Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-19
29
Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-19
Transcript of Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-19
Why are we changing?
Our team needs specific targets to work towards and review performance against. Our current stuck is a lack of specific targets: without a cohesive strategy, there has been a focus on tactics only. Strategy sets a specific long-term vision and our team is ready to commit to higher performance based on strategic organization. This report is directly responding to the previous lack of strategy with research, data, and actionable takeaways.
In this report you will find data from audits showing a baseline from the past fiscal year. You will also see a full analysis of the current state of digital marketing, a projection of what we are building to, and the steps it will take to reach our objective.
3Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Contents Current State of Data 3 Google AdWords 3 Programmatic Advertising 4 Social Media Advertising 5 Fusion Mosaic (blog) 6 Organic/SEO 7 What do we need to change? 8 New Strategy Goals 9
Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-2019 10 Google/Bing Advertising 10 Programmatic Advertising 11 Social Media Advertising 12 Social Media Organic Traffic 12 Fusion Mosaic (Blog) 13 Email Automation 14 Organic/SEO 15 Referral blogs 16 Glassdoor, Yelp, and Other Referral Sites 17
Digital Marketing Funnel 19 Why Are We Changing/Why Implement? 21
4Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
2017-18
Google AdWords
PPC Search From July – mid-December, PPC Search was strategized and ran by Emily and Ricardo. Summer, Brand, and Private School adgroups were being optimized and running. From December – currently Stevens has been in charge of running PPC Search. Stevens changed the structure of the account from a multi-campus campaign approach to grouping all campuses together via zip codes into larger adgroups based on key- word grouping. This new structure allowed the account to change from a manual CPC bidding approach to an automized CPA bidding approach.
New summer, private school, and brand landing pages were built in Unbounce and used until April. Ste- vens created new landing pages for Brand, Private School, Anxiety, Tutoring, and ADHD adgroups.
Display From July – December 2017, Display campaigns were optimized and ran by Ricardo. Google Display was shut off in January 2018 and the budget was reallocated to new programmatic campaigns.
Retargeting From July – mid-December 2017, the retargeting strategy and implementation was ran by Emily and Ri- cardo. Starting in January 2018, Stevens took over running retargeting and the budget was cut to $5/day and reallocated into the new programmatic campaigns. Targeting has been minimally customized due to an unorganized Google Tag Manager and poor website page layout.
AdWords Acquisition Data
6Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
AdWords Impressions and Clicks (Google data)
7Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
8Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic campaigns (MIA/BR, PA, Focus Schools, Focus Schools 2.0, COGx, Fusion Forward) were launched with the company Simpli.fi in January 2018. A holistic, campus-wide campaign (38 cam- puses) was launched in June. Tactics used are geo-fencing, keyword contextual, audience behavior tar- geting, keyword search, display banners, video pre-roll, and native ads. The reports offered from Simpli. fi showed traffic and conversion data. However, due to only a last-click attribution model of reporting, connecting impressions to inquiries from this tactic was unsuccessful. Simpli.fi data and Pardot data also never matched similarly and conclusions for inquiries driven by this tactic were near impossible to draw.
Programmatic Acquisition Data
Total inquiries: 17 Total revenue: $8,460 (completed contracts) Total landing page views: 39,284
9Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Social Media Advertising
Paid Advertising The current strategy around Facebook ads has led to inconsistent targeting, reporting, and success. There have not been solid objectives built out to track KPI success or failure from social advertisements as well as no content marketing plan to support the content of the ads. The majority of ads created last year sup- ported new campus openings and their events. The field has been trained to use Facebook ads to support their campus events, and the Marketing team built out visuals for the ads.
Organic Up until now, the Marketing team has been responsible for managing social media software for every campus in the country. However, the system was riddled with in-efficiencies and was highly ineffective. Campuses were expected to be their own mini social media experts and were frequently stressed over what sort of content they needed to post. With our switch to running national social media advertising, campuses will no longer have to worry about how their social media channels support inquiries.
