world.

Only 5 % of organisations have not integrated inbound marketing. Inbound marketing takes

time and in order for it to be effective “inbound needs to be more than just a series of

marketing campaigns aimed at “pulling” people toward your company website. True inbound

marketing success occurs when your company adopts an inbound marketing philosophy and

weaves the strategy of delivering quality content and delighting customers throughout every

facet of the business”, (Cdn2.hubspot.net, 2014).

Although an inbound marketing approach is key today in gaining leads, without much

resources in place it can be challenging to exploit all inbound marketing tactics available.

Outbound marketing is essential. Customers are the reason your business exists in the first

place so outbound marketing is still essential. Although the industry is saying that inbound

marketing is the most effective strategy for staying relevant and delivering the best leads,

using an inbound approach alone is not sustainable as volume is in the numbers and this is

where an outbound approach is crucial (Fulk 2011).

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I have identified one shortcoming from undertaking inbound marketing certification course.

Although the course covered Smarketing which stands for sales and marketing, which has not

yet been added to the Oxford dictionary unlike Yolo and Selfie. The course didn’t discuss how

you can combine both inbound and outbound marketing approaches for lead generation. For

example you can use social media to send targeted outbound communications to discover

high quality leads. By listening to your prospects on social media channels you can deliver

intelligent content to these communities with the aim of converting people into leads. And

leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than

20% (Hanford, 2014).

Academic and professional Literature

As stated by Andrew Susman (1994) in (New media new technology, 1995) on advertising to

the consumer online, a “the two-way communication ability of new media will make it

possible to learn what individual customers have and want in their own lives and to customise

benefits for more persuasive personal selling”. This is exactly what inbound marketing is

about, companies can use web 2.0 and use social media sites to listen to what the customer

wants. Andrew Susman (1994) also stated that virtual brands will be customised to individuals

and the brands will be created through information relationships rather than by broadcasting

value announcements. And “Unlike traditional market research, which is mediated, customer

conversations online happen spontaneously and so have greater authenticity and credibility”.

Thus online sources have an edge over traditional methods which typically reveal intentions

rather than actual sentiment or behaviour, (Linkedin.com, 2014).

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There is are notable differences between traditional outbound marketing approaches and

todays inbound marketing approaches. Outbound marketing is all about interrupting the

consumer in contrast inbound is all about earning and not buying a person’s attention.

Inbound marketing is “Any marketing tactic that relies on earning people’s interest instead

of buying it”. Communication is interactive and two-way, customers come to you, marketers

provide value and seek to entertain and/or educate. Conversely outbound marketing is “Any

marketing that pushes products or services on consumers”, communication is one-way,

customers are sought out, marketers provide little to no value and rarely seek to entertain

or educate. An infographic on inbound versus outbound marketing can be seen in the

appendices (Mashable, 2011).

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References

B2B Content Marketing (2012) Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends. Marketing Profs [online]

Available at: file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/B2B_Content_Marketing_2012.pdf

[Accessed 29th Aug. 2014].

Cdn2.hubspot.net, (2014). State of inbound marketing,[Accessed 29 Aug. 2014].

Fulk, M 2011, 'For b-to-b leads, don't forget outbound marketing', B To B, 96, 6, p. 10,

Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed 29 August 2014.

Hanford, J. (2014). Why Lead Nurturing Makes Sense For B2B Companies. [online]

SteamFeed. Available at: http://www.steamfeed.com/lead-nurturing-b2b/ [Accessed 29

Aug. 2014].

Linkedin.com, (2014). 5 reasons businesses should listen to their customers online. [online]

Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140326023436-5852233-5-

reasons-businesses-should-listen-to-their-customers-online [Accessed 29 Aug. 2014].

Mashable, (2011). Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]. [online]

Available at: http://mashable.com/2011/10/30/inbound-outbound-marketing/ [Accessed 29

Aug. 2014].

Steenburgh, T., Avery, J. and Dahod ,N. (2011) ‘Hubspot: inbound marketing and web 2.0’,

Harvard business school, pp. 1-22.

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Appendices

The inbound methodology (Hubspot)

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Source: Mashable 2011

Source: B2B Content Marketing (2012)

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Section three: LinkedIn Marketing

Launched in 2002, Linkedin is an online professional network that allows users to connect

with trusted contacts to exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities within a

broader network of professionals (Witzig et al., 2012). LinkedIn connects the world's

professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 300 million

members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, (Linkedin.com,

2014).

“The strategic uses of LinkedIn as follows: building relationships, understanding prospects,

handpicking specific prospects, attracting prospects to a particular brand, and listening to

clients”(Comer,2010). LinkedIn is particularly useful for small businesses and there is a

higher adoption rate by them. They are a less expensive channel for reaching targeted

customer segments. Small businesses appear to have greater adoption and usage rates of

LinkedIn, (comer, 2010).

