Course Review

The course for this month was extremely insightful because we started with the fundamentals; learning about the PESTEL and SWOT analysis was a major experience for me because it was the first time I heard of PESTEL analysis. Every training I have experienced focuses on SWOT analysis and it seems to be the end all be all;. However, the two analyses overlap on a few things applying them the way the lecture required allowed me to broaden the scope of the current industry dynamics in an organized manner. This allowed me to present relevant information and create a plan that solved each element of both analyses.

Search Engine Marketing is one of the most effective strategies in the marketing arena. The advances in AI have opened up many avenues for companies to reach their target audience repetitively. The discussion of whether it is ethical to stay hooked at the hip of our target audience across the internet/mobile apps does raise a lot of questions; in my opinion, it’s a necessary evil because if we are not visible for some time our target audience attention moves to the next shiny object. Our message has to be consistent and educational to ensure we are providing value in our content. This visibility can come at a cost to the budget of our company due to bad actors exploiting the needs of the company as it targets and retargets customers by fraudulently increasing its budget by using the system to create fake audiences to drive up ad costs.

Managing a company’s online reputation in today’s viral environment is among the top things leadership plans around. This lesson highlighted the nuances companies need to navigate to ensure that their online presence and reputation remain in high standing. Putting together the checklist was very informative and a timely lesson to get us thinking proactively about the steps that need to happen in the event of a situation like that should occur. Evaluating the websites of our competitors was a great training tool, I had no idea that there were that many aspects of the website that needed to be evaluated. It showed me that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to set the website apart from the competitors.

There is a lot of information and tools available to help the digital marketer, moving forward gaining detailed insight on the tools available is valuable in creating systems to achieve company goals in the digital space. The SWOT and PESTEL analysis provided a great deal of information, I need to learn how to put that information together in such a way as to ensure that I am maximizing the use of the information to generate the best marketing ads.