Social Media Acquisition Data
Total social-referred inquiries: 30 Total revenue: $48,900* Total landing page views: 12,078 Website visits via social referral: 382 Website visits via Facebook referral: 373 (98% of social referrals)
10Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Fusion Mosaic Journal (Blog)
The blog houses our stories, thought leadership pieces, and any news coming from the campus. This past year we have focused on telling more teacher and staff stories. In May, SEO was audited and updated to improve our content presence on Google. Up until now, strategy has been lacking and the blog was a tactic added into various projects without solid support. An editorial calendar is in process.
Total blog inquiries: 34 Total registers: 6 Total revenue: $242,510
Blog Acquisition Data
Top Converting Blogs
Organic/SEO
Organic traffic and SEO efforts were monitored and optimized by Ricardo until December 2017. Organ- ic referral traffic comes from both Google and Bing search networks. The organic traffic has been under reported. Stevens took over optimizing SEO for new schools as of January 2018 through managing Goo- gle Identification note cards. Melissa has been in charge of optimizing the back-end SEO keywords of the website and is transitioning the role to Matt. The Marketing intern, Katherine, gathered updated campus information from about 20 campuses so that listing websites can be updated (Noodle/k12, Private School Review, GreatSchools, etc.).
Organic* Acquisition Data *Website Tracking Pardot Campaign Data
Total registers: 537 Total revenue: $13,052,277.31
Fusion Website Domain Authority
14Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
15Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-19
16Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Create and establish a healthy and effective digital marketing funnel.
Goals
1. Build thought-leadership through evergreen/pillar brand content and inbound marketing tactics target- ed at appropriate funnel levels. BHAG: become the number one resource for our families and profession- als in the innovative education sphere.
2. Create a highly efficient awareness and conversion funnel that is easy to use and leads to more campus visits and more community connections.
3. Use data to inform strategy, content, and targeting which will ultimately lead to higher quality leads. (The right people, at the right time, in the right place.)
Actions: What do we need to change?
Develop content marketing strategy • Create objectives to measure KPIs • Create fresh, targeted messaging and creatives
Target with funnel-specific strategy; data-driven content
Audit resource management • Optimize time – manage less vendors and utilize team skills if possible
Audit and re-organize Google Tag Manager • Optimize for retargeting campaigns • Redo “goals” in Analytics
Improve tracking and data auditing • Streamlined UTM system • Clean, tested pixels
17Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Optimize website to convert • Build new pages for retargeting, enhanced SEO, and user-experience driven conversions
Report, report, report! • Monthly report rhythm minimum • Build new dashboards • Survey stakeholders for what data they need to see • Review IVIR quality data; compare referral and inbound inquiries
Customer personas/Insight journey maps • Complete audience profiles and add them to department brand • Create system for auditing, testing, and enhancing audience profiles
Organize region-specific data • Keywords, phrases, trends, zip codes, pros, qualitative feedback
Lead-nurturing • Analyze the marketing funnel for our audiences and create lead-nurturing campaigns to target each appropriate stage of the funnel
18Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
1. Plan
Before any tactics are utilized, we’ve gathered data to inform strategy and to build out a plan. We’ve mapped out defined targets and goals, SMART KPIs, have focused on investing in content marketing, digital media, and experiences. Our integrated digital strategy will continue to help define audience/mar- ket segmentation, targeting, and positioning for our online value propositions.
Types of branded content that will be created or gathered at this stage: evergreen/pillar content, testimonials, brand story, brand message, brand promise, and more.
2. Reach / Exploration
In this top stage of the funnel, we publish and promote content through search engines, social networks, publishers, and other blogs to draw influencers, networks, and relevant audiences to our content hub (AKA the Fusion website). Key measures for this stage are unique visitors and the growing number of fans/followers.