LinkedIn has two different types of audiences; individuals and businesses. For individuals

LinkedIn is a platform for find and meet their potential clients, service providers, people in

similar industries and job opportunities. For business Linkedin is useful for making job offers,

finding highly qualified candidates and meeting other experts through existing contacts

(Damnjanovic et al., 2012)

Description

“B-to-c marketers might have a lock on Facebook, but B-to-B marketers have their own social

networking linchpin” (Birkner, 2012).

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I currently work as a B2B marketer for a technology company so I have chosen LinkedIn as

part of my portfolio. I set up a group page called iBeacon Ireland. The page was set up in July

2014. The description of the page was to keep up to date with the best of iBeacon news and

the best of iBeacon blogs! And to engage with people who are interested in mobile

technology either professionally or personally and to act as a discussion group for iBeacon

technology. A secondary aim for the group is to help to generate leads for the company I

work for. The page idea was entirely my own. iBeacon Ireland was also used as part of the

Twitter marketing and email marketing campaigns.

Personal motivation and relevance

When I started working in my job, it was then that I became aware of LinkedIn groups and

how you can use them to share your ideas and/or content and build your professional

network. Several popular mobile marketing groups were noted; such as Mobile Marketing

and Advertising which has over 130,000 members and thus has a high potential reach for

content sharing. Other mobile marketing related groups that I regularly target with content

include Digital Dublin, Marketing Communication and iBeacon. Marketing Communication

appears to be a lucrative group for networking and sharing your content as It has over

200,000 members.

Evidence of progress

In terms of gaining followers I invited my connections on LinkedIn to join the group. The

page to date has 16 members, due to time constraints the page has had limited success. I

have shared content about once a week. However I fully intend to expand the iBeacon

Ireland LinkedIn page once there is time to do so.

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Despite LinkedIn’s reach capabilities, many B-to-B companies aren’t taking full advantage of

its marketing potential according, as stated by Kipp Bodnar, inbound marketing strategist at

HubSpot “They don’t get deep enough into the platform to build a really strong magnet

that’s going to pull [prospects] from interactions within LinkedIn” (Birkner, 2012). I can very

much relate to this where the LinkedIn work LinkedIn page, although content is shared daily,

the follower growth has remained stagnant. In order to combat this challenge I have

identified several tips on implementing a successful LinkedIn page for a B2B marketing

strategy (Birkner, 2012).

Although an attractive and optimised page is crucial, consideration must be given to

content, when sharing content it is important to map the content to the questions that your

clients or prospects may be asking throughout the entire buying cycle. LinkedIn is also a way

of showcasing your products and services, videos or webinars are good tools for doing this.

The company I work in currently does not have any videos or webinars, however plans are in

process to implement these which should help grow the followers. You can also leverage

employee connections, this is limited as not all the employees in the company utilise this

platform. And most importantly you can start a group relating to your industry, which I did. A

variety of content such as webinars are recommended to grow the group, unfortunately if Ii

had the opportunity again I would have created a webinar campaign to help grow the

followers on iBeacon Ireland.

Value

Although I already manage a LinkedIn page of the company I work in, I have been aware that

there are a few shortcoming and a new LinkedIn strategy is needed for the page to gain

traction. With the creation of a LinkedIn group iBeacon Ireland I managed to grow my

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network with people who are involved specifically with iBeacon, they joined iBeacon Ireland

and then reached out to me. I am more aware of the need to implement different types of

inbound marketing content such as webinars and whitepapers. And through reviewing the

literature on the subject of LinkedIn I am a lot more informed in what is required in order to

build a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.

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References

BIRKNER, C 2012, 'LinkedIn Lessons for B-to-B', Marketing News, 46, 14, p. 6, Business

Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 August 2014.

Damnjanovic .V., Matovic .V., Kostic .C.S., and Okanovic .M. (2012), The Role of the Linkedln

Social Media in Building the Personal Image, Journal for theory and practise management,

pp. 15-23.

Linkedin.com, (2014). Mobile Marketing & Advertising | LinkedIn. [online] Available at:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Mobile-Marketing-Advertising-

62503?gid=62503&mostPopular=&trk=tyah&trkInfo=tarId%3A1409442883312%2Ctas%3Am

obile%20marketing%2Cidx%3A2-2-5 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2014].

Linkedin.com, (2014). LinkedIn. [online] Available at:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/1337?trk=tyah&trkInfo=tarId%3A1409446479172%2Ct

as%3Alinkedin%20%2Cidx%3A4-1-12 [Accessed 31 Aug. 2014].

Witzig .L., Spencer .J., and Galvin .M., (2012) ORGANIZATIONS' USE OF LINKEDIN: AN

ANALYSIS OF NONPROFITS, LARGE CORPORATIONS AND SMALL BUSINESSES, Marketing

Management Journal, pp. 113-121.

