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Internet Marketing Campaign Development

As I reflect on my initial Mastery journal posts from the first course, I am excited about all that I have accomplished throughout the past year in this masters program. In reviewing the goals I set for each course I realized I have a much greater understanding in all these areas and have learned much more than I had anticipated when I set these goals. I remember at the beginning of the course being somewhat overwhelmed, knowing I had a lot to learn about all these topics.

Throughout this program I have gained more knowledge about the digital marketing field and have gained experience with different aspects of digital marketing. During the program, I was given the opportunity to apply and was hired as Digital Marketing Manager for my case study company. I would not have been able to pursue this position had I not started this program, so I am very grateful for all the classes throughout the program that helped me gain a greater understanding of digital marketing and particularly how I can apply different tactics to my company.

In developing my Internet Marketing Plan for this course I was able to take material from previous courses and create a plan that I think would best suit my case study company. As the BPO is a non-profit organization, it was important to me to find ways that my company can be mindful of their budget. Learning about organic SEO, for example, gave me ideas for the BPO to improve their website without spending a large amount of money. However, learning the benefits of paid ads did give me insight into how the BPO can better use their budget and use better keywords, should they decide to pursue using paid advertisements on Google.  Being able to condense all of this information into one comprehensive plan also gave me a better “big picture” idea of what I can accomplish in my job over the next year or so. The program gave me the opportunity to really dig into what the BPO is currently doing in regard to their digital marketing and how they can improve their current strategy to generate more ticket sales, improve audience loyalty and have a greater ROI.

I am excited to be able to use this information in a real world setting and ideally help my company reach their goals through implementing a digital marketing plan. My degree program at Full Sail University gave me lots of tools that I can use in my job – or in any marketing job I might have in the future! I look forward to beginning my career as a digital marketer and continuing to learn more every day.

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Internet and the Law

This course gave me a much greater understanding of laws that pertain to the internet and digital marketing, and covered a variety of topics from defamation, to copyright issues, SPAM, privacy policies and terms of use. My goals for the course were to be more familiar with the types of legal issues that can arise in digital marketing, learn about current topics and trends and how I can be aware of these issues in my own work. I also was curious to learn more about specific laws that affect things like email marketing, such as the CAN-SPAM act and different regulations that digital marketers should know about. The project on spam was particularly interesting to me as it had not occurred to me that many companies engage in these types of activities every day, and the penalties can be very high if businesses do not abide by the proper guidelines. I also learned much more about different types of cybercrime, and how these cases are handled. It gave me a different perspective on how crimes that are committed virtually should be treated and was interesting to see how laws are still quite new in this area, so they are not necessarily as comprehensive as many people would like them to be. In this course I ultimately wanted to familiarize myself with as much as I could now that I am formally working in digital marketing, so that I can be aware of what my company and other companies are doing. The material I learned in this class addressed a variety of topics that I may (or have already) run into in my work, and allowed me to better understand the consequences of certain behaviors, guidelines to follow to avoid legal issues and common defenses that are used by those who are accused of committing crimes.

It was funny to me that during this course, much of the work I am doing at work every day for my company coincided with the coursework. In the course we were required to research and create a privacy policy for our case study company, which proved to be particularly useful for me as I had been tasked with drafting a privacy policy at work the same week. Having the opportunity to research best practices for privacy policies and what aspects of a privacy policy would be most useful to include for my company was really interesting to me. I enjoyed being able to use an assignment for both school and work and having the opportunity to research and draft something that will benefit my company. This assignment in particular also taught me the importance of having a privacy policy – especially since my company collects user information and facilitates sales through our website. As a result of this course I have been able to make more informed decisions about our website and marketing that I might not have considered previously.

I look forward to doing more of this as I finish my program at Full Sail next month and create my digital marketing plan for the BPO. I am excited to be able to combine all of what I have learned over the past year and develop a plan for my company to enhance their digital marketing efforts.

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Digital Analytics and Optimization

The objective of this month’s course was to learn how to synthesize data from a website into an overall marketing plan to improve the success of our digital strategies. Beginning the course, I had an idea of how tools like Google Analytics work, metrics that can be tracked and what they mean. However – being more “creatively” minded I admittedly deal better with more abstract concepts than numbers and metrics, so the idea of tracking numbers/quantifiable metrics was a little scary to me!

