Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3)

Unit 06 Producing digital promotional content for business (M/507/4159)

In this NCFE unit we will investigate and apply a range of digital promotional activities

1 Understand the impact of content on digital promotions

1.1 Compare Content Used By Different Organisations For Promotional Purposes

The 5 businesses and organisations that are being analysed below are for both digital and offline content.

Argos
The company called Argos is a high street business operating many stores in the UK plus selling online as in ecommerce. The sector Argos specialises in is on online selling or ecommerce catalogue retailing Offline they are brick and mortar selling through catalogue books or in store PC.

Argos state they are all about ordering online today for fast home delivery. They are one of the UK's leading digital retailers, and offers more than 60,000 products online and in-store.

The content is 90% evergreen which means it does not change. The content is images and text of their product lines. A typical page would feature the product images 4 or 5 and text about this product.

The aim for Argos is to promote each product by sections. A user can search on their database also. Once a product is found the user is encouraged to add the product to their shopping basket and purchase. The other calls to action are for:

Sign up for our latest offers
Credit card plan
App download
Nearest store

Odeon
Stylised as ODEON, is a cinema brand name operating in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway The business sector is entertainment. Their website is about the latest films, listings, times, IMAX,3D, 2D film releases at ODEON. Offline Odeon advertises in their own cinemas other films. 

They want their users to browse cinema listings and book tickets OR watch movie trailers and ultimately book online. Big images are used with lots of deep contrasting colours in all the background graphics. The tone is dark blue and reflects the mood of a cinema experience. This is what they are promoting. As this business is about current entertainment their content is very topical we can say 70% about their films and the rest about their cinemas.

The website is 70% image/video and 30% text which is about film content and reviews.

The purpose of the website is get you to Book Tickets Now via their call to action button.

UCL
UCL is short for University College London; they promote themselves as the number one London university for Research Strength, recognised for its academic excellence and global impact. Their sector is higher education. They are the third largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment, and the largest by postgraduate enrolment. Offline universities use the alumina method of marketing their services and partnership with business.

After the home page the site is 70% text, 25% images and 5% video. The content is 70% evergreen and 30% topical.

The idea is for a user to register their interest by leaving an email on the online form. The action of doing this is requesting a prospectus and leaving information about your interests and intended year of study.

DVLA
DVLA is an executive agency, sponsored by the Department for Transport.  The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is the organisation of the UK government responsible for maintaining a database of drivers in Great Britain and a database of vehicles for the entire United Kingdom.

The content is mainly text, say 80% the rest being images. The content is 90% evergreen. The DVLA must be accessible to all. Accessibility statement is one of the links at the bottom of this governmental website. The DVLA is part of the government website.  The website is about information and directing a user to how to access more services such as applying for a driving licence. Offline DVLA would market through post offices.

Yes Bank
Yes Bank is a retail banking company. Their business sector is banking and finance. Yes bank offers a wide range of banking and financial products for corporate and retail customers.

The website is plain not excessively graphic heavy. The content breakdown is 60 text 40 images. The bank would like you to download their app as the main call to action. The content is 95% evergreen 5% topical. I see no offline marketing content.

Content comparison

We looked at 5 websites and the balance of the type of content on the site. Each site was from a different sector of business or was governmental. Content can be video, images which includes graphics, buttons, logos and pictures or based on written text.

The content can be topical and evergreen. Topical is the trending newsworthy content. Evergreen is like the cash cow or stable content never really changing on a website.

The websites content for government and banking such as the DVLA and Yes bank do not change that much. They are information based and evergreen. The government website does not use marketing tools of bold colours. The site is plain and to the point. It has good consistent branding of their services. Yes bank seems to want you to download their app for a closed client business experience, however the website is simple and fast to load.

UCL  website focuses on call to actions and registration by prospective students. Their content marketing is all about the experience of higher education. It is all about informing the user of what to expect.