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Appendices

LinkedIn Group iBeacon Ireland

Demographics of iBeacon Ireland Members

Demographics of iBeacon Ireland

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Growth of iBeacon Ireland

Mobile Marketing and Advertising group

Sharing a company blog post

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Section four: Twitter Marketing

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks on the internet. Given the widespread

generation and consumption of content on Twitter, companies are eager to exploit this

medium. However studies have shown that a large majority of Twitter users act as passive

information consumers and do not forward on content to their network and a wider

audience. As a result of this ideas, opinions and products compete with all other content for

the scarce attention of the user community. Twitter has garnered lots of attention from

corporation for the immense potential it provides for viral marketing. However For a brand

it can be difficult to get a share of their voice across Twitter, particularly if it is virtually

unknown.

There are very tactics that can be employed to try and gain traction on Twitter of which

have been identified by Zarella (2014). For my campaign on @ibeaconireland which is

discussed further on and in my work Twitter account @xtremepush I have been

implementing tactics suggested by the author. Below is a summary of best practices for

using Twitter. Links are essential as highly followed accounts tweet more links, sentiment is

paramount and the more positive the better, 22 tweets a day is the optimum

recommendation for gaining followers, links are crucial for getting retweets with accounts

that post 60 to 80 percent of links, after that retweet performance can dwindle, timing and

days of the week are important with Friday being the most popular day for retweets,

however, the optimum time to tweet is open to interpretation as users have access 24/7

and mostly from mobile with 78% of Twitter's monthly active users tweeting from a mobile

device, (Techcrunch, 2014).

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Self-referential language does not fare well for getting retweets. A retweet is a post

originally made by one user that is forwarded by another user, it is a way of spreading your

message to followers outside of your network. Fresh, novel and scare information are the

most valuable and effective types of information you can share. Aldo language used is

critically important in determining whether a tweet will get a retweet. Some popular words

for retweets include “please retweet” when you wish to ask for a retweet and as already

mentioned the novelty factor of a tweet “new blog post” has a high retweeting success rate.

Also Utility content such as “How to” perform well. Chunked list based content “Top” and

“10” also performs well overall on social media. And lastly the headline is the headline is the

most important component of your Twitter success. If your headline doesn’t entice and

motivate the retweet, the body of your content will be overlooked.

One of the most effective ways to gain more followers is to identify the key influencers in

your industry. Key influencers on social media are defined as those who are responsible for

the overall information dissemination in the network (Romero et al., 2011). For my work

Twitter page I took this advice on board and identified influencers in mobile marketing who I

wanted to engage with so they might acknowledge the company’s Twitter activity online. I

started by retweeting the influencer by the name of Peggy Anne Salz who is one of the top

30 mobile advertising influencers (Crawford, 2014). She then followed my company and

started mentioning us and eventually reached out to us for a guest blog. I have identified

other influencers in the mobile industry and actively looking for opportunities to engage

with them.

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Creating Lists on Twitter is a tactic you can use for lead generation, to gather content and

reshare it and to listen to your competitors followers (Quick Sprout, 2014) Several lists were

created, the first one was called “Mobile marketing” with the intention of increasing

followers and adding people who followed competitor sites. Unfortunately this did not

result in any increase in followers whatsoever. The key thing here is to go one step further

and to regularly engage with the list members so that if and when they follow you it’s

because you have made an effort to engage with them and not Passively communicate to

them. Which can be seen in the appendices.

Favortising is another tactic for gaining traction, however, the Twitter timeline layout

changed in April 2014 and favourites are now visible. My company’s business page has a

disproportional amount of favourites to followers which is a really bad social proof.

Although I did not initiating this favouritising strategy, since Twitter changed its’ timeline

(XtremePush, 2014) ironically mentioned in a blog post created thereafter, I have started to

implement Zarella’s (2014) best practices on Twitter.

Description

What did you do or not plan to do: I did not simply follow accounts on Twitter so that they

would follow me back. Initially I started the Twitter marketing using my own personal

account. I attended several digital related events during the course, and used various tactics

to attract followers and increase my social online presence.

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Personal motivation and relevance

The reason I chose Twitter is that I use it professionally in my work and personally. I have

had a twitter account from 2009, and would describe myself as an early adopter to

technology.

Academic and course relevance

Learning about Twitter has equipped me with best practices for building a brands audience

online. Through my new knowledge of Twitter I can defend this platform as a useful tool

communicating and building a brand online. Practically although I was already a Twitter

user, I am a lot more tactful and strategic in my approach when it comes to using Twitter for

the company I work in.

Academic and professional literature

Greer and Ferguson (2012, p.199) define twitter as “a Web-based social network system

first made available for public use in August 2006 referred to as a status update service

Twitter enables marketers to reach consumers directly, enabling brands to help build and

maintain consumer relationships by engaging in conversations. According to Kwon and Sung

(2011), research conducted on 44 global brands based on Twitter use indicated that

marketers tend to exhibit their brands’ presence and personalities into their brands by using

human representatives, personal pronouns and verbs in the imperative form.

