eMarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing Fourth edition By Rob Stokes Compiled by Sarah Blake and Quirk

Education

When we began work on the first edition of eMarketing back in 2007, I certainly did not anticipate that wed be publishing a 4 th edition four years later. Witnessing the growth and maturation of the digital marketing industry over the last twelve years has been incredible, but it is the last four years that have demonstrated the most change. No longer is digital seen as just another channel. I believe that viewing it this way has manay dangers. Digital is too pervasive in our lives to be called a mere channel. Television is a channel, but you dont carry a TV around in your pocket. Digital, and in particular its exploding mobile elements, has been pulled into every facet of our lives. It is as relevant to a developing nation as it is to the first world, and can have an empowering impact whether you are a business executive or you live in a rural area. The internet is now everywhere, and for marketers it has become a non-negotiable part of the marketing mix. Quirk has also evolved tremendously during this time. We have expanded to over 150 people and our clients have grown to include some of the most valuable brands in the world. In turn, the structure of our agency has changed to meet the needs of our clients within this digital landscape. Traditionally, our business was made up of tactical teams: search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), creative, engineering, email marketing, etc. At one point we had about 15 different teams within the organization. Over time, this structure became less effective than we would have liked. Even with fantastic communication within the business, having so many separate teams meant communication within the business, having so many separate teams meant we were siloed. It became increasingly obvious that the various elements of digital marketing work hand in hand, not just benefiting each other through coordination, but actually relying on each other for success. A year ago we began a transformation. We took a step back and analyzed the digital landscape and what it meant to our clients and their customers. The result of this analysis was a restructuring of our various tactical teams into four key disciplines: Think, Create, Engage and Optimize. The Think team is responsible for research, insight and strategy. They in turn work closely with the Create team whose job it is to build beautiful and functional digital assets. Our create team is made up of designers, copywriters, video experts, front-end developers and engineers. But a digital asset in isolation is like the proverbial billboard in the Sahara invisible. This is where our Engage team comes in. Their job is to drive traffic and build customer relationships. Within Engage resides Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Display Media, Viral Marketing, Email Marketing and CRM. It is particularly within Engage that you see the importance of teams working together. Social media benefits SEO which benefits PPC which in turn can help build that important database of email subscribers. A basic example,

but I think you get the point. If these eMarketing tactics are being used in isolation, you will lose out on a lot of value. Finally our Optimise team straddles everything we do at Quirk. One of our philosophies is Enough is never Enough: the relentless pursuit of the perfection that you know does not exist. The Optimize team focuses on analytics, conversion optimization and user experience testing to make sure everything we do for our clients is more effective every day. The most wondorous thing about the internet is its measurability, and our Optimize team relishes in this opportunity. We have seen this structure and behavior become increasingly effective within our agency and for our clients. It was only natural to extend it to the structure of our textbook. Another evolution at Quirk, since the publication of our previous book, has been the growth of our education business. The QuirkStars have been lecturing at universities and teaching at other companies for years, but on a very ad hoc basis. Suddenly, with the launch of our textbook, this area of our business was in huge demand and as such Quirk Education was born. We still do a lot of face-to-face teaching, but the fastest growing component of our educational business has been in our online learning offerings. We now offer a full certificate course in eMarketing as well as short courses in social media, WebPR, mobile marketing, SEO, ORM, email marketing and writing for digital. Over the next year we will expand these to include courses in analytics, UX, strategy, internet law and more. Its an exciting time for us as we are quite obsessed with education and it is very fulfilling to be able to create a business out of it. Of course, whilst our facilitated online training is charged for, our textbook will always be available for free online. Its our contribution to the industry that we have gained so much from. It is important to raise a glass to those who made this textbook possible. If it takes a villages to raise a child, in our case it takes an entire agency to write a textbook. Its really difficult to single out individuals as everyone played a small part in one way or another. However, special mention must of course go the lovely Sarah Blake without whom this book would never have happened. She is a genuine digital polymath and her brain and superb writing skill has ensured that this book has the dept and breadth that make it the text of choice for over 400 academic institutions across the world. The Quirk Education team also deserves much credit, but in particular their mighty leaders Kat Scholtz and Lyndi Lawson who did a huge amount of work, not only with the content, but all the other elements which are essential to bring a book to fruition. Thanks go again to Solveig Bosch for her efforts in laying out the book and making it look great and also to Roger Ewing who designed the cover based on Craig Raws original idea.

Im terribly proud of this book. As I said with the previous edition, it has been much harder than we thought to put it together with many late nights and missed deadlines, but every minute has been worth it. I must thank my team for helping me make this idea a reality. This book is a distillation of Quirks knowledge and to be able to offer it to all without boundaries and limitations is a privilege. I can only hope that others do the same across all disciplines. I believe education is the one thing that can change the world. Its up to those with knowledge to do what they can to put it in the hands of others. Please enjoy and share our book. Rob Stokes