Odeon prompts users to book tickets now. The website is geared to entertaining and engaging you the visitor. They then attempt to pull you towards buying a seat for a film. A big focus of the content marketing is video and reviews of current films at the cinema with a call to action nearby.

Argos’s had a lot of promotional material selling a lot of their products. The main home page material would change season to season of course.

Over all different organisations used different content to engagement with their audiences. Highest contrast was with the government organisation - DVLA is very plain and all about information, the Odeon is about entertainment, UCL is about informing and educating the visitor. Yes bank is about informing and information. Finally Argos is about engagement to purchase.

1.2 Analyse Content According To Its Purpose

How effective are blogging, Q&A’s, guides, white papers, newsletters and emails in fulfilling their purpose which is in our case marketing the business.

Blogging
Millions of blogs are posted everyday, it is easy to be lost, so the content needs to be quality and relevant to the user. The best blogs attract users and views on a website by pulling in users who have been acquired by SEO. The user has entered a phase or keyword in a search engine and has arrived at the business website and got their answer or achieved their aim.

Blog post features are length in words, key words and importance of content in driving traffic to a website. Blog need to shareable, original, compelling and relevant to achieve their purpose

A content strategy is needed for each business to be consistent to the businesses target audience. The strategy is key to long term traffic to a business and traffic that converts. A conversion may be calls made via telephone, emails, or sales.

Q&A, FAQ’s, ten tips (top 10 tips) and guides
Many questions are entered in search engines. They are how to do this and why is that for example. If a business has the following, the business can attract SEO traffic to its website:

Q&A's
FAQ’s
Top 10 tips
How to guides

The form of this type of content could be text, video or audio or as an intro live event which is good for one to one. The content can be used at the top of the marketing funnel to collect emails for more marketing.

White papers
Conducting research for a white paper is time consuming but if exercised well. It can lead to new insight. This insight can be shared with others. The researchers become an authority on the insight and can attract web traffic. White papers are a way to prove you are an expert. A business can  prompt for more from a customer by asking for an email when an expanded deeper level of information is given out. This is a technique used by many B2B organisations. White paper content creation is time consuming however.

In summary a white paper for distribution by a pdf download requires good information that is up to date and solves other businesses problems or find them solutions and opportunities.

Newsletters and emails
Newsletters attached to emails and sent out are mostly timely. The content is topical or seasonal. Examples of this are summer sales or new season offers. The idea is to measure the CTA through an email marketing software provider. Mostly this content should be timely, entertaining and personal.

The major challenges with newsletters are spam email distribution features on email serves. Will content get to the target audience, however if it does the ROI is very good compared to other forms of marketing. The conversion from email marketing is around 3% depending on the value of your goods and services this may be the most efficient content strategy.

1.3 Identify The Features Used In An Organisation’s Digital Promotional Content

I have identified the different types of content for the organisation Argos which is mostly every green. Content consumed through this website is textual and visual.

The features used in Argos’s promotional content plan are as follows:

Search box at the top of every page
Colours and graphics
Call to action CTA buttons

Search box
The search box is the key to the website. The main feature is prominent on the top section for a user to shop by search.

Category shopping is a feature. This section shows up after searching you see it on the left hand side of the webpage.

Colours and graphics
Images are used to draw you in. The Argos website uses colour buttons which are green for go. The website uses numbers for reviews for example Read reviews (3116) and stars rating in yellow.

WOW, NEW and More details graphics attract the eye also and entice you to click.

The text on the product is a format which is clear and small paragraphs.

When you look at a product in detail you see text bullet points these are a further feature of the content.

Argos is a retailer that encourages engagement. They seem to be experts at this and employ many ways to do this. Here is a list of these techniques using the call to action method.

Call to action CTA buttons

The following call to action buttons are used on the Argos website and are key features:

Engagement buttons on a product for you to save items which have a heart graphic image.
Add to trolley buttons these are prominent and on many pages
Sign up for our latest offers. This feature is on the home page.
Credit card plan button. This feature is on the home page.
Feedback is a feature CTA which hovers over the side of a full page website.
Download our app button on the lower section of the website.