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References Crawford, T. (2014). Top 30 Mobile Advertising Influencers - Impact Radius. [online] Impact

Radius. Available at: http://www.impactradius.com/blog/top-30-mobile-advertising-

influencers [Accessed 30 Aug. 2014].

Greer, C. F., and Ferguson, D. A. (2011) ‘Using twitter for promotion and branding: a content

analysis of local television twitter sites’, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media,

55(2), pp. 198-214.

Kwon .S. E. and Sung .Y. (2011) ‘Follow me! global marketers’ twitter use’, Journal of

Interactive Advertising, 12(1), pp. 4-16.

Quick Sprout, (2014). How to Steal Your Competitor’s Twitter Followers. [online] Available

at: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/17/how-to-steal-your-competitors-twitter-

followers/ [Accessed 30 Aug. 2014].

Romero, M. D., Galuba, W., Asur, A., and Huberman .A. B. (2011) Influence and passivity in

social media’ Springer berlin heidelber, 6913, pp. 18-33.

Techcrunch (2014). 78% of Twitter's monthly active users are tweeting from a mobile device.

[online] Phone Arena. Available at: http://www.phonearena.com/news/78-of-Twitters-

monthly-active-users-are-tweeting-from-a-mobile-device_id55666 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2014].

XtremePush, (2014). 5 Tips to Optimise your new Twitter layout. [online] Available at:

http://blog.xtremepush.com/2014/04/28/5-tips-to-optimise-your-new-twitter-layout/

[Accessed 30 Aug. 2014].

Zarella, .D. (2013). The Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog,

and other Proven Strategies. John Wiley and Sons.

37

Appendices

Popular Trends #irishbizparty

Reaching out to @Irishbizparty and getting a retweet, this resulted in approximately 10 new

followers.

38

Influencers

Engagement on Twitter with an influencer

Twitter: @iBeacon_Ireland

A follower growth chart from July 20 to July 25 Twitter Analytics Dashboard Tool: (Twitter

analytics).

39

My personal account @atsaffron

Event blogging

40

Growing my influence online

Chosen as a “Top Marketing Expert on Social Media” by atsMobile

41

I come in at number 18

Tweeting to a guest lecturer

42

Twitter @xtremepush: (Work Twitter account)

I have been testing out a number of tactics to increase the number of followers:

Lists

One tactic recommended to increase your followers is through creating lists according to

Neil Patel “How to Steal Your Competitor’s Twitter Followers”, 2014. Several lists were

created, the first one was called “Mobile marketing” with the intention of increasing

followers and adding people who followed competitor sites. Unfortunately this did not

result in any increase in followers whatsoever. The key thing here is to go one step further

and to regularly engage with the list members so that if and when they follow you it’s

43

because you have made an effort to engage with them and not passively communicate to

them. Which can be seen in the appendices.

Favourtising

The favouritising of tweets is similar to liking a Facebook status, and is a tactic was used to

attract followers who may be interested in our businesses, who are genuinely interested in

our industry and may be potential leads. For example the hash tag #mobilemarketing was

used favortised on numerous occasions which resulted in a ten percent followback.

As you can observe a favouritising strategy alone is not an effective tactic to gain more

followers. The ratio of followers to favourites does not fare well. On average for every 100

favourites per day 8-10 people followed back. However Twitter changed their timeline and

favourites suddenly became public, this has resulted in a bad social proof that is irreversible.

The company twitter strategy has had to become more creative.

44

Section five: Website Usability

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. “Usability” deals with an

individual’s ability to accomplish specific tasks or achieve broader goals while “using”

whatever it is we are investigating, improving, or designing – including services that don’t

even involve a specific “thing” (like a doorknob or web page). - Eric Reiss, Usable Usability.

We have all been there: If a website is difficult to use, you leave. If the homepage fails to

clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, you leave. If you get

lost on a website, you leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer

your key questions, you leave! (Nielson, 2012).

Description

As part of my career portfolio, I decided to undertake a web-site usability test on behalf of

Multitrip.com Travel Insurance. Usability testing’s main advantage is hearing the voice of

the customer – quotations, frustrations, sighs, needs, and suggestions for improvements.

This will allow a business to understand whether their product meets a user’s expectations

through usability testing. Website usability is crucial in the design development of a website

before it is entirely finished, so that necessary changes or enhancements can be made, and

to save time during development and post development (Uxmatters.com, 2009).In order to

do the test I had to download a Morae Recorder to my laptop and close all other windows.

The test took ten minutes to complete. The purpose of this test was to inform Multitrip

Travel on how user friendly I found their website. The test looked at addressing the overall

feel of the homepage and the ease of use and navigation of the Multitrip Travel website.