• Google (Search & Display) • Bing (Search & Display) • Programmatic Networks (Search & Display) • SEO/Organic • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter • Pinterest • LinkedIn • Mom Blogs (Traacker) • PrivateSchoolReview.com • GreatSchools.com • ADDitude.com
3. Act / Decision Making
In this stage, audiences are led to our website, blog, and lead generation landing pages. These pages are filled with content that is relevant, inspirational, and useful with the intent to encourage audiences to fill out our web forms and become inquiries. Key measures for this stage are number of leads, conversion rate, time spent on site, engagement (shares/comments/likes).
20Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
4. Convert / Purchase
In this stage, marketing automation and remarketing are used based on contextual relevance to drive con- versions to audiences who have visited our website previously, but did not convert. Strong investment is focused on this stage in the funnel to support conversion rate optimization (CRO). Key measures for this stage are registers, revenue/profit, and inquiry to register rate.
• Google (Retargeting) • Bing (Retargeting) • Programmatic (Retargeting) • Facebook (Retargeting) • Instagram (Retargeting) • Email Automation (Lead generation)
5. Engage / Advocacy
This stage in the funnel is fulled by raving fans. Positive testimonials and reviews are the key to social media marketing, social proof, repeat sales, and referrals. Testimonials are collected and incorporated into the foundation of our content marketing that is used at every stage of the digital marketing funnel. Key measures for this stage are repeat sales (lifetime value), satisfaction survey results, advocacy and referrals.
• Facebook (Reviews) • Glassdoor (Reviews) • Instagram(Reviews) • Yelp (Reviews) • Testimonials • Family Referrals • Professional Referrals • Returning Students
21Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Google/Bing Advertising
Search We’ll continue to test the new account structure, CPA bidding strategy, and landing pages frequently. Reports will be made monthly on traffic, conversions, and awareness generated by this tactic. All landing pages will be mobile-optimized for our main audiences and will use Pardot tracking pixels. We will begin exploring Acquisio a Google/Bing management alternative to regain internal management over the ad- vertising platforms.
Display Display banner ads will be used to reach targeted audiences and build the base for retargeting audiences. Messaging and creatives will be hyper-focused and lead audiences through the top section of the digital strategy funnel down to informational pages (like the website and blog). This tactic is not meant to build high amounts of immediate conversions, but instead supports as the first step in a longer attribution chain. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
Retargeting This tactic will use lists of audiences built into Google Tag Manager. We can target audiences based on rules such as: different retention windows, “blog readers,” tuition page visitors, converters or non-convert- ers, adgroup type, etc. As testing builds data around the optimal audiences, we’ll increase bids for high ROI-audiences. We will spend proportionately to conversion – more money will be spent on retargeting compared to display/programmatic due to the fact that audiences are more likely to convert at this stage of the funnel and touch-point. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
22Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Programmatic Advertising
We will continue the holistic Fusion campus campaign until August and review Simpli.fi as a program- matic vendor. We will begin testing programmatic with a new company called Acquisio on the bay area and Chicago land Fusion campuses. We are looking to improve our reporting capabilities to contribute to an omni-point attribution model which we are still missing. The creatives used on this platform will be the same as Google display and retargeting. Programmatic will be used to build more reach and audience lists and utilize retargeting campaigns on other networks. Native ads will be used to draw more audiences and traffic to our content marketing hub: the Fusion blog. This tactic is still in the works of becoming more efficient to manage and report on. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
23Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Social Media Advertising
Facebook/Instagram The Marketing team will write, build, and monitor national ad campaigns for Facebook and Instagram. The company Acquisio offers a robust A/B testing software which we are demoing. This functionality offers a seamless sync to our Facebook Business Manager account and allows us to advertise to any of the pages that we own. Their advertising software creates up to hundreds of A/B test variables in mere minutes which is an incredible advantage for our team. The strategy for Facebook advertising is to have consistent, fresh, and highly tested ad copy. We will create and test custom audiences for both display and retargeting advertisements. These ads will push to the next stage of the funnel: white papers, the website, blog posts, etc.
The Marketing team will still support local campus teams with their Facebook event advertising by creat- ing sharable images for the local teams to use.