The CTA GOAL is sales, email collection and aftersales reputation by reviews.

Other features are 
Q&A (moving customers down the marketing funnel)
Frequently bought together (used for upselling)
App download (locking users into a close buying platform)
Nearest store (other options for sales)

In summary
The Argos content is useful and easy to consume.

This section 1 above is about understanding

2 Being able to create content for an organisation’s digital promotion

2.1 Select And Justify A Topic For Producing Digital Content

The business name is Foydigital. This is an online business which is a digital consultancy that designs and develops websites. We are going to target people who are already looking for our business sector in their location where they live and work. The locations are African countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia.

We justify this business for producing digital content by it’s need to reach the target market in the local markets of west and east Africa by using the cheapest means possible and that is online.

Digital Promotional Activities	Metrics	Tools	Target Audience	Time
Website The website would describe the business service for the local market with examples of past work and reviews	Site visits, conversion via the online form	Wix website builder to design and develop the website and Google Analytics	Business in Ghana and Ethiopia Sectors are tech, telecom, gaming and food	4 week from start date
SEO Use local words and local language	3 Key words converted via search engines to website as below   Website designer Ghana/Ethiopia  Web design Ghana/Ethiopia Website design company Ghana/Ethiopia	SEM Rush Spyfu and Related Keywords platform for brainstorming   SERP results	Target countries in the order: Ghana Ethiopia	2 week to complete then on going for the market
Social Media Use Linkedin, Twitter and trust pilot on a regular basis	Use visitors to platform page Retweets and reposts. Platform analytics	Linkedin, Twitter and trust pilot	Business leaders in the countries	Aim to post twice a week on each platform
Blog Content will be about the benefits for local markets having an international presence. Using keywords from SEO brainstorming   Example top ten lists, locate images and infographics	Site visits   Blog is posted on Linkedin and twitter to attract visitors to websites and network with each other. This can be measured	Related Keywords platform wordpress and drupal	Local markets Ghana and Ethiopia international business leaders	A blog of 300 words every month

 

2.2 Choose The Most Appropriate Environment Or Channel To Host The Content

Choose – outlining the advantages and disadvantages of selected environments and/or channels

The business is Foydigital a digital agency

The content management system or CMS for our business will be drupal. Durpal will host the content online; it is the most appropriate environment. Drupal is open source technology which means it is free, it has a large community of developers, good administration, multiple users management options, groups management and level of permissions for users. Furthermore it has API integration, extension and plugins or modules, plus themes which can be customised and has good levels of security  

We will use it because we can customise it to our own style, as a digital agency this is important as it shows that we are independent and can design.

The main advantages and disadvantages of drupal

Advantages of our CMS
Low barrier to entry in time and money to get a website up and running
We can design a theme which looks good on the mobile screen for our customers to view
We can manage content by category of basic web pages and articles which will be our blogs
On the collection of an email on our registration page we can respond quickly with a follow up
We can easily integrate social media share buttons onto our content. This means we can share content on Linkedin and twitter with one click of a button.

Disadvantages of our CMS
We need to appreciate how our site looks on the mobile screen for our customers with an eye on download speed. A simple html page will download faster than any CMS web page
We need to keep it short and sweet. Static text and graphics should be used first before having video inserted into our sites. This could be data draining for our customers in the local market. Broadband is not always the same in the same local market.

There is always a risk with using any CMS that involves security. We need to make sure we back up the CMS regularly and update the security of each module plus use the latest version of the platform.