45

Personal motivation and relevance

Although the channels of marketing platforms are plentiful, a website is the central point for

a business. From carrying out previous digital marketing assignments, the website was

always the starting point. This course on website usability has given me the ability to

critique any website objectively. I also wanted to grasp the technology tools you can use to

test usability. In work the website was recently changed and improved, based on our course

lecture on website usability I was able to make website.

Academic and Course Relevance

Usability is an important component of website design. What I learnt from undertaking this

course is; the importance of having a good website, that complexity is not key and a simple

user friendly interface is preferable. I also learned that the same principals of common

sense in life can be applied to a good website design.

Academic and Professional Literature

Various academic and professional literature was before carrying out the website usability

test. Different website usability testing techniques were looked at including, Shneiderman’s

eight golden rules of interface design, Usability testing 101. Shneiderman’s (2014) eight

golden rules of interface design were looked at, these eight principals should be considered

when looking at improving the overall usability of a website. From looking at these eight

principals the most important one’s that I can identify with are; consistency where one

prompt on a website leading to the next should contain identical terminology, design dialog

to yield closure, where like in a real life context sequences of actions should be organized

into groups with a beginning, middle and ending so the path is clear for the next action.

Error handling and prevention, very often small detail errors can cost you time and

46

convenience so in the event of an error it is important that I am not redirected back to the

very beginning, so I can take on where I left off. Language is important as you need to speak

the language of your audience. The most important of the eight principals to me personally

is shortcuts where when revisiting a frequent website where it remembers information

about you. Amazon is a good example of an ecommerce website that lightens the load on

my short term memory.

Similarly as identified by Nielson (2012) in Usability testing 101 which defined usability by

five quality components, memorability of an interface is one component, which is the

likelihood of a user being able to establish proficiency after a period of not using it. Other

components include learnability which is the easy or difficult it is to accomplish basic tasks

the first time they encounter the design, efficiency; how quickly can tasked be performed,

errors such as for instance if you put in the wrong password, is it easy to recover the

password and lastly satisfaction, which relates back to the overall heuristic design of the

interface.

Value

In the future I believe mobile website usability testing will be crucial. Mobile devices have

overtaken laptops/desktops in importance. Statistics on mobile can reveal that 57 percent

of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Similarly,

40 percent of consumers will go to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience even if

they experience even the slightest problem accessing the site they are currently viewing

(Compuware, 2012). As stated by Tsiaousis (2014) studying mobile websites usability “has

become an intriguing endeavour considering the ergonomic constraints posed by the mobile

devices”. In my opinion overall design and usability is crucial if not more so than a website

47

accessed from a desktop. From looking at the website usability testing techniques I have

identified several websites which I personally think need to be revamped, of which can be

seen in the appendices.

48

References

Compuware, 2012, Mobile Apps: What Consumers Really Need and Want,[online], available

at: http://offers2.compuware.com/rs/compuware/images/Mobile_App_Survey_Report.pdf

Accessed, August 31 August 2014].

Nielson, 2012, ‘Usability 101: Introduction to usability’, Nielson Norman Group. [online]

Available at http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/

[Accessed 31 Aug. 2014]. Shneiderman (2014), Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design. [online] Available at:

http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/360/f04/sessions/schneidermanGoldenRul

es.html [Accessed 31 Aug. 2014].

Tsiaousis, A, & Giaglis, G 2014, 'Mobile websites: usability evaluation and design', International Journal Of Mobile Communications, 12, 1, pp. 29-55, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 31 August 2014.

Uxmatters.com, (2009). Usability Testing Versus Expert Reviews :: UXmatters. [online]

Available at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/10/usability-testing-versus-expert-reviews.php

[Accessed 31 August 2014].

49

Appendices

DoneDeal

The website is hard to navigate and the look and feel of the design interface is outdated.

The memorability of the website is poor in comparison to Amazon which can recall your

purchase behaviour and make suggestions for future purchase ideas.

Although the Amazon website looks quite busy, it has usability quality components such as

memorability.

50

Website usability test Multitrip.com

51

Section six: Email marketing

“Despite its lack of novelty, email is still massively effective.” — Cezary Pietrzak, Marketing

Director at Appboy on the promise of mobile email for 2014. Email is not only a big driver of

mobile app engagement, but is also a key tool for building customer loyalty”. “65% of all

email gets opened first on a mobile device — and that’s great news for marketers”,

(VentureBeat, 2014).

Description

There is a misconception out there that email marketing is dead, however, the world is still

fond of email. Currently in 2014 there are over 4000 million email accounts worldwide, and

growing. Mobile email users are the highest contributors to the growth of email accounts

worldwide, with a growth rate of 28 % this year (Radicati Group, 2014).

From a business stance businesses plan to increase spend on email marketing by 52%, with

SEO and social media there after (StrongView, 2014). Email is all about engagement,

segmentation amd targeting. Triggered emails and segmentation are the most effective

camapaigns.