Pinterest Pinterest has become known as another “search engine” and our team will be reviewing and demoing the platform advertising features. The audiences that use Pinterest fit our targeted demographics well and could be an excellent addition to our top-funnel digital advertising strategy.
Social Media Organic Traffic
Organic social media strategy is making a large change in the direction of streamlining the Marketing team to run similar to an advertising agency. This shift in strategy means that campuses will be posting di- rectly through Facebook and Instagram when they share images from their campus and focusing on only creating events and sharing photos from local campus events.
The Marketing team will update trainings to reflect how to use the Facebook and Instagram apps natively.
Edgar is the new program that the Marketing team will be using to run social media management. Edgar makes it easy for teams to compile an unlimited collection of content and then easily post it to multiple so- cial media platforms. This program successfully compliments the content marketing strategy that has been developed by the team. This program is much more cost efficient than Social Studio had been (about $600/annually), and also matches the new strategy flawlessly. We will use Edgar to post thought leader- ship content and promote connections from influencers via Traacker.
The Marketing team will manage national Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts (with support from the recruiting team for LinkedIn) and continue to support new school Facebook pages.
24Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Fusion Mosaic Journal (blog)
The Marketing team is committed to data-informed, strategy-driven content. On the blog this includes content that will support our projects written for the right audience at the right stage of the funnel. A Teacher Freelance Network plan is in progress and we will utilize other internal content creators as well. Content types include: evergreen content for ads and landing pages, thought leadership pieces to be post- ed internally and on external sites, and relevant/timely content. A larger focus will be placed on the distribution of content on the right channels and in the right commu- nities to build awareness, drive inquiries, and bolster engagement. We will be utilizing Contently to manage our entire Content Marketing process and network of content creators.
25Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Email Automation
Pardot has a robust tool called Engagement Studio that email automation will be managed through.
We will move targeted audiences along the marketing funnel through a series of content including blogs, videos, and testimonials with the goal of having them attend an event or set up a visit. Considerations will be made as to how this interacts with the sales process and communication with RDAOs, DAOs, and Operations will be paramount. Automation funnel ideas are: re-engaging Disqualified: Unresponsive inquiries, blog subscribers, and more.
26Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Organic/SEO
To maintain our organic traffic, we’ll use the program Moz/Moz Local to manage all of our campus list- ings around the internet. Through Moz we can make sure that google listings are up to date – especially new campuses as they move through pilot to launch phases.
We’ll use Google Analytics to report on trends such as unique visits and bounce rates to measure the user experience on our website. As we develop and launch a new website, we’ll have to carefully watch our traffic trends and can use previous data to compare and make sure that our new website is performing to at least standard or above average metrics for the initial launch phase.
Due to technological and cultural advances, more of our audiences are using mobile devices for online navigation than ever. We’ve noticed a heavy and consistent trend of more mobile users on our website which means that we’ll have to closely monitor user experience on our website for organic traffic. Our focus for the new website will be to make it primarily mobile optimized for this reason.
27Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Referral Blogs
We will begin using the program Traacker to build influencer networks. This program is owned both by the Marketing department and RDAOs. This program will keep track of the influencers we need to network with, find new blog and social content to share, and help build relationships and referrals. This tactic will work closely with the content marketing plan to both promote Fusion-created content and also connect with industry-expert content helping to build our thought-leadership platform.
28Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Glassdoor, Yelp, and Other Referral Sites
Glassdoor Glassdoor management is co-owned between the Marketing and Recruiting teams. Content is updated regularly and any time a blog is posted it gets updated here as well.
Yelp Yelp is another important referral source and will have a complete and updated list of campuses. Calls to action will be updated on a regular basis and landing pages will be created to track inquiries coming from Yelp. Pay-per-click advertising opportunities are available and will be investigated.
Referral Sites Our team will champion updating referral sites such as:
• PrivateSchoolReview.com • Niché.com • NoodleK12.com • GreatSchools.com • and more
We will work with all of the campus teams to collect information and manage updates as needed.
