Internet marketing and e-commerce are vast and ever-changing subjects to study. It has been thrilling to see how marketers can reach target audiences in various ways online. The seven weeks of projects for Southern Oregon University’s MBA 536 class has been rewarding. As I reflect upon all the many tips of the internet-marketing icebergs, there are five final takeaways I’d like to share.
UX
Creating a website for specific clients or users is fun and all but understanding the simple design details that will delight visitors is where the rewards come. Before MBA 536, I had no idea that user experience is represented by the term UX. There are many variations of UX such as user experience design (UXD, sometimes UED), user interface (UI), and user-centered design (UCD). I learned at the center of a website visitor’s experience, it is the user’s perspective that matters most. To create the best UX content creators should be mindful of six qualities. From now on as I develop this website I will constantly be trying to improve the findability, accessibility, desirability, usability, credibility, and usefulness of its content.
SlideDocs
Anyone can make slides or documents to share with colleagues or clients, but can they combine the two? Yes, they can. I learned from Nancy Duarte’s website the art of making Slidedocs. In a nutshell, Slidedocs helps break down ideas into readable chunks – with text in columns put on slides that can be supplemented with visuals. Slidedocs are meant to be read and allow users to take in information at their own pace. No bullet points are to be used like conventional PowerPoint slide decks. Nancy’s website provides fantastic templates containing a variety of Slidedocs anyone can use to effectively communicate their next great idea.
Google Analytics
Google is sharing its power of data tracking with Google Ads and Google Analytics. What’s great about using the internet search engine to gain customers is that with the right tools you can track how and why customers are finding what you want them to find. With all the data being exchanged online, it would be most advantageous to see the stories behind that data. Online marketers can use Google Analytics as a tool to see what data decisions are being made by customers. Marketers can easily compare internet campaigns and create reports to display progress and opportunities to stakeholders. With so much data traffic being exchanged every second worldwide there are plenty of great business decisions that can be made to capture attention and sales. A user can go as deep or shallow into data with Google Analytics. Users can also take free courses to learn and get certified as a guru of Google Analytics. I received my Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) thanks to the encouragement of MBA 536.
Persona
Marketers need to know exactly who they’re targeting for clients, especially online. From my mass commercial communications background, it was enlightening to learn just how specific your reach in marketing can be when you build a Persona. Hubspot and other websites provide questionnaires and templates to identify the type of person a company is marketing to. I teamed up with some classmates to support Google Ad campaigns for a nonprofit called Positive Coaching Alliance. Before executing our campaigns we had to identify who we’re trying to find to donate to the nonprofit. You can take a look at the Persona we made by clicking here. It really helped to narrow our focus to the customers most likely to contribute to the Positive Coaching Alliance’s online goals.
Affiliate Marketing
My friend from college, Mark Hamilton, is an example of an affiliate marketer. His YouTube channel is called “Mark Reviews” and he reviews various products and services given to him from companies. These companies consider him an online influencer hoping he’ll reach the desired target market. I’m not sure whether he utilizes data analytics to get a cut of what his channel contributes, but I know he gets a lot of cool, free stuff. Better examples of affiliate marketing include third-party advertisers of products or services for a merchant in return for a sales commission or lead. MBA 536 taught me how affiliate marketing is more effective online than it is offline because on the world wide web referrals are easier to track. Check out Mark’s channel! Maybe I can track your click and Mark will give me a cut of what he enjoys from contributing companies.
What stands out as being the most useful of these takeaways is Google Analytics. Companies small and large need more people to help them make data-driven decisions and grow their online presence. Be receiving the GAIQ, an industry standard for interpreting online search engine and website customer decisions, I feel more confident in boosting a company’s growth with online customers. Now more than ever, we can track online users’ habits and decisions through data analytics. I’m grateful for MBA 536 in sharing how to use Google Analytics and to try out Google Ads with a nonprofit for an enlightening and educational campaign.
Dave, great summary of takeaways from an intense seven weeks of learning. I appreciate that in this post you cited references to your points and summarized the six best practices of UX design. Because you hold a marketing role by profession, I wonder which of the five points you make will be the most applicable to you? Will any of these topics push you into a new interest in marketing in your organization? For myself, I have asked to do the research and onboarding for an e-commerce platform and for a CRM database service. As a powerhouse Google Analytics user, you might find ways to incorporate marketing analytics and UX design insights into having more influence on your website content? I am making assumptions but my intent is to speak to the practical applications of what we learned in this class. I would love to know what you think you will most use.
I agree on all of your points except one. I did not find value in using SlideDocs. I spent at least 10 hours on the assignment where we were to use them to present our research. In great part, the time I dedicated was to the learning curve to use the template. I failed to find the advantage of using SlideDocs over PowerPoint. To me, the templates were lacking in the ability to customize style sheets and I couldn’t be creative with design elements. But perhaps I wasn’t able to access the intended templates? I am proficient in using PowerPoint and for newer presentation approaches, I like Google slides and Prezi, which are very flexible in what content you can add. For me, whatever presentation software I use must be exportable and compatible with the device type and operating system, projector, and screen size of whoever is running the audiovisual presentation. For those reasons, I am very conservative about the software I use for creating presentations. Do you think you will switch to using SlideDocs?
Finally, I want to applaud your website design, your logo, and your clever tagline.