Personal Motivation and Relevance

My personal motivation for doing email marketing was both personally and professionally

driven. Personally I normally do not check my emails from various organisation I have signed

up to, however, quite often I feel prompted to open an email by their subject line. Email

marketers are facing challenges and have had to come more creative, the economics of

attention of the internet has resulted in a quick transition from information scarcity to

information abundance. And I have certainly noticed how creative emails have become and

in particular their subject line. According to Schwartz (1999) in Chiu at al. 2007, “The idea

52

behind viral marketing is that a catchy message will be released into the online context,

grow organically, become contagious, and procreate like a weed”. These catchy emails can

be seen in the appendices.

Professional email marketing is particularly important for my job. At the moment an

outbound approach of emailing lists of prospects is the current approach. Success has been

limited, the majority of the time the recipients who have been emailed do not reply, and a

follow up call is standard. The website needs more prompts on the website to encourage

visitors to sign up to join the mailing list, however, currently there is no tangible value

communicated such as what you will receive once you subscribe. The current emailing

system is not automated, so each recipient emailed has to be personally addressed. An

automated marketing tool such as Mailchimp is required as there is no system in place to

measure the emails sent out, such as open rates or click through rates. Outbound emailing

without automation and good email design is challenging. A sophisticated approach is

needed like the emails I often receive of our competitors.

Evidence of progress

Two entirely separate email campaign were carried out; campaign one Paddy Power had the

subject line “Paddy met Steve in Dicey’s lastnight” and campaign two iBeacon Ireland with

the subject line “iBeacon Apples Newest Technology”. A/B testing was carried out on both.

Careful consideration has been given to the formulation of the email campaigns. In

campaign one a single variable the test subject line was tested to eliminate the possibility of

confounding variables and in campaign two three variables were tested including message

body, links and social sharing. A summary of the variables used can be seen in the table

below and the winning email.

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A/B Testing Variable

Campaign one Subject line:

One: Paddy met Steve in Diceys Lastnight

Two: Check out my Blog on Paddy Power

Winner: Paddy met Steve in Diceys Lastnight

Campaign two (A/b split)

Message body:

A: less content

B: more content

Links:

A: links

B: no Links

Social sharing:

A: social follow

B: social sharing

Winner: B

A/B testing variables

54

Campaign one Paddy Power

The objective of email campaign one Paddy Power was to achieve a high open rate through

the novel subject line “Paddy met Steve in Dicey’s lastnight”.

A secondary objective was to drive traffic to my blog post that further elaborated what was

said in the main body of the email and to subsequently encourage sharing of the blog on

Twitter using the hash tags provided in the email, a copy of which can be seen in the

appendices.

A hypothesis was formulated which was the use of a novel subject line to achieve a high

open rate. The A/B testing tested the two subjects randomly on 20 % of a sample size of 87

recipients, each with 10 % each. The winning subject line received a 100% open rate

55

compared to 44 % of the other test subject. The winning subject line “Paddy met Steve in

Dicey’s lastnight” was then sent to the remaining 80%.

The campaign received an open rate of 56.8 % and a click rate of 14.8 %. The open rate is a

lot higher than the industry average at 14.2 %. The top linked clicks was to the blog with 15

clicks in total in this instance. The impact of the social media sharing button Twitter was

negligible.

Campaign two: iBeacon Ireland

The objective of campaign two iBeacon Ireland was to educate and inform the email

recipients on iBeacon technology. A secondary objective was to gain new followers on

iBeacon Irelands Twitter page. A sample size of 160 people was used of which 80 were

randomly split by half. A/b testing was carried out including message body, links and social

sharing as already mentioned. Both emails can be seen in the appendices. The results of this

campaign reveal that the email campaign B received a higher open rate and click through

rates. Email B had more content and less links, as well as a prominent Twitter icon for

56

following iBeacon Ireland. Email A may have been perceived as having more spam as it had

several links whereas email B may have been perceived to me more informative. Also there

was only one link to click on apart from the social following. Both emails had the same test

subject so the open rate factor is beyond the control of this campaign. A summary of the

results can be seen below.

B A Difference

Open rate 43.24 % 33.77 % 10 %

Click rate 2.7 % 1.3 % 1.4 %

Industry average 14.9 % 14.9 % -

Summary of results of A/B split for iBeacon Ireland

Value

The email campaigns I have undertaken have proven to be a valuable learning experience.

There are several lessons learned and mistakes not to be made again. I learned that the

provision of a novel or entertaining subject line can help achieve open rates. I learned that

although social sharing buttons seem convenient and in an ideal world everyone would

follow you and share, however, I believe there has to be some kind of incentive for them to

do so. If I were to do the email campaigns again I would use a larger sample size and I would

leave a longer gap between the test email and the winning email. There was an hour

difference in the delivery of the A/b split emails and the winning email, as the sample was

very small, in order to draw validate the hypothesis a larger sample is recommended.