June 1, 2018
with contributions from Melissa Kersjes, Storyteller & Content Writer
Our team needs specific targets to work towards and review performance against. Our current stuck is a lack of specific targets: without a cohesive strategy, there has been a focus on tactics only. Strategy sets a specific long-term vision and our team is ready to commit to higher performance based on strategic organization. This report is directly responding to the previous lack of strategy with research, data, and actionable takeaways.
In this report you will find data from audits showing a baseline from the past fiscal year. You will also see a full analysis of the current state of digital marketing, a projection of what we are building to, and the steps it will take to reach our objective.
3Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Contents Current State of Data 3 Google AdWords 3 Programmatic Advertising 4 Social Media Advertising 5 Fusion Mosaic (blog) 6 Organic/SEO 7 What do we need to change? 8 New Strategy Goals 9
Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-2019 10 Google/Bing Advertising 10 Programmatic Advertising 11 Social Media Advertising 12 Social Media Organic Traffic 12 Fusion Mosaic (Blog) 13 Email Automation 14 Organic/SEO 15 Referral blogs 16 Glassdoor, Yelp, and Other Referral Sites 17
Digital Marketing Funnel 19 Why Are We Changing/Why Implement? 21
4Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
2017-18
Google AdWords
PPC Search From July – mid-December, PPC Search was strategized and ran by Emily and Ricardo. Summer, Brand, and Private School adgroups were being optimized and running. From December – currently Stevens has been in charge of running PPC Search. Stevens changed the structure of the account from a multi-campus campaign approach to grouping all campuses together via zip codes into larger adgroups based on key- word grouping. This new structure allowed the account to change from a manual CPC bidding approach to an automized CPA bidding approach.
New summer, private school, and brand landing pages were built in Unbounce and used until April. Ste- vens created new landing pages for Brand, Private School, Anxiety, Tutoring, and ADHD adgroups.
Display From July – December 2017, Display campaigns were optimized and ran by Ricardo. Google Display was shut off in January 2018 and the budget was reallocated to new programmatic campaigns.
Retargeting From July – mid-December 2017, the retargeting strategy and implementation was ran by Emily and Ri- cardo. Starting in January 2018, Stevens took over running retargeting and the budget was cut to $5/day and reallocated into the new programmatic campaigns. Targeting has been minimally customized due to an unorganized Google Tag Manager and poor website page layout.
AdWords Acquisition Data
6Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
AdWords Impressions and Clicks (Google data)
7Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
8Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic campaigns (MIA/BR, PA, Focus Schools, Focus Schools 2.0, COGx, Fusion Forward) were launched with the company Simpli.fi in January 2018. A holistic, campus-wide campaign (38 cam- puses) was launched in June. Tactics used are geo-fencing, keyword contextual, audience behavior tar- geting, keyword search, display banners, video pre-roll, and native ads. The reports offered from Simpli. fi showed traffic and conversion data. However, due to only a last-click attribution model of reporting, connecting impressions to inquiries from this tactic was unsuccessful. Simpli.fi data and Pardot data also never matched similarly and conclusions for inquiries driven by this tactic were near impossible to draw.
Programmatic Acquisition Data
Total inquiries: 17 Total revenue: $8,460 (completed contracts) Total landing page views: 39,284
9Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Social Media Advertising
Paid Advertising The current strategy around Facebook ads has led to inconsistent targeting, reporting, and success. There have not been solid objectives built out to track KPI success or failure from social advertisements as well as no content marketing plan to support the content of the ads. The majority of ads created last year sup- ported new campus openings and their events. The field has been trained to use Facebook ads to support their campus events, and the Marketing team built out visuals for the ads.
Organic Up until now, the Marketing team has been responsible for managing social media software for every campus in the country. However, the system was riddled with in-efficiencies and was highly ineffective. Campuses were expected to be their own mini social media experts and were frequently stressed over what sort of content they needed to post. With our switch to running national social media advertising, campuses will no longer have to worry about how their social media channels support inquiries.
