Dr. Debra Zahay - Digital Marketing Management, Second Edition

Digital Marketing Management

A Handbook for the Current (or Future) CEO

Second Edition

Debra Zahay, PhD

President, Zahay, Inc.

Professor of Marketing,

St. Edwards University, Austin, TX

Digital Marketing Management: A Handbook for the Current (or Future) CEO

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2020.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2020 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-792-1 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-793-8 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Digital and Social Media Marketing and Advertising Collection

Collection ISSN: 2333-8822 (print)

Collection ISSN: 2333-8830 (electronic)

Cover image licensed by Ingram Image, StockPhotoSecrets.com Cover and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

Second edition: 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Printed in the United States of America.

Dedication

To my husband Edward Blatz, my mother Joyce Zahay and our families, and the late MaryLou Roberts for her guidance and inspiration.

Abstract

This book is for managers and would-be managers who need to upgrade their knowledge of digital marketing. Told from the perspective of marketing strategy, it puts digital marketing in the context of firm strategy selection. The first step in digital marketing is to understand your company and your brand. The next step is to put content and keywords on your website so that they can be found in search. The next step is to use the other delivery platforms of digital content, e-mail, social, and mobile, to deploy that content to the customer. The final topics in the book focus on the importance of data management and privacy. I discuss how to develop a database and an integrated data platform and how to create an organization that puts data quality at its center. These practices are as critical to digital marketing success as the digital marketing delivery platforms. Without quality data, no digital marketing program can be successful. After discussing how to create processes for high-quality data and a platform to manage that data, I then briefly discuss the use of analytics in digital marketing. Finally, I cover issues in managing digital marketing organization in the age of automation. In particular, I examine the skills needed for digital marketing and the best way to structure an organization for knowledge transfer in the area. After reading this book, the reader should have a good idea of where to start on the path to an integrated digital marketing management strategy. Each chapter concludes with a list of action steps or what to do next to get started on implementing a digital marketing strategy, as well as review questions and key terminology.

Keywords

Digital marketing; search engine marketing; e-mail marketing; social media marketing; data quality; database management; data analytics

Contents

Victoria Crittenden, Rich Hagle, Charlotte Mason, George Milne, Kurt Ruf, Lisa Spiller, Thorne Washington

When I began my career as a marketing professional, e-mail was a rare privilege. There were four major forms of marketing communication: in-person, phone, fax, and postal mail. Everything that we needed to know about the customer we learned from talking to the customer, through research surveys, or from transaction records, laboriously collected, and sometimes painstakingly supplemented. There was no online behavioral data to analyze, no web logs, or click-through rates.

I remember, not too long ago, going through hard copies of printouts with a yellow highlighter to pick out the industries which were most likely to yield increased sales in terms of vertical marketing specialization (a technique which worked, by the way). I was somewhat unique in having come from an information systems background and being able to coax decisions from data in the organization. Those who knew how to do so usually labored, as I did, in direct marketing, one of the few areas of marketing which relied on customer data analysis for decision making.

Now I would argue that an individual who is in marketing cannot escape the inexorable rise of technology and its applications. A proliferation of communications channels and a reliance upon technology by both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer markets (B2C) mean that we marketers are dependent upon the importance of digital marketing. Not only that, digital marketing is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, beginning with upper management. For example, if 93 percent of purchases begin with searching the web, then search is everybodys business in the company, not just that of marketing.

This book is a handbook for the management of digital marketing. It is not, like my other digital marketing book, Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies in a Digital Environment, 4th edition, with MaryLou Roberts, designed to also be used in a skills-based course and provide a detailed overview of the ins and outs of the execution of digital marketing. Those seeking to learn the details of operating social media platforms or how to effectively create paid search ads can look to that text or other resources to do so.

In my classes, I supplement this material with practical, hands-on applications, such as the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge (OMC) or an Internet marketing simulation.

This book will also help pinpoint the people skills necessary to build the digital marketing organization and also help identify and classify the important elements of digital marketing in the organization. Although there are some leading-edge programs in this area, marketing academics have been slow to make the transition to digital marketing. A recent study by Langan, Cowley, and Nguyen found that only one in ten university undergraduate marketing programs accredited by Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) requires a digital marketing course in the core marketing curriculum. Therefore, this book plays an important role in terms of its use in upper-level masters classes and as a resource for managers.

This book is relevant because what constitutes digital marketing is constantly evolving, with skills in data analysis and management, content marketing and storytelling, and the user experience becoming core skills to accompany competencies in search, e-mail, and social media. Increasingly, flexibility and openness to new ideas are just as critical as skill sets in managing a digital marketing team. It is more likely than ever that skills and specializations will have to be developed in-house as well as hired from without, because of the shortage of those with knowledge in this field. Managers need to know what skills and capabilities to develop in their employees, not necessarily have the skills themselves.

To summarize, the books target is anyone who needs to understand how to incorporate digital marketing into their organization at a strategic level. It is hoped the book will be as useful to the small business owner as to the CMO of a large company. Many of those reading this book developed and succeeded in their careers in an era without Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and paid search; many are digital natives but use the Internet for their own education and enjoyment and not for marketing purposes. The book can be read on its own or to upgrade your skills or as part of an undergraduate or masters level course in the subject.