Academic and course relevance

By carrying out two email marketing campaigns through email marketing tool Mailchimp, I

am now equipped with the skills to design and implement an email campaign. Although

emailing seems simplistic it is to a certain extent, however an email campaign must be goal

57

driven and should deliver results. In line with the course objectives I now have the capability

of putting the theory I have learnt on email marketing into practise as demonstrated in my

campaigns. I can now defend email marketing as a platform for businesses to communicate

their brand messages to their audience. The biggest learning outcome for me personally is

that marketing automation is essential.

58

Appendices

Email campaign one: Paddy Power

59

Email campaign Two: iBeacon Ireland A

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Email campaign two: iBeacon Ireland B

61

A/B testing

62

Campaign one:

Paddy Power

Campaign two

Email A and Email B

63

Subject lines

Paddy Power knows a good subject line

New Look embraces creative subject lines

64

References

Chui .H. C, Hsieh .C. Yi., Kao .H. Y. and Lee .M. (2007), The determinants of email

receivers’ disseminating behaviors on the Internet’, Journal of Advertising Research, 47 (4),

pp. 2-16.

Hubspot ,2014, The science of email, full report: Available at:

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Science_of_Email_2014_Full_Report%20(1).pdf [Accessed

1 29 Aug, 2014).

VentureBeat, 2014, 65% of all email gets opened first on a mobile device -- and that's great news for marketers. [online] Available at: http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/22/65-of-all-email-gets-opened-first-on-a-mobile-device-and-thats-great-news-for-marketers/ [Accessed 1 Sep. 2014].

65

Section seven: Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,”

“organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. (Search Engine Land,

2014)

Search engine optimisation is crucial for any type of business today. Search engine

optimisation is used correctly over an extended period of time can help boost a company’s

overall visibility and that starts with their website. Organic search is the buzzword used today

and businesses can embrace their organic reach by investing in a strategic SEO strategy.

The most important components in the formulation of a successful SEO strategy as revealed

by Searchmetrics (2013) are as follows: Keyword links and keyword domains have lost

relevance, where keywords in a URL has significantly decreased as a ranking factor

compared to 2012. With brands being an exception to the rule, where search engines

acknowledge their brand name in a URL as a backlink.

Social signals continue to correlate very well with search rankings where well positioned

URLs have a high number of likes, shares, tweets and plus ones. If you look at a brand search

as Starbucks on Moz (an SEO tool that I have been using regularly throughout this course),

by looking at Starbuck’s link metrics, they have over over 3.74 million +1’s, over 50,000

Facebook Shares and over 77,000 tweets (Moz.com, 2014). Which can be seen in the

appendices. And lastly good content is essential. This is where the importance of having a

good blog comes into play. Ultimately backlinks continue to be one of the most important

SEO metrics.

66

Description

I decided to undertake Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as it is a marketing activity that I

find particularly interesting. Unlike Adwords which is very much one dimensional and based

on keyword research, SEO incorporates over 200 ranking factors on a website. The SEO

fundamentals add dynamic to SEO. Although SEO sounds very much like a technical skill

such as web design there is actually a lot of thought involved that requires creative and

flexible thinking. The SEO fundamentals is based on four main components; Social, Link

building such as influential targeting and lastly quality content that has unique text content

for instance can help a company build and manage its SEO presence.

Identifying the influencers is particularly important for start-up companies who have

website visibility problems. In work I have formulated a strategy to target influencers on

Twitter related to mobile marketing. I am currently working on a guest blog post which

when published will have a potential tweet reach of over 100,000 people, based on previous

guest blogs. The other components of SEO fundamentals include Keyword research and

targeting which can be applied to a company’s blog which I have been doing. And social with

social sharing being effective in showing up in search.

Value

From carrying out an SEO report on a website for both college and work I feel very capable

of offering practical advice on SEO and the necessary steps involved to enhance a websites

SEO. The website in work was re launched and before and after I was able to pinpoint what

SEO improvements were made. Keywords were essentially important to different landing

pages, the website did not score well on keywords which was discovered using the Moz

tool, and subsequently this has been fixed. Another weakness identified on the website was

67

the lack of backlinks to the website, backlinks continue to be one of the most important SEO

metrics. From using link building tools Moz and CognitiveSEO, I have identified the

competitors backlinks, categorized them and identified people to reach out to for backlinks.

Description

“Research has shown that increasingly people are doing online searches … essentially doing

their “homework” before moving forward with seeking services and products” and that for

small businesses online seo press sections are important and are a cost effective way for

generating more business. And that Businesses that have used the SEO effectively are

successful in showing up in search engine results this was statement back in 2009 by

(Murphy, 2009). SEO has come a long way in the past few years, with the introduction of

Web 2.0 consumer, there has been an explosion of consumer generated content.

A global online consumer survey was carried out by (nielson) in 2009 on over 25,000

internet users from 50 countries. The survey revealed that “Recommendations from

personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms

of advertising” and 70 percent said that they had trusted consumer opinions posted online.