Social Media Acquisition Data
Total social-referred inquiries: 30 Total revenue: $48,900* Total landing page views: 12,078 Website visits via social referral: 382 Website visits via Facebook referral: 373 (98% of social referrals)
10Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Fusion Mosaic Journal (Blog)
The blog houses our stories, thought leadership pieces, and any news coming from the campus. This past year we have focused on telling more teacher and staff stories. In May, SEO was audited and updated to improve our content presence on Google. Up until now, strategy has been lacking and the blog was a tactic added into various projects without solid support. An editorial calendar is in process.
Total blog inquiries: 34 Total registers: 6 Total revenue: $242,510
Blog Acquisition Data
Top Converting Blogs
Organic/SEO
Organic traffic and SEO efforts were monitored and optimized by Ricardo until December 2017. Organ- ic referral traffic comes from both Google and Bing search networks. The organic traffic has been under reported. Stevens took over optimizing SEO for new schools as of January 2018 through managing Goo- gle Identification note cards. Melissa has been in charge of optimizing the back-end SEO keywords of the website and is transitioning the role to Matt. The Marketing intern, Katherine, gathered updated campus information from about 20 campuses so that listing websites can be updated (Noodle/k12, Private School Review, GreatSchools, etc.).
Organic* Acquisition Data *Website Tracking Pardot Campaign Data
Total registers: 537 Total revenue: $13,052,277.31
Fusion Website Domain Authority
14Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
15Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Digital Marketing Strategy 2018-19
16Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Create and establish a healthy and effective digital marketing funnel.
Goals
1. Build thought-leadership through evergreen/pillar brand content and inbound marketing tactics target- ed at appropriate funnel levels. BHAG: become the number one resource for our families and profession- als in the innovative education sphere.
2. Create a highly efficient awareness and conversion funnel that is easy to use and leads to more campus visits and more community connections.
3. Use data to inform strategy, content, and targeting which will ultimately lead to higher quality leads. (The right people, at the right time, in the right place.)
Actions: What do we need to change?
Develop content marketing strategy • Create objectives to measure KPIs • Create fresh, targeted messaging and creatives
Target with funnel-specific strategy; data-driven content
Audit resource management • Optimize time – manage less vendors and utilize team skills if possible
Audit and re-organize Google Tag Manager • Optimize for retargeting campaigns • Redo “goals” in Analytics
Improve tracking and data auditing • Streamlined UTM system • Clean, tested pixels
17Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Optimize website to convert • Build new pages for retargeting, enhanced SEO, and user-experience driven conversions
Report, report, report! • Monthly report rhythm minimum • Build new dashboards • Survey stakeholders for what data they need to see • Review IVIR quality data; compare referral and inbound inquiries
Customer personas/Insight journey maps • Complete audience profiles and add them to department brand • Create system for auditing, testing, and enhancing audience profiles
Organize region-specific data • Keywords, phrases, trends, zip codes, pros, qualitative feedback
Lead-nurturing • Analyze the marketing funnel for our audiences and create lead-nurturing campaigns to target each appropriate stage of the funnel
18Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
1. Plan
Before any tactics are utilized, we’ve gathered data to inform strategy and to build out a plan. We’ve mapped out defined targets and goals, SMART KPIs, have focused on investing in content marketing, digital media, and experiences. Our integrated digital strategy will continue to help define audience/mar- ket segmentation, targeting, and positioning for our online value propositions.
Types of branded content that will be created or gathered at this stage: evergreen/pillar content, testimonials, brand story, brand message, brand promise, and more.
2. Reach / Exploration
In this top stage of the funnel, we publish and promote content through search engines, social networks, publishers, and other blogs to draw influencers, networks, and relevant audiences to our content hub (AKA the Fusion website). Key measures for this stage are unique visitors and the growing number of fans/followers.
• Google (Search & Display) • Bing (Search & Display) • Programmatic Networks (Search & Display) • SEO/Organic • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter • Pinterest • LinkedIn • Mom Blogs (Traacker) • PrivateSchoolReview.com • GreatSchools.com • ADDitude.com
3. Act / Decision Making
In this stage, audiences are led to our website, blog, and lead generation landing pages. These pages are filled with content that is relevant, inspirational, and useful with the intent to encourage audiences to fill out our web forms and become inquiries. Key measures for this stage are number of leads, conversion rate, time spent on site, engagement (shares/comments/likes).
20Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
4. Convert / Purchase
In this stage, marketing automation and remarketing are used based on contextual relevance to drive con- versions to audiences who have visited our website previously, but did not convert. Strong investment is focused on this stage in the funnel to support conversion rate optimization (CRO). Key measures for this stage are registers, revenue/profit, and inquiry to register rate.
• Google (Retargeting) • Bing (Retargeting) • Programmatic (Retargeting) • Facebook (Retargeting) • Instagram (Retargeting) • Email Automation (Lead generation)
5. Engage / Advocacy
This stage in the funnel is fulled by raving fans. Positive testimonials and reviews are the key to social media marketing, social proof, repeat sales, and referrals. Testimonials are collected and incorporated into the foundation of our content marketing that is used at every stage of the digital marketing funnel. Key measures for this stage are repeat sales (lifetime value), satisfaction survey results, advocacy and referrals.
• Facebook (Reviews) • Glassdoor (Reviews) • Instagram(Reviews) • Yelp (Reviews) • Testimonials • Family Referrals • Professional Referrals • Returning Students
21Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Google/Bing Advertising
Search We’ll continue to test the new account structure, CPA bidding strategy, and landing pages frequently. Reports will be made monthly on traffic, conversions, and awareness generated by this tactic. All landing pages will be mobile-optimized for our main audiences and will use Pardot tracking pixels. We will begin exploring Acquisio a Google/Bing management alternative to regain internal management over the ad- vertising platforms.
Display Display banner ads will be used to reach targeted audiences and build the base for retargeting audiences. Messaging and creatives will be hyper-focused and lead audiences through the top section of the digital strategy funnel down to informational pages (like the website and blog). This tactic is not meant to build high amounts of immediate conversions, but instead supports as the first step in a longer attribution chain. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
Retargeting This tactic will use lists of audiences built into Google Tag Manager. We can target audiences based on rules such as: different retention windows, “blog readers,” tuition page visitors, converters or non-convert- ers, adgroup type, etc. As testing builds data around the optimal audiences, we’ll increase bids for high ROI-audiences. We will spend proportionately to conversion – more money will be spent on retargeting compared to display/programmatic due to the fact that audiences are more likely to convert at this stage of the funnel and touch-point. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
22Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Programmatic Advertising
We will continue the holistic Fusion campus campaign until August and review Simpli.fi as a program- matic vendor. We will begin testing programmatic with a new company called Acquisio on the bay area and Chicago land Fusion campuses. We are looking to improve our reporting capabilities to contribute to an omni-point attribution model which we are still missing. The creatives used on this platform will be the same as Google display and retargeting. Programmatic will be used to build more reach and audience lists and utilize retargeting campaigns on other networks. Native ads will be used to draw more audiences and traffic to our content marketing hub: the Fusion blog. This tactic is still in the works of becoming more efficient to manage and report on. We will continue to test and optimize landing pages.
23Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Social Media Advertising
Facebook/Instagram The Marketing team will write, build, and monitor national ad campaigns for Facebook and Instagram. The company Acquisio offers a robust A/B testing software which we are demoing. This functionality offers a seamless sync to our Facebook Business Manager account and allows us to advertise to any of the pages that we own. Their advertising software creates up to hundreds of A/B test variables in mere minutes which is an incredible advantage for our team. The strategy for Facebook advertising is to have consistent, fresh, and highly tested ad copy. We will create and test custom audiences for both display and retargeting advertisements. These ads will push to the next stage of the funnel: white papers, the website, blog posts, etc.
The Marketing team will still support local campus teams with their Facebook event advertising by creat- ing sharable images for the local teams to use.
Pinterest Pinterest has become known as another “search engine” and our team will be reviewing and demoing the platform advertising features. The audiences that use Pinterest fit our targeted demographics well and could be an excellent addition to our top-funnel digital advertising strategy.