I decided that doing the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam would give me a solid overview of the program and how to use the different reports. For my company, I see lots of benefits to using Google Analytics and I wanted to learn more about how to do this. In preparing for the exam, I felt much more comfortable with the program and what the different reports do, how to customize them, and what reports would be most useful for my company. This allowed me to start thinking about SMART goals for my company, and KPI’s that would be the strongest indicators of success on our site.

I passed the exam and have started to use Google Analytics at work and begin to devise a plan for tracking that the BPO will be able to use. I am beginning to collect data for my company’s site and am looking for trends so that I can address these in my overall marketing plan. I find that this is a really useful tool to measure things that are difficult to measure in other ways – social media metrics for example. I would like to begin implementing campaign tracking for specific email campaigns and promotions. I also plan to explore the goal funnel for the ecommerce part of our site to see how customers are responding and whether they are converting. Overall the course showed me that this is not really a scary, daunting task like it originally seemed – it is actually really insightful and gives us good feedback for our website that I will be able to use in creating an overall digital marketing plan for the BPO.

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Strategic Internet Public Relations

Going into this course, I was actually preparing to interview for a position with my case study company to work as a Digital Marketing Manager. Leaving this course, I have accepted the position and I start tomorrow!

I am excited to begin my career in this field with a company that I have been researching and will be preparing my IMP for.  In this particular course, I learned a lot that I feel will prepare me in my new role – primarily in dealing with the public through our online channels, monitoring conversations surrounding our brand, and how to deal with any potential crises.

The skills I developed during this course will allow my company, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, in working to achieve its mission of educating and entertaining the broadest possible audience in WNY and beyond.  In using digital channels, the BPO has the opportunity to reach a huge amount of people. The way we handle our communications with the public will have a great impact on how the BPO brand is perceived, and ultimately whether or not people decide to do business with us and attend our concerts.

In this course, I learned that it is best for PR professionals to report news in a timely, accurate way and to be as transparent and open as possible with the public.  In relating PR to the BPO, I think it will be important to be transparent with our customers particularly because we are a non-profit organization that relies heavily on donations.  Being clear on where our donations are going and what programs they are funding will make our donors more comfortable in giving to our organization. By also being clear about our events, staff and musicians, and any issues that may arise that impact our events, we will be able to build trust with our audience.  This can even extend to being honest and open regarding pricing for events and subscriptions.

The BPO is a significant arts organization with many connections in the Buffalo community.  We have significant influence on members of our community, other arts organizations, schools we partner with for our educational outreach programs, etc.  A main objective for the BPO would be to increase our contacts outside of the organization – reaching out to other arts organizations and schools and partnering on events, etc.  This in turn would increase awareness of our organization, generate more content, and ultimately lead to more favorable customer perception among current patrons, or new patrons who discover us through these other organizations.

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Advanced Search Engine Optimization

In beginning the Advanced Search Engine Optimization course, I had a vague idea of what SEO entailed, but I was eager to learn more as this was an area I do not have much experience with. Prior to this course, I was familiar with using keywords to improve search rankings and tailoring content around keywords – but I learned much more about optimizing for paid search, improving web usability, mobile optimization, building links, and more – and how all of these things work together to optimize a site for both search engines and for your customer.  I thought this course was very helpful in that it provided me with many tools I can use to test keywords and websites, and compare against competitors.

One of my greatest takeaways from this course was that in selecting keywords, it is very important to choose keywords that are particularly relevant to your company and their offering – not necessarily keywords that are the most popular.  In exploring keywords for the BPO, I learned what keywords might be most effective for the BPO to pursue and how they can use them to rank above competitors in the Buffalo area.

I also learned much more about paid search campagins- something I really knew nothing about beginning this course!  I had a general idea of how they worked, but the tools and materials in this course really gave me a better understanding of paid search/PPC and how this type of campaign might be implemented.  Researching PPC and relating it back to a budget and ROI was useful for me in understanding how these campaigns work and how they can be very effective, but also the importance of measuring and adjusting based on data.  I also found it very useful to learn about mistakes that are commonly made in regard to PPC campaigns.  This information is incredibly helpful in potentially pitching a PPC campaign to a company, and I feel that I am better able to see and communicate the benefits.

Overall, this course gave me a lot of tools and insight into all the different components of SEO.  In testing my company’s web optimization, I found that this is an area they could greatly improve upon.  The information presented to me in this course will allow me to develop a plan for the BPO to optimize and really improve their ranking online in a variety of ways.

