What is Earned Media: Definition, Best Practices and Examples

The only thing constant in life and digital marketing is ‘change’. And by now we are more than used to it. More the companies invest in various internet marketing campaigns, more is the influx of data. That data which holds the potential to not just sustain their business but also turn it around, if used optimally. Data focused marketing requires a lot of testing and comes with its own set of challenges. While many businesses are actively synergizing data into clever campaigns to reach out to their customers, they are still facing a lot of stumbling blocks when it comes to online marketing. Common Challenges Faced by Digital Marketing Executive: Every minute, a new business is trying to build its presence online. The market is cluttered as ever and the consumers are spoilt for choices. The competition is getting worse day-by-day but at the end of the day, businesses are selling the same thing to the same people at the same price. Which means whatever they are saying through their marketing channels is only adding to the consumers’ disinterest. What can they do to break away from this pattern? Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Invent new digital customer experiences that make their brand stand out. Use data-focused marketing to localise global data and personalise it to resonate with the local consumers. Let’s look at the consumer’s ideal journey across digital channels to understand this particular challenge. Say a consumer is accessing Facebook on his phone and has come across an interesting video Ad. He watches it, likes it and moves on. The next time he is browsing on his iPad/Tab looking for products like the Ad he saw on Facebook a week ago. This time a Google Display Banner about the product he is looking for pops up. He is interested and goes to the landing page to check the product/ brand but drops out without making up his mind. The very next week the same consumer goes to the website of the said brand buys the product. Magical, eh? But this kind of concrete conversions is a distant dream for most online businesses as they are often trying to figure out which marketing channel should they push the most. The answer is, ‘all of them’ – social media, website, the right technology tools and mobile. Use target group segmentation and then wait to find out which of these mediums work and which of them are passé. Unless a business justifies its digital experiments in the form of ROI (return on investment), it is very difficult to understand the effectiveness of any online marketing campaign. ROI can be measured by tracking every single marketing activity in real time and clubbing the results with the sales report. But the challenge is not all marketing activities are easy to track. Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification That’s where marketing analytics and inbound marketing come to the rescue. Marketing analytics help in deciphering the credibility of the existing or incoming data and inbound marketing campaigns give tangible numbers performance-wise. Better the numbers more will be the budget for the next digital marketing campaign. All said and done, today’s challenges will be tomorrow’s guiding stars. Hence, experimentation in digital marketing is key if a business wants to ace it in the long run. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

Back in my agency days, I was really confused as to how my team managers could magically divide the client’s budget on digital across channels like Google & Facebook, and across networks like Google Search, Shopping, GSP, Facebook Targeting & Remarketing. They would estimate some “industry standard” click-through & conversion rates and apportion the client’s money across these channels to achieve the desired goals either transactions or leads. Over the years, I’ve realized that marketing managers figure out some of these industry thresholds and develop some templates which helps them accurately coin strategies that are at least 70-80% of the desired results. In this E-Book, we’ll be taking you step by step, in how you can create a comprehensive 3-month comprehensive digital marketing budget strategy. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. What You’ll Learn from this E-book? This e-book primarily aims to make you independent from your marketing managers, and helps you create Digital Marketing Strategy & perform budget allocations for all the online channels, and highlights the levers that you need to focus on when you create your strategy around thresholds & metrics – 1. Deep Dive into Primary & Secondary Metrics – Learn why CPCs, CTRs, Conversion rates are so important. 2. Understanding Your Target Consumers – Learn How to think about your target audience & then take a decision on which channels & networks you want to allocate money to. 3. 1st Month’s Budget Plan – Learn Step by Step for a Travel company, who wants to create a Digital Marketing Strategy & Budget Plan for the 1st month on Google & Facebook. 4. 3-Month Budget Plan – Learn how to expand your 1 month’s pilot to a 3-month quarterly strategy, also check the pitfalls & landmines of digital PPC you need to avoid. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses Bonus Section : We have also shared a compilation of 10 top performance marketing strategies that have worked well for both e-commerce & lead generation businesses, which you can use as a starting point for your digital marketing strategy. You can download the e-book from the below link Free of Cost. Do let us know your feedback. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