Some thoughts on Marketing from Seth Godin. I dont think youll learn much from this textbook. Its nothing specific I actually dont think you can learn how to market from any textbook. As marketing textbooks go, this is a very good one, but still, its not going to work. Its not going to work because marketing is about nuance, experience, experimentation and passion. And I dont have a clue how you could start from scratch and learn that from a textbook, no matter how good. So, what to do? The first thing you should do is obsess about the terms in this book. Vocabulary is the first step to understanding, and if you dont know what something means, figure it out. Dont turn the page until you do. Second, get out of the book. Go online. Go market. There are very few endeavors that are as open to newcomers, as cheap and as easy to play with. You cant learn marketing without doing marketing. Go find a charity or a cause or a business you believe in and start marketing. Build pages. Run ads. Write a blog. Engage. Experiment. If you dont learn marketing from this process (the book for vocabulary, the web for practicing_ then you have no one to blame but yourself. Youve already made the first step, dont blow it now. We need you. Market what matters. Seth Godin Author Purple Cow, Permission Marketing and Linchpin

Reviews for eMarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing Writing a book on any aspect of the online world is problematic because it changes so much, which is why the people working with this daily enjoy it so much. There are many books explaining why the internet is important and why you need to be part of the hype this is not one of those books. What the team from Quirk have been able to do is create a solid book on eMarketing that will be useful for a long time, regardless of the continuous changes in the field. This eMarketing textbook addresses the core principles one needs to understand to use marketing principles effectively in the online space in a highly accessible format. If you are a marketer, this is a must have book; if you know a marketer, do him or her a favor and get it for them; if you are just interested in eMarketing and want to expand your general business knowledge, but two copies someone will want to borrow this from you. Jaco Meiring, Digital Invested The text book is not only a great resource but has been fundamental to increasing the profile and education around Digital Marketing within SA. The industry as a whole should be grateful for the impact it has made Sean Hidden, Digital Media Manager, Distell.

We brought out the first edition of eMarketing in 2008, and now just three years later we are already on the fourth edition. Weve had great feedback from students and professionals from around the world, and so in updating the book for the fourth edition, we wanted to incorporate that feedback, as well as update what needed updating in this fast paced digital world we market in. Weve decided to restructure the book a little. While anyone can dip in and out of chapters as needed, weve structured the book the way we work at Quirk: We Think: we research, plan and strategize for any campaign, big or small. We Create: we build digital assets for those campaigns.

We Engage: we drive traffic to those assets and build relationships using a variety of online channels. We Optimize: every step of the way, we use data and analysis to make our assets and relationships work better.

So, this books chapters are structured under Think, Create, Engage and Optimize. Follow them sequentially, and you will get an overview of how everything fits together. However, each chapter stands alone as well, so you can brush up certain areas as you need to. Within each chapter there are notes along the way which often pint you in the direction further material, and at the end of each chapter there are links to some great blogs or other books relevant to the chapter. If you want to keep up to date, these blogs are a great way to start. When youve finished reading, the next most important step is to start doing! Put what you have learned into action. Throughout the book we have listed low-to-no-cost-ways to get started all thats needed is your brain and some time. There are many vouchers in the print edition of the textbook, so you can get started with practical application. If its not relevant for your own business, help out someone else. Good luck and have fun! Wishing eMarketing success, From the QuirkStars Whats Inside: In this chapter we look at some background information for understanding how the internet makes digital marketing possible. We also examine a brief history of the Internet as well as a description of how it works and what role it plays in peoples lives. Introduction to the Internet

There is no doubt about it: the internet has changed the world we live in. Never before has it been so easy to access information, communicate with people all over the globe and share articles, videos, photos and all manner of media. The internet has led to an increasingly connected communications environment, and the growth of Internet usage has resulted in declining distribution of traditional media such as televisions, radio, newspapers and magazines. Marketing in this interconnected environment and using that connectivity to market is digital marketing. Digital marketing embraces a wide range of strategies, but what underpins its success is a uuser-centric and cohesive approach to these strategies.

While the internet and the World Wide Web have enabled what is sometimes referred to as New Media, the theories that led to the development of the Internet were being developed from the 1950s. Over the past two decades, marketers began waking up to the power of the Internet, both as a platform for communication and as a way of tracking conversations. By its very nature, the Internet is a network of interlinking nodes. We as marketers use these nodes to track conversations, and therefore patterns.

A Brief Timeline of Internet Developments

1958 US ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) established to lead science and militarly technological developments. 1961 MIT research paper of Packet Switching Theory. 1961-69 Ongoing research into inter-computer communications and networks. 1969 ARPANET, commissioned by US Defense Department, goes live. US universities connect up network facilities for the first time. 1971 Ray Tomlinson creates first network email application 1973 Development of protocols to enable multi-network Internet applications First international ARPANET connections made. 1976 HM Queen Elizabeth II sends an email. 1978 First spam email is recorded. 1980 Tim Berners-Lee develops rules for the World Wide Web and is credited as the Web Father. Alan Emtage develops the first search took known as ARCHIE. 1982 Standard network protocols are established: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), commonly referred to as TCIP/IP. 1984 Joint Academic Network (JANET) is established, linking higher education institutions. 1985 A company named Symbolics becomes the first registered dot.com domain. 1987 National Science Foundation (US) is the catalyst for the surge in funded work into the Internet.

1988-90 28 countries sign up to hook up to the NSFNET, reinforcing international Internet Potential. 1990 Senator Al Gore coins the term information superhighway. 1991 Web father, Time Berners-Lee releases World Wide Web (www) with scientists from CERN. 1992 America