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Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies

The Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies course really helped me gain a better understanding in lots of areas, primarily with advertisement campaigns.  I enjoyed the structure of this course and how I was able to develop certain parts of an Internet Marketing Action Plan each week for my organization.  Creating this action plan was really valuable and gave me lots of insight on how companies create advertising campaigns, target specific users with ads, and different methods of generating conversions and traffic.  I learned a great deal about using multivariate testing to optimize landing pages and how testing different headlines, images, etc. is useful in creating a landing page that works most effectively.  I have a much greater understanding of different types of campaigns, broad and targeted ads, as well as unique ways to reach targeted audiences such as through newsletters and promotion on other websites and online magazines.  I had not considered that many magazines and sites offer paid advertisement within their newsletters and publications and that this is a great way to reach an audience that you are looking to target.  Finding publications that already target users seeking entertainment in Buffalo, NY, or are geared toward people who are interested in classical and orchestral music would be a great way for the BPO to gain more exposure.  This course also taught me a great deal about the buying funnel and how to market to customers at specific stages in the buying process, as well as different types of customer personas based on their purchasing behavior throughout the buying process.  Overall, I am gaining much more clarity on how to target potential buyers, as well as understanding metrics and how measuring specific metrics can help an organization advertise efficiently and generate the best ROI.  I look forward to continuing in my program with a greater understanding of all of these components of marketing, applying what I have learned to more specific marketing concepts, and creating an effective marketing plan for my organization.

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New Media Marketing Course

Going into the New Media Marketing course, I was really excited to learn more about social media and influencer marketing as this is an area I am particularly interested in.  I discovered that throughout the duration of the course I have been able to really apply the concepts I am learning to my work in real life. I have been thinking a lot about how topics such as influencer marketing can influence the success of small businesses and individuals.  I am excited because I am beginning to view my company’s as well as my own personal marketing strategies in a different way.

In this course, I learned a lot about brand ambassador programs and influencer outreach programs, and how these different programs can benefit companies in unique ways.  I also learned much more about social media and mobile usage and how these affect a company’s digital marketing strategy.  In this course, I determined that developing an influencer outreach program would be the most beneficial way for my company to engage others in promoting our brand on social channels.  Through an influencer program, we will be able to reach more of our target audience in a different way, while also developing relationships with influencers and our fan base.  Ultimately, this type of program will be beneficial for the BPO because it will create a new type of “paid” advertising and ideally help us create a greater return on investment. This course gave me lots of ideas on engaging and developing relationships with customers and fans in a ways that benefit both the fan the company.  I also learned a lot about which social media channels are most effective to reach specific demographics, and resolving PR issues online. I look forward to taking the information I learned in this course and developing an influencer outreach plan that works for the BPO, as this is something the BPO currently lacks.  Implementing an influencer outreach program will be an effective way for the BPO to make progress toward their goals and fulfilling their mission.

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Web Design and Usability Course

The Web Design and Usability course gave me a much greater understanding of what goes into designing a website and how to create a positive experience for your user.  Prior to this course, I really had no idea how much went into designing websites and the attention to every detail that is required, from font size and color schemes, to using keywords in specific areas and the use of metadata.  I learned a lot about what works well in navigating websites and how this translates to mobile usability.   I found the usability testing to be particularly interesting and in conducting my own usability test on the BPO site, I learned a lot about the experience our users are having.  Some of the issues that came up in my usability study were things that I had predicted users having difficulty with, but others were things I had never considered.  Testing website usability is definitely something that I feel would greatly benefit the BPO and help us to create a better experience for our customers. I also found the concept of findability and how it ties in to SEO to be really interesting and this is a topic I would like to study further as it relates to the BPO site.  Much of the things I observed in my usability testing, as well as in my own research of our site were things that could be attributed to having poor findability.  In gaining a better understanding of this concept, I am noticing more and more ways to increase findability on my company’s website, as well as other sites I visit. Overall, this course taught me to be much more critical especially relating to website design and the way pages are displayed.  I learned a great deal about many different aspects of web design that will ultimately better prepare me to work with other businesses on improving their websites.

