Digital advertising strategy and ongoing optimization

In last week’s class, Dr. Seung Yoo, Assistant Professor of Digital Advertising, spoke to us about digital advertising strategy. The easiest way to define that term is by breaking it down, and that is what Yoo did.

What is strategy? A plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

What is digital advertising? It aims to create demand using the power of digital media.

So what is digital advertising strategy? It builds on traditional advertising strategy, using the benefits and challenges within the digital media technologies.

Bosses are always interested in results. How will we know if our strategy will work? The great thing about digital advertising is that it is measurable. “It gives brands opportunity to build tailored, optimized brand experiences,” presented Yoo.

There is ongoing optimization. “You can monitor, measure, experiment, learn, and be proactive!” mentioned Yoo.  Some of these tools are free and can help you optimize brand experience: Google Insights; Flickr; Delicious; Spyfu; Quirk SearchStatus; SEO Book’s Rank Checker; Change Detection; Google Alerts; BrandsEye; Google Patent Search; Google Adwords External Keywords Tool; Google Trends; YouTube Selection Tool, and much more.

Google Analytics is also another powerful free tool that can help your digital advertising strategy work wonders. You can learn about the behavior of visitors to your website, run online campaigns, etc. You can learn about what is working/not working for your website, tailor it to your customers, build relationships, etc. You can tailor it to your audience so they get the experience and content they are looking for, and so they want to keep returning to your website.

Not using an analytics tool as part of your digital advertising strategy will prove to be damaging to your brand. How will you know if your strategy is successful or if it needs to be tweaked if you do not measure it?