The difference between good and great is never the hard and sharp skills which can be measured and quantified, it is always the softer, rounded and scruffy stuff which is tough to learn, unlearn and asses. Ironically, the hard is easy and soft is difficult. An un-shakeable rockstar digital marketer is not just made up of data, analytics, optimization, tools, impressions, clicks and conversions. He is made of rigor, curiosity, intuition, persuasion, adaptability and negotiation. Doesn’t sound like a chapter from organizational behavior 101? Well, it does and it is the what great marketers are made of. No, he is not made of dimensions which can be measured through the spider web charts. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. The difference between a good and a rockstar digital marketer are the soft skills which can’t be put in a spreadsheet. So, here’s how these soft skills can future proof your digital marketing career and transform you into a digital marketing Rockstar: 1. Endless Curiosity The future belongs to the curious and a digital marketer needs to have the hunger to learn more, ask more questions and be curious about everything happening in the marketing world. The pace at which technology is evolving and communication modes and mediums are changing you run the risk of being irrelevant in no time. If you were an SEO expert in 2005 and you haven’t kept up with the pace of the changing landscape, it is highly possible that you are out of your job right now. If you were a social media marketer 5 years and you haven’t bothered to move beyond likes and vanity metrics, you would probably not be of any use to brands anymore. Be curious, learn new things, spot and explore opportunities to deliver superlative results for your business. 17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills for 2017 Pro Tip: Use Feedly, Subscribe to 10-15 blogs on areas which interest you within marketing, read religiously, document your learnings and run 5 experiments a month. See the results in 6 months. 2. Powerful Intuition It doesn’t always help to hide behind data and argue on results with data that is sparse, insignificant and used merely to fill up a table. You should not fear the unknown when faced with situations where there is no precedent or no means to measure, it’s ok to rely on your intuition. If you have a deep understanding of your consumers and business you will fail less. Empirical data doesn’t help you always, path changing innovations are based on strong intuitions. Tip: Deep dive into consumer research, brand tracks, media planning, business results. No, it’s not the job of the ‘brand’ or other functions. It is yours too. Take a few bets early in your career. Fail. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – Webinar with Q&A Session on Digital Marketing document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/kapil-panchal-alumni-talk-about-careers-in-dm.mp4 3. Exceptional ability to Persuade Great marketers have an exceptional ability to persuade. They know how to align themselves to the big hairy audacious goals of the top bosses without compromising on what they think is right for the brand and the business. As a digital marketer, you will need to persuade your bosses to run experiments, run campaigns which are superfluous and to spend on marketing even in hard times. Don’t give up if you fail once. Prepare better, work harder and reason with a logic. What works? Your ability to listen and understand, passion for the idea and your belief. How to Become a [T] Shaped Marketer in the Digital Age? Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification 4. Ruthless Negotiation Truth to be told, marketing is still seen as a huge cost center by most companies. You are the guy who is giving your CEO sleepless nights, you have the power to spend millions at the click of a button after all. When it comes to money, you should learn how to save it and make use of it to fund your experiments. Hence, Negotiate ruthlessly. A strong digital marketer needs to be a great negotiator. Whether it is vendors, tools or media you need to negotiate, not only for money but for anything which makes you more efficient and effective. Bet your CEO won’t stop smiling. Tip: Do not hesitate to ask. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs 5. Flexibility to Change and Adapt An extraordinary digital marketer keeps himself relevant, he is willing to unlearn and is sensitive to the changing environment and consumer. The channel strategy which worked well a year back might not be the best choice right now, the optimization techniques, the growth hacks which delivered a year ago might not yield the same results. It is of utmost importance to be nimble and change course if the results don’t seem to agree with your plan. Pro Tip: Don’t overtest, handle your ego, be willing to unlearn and make new mistakes instead of repeating the old ones. We are living in exciting times where the lines between various functions of marketing are blurring, marketing is increasingly becoming the center of the business and it is changing and evolving rapidly. It will become increasingly complex to take black and white decisions and hence a rockstar marketer needs to build soft skills which are enduring. The career opportunities in digital marketing are plenty; you get to choose what you want to become. If you are curious to get into the world of digital marketing, check out upGrad & MICA’s Digital Marketing Program. Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

Influencer marketing campaign trends have been in vogue since the advent of social media marketing. With celebrities, subject matter experts, social media enthusiasts and entrepreneurs building their own world of fans and followers, influencer marketing has become more of a trend than an invaluable business marketing tool. The Need to Evaluate It is very easy to employ a group of small to mid-level influencers for short campaigns or outbursts like contests or offer announcements and get your hashtag trending or acquire the set number of followers or sign-ups. But if you are looking at building your brand image through an influencer marketing campaign, it calls for a thorough evaluation of your influencer targeting process, your campaign agenda and execution, and how best do you use your learnings for the next campaign. Daunting, is it? Relax. There’s an easier way to go about this. Simply seek answers to the following questions and put them to good use. Do you have these 17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills? Questions to ask while evaluating an influencer marketing campaign: 1) Are you working with the right influencers? When it comes to the influencers, it’s not just their incredible number of followers that matter but also the kind of conversations they have with their network. You are working with the right influencers if they love your brand by genuinely tagging/mentioning you in most of their conversations or if they are already talking about your forte/industry and all you need to do is give them a brand name as a plugin to their social chatter. When Amazon India launched Kindle Paperwhite in India, they wanted to inculcate the habit of e-reading among the Indian readers. So, they got bestselling Indian authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi to feature in digital films which showcased the authors’ journey from reading books to e-books. These film spoke volumes to the Indian readers subtly highlighting the features of Kindle. 2) Do your influencers have the right followers? All influencers have extensive reach owing to their massive fan following. But the kind of followers they have plays a crucial role in an influencer marketing campaign as that defines the actual reach of your content. For e.g. if you are a brand selling baby products, let’s say Smart Bottoms Inc, and you have teamed up with mothers, it is essential for them to have other mothers as their major followers with active conversations revolving around babies and motherhood. Only then will your brand mention seem relevant and authentic. How to become a T Shaped Marketer? 3) Are you supporting your influencers? Your collaboration with your influencers doesn’t end at briefing them about your objective and letting them do their work by mentioning you everywhere. As a brand, influencer promotion is your responsibility wherein you leverage the content shared by your influencers by sharing, re-sharing and posting them on your brand pages periodically (with relevant tags and mentions) to appeal to your influencers’ network and attract loyal followers for your brand. Disney Baby’s Instagram account has built its popularity solely by repurposing and re-posting UGC content sent by moms from around the world. By giving out themes and tips on motherhood and parenting, this account has not only encouraged moms from around the world but has also shown them ways to have fun creatively with their babies. 4) Have you set any guidelines? Setting up ‘influencer guidelines’ for all your influencer marketing campaigns is essential as that will influence your sales through top-of-mind brand recall than just increase the number of followers. For e.g. on platforms like Instagram where you can tag brands in the photos, setting up a clause to tag you in the comments/caption will help as the tags are generally not readable on the photos whereas in the caption they are loud and up front. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses 5) Is your campaign social enough? Finally, is your influencer marketing campaign social enough to be talked about in a wide network as opposed to a niche audience? Does your campaign have the potential to be a social media influencer in itself, trend for a while and lead to a V.2.0 purely on the basis of its popularity? Well, let’s evaluate it together by looking at an example. Consider Tata Bolt’s #GetSetBolt. It looks like Tata Bolt had all the answers to the above questions before coming up with an idea for its launch campaign #GetSetBolt. It teamed up with just four powerful twitter influencers and #GetSetBolt to reach out to its social savvy millennial TG (Q1.) – who also happened to be the followers of the said four influencers (Q2). Unlike the usual influencer campaigns where the influencers are asked to tweet and make noise, Tata Bolt created a reality show called #GetSetBolt where the influencers were locked in glass cubicles. To get out of these cubicles, the influencers had to procure the symbolic Bolt key. They had to achieve this by generating maximum buzz amongst their followers (Q4) using the hashtags #GetSetBolt and their team names – #TeamAshwin,#TeamGabbar, #TeamTrendulkar and #TeamRahul named after their twitter handles. During the campaign, Tata Bolt through its own Twitter handle seeded tweets, updates, video snippets featuring the influencers and the progress of the contest regularly to leverage the accelerating buzz created by the influencers (Q3). But what made this campaign a social media influencer in itself was the type of engagement. (Q5). Influencer Marketing is a Silver Bullet if done correctly! The fact that it got the followers to actively participate along with the influencers with gratifications lined up for both the top influencers and followers (here supporters) made this influencer marketing campaign one-of-its-kind. Also, the gamification bit added a lot more fun and frolic to the campaign where the Twitterati actually played along to unlock the key instead of tweeting a cascade of senseless tweets. Simplicity and tact, that’s all it took Tata Bolt to #GetSetBolt and make the best out of an ordinary influencer marketing campaign. So, how do you evaluate your influencer marketing campaigns? Have you come across any unique insights that are share-worthy? Go ahead, spill the beans. We’re all ears! Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – How Marketers can enable Sales for Success? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/abhishek-ballabh.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? 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Who is this Digital Marketing Quiz for? Are you an Entrepreneur with a fancy for Digital? Or a Brand Manager wanting to focus on Online Marketing? Maybe a domain expert looking to diversify her skill sets? Well, this test is for everyone, conventional marketing professionals who are interested in Digital Marketing as well as new entrants who are looking to make a start in the digital domain. Experienced Digital Marketers between 4-6 years of experience also will find this challenging. Digital Marketing Knowledge is hard to test, honestly speaking, what do you test in a Digital Marketer? Her capability to manage Lakhs of campaign budgets across Google and Facebook? Her ability to create a robust inbound engine that takes away paid marketing heavy lifting to ensure a sustainable CAC? Or her ability to optimize landing pages, create killer email drips and be a pro at Analytics? If you are a beginner in digital marketing marketing, and want to gain expertise, check out our digital marketing courses from top universities.  17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills which will help you Rock! We at UpGrad’s Digital Marketing Program team were pondering the same questions, which lead us to create this Cross-Channel Digital Marketing Program. After some passionate debates among domain experts, we agreed is that a true Digital Marketer is someone who can fit all the pieces back to the puzzle! What to Expect in this Digital Marketing Quiz? Well, we have created an adaptive learning test, which first takes your input on how well you think you know Digital Marketing. The consecutive questions adapt on the basis of your performance. So even for beginners, this test is a great experience to discover the scope of Digital Marketing. For pro Digital Marketers, this may end up becoming an addictive challenge you love to solve.   Be ready to expect anything and everything starting with an email drip campaign to A/B Testing, to Programmatic buying! Friendly advice: Don’t bother searching these questions on Google, you won’t find them! You could try to crack the test multiple times, and we will appreciate your attempts. 😉 Top 15 Digital Marketing Interview Questions Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses What happens if you perform really well? We’ve kept aside some really awesome goodies and gift vouchers for the top scorers. But that’s not it, we’ll also be giving out scholarships to a select few of our 5 Month Digital Marketing Online Program. So spread the word to all Digital Marketing enthusiasts out there! If you want to learn and work on real projects, engage with industry mentors & receive a valuable certificate, check out MICA’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication specialises in Branding, Social Media, Content Marketing and Analysis. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

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