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Consumer Behavior and Analysis Course

As I complete the Consumer Behavior and Analysis course, I am starting to understand how the concepts taught in each course work together.  I am leaving the course with a much greater understanding of the consumer decision process, and how marketing to consumers during each stage of this process is unique and important to a company’s success.  I am also gaining a much greater understanding of consumer segmentation, and how information such as psychographics might be useful in developing marketing campaigns.  In applying this to my case study company, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, I see many ways the BPO can target segments of customers in unique ways to engage them. In studying this, I have identified several segments of BPO customers and traits/behaviors that are unique to these groups.  It is really important to understand not only who your customer is, but also to gather information and understand why they might make the purchase decisions that they do. I enjoyed learning more about concepts such as retargeting and consumer generated content, and how companies use these ideas to promote their brand, engage, and ideally convert more customers.  I also gained valuable insight into how marketers collect consumer data and analyze their behavior.  For many years I have worked in retail positions and it has been really interesting for me to learn more in depth about consumer purchasing patterns and how digital marketers can influence them.  This course has been challenging and really interesting for me and I look forward to continuing to learn about how the many aspects of digital marketing impact consumer behavior.

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Digital Storytelling and Branding Course

As I complete the Digital Storytelling and Branding course, I am excited to move forward in my program with a greater understanding of branding, particularly as it relates to my chosen company.  The assignments and reading in this course were extremely useful in understanding how to communicate a brand’s voice, tell a brand’s story, and connect with customers. Developing a brand that is consistent is very important not online in digital marketing, but in all aspects of your business. I enjoyed reading The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier and learning the fundamentals of branding, answering the “Three Little Questions” and learning ways to differentiate brands.  The reading and these exercises really got me to think about the different components to branding and how to build a brand for your business. I found the brand archetypes discussion in week 3 to be particularly interesting.  I thought the idea of brands having specific archetypes/combinations of archetypes was a really interesting way to think about my company’s branding.  I think this will be a really useful tool as I think about branding moving forward. Building a brand strategy for my company in week 4 has been really useful and a great way to apply everything I have learned about branding throughout this course.  Creating and executing a brand strategy is something I think the BPO would benefit greatly from.  Implementing a clearly laid out brand strategy would have great benefits for the orchestra and ultimately will lead to greater connections and create a more positive experience for our patrons.   I have really enjoyed this course and I look forward to developing my understanding of branding as I continue through my program at Full Sail.

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Internet Marketing Fundamentals Course

Over the past four weeks, I have learned a great deal of information about the field of Internet Marketing.  As this course ends, I am reflecting on all of the knowledge I have acquired about this very diverse field. I was very excited to begin this course as I start to fill in gaps in my knowledge of marketing/internet marketing in general. I enjoyed learning about many different aspects of digital marketing, particularly the use of SEO, analyzing competition, and methods for developing an internet marketing strategy.  With an introduction to search engine optimization, as well as strategies for several different marketing methods (social media, email, influencer, affiliate marketing, etc.) I feel I have gained a much greater understanding of all of these methods and how businesses use them to market their products and services.   I also found it very interesting to research web design/usability, and functionality of websites.  This is something I hadn’t considered before as being a part of internet marketing, but I now understand it plays a huge rule in the success of your website and SEO efforts. At the beginning of the course, I chose my current employer, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra to study for the duration of the program to ultimately use in my final project.  I chose this company because their mission is really meaningful to me and I am very interested in finding effective ways to market the orchestra so that they may continue this mission.  The assignments in the IMF course really tied together a lot of the concepts we studied and related them to our specific company.  The competitor analysis assignment was particularly useful as I researched competitors and compared their websites to the BPO.  I learned a lot about my company as well as these competitors, and how we can use their strengths/weaknesses in improving our own website and SEO.  I really enjoyed learning all of this new material through the lens of a company I work for and have a strong connection to, and I look forward to what is to come in future courses.

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As I am wrapping up my final assignment for the Mastery course, I have been reflecting on the reading and other materials from the course and thought of this quote by Martha Graham.  My piano teacher and mentor in high school showed me this quote when I was first applying to college and feeling unsure of myself and my path.  I thought it tied in really well with the theme of this course - finding your life’s task, cultivating creativity and continuing education toward mastery in your subject.  Each one of us has our own “expression” and a unique voice and skill set.  It is up to us to be our authentic selves and translate our unique energy into action to fulfill our life’s task. We are all innately creative and have so many opportunities to express it, create something new and unique, and share it with the world.  As I go forward in my program at Full Sail and professionally in my career, I will try to keep this in mind.  I look forward to continuing to express myself and seeing what the next step in my mastery journey brings!

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