In 2010 SEO was picked as a top conversion tactic for marketers according to Scott (2010).

The article focused on the results of a report on the 4 SEO fundamentals to boost natural

search traffic, with 48% of senior management selecting search engine optimisation as the

most effective way to attract customers. The report also predicted that SEO will to soar by

15% each of the next three years, from the period of 2011 to 2013, to reach 5.1 billion U.S.

dollars by 2014. However back in 2009 we were in a global recession where marketing

budgets were tight and SEO marketing was taking precedence, however now in 2014 the

has improved and businesses are thorn between PPC or SEO advertising.

68

An article released in 2013 by Forbes with the title “Will 2014 be an SEO or PPC year for

marketers?” described how in the battle of marketing dollars, many businesses re torn

between search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. In 2013

changes to Google’s algorithms meant marketers must shift their focus from keyword-heavy

copy to relevant content linked with google authorship. This gives back the search engine

rights to honest businesses who use link building and keywords as part of their overall

search engine optimisation. I can see how this can help small businesses who do not have

big marketing budgets to invest in pay-per-click advertising. However according to Appenin

Marketing (2013) a report carried out on the state of state of paid search reveal the PPC

industry is thriving, and is poised for more growth in 2014; with 72 percent of businesses

surveyed saying they are planning to spend more on PPC in 2014.

69

References

Fishkin, R. (2014). SEO: The Free Beginner's Guide from Moz. [online] Moz. Available at:

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links [Accessed 26 July.

2014].

Gori, M., Witten I. 2005. The bubble of web visibility. Communications of ACM, 48(3), pp.

115-117.

Google CTR Study (2013) “How user intent impacts google’s click through rates” http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/GoogleCTRStudy-Catalyst.pdf (Accessed: July 21st 2014).

Hanapinmarketing (2013), ‘The state of paid search’ available online

http://marketing.hanapinmarketing.com/acton/attachment/3199/f-0099/1/-/-/-/-

/2013%20State%20of%20Paid%20Search%20Report.pdf [Accessed 1 Sep. 2014).

Killoran .J. B, (2014) ‘How to use search engine optimization techniques to increase website

visibility’, IEEE Transactions On Professional Communication, 56(1), pp. 59-63.

Moz.com, (2014). Open Site Explorer. [online] Available at:

http://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.starbucks.com

[Accessed 19 Aug. 2014].

Murphy, C 2009, 'Online SEO Press Sections ESSENTIAL FOR SMALL BUSINESS', Home

Business Magazine: The Home-Based Entrepreneur's Magazine, 16, 1, p. 40, Business Source

Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 September 2014.

Nielson (2014). Global Advertising Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the

Most. [online] Nielsen.com. Available at:

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2009/global-advertising-consumers-trust-real-

friends-and-virtual-strangers-the-most.html [Accessed 1 Sep. 2014].

Spencer, S. (2014). Scaling & Systematizing Your Link Building. [online] Search Engine Land.

Available at: http://searchengineland.com/scaling-systematizing-link-building-190469

[Accessed 27 July. 2014].

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Searchmetrics.com, (2014). SEO Ranking Factors - Rank Correlation 2013 for Google USA

2013. [online] Available at: http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/knowledge-base/ranking-

factors-us-2013/ [Accessed 1Sep. 2014].

Scott, R 2010, 'SEO Picked as Top Conversion Tactic for Marketers', Min's B2B, 13, 12, p. 7,

Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 September 2014.

Search Engine Land, (2014). What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?. [online] Available

at: http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo [Accessed 1 Sep. 2014].

Torres, M. (2014). Optimize Your Content for Inbound Marketing: Part 1. [online] Business 2 Community. Available at: http://www.business2community.com/inbound-marketing/optimize-content-inbound-marketing-part-1-0910238#W46r49IhLPQZusgi.99 [Accessed: 27 July 2014).

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Appendices

Source: Nielson (2009) trust and recommendations from peers

72

Source: hapininmarketing “Paid search”

Source: Searchmetrics, 2013

73

Source (Moz.com, 2014)

A link building strategy is priority in order for the website Xtemepush to gain visibility

online

Source (Moz.com ,2014)

74

Keyword ibeacon’s grade on the new website has changed from F to B.

Source: (Moz.com, 2014)

75

Conclusion

From undertaking my learning portfolio, it has taught me and equipped me with the

necessary digital marketing tools and techniques required to carry out a successful

marketing campaign. Although my campaigns carried out may not have necessarily driven

traction to my social media, I have identified shortcomings, and what I would do next that I

didn’t do this time. Timing played another important factor in the outcome and

deliverability of my campaigns. Working full time in a digital marketing role meant that my

time was stretched between various campaigns. However undertaking this portfolio has

been an extremely valuable experience. If I could do it all again I would certainly give more

time to the campaigns and start earlier. I will certainly be applying some of the exploratory

sections that I did not cover here such as video marketing into future endeavours that my

career may entail.