DIGITALE MARKETING – SMITS (2023)
INTRODUCTION: ARRANGEMENTS & CONTEXT
4ECTS
OVERVIEW WEEK 1
- Arrangements and context
- MarCom mini course
- Digital marketing threats
o Potential pitfalls, real pitfalls
- Issues
ARRANGEMENTS AND CONTEXT
Larger goal
- Digital marketing evolves much too rapidly to have an up-to-date and hands-on course
o Tools and approaches change quickly
▪ Learn about those on YouTube, podcasts, articles, etc.
o Academic insights about newest techniques not readily available
▪ A lot of what we do boils down to the same basic marketing paradigm even
before digital marketing was a thing. It comes down to basic principles
because new things emerge from them
▪ For example TikTok: in practice, research is not that important or relevant
anymore but in academia it is still considered very innovative and ‘new’
- Hence, we offer a mix of practical insights (cf. certificate) and academic insights with long-
term value
How?
- Live lectures + additional materials. Try to actively work on these materials to construe your
own understanding of all this. Toledo entries will offer some structure and guidance for the
weekly building blocks
- Live lectures: on campus with recording
- Interaction is possible during the lectures, Q&A moments and polls that will be launched
prior to or during lectures
Contents
- Introduction to digital marketing: place within the marketing communication mix, objectives,
reach versus relevance
- Overview of available media and techniques
- Social media marketing
- Online behavioral advertising & power to the consumer (WOM)
- Native advertising, stakeholders & ethics
- To be discussed
1
,Exam
- Certificate from a digital marketing platform → submitting via Toledo
o Due date = day of the exam
- Exam = open book → you can use own course materials
o Multiple choice
o Short answer
o Short essay
o Bring your own device → On the computer
Context: Digital & Marketing
- Online/digital
o Everything digital could be part of this course, but we focus on the larger media and
platforms, where the aggregate effect on individuals and society is substantial. At the
same time, we take a systems thinking approach, trying to understand evolution &
dynamics in digital media marketing, such that you’ll be able to also understand the
rise of new techniques, platforms or even media
- Marketing
o Focus on marketing communications, because this best fits the communication
sciences expertise and because this is what consumers and most marketers deal with
- Digital marketing is a thing in itself that changes how reality works
o Has an effect on consumers
- For a lot of people it’s privacy problems
Even the smartest people make costly mistakes
- Not spending your budget right on influencers → spending too much on them
o Influencers who you work together with and then have a ‘scandal’, their image
reflects on your brand if you’re partnered
- Not having a strategy or no established goals
- On a global level: the metaverse thing by Facebook
o Changed the company name to ‘Meta’ and thought everyone would adopt it and
brands would join and have their online shops. Very very costly mistake since it
wasn’t successful
- NFT’s are also a costly mistake
- Buying Twitter
o Elon Musk thought he could monetize from Twitter or at least reach break-even but
the business model doesn’t really fit
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, - Neglecting digital evolutions such as AI
o It is unsure how AI will develop over time, but there’s a big cost related to it
(financial and ecological)
- Neglecting physical marketing
o Although we live in an increasingly digital world, we are still physical beings and the
things we buy on a daily basis are often found in a physical store. Same for services
(e.g. going to a restaurant, staying in an Airbnb
o For example food: you need packages to market a food so therefore you need a
physical shop to present all the packages
When you know the basic principles you can kind of predict what can/will happen
Ad blockers
- 5 years ago, almost everyone was using ad blockers and the rest just didn’t know how
- Why did it evolve?
o Nowadays ads are more interesting and relevant
o Websites and services adopted to ad blockers
▪ F.ex. Some platforms: no entry without ad blockers → that’s why some
people are now using it on some devices or apps
o Often concerns with privacy but the more relevant ads you want, the less privacy you
have.
This course will not go into the creative or production aspects of digital marketing
MARCOM MINI COURSE
MARCOM MEDIA AND TOOLS
- Marketing communication always needs a medium to transfer the communications
o Could be a physical food package in a store, or an influencer on a social medium, the
social medium itself
- Above-the-line vs. below-the-line media: explains quite a lot about how the marketing world
still works
o Above-the-line = mass media
3
, ▪ Got a separate kind of deal: the cost to place this ad somewhere, defined the
price of the ad
• 15% of the placement cost was how much it costed to create the ad
• Advertisement agencies wanted to work for mass media because it
was big money
• Today still a lot of budgets go to placement: paying for people to see
your ad
• Only a fraction of the budget goes to the creation of the ad
▪ Big agencies focused on above-the-line
• You still see that they are supposed to focus on the entire spectrum
(f.ex. 360° advertising), but they prefer mass media advertising that
isn’t targeted
▪ Marketing is very different when you have a reach-medium versus a
relevance-medium
o Below-the-line
▪ They put a price to it and in case clients wanted them to do it, they let an
intern do it
▪ A lot of these examples ended up in niche advertising
• F.ex. Brand websites, fan pages
▪ Targeted advertising doesn’t fit that well anymore, most of the advertising is
focused on mass media. Rather targeted on content instead of people.
• Digital marketing = targeting on people! → Doesn’t fit the historic
element
- Paid media vs. owned media vs. earned media
o Paid media = paying a medium to host your ads
▪ All the above-the-line media + couple more
o Owned media = you have a bit of control
▪ Also costs a little bit of money, f.ex. a server to run your website
▪ F.ex. Sales: chatbots
o Earned media = everything what happens without you having actual real control,
everything you get for ‘free’
▪ Word-of-mouth, press, influencers
• The massive success of influencers has evolved in would-be
influencers: they are doing the stuff influencers are doing in the
hope they will be paid like influencers
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