Are you looking for the ultimate guide to using Ad intel? This is a great tool for researching the global competitive advertising market for both Ad spend and creatives. But you might find it hard to use the platform. We have come up with Dos and Dont’s help you navigate the way around the platform. Continue reading to find out more!
What is the database?
This a data base that allows you to run selective reports and adds media channels, new dates, brands and spending across the time that is suited. It requires planners, to research and gain exposure on competitors for client requests.
Please see Apprenticetips for more information on using digital tools and overall apprenticeship research. Find at ApprenticeTips.com
DO
Use Ad Intel for in-house planning, buying and media decisions. This will include building in-house reports to understand the competitive market.
Don’t
Another key point is not to share the data, in a raw format – it will lead to it being manipulated in another way.
DO
Also, Feed data into dashboards or reports for client use.
Don’t
Generate reports with any spot level granularity. Including reporting by channel, publication or sharing data outside the business.
DO
But, do use your own login at all times. This is to save copyrights and people taking credit for your work.
Don’t
Lastly don’t, share any data on your own websites without permission.
Why this matters?
These Dos and Don’ts allow you to be the best researcher you can be for your business and solve your client requests. Being a good researcher helps meet business goals and pushes your company to: Better understand your customers, design new business opportunities and identify problem areas.
In summary, we hope this gave a good overview on the sharing guidelines of Ad Intel. By following these tips, you will be showing a better understanding on Ad intel and can take what you have learnt back to your business and show your clients you are a research expert!
In a world where technology is constantly growing and evolving you can be at the centre of it all. Design, build and implement campaigns across a variety of platforms. Develop skills, learn new technologies and explore the Metaverse with a Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship.
Digital Marketing Technologies
Marketers who adapt to newer technologies are able to personalise, engage, and connect with their audience. Developments in system technologies help marketers become better at targeting and predicting the behaviours of their industries consumers. During your apprenticeship you will be recommended technologies to learn and understand. Applying effective secure and appropriate solutions whilst using a wide variety of platforms and user interfaces to achieve marketing objectives. Interfaces mean by which the user and computer system interact. In accordance with the occupational brief the apprentice will be able to demonstrate the use of three digital technology tools over three different platforms or user interfaces to meet objectives.
Examples technologies and tool:
Social Media – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok etc. As well as social media management tools. Examples include Sprout, Hootsuite and Later.
Design Tools – Creating content for advertising using platforms such as Canva, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
Email Marketing Tools – Using written communication skills in the form of newsletters to encourage brand engagement. Common tools include Mailchimp, Sender and Iterable.
The Importance Of Research
Market research goes hand in hand with digital marketing. Gathering consumer preferences, identifying trends, brand research and social listening. This can help your business eliminate the risk of targeting the wrong audience. This can save your company thousands of pounds when creating paid advertisements. During your apprenticeship you will take and interpret given topics both short and long term and make recommendations and report on the summary of findings to create a strategy. Throughout you will be conducting research sometimes without even realising you are! You will develop technical understanding of the following principles:
Search Marketing
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Metrics
Pay-Per-Click
Analysing Data
Digital analytics measures and evaluates the success of digital marketing activities. You will analyse digital data from various sources like websites, mobile apps, and social media to provide a vision of how customers are behaving in relation to your company. Through analytics you will obtain an insight into the areas where there may need to be improvement. In line with the occupational brief the apprentice must be able to analyse data and create reports by selecting three appropriate tools. This can include:
Website Data – this identifies who is coming to the company’s site and their activity while they’re there. This can be obtained through Google analytics. Google analytics lets you explore your audience such as demographics, location, retention, and the device in which the user searched on.
Social Media analytics – Data gathered from social channels measures the performance of actioned based decisions through social media. Companies with business accounts have access to information such as accounts reached, accounts engaged, impressions and profile activity. Tools such as Hootsuite, Sprout and Later can also be used to gather data.
A Group of People Discussing Charts
Digital Marketer Assessment
Technical knowledge and understanding are formally assessed at relevant times during your apprenticeship. The EPA (End Point Assessment) includes an assessment of all requirements of the standard. The following assessment methods are summative portfolio, synoptic project, employer reference and an interview. This displays all the knowledge, behaviours, and technical competencies you have learnt through your apprenticeship.
Conclusion
As you can see, the Level 3 Digital Marketer apprenticeship includes various technical aspects. With technology constantly evolving it has the power to predict your consumer’s next move. I hope this blog gives you an insight into the technologies you will learn during the apprenticeship including analytics, research, and social media tools.