Social Media Organic Traffic
Organic social media strategy is making a large change in the direction of streamlining the Marketing team to run similar to an advertising agency. This shift in strategy means that campuses will be posting di- rectly through Facebook and Instagram when they share images from their campus and focusing on only creating events and sharing photos from local campus events.
The Marketing team will update trainings to reflect how to use the Facebook and Instagram apps natively.
Edgar is the new program that the Marketing team will be using to run social media management. Edgar makes it easy for teams to compile an unlimited collection of content and then easily post it to multiple so- cial media platforms. This program successfully compliments the content marketing strategy that has been developed by the team. This program is much more cost efficient than Social Studio had been (about $600/annually), and also matches the new strategy flawlessly. We will use Edgar to post thought leader- ship content and promote connections from influencers via Traacker.
The Marketing team will manage national Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts (with support from the recruiting team for LinkedIn) and continue to support new school Facebook pages.
24Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Fusion Mosaic Journal (blog)
The Marketing team is committed to data-informed, strategy-driven content. On the blog this includes content that will support our projects written for the right audience at the right stage of the funnel. A Teacher Freelance Network plan is in progress and we will utilize other internal content creators as well. Content types include: evergreen content for ads and landing pages, thought leadership pieces to be post- ed internally and on external sites, and relevant/timely content. A larger focus will be placed on the distribution of content on the right channels and in the right commu- nities to build awareness, drive inquiries, and bolster engagement. We will be utilizing Contently to manage our entire Content Marketing process and network of content creators.
25Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Email Automation
Pardot has a robust tool called Engagement Studio that email automation will be managed through.
We will move targeted audiences along the marketing funnel through a series of content including blogs, videos, and testimonials with the goal of having them attend an event or set up a visit. Considerations will be made as to how this interacts with the sales process and communication with RDAOs, DAOs, and Operations will be paramount. Automation funnel ideas are: re-engaging Disqualified: Unresponsive inquiries, blog subscribers, and more.
26Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Organic/SEO
To maintain our organic traffic, we’ll use the program Moz/Moz Local to manage all of our campus list- ings around the internet. Through Moz we can make sure that google listings are up to date – especially new campuses as they move through pilot to launch phases.
We’ll use Google Analytics to report on trends such as unique visits and bounce rates to measure the user experience on our website. As we develop and launch a new website, we’ll have to carefully watch our traffic trends and can use previous data to compare and make sure that our new website is performing to at least standard or above average metrics for the initial launch phase.
Due to technological and cultural advances, more of our audiences are using mobile devices for online navigation than ever. We’ve noticed a heavy and consistent trend of more mobile users on our website which means that we’ll have to closely monitor user experience on our website for organic traffic. Our focus for the new website will be to make it primarily mobile optimized for this reason.
27Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Referral Blogs
We will begin using the program Traacker to build influencer networks. This program is owned both by the Marketing department and RDAOs. This program will keep track of the influencers we need to network with, find new blog and social content to share, and help build relationships and referrals. This tactic will work closely with the content marketing plan to both promote Fusion-created content and also connect with industry-expert content helping to build our thought-leadership platform.
28Digital Marketing Strategy 18-19
Glassdoor, Yelp, and Other Referral Sites
Glassdoor Glassdoor management is co-owned between the Marketing and Recruiting teams. Content is updated regularly and any time a blog is posted it gets updated here as well.
Yelp Yelp is another important referral source and will have a complete and updated list of campuses. Calls to action will be updated on a regular basis and landing pages will be created to track inquiries coming from Yelp. Pay-per-click advertising opportunities are available and will be investigated.
Referral Sites Our team will champion updating referral sites such as:
• PrivateSchoolReview.com • Niché.com • NoodleK12.com • GreatSchools.com • and more
We will work with all of the campus teams to collect information and manage updates as needed.
June 1, 2018
with contributions from Melissa Kersjes, Storyteller & Content Writer
