Continuing education and lifelong learning programs are embracing digital marketing. By mixing digital marketing with direct mail and other promotion methods, their marketing efforts are becoming more integrated.
Digital marketing is the marketing of programs and/or services using digital technologies, on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.
There are three types of digital media:
- Paid Media. Paid media is what most people think of when they think of advertising. It’s the most traditional of the three types of digital media – you pay to leverage an existing channel. Examples include digital display ads, paid search, and native advertising.
- Earned Media. Earned media is often referred to as “online word of mouth.” It includes SEO rankings, social media mentions, and content getting picked up by a third party. In effect, your customers become your promotion channel. Earned media is free, acquired by good strategic practices on social media and SEO, as well as good PR practices.
- Owned Media. Owned media is the least understood of the three types of digital media. It’s any media that is controlled directly by your brand, such as your website, blog, or social media account. Everything that you publish on this channel is yours, and you can adapt and change content as you need.
LERN recommends that 75 percent of your marketing budget be spent on direct marketing, such as your printed catalog, brochure or schedule. But this does not mean that 75 percent of your marketing time is spent on direct marketing. With the increase in digital marketing, there is an increase in time dedicated to digital marketing.
With the increase in digital marketing, successful continuing education and lifelong learning programs are exploring adding Digital Marketing staff positions. In researching the most critical continuing education and lifelong learning digital marketing needs, the following Digital Marketing Job Duties List has been developed. You can use this list as a starting point when developing your Digital Marketing Job Description.
- Develop and implement new lead generation tactics on the website, on social media, eMarketing, etc.
- Use internal goals to incorporate Google Ads into the paid digital marketing mix.
- Research and develop customer-focused blog content that also helps improve website SEO. This can include working with guest bloggers.
- Develop supporting email marketing campaigns as needed.
- Maintain a handle on website health (SEO, broken links, etc.) and make necessary recommendations and changes.
- Create content and repurpose content developed for catalogs, newsletters, press releases, etc. into engaging elements for Facebook, Twitter and Instragram and any other social platform.
- Establish and maintain a digital marketing budget for boosted posts, lead capture ads, and other paid campaigns.
- Find, provide commentary and share content from other relevant websites.
- Accompany or give suggestions for photography to visually tell stories.
- Work with graphic designers and other stakeholders to develop content for use on digital marketing.
- Answer questions and respond to comments on social media as needed.
- Evaluate emerging technologies. Provide thought leadership and perspective for adoption where appropriate.
- Measure performance and evolve the campaign to maximize results.
- Avoid vanity metrics and focus on achieving outcomes.
LERN’s Certification in Digital Marketing is an excellent training/certification for new continuing education and lifelong learning digital marketing staff.