Below is a table which gives an overview of content management systems

Content management systems overview

CMS	Features	Viability	Comments
Drupal	Open source free, large community of developers, good administration multiple users management, group permissions, API integration, extension and plugins or modules, themes, custom, security	We will use it because we can customise to my own site as a digital agency.	Drupal compares well against similar CMSs such as Wordpress and Umbraco
Hubspot and wordpress for clients that have big budgets	This tool is what the business would move onto if our clients have a long term project of high value. Using these tools can demonstrate the multi disciplined leased nature of the business	Like drupal these CRM systems have great ways to integrate with other applications via API’s. The are partner arrangements with Hubspot which could be another source of revenue for the business	These CRM systems can be used in addition to drupal and show our clients that we have talented developers.
Live helper chat is a CMS we would not use	We would not use live helper chat as this involves lots of intervention	This could be use however when the company grows large and it can be resourced	There are lots of tools more relevant to helper chat at the early stage of this business like skype

Read NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3) course units

2.3 Apply Knowledge Of The Organisation To The Creation Of Content For Digital Promotion

Organisation – products, services, and/or people

The business is Foydigital a digital agency which supplies digital services to businesses on the continent of African in particular Ghana and Ethiopia.

Content management and distribution strategy

For a business which is a digital agency servicing countries like Ghana and Ethiopia the type of content required or need must be defined by the sector of business we are in. The sector of business is digital consultancy and service agency.

The target market is B2B business leaders and decision makers in the local market as described. We believe the ratio of topical and evergreen content should be 20-30%/80-70% for promotion. An example of this would be news about the latest trends in digital development for topical and for evergreen it would be top ten tips. This is our content balance.

Topical news

Industry news
Future and current trade events

Evergreen content with keywords used in the copy

About us and contact info
Services, where we do business
Past clients and case studies

How to guides
Top ten tips for local people
Q&A’s for local people
Past trade events

Blogs to post over time
Advantages and disadvantages of specific subjects

The type of content would be 55% text, 40% images i.e local in country images of typical clients, graphics, infographics and 5% video of myself on the about us page.

Below is a table which gives an overview of the content distribution and where it would be seen

Website	SEO or organic search	Blog	Social Media	Email Marketing
After about us section I will focus in the following:    How to guides	Keywords, country location, website, design, development, business	Current trends in the local market to do with tech and the benefits of having a website. Using inforgraphics and local images	Linkedin	Survey Monkey collection email for newsletter. I will be using How to guides, Top ten tips and Q&A’s for email collection via a CTA
Top ten tips	B2B tips for local people wanting a website	Top tips for locals in website development	Twitter
Q and A	Local answers to the market	Q&A on specific tops	Youtube intro to the business

In summary

Website main pages will be 1. about us, 2. how to guide, 3. top ten questions and 4. Q&A.
I will post four videos on Youtube as evergreen content which is four in a year. The number of blog posts per month will be 1. So 12 per year. The number of social Media posts will be 1 per week on Linkedin and the same amount on Twitter.

 

2.4 Evaluate The Effectiveness Of Content For Digital Promotion

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the content

We would evaluate the effectiveness of the content by how it brings in web traffic, how it brings in visitors that view more than one page and convert to our set goals. The top set goal will be the email address of qualified leads. A qualified lead is a business in the stated market and that has the budget for the services we provide.

Acquisition

Key landing pages reached and by which method i.e SEO, direct, via email campaign or referral will be another way to evaluate the effectiveness of the content.

We will monitor web logs, analyse Google, Bing analytics and count the number of emails collected in our database every month to see if we have reached our targets.

Goals per month

The 1st target is the visitor numbers. We are looking for:

Visitors
Emails

The aim of the website/blogs will be to have 10 visitors per day and to convert 0.3% of these visitors to email addresses.

Top goal email collection of hot prospects

5 prospects per month to target for follow up in the countries of Ghana and Ethiopia by collection of an email from our content in all its forms which is website copy, blogs, referrals, reviews, youtube, linkedin, twitter and email marketing.

This section 2 above is about understanding

This unit aims to equip us with the knowledge and understanding required to produce effective material for an organisation’s digital promotional activity.