Whether you’re testing a CTA on an email or creating an entirely new campaign, research is key in Digital Marketing. This article will show you some of the best tools to getting the most out of your research. Researching is also one of the core competencies on the Digital Marketing apprenticeship so it’s important to know how to go about it.
Why is Researching Important?
There are many reasons why researching is useful in Digital Marketing, for example:
You’re not starting from scratch– research gives you key learnings that you can use to inform your campaigns
See what has worked well before– reviewing previous campaigns and current creatives allow you to see what performs well and therefore what you should continue doing
See what hasn’t worked well– this can often be just as useful as you’re able to learn and optimise your campaigns
Reviewing what competitors are doing– this can inspire your campaign but also allows you to review what did/ didn’t work for them
Puts you in the consumer’s position– research allows you to see things from a customer’s point of view which gives you a great insight into their needs
Setting a Target Audience
This is an important step of the researching process as you need to know who you’re targeting. You may thing that you want to target ‘everyone’, but by setting a specific target audience, you will be able to create more accurate and effective campaigns.
A great way of identifying your key audience is to create user personas. Pick 2-3 segments of your target audience, give them a picture, a name and a description. It is also useful to select which social media channels each person is likely to respond to. For example:
Aaron is a 26 year old young professional who commutes into Central London every day. He uses Amazon as a delivery service and has recently signed up to a free trial of Prime but he isn’t familiar with the streaming service. Aaron currently uses Netflix to watch videos on the train but he is limited to the shows that he can download.
By giving your target audience a persona, it allows you to connect and view your campaigns from their perspective. It can provide useful insight into what your audience needs from your product and service, and how you can best target them. You should link all your findings back to your target audience.
Competitor Research
This can be done for the majority of channels available. Here are some examples of where you could conduct competitor research and how to do it:
Website Review
You may be updating a page on your website or perhaps revisiting a customer journey. It is useful to put yourself in the shoes of one of your user personas, have a browse of a competitor’s website, and then compare this to your own website and journey. There are multiple things to check for when looking at another website:
Is it easy to find the information you’re looking for?
How many steps does it take to find this information?
Is the content engaging or text-heavy?
How is it presented?
Is there a logical next step to the journey?
Online Presence
As well as conducting SEO research on your own website, it is useful to conduct it on competitors too. Seeing what keywords your competitors are appearing under may be useful to inform the direction you want your content to go.
One great tool to use is Google Alerts. By setting up alerts for your brand and your competitors’, you will be notified when Google finds new results for those keywords. This allows you to keep up to date with the latest news in your industry.
Email Marketing
If you’re able to sign up to your competitors’ email marketing, this is a great way to see what communications their customers are receiving. For example, if you are running an Abandoned Baskets email campaign, going onto competitor websites and abandoning baskets are an easy way to see what other companies’ communications are, when they are sending these messages and what the CTA (Call To Action) is.
If you’re not able to get these emails directly to your inbox, there’s a website called ‘Really Good Emails‘. This tool allows you to search for successful email campaigns by company or type of email. It’s collates the best creatives, making it easy for you to review and figure out what works best for you and your business.
Social Media
Another method of competitor review is to look at social media channels and conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threat) analysis. As a part of this, you should review the following:
What social media channels are they using?
Are they posting different types of content on each platform?
What is the strategy behind each platform?
Are they using any channels that you’re not using?
What content is performing the best?
Analysis of Past Campaigns
Once you’ve looked at competitors, make sure to analyse your own performance as part of your Digital Marketing research:
Website Review– A great tool to use, if your business is set up on it, is Clicktale. Clicktale generates heatmaps based on mouse movement, engagement, clicks and attention as well as providing real videos of user journeys so you can see how your audience responds when presented with your website.
Online Presence– Similarly to the competitor research, you should be producing a search marketing review and setting up Google Alerts for your own company.
Email Marketing– If you have existing email campaigns, you will be able to evaluate key statistics such as open rate, click through rate and conversion rate. If your emails changed at all or if any tests were run, pull the findings from these changes so you can provide recommendations for creative going forward.
Social Media– Perform a SWOT analysis on your own social media channels to compare to competitors.
Summary of Findings
Once you’ve completed your Digital Marketing research, it’s important to make sure this doesn’t go to waste. Pull together your core findings into a PowerPoint deck and share with key stakeholders for the campaign/ project. Ensure that your research is stored somewhere safe so it can be accessed easily. Research should be conducted on a regular basis to keep up-to-date with latest industry changes and ensure that your own campaigns are performing well.
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