Final Report (Self Promotion) – McKennaJohnsonMarketing.com

Course Overview:

During this semester in digital marketing, we looked at the main idea of digital marketing, and how different companies use it strategically. In this process we learned about the digital marketing environment, the digital consumer, email marketing, social media marketing, and the use of AI in marketing. All these aspects are very important to the idea of digital marketing to ensure the best outreach possible for a company. Each week we learned about something different, and integrated it into our own websites. With our websites we research different companies and create customer personas based on their demographics, content creation using AI, and a review analysis. Doing these activities allowed us to get actual experience in digital marketing, which got us to further understand the concepts of digital marketing.

Theoretical Knowledge:

There are many different areas of digital marketing where I gained theoretical knowledge. Different areas include, modern digital marketing environment, how digital consumer behavior shapes marketing strategies, and how the consumers interact with the content. When it comes to the modern digital marketing environment, I thought it was really interesting to see how digital marketing has changed and evolved. With the new technology that we have gained over the past couple years, digital marketing has grown, and has become an asset for marketing and advertising. When it comes to how digital consumer behavior shapes marketing strategies, I learned a lot about how consumers interact and think about a company’s message and brand. This aspect leads into how the consumer interacts with the content. Marketers can look at things such as clicks, amount of time spent on a page, history, etc. Along with these concepts, I was able to look at social media and email marketing. With this, I got to look more into target markets and segmentation to draw in customer engagement. With social media marketing, I gained insight on how different platforms can be used to gain brand awareness. For email marketing, I learned that it helps with customer loyalty, and shares information about the brand. Lastly, when looking at search engine optimization (SEO), I was able to see the importance of increasing visibility.

Practical Project Summary:

Throughout this entire semester, we have been building our own websites to share what we learn in class. I really enjoyed how hands-on building our own website was. I was able to see the beginning stages of creating a website. With this, I got to understand how to overcome problems and struggles before my website was live. I really enjoyed managing my website and looking at the analytics. It allowed me to see how this type of platform functions, and its outreach possibility for bigger companies. Each week I would create a blog post about the companies I chose to research. These blog posts included customer personas, content creation using AI, and review analysis.

Key Skills Acquired:

With this process, I gained a lot of key skills. These skills include website management, email automation, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. Website management was really interesting to look at with my own website. As a marketing major, I really enjoyed learning more about this aspect in a hands-on way. Email automation goes along with website management as it is something marketers do to get a further reach to consumers. Google Analytics was my favorite thing to learn about. I really enjoy learning about engagement, and user information. This skill is very helpful to me as I get further into my college career. Lastly, being able to use Google Search Console allowed me to maintain and improve my website to help increase my website’s results.

AI Tools Utilization Experience:

With this project, I was able to learn about using AI to get information on demographics and content creation. As AI has become a widely used system in the past few years, it is important to know how to work it in order to get the results you want. I learned that it was very important to know how to ask AI certain questions to get the response I needed. Once I figured out the correct way to ask questions, AI was able to create content based on the information I told it. With that, it was able to generate images based on the information to enhance the content.

Data Analysis Capabilities:

Something else we worked on was data analysis with Google Analytics. This would help measure engagement, new users, active users, etc. Looking at these types of metrics is very important as it tells you how your website is doing. Here are some of the analytics from my website:

These metrics tell me that I had 167 new users and my engaged sessions were 26. I really liked learning about google analytics as it was very interesting to see how my own website was doing.

Real Company Analysis Experience:

While researching companies, I was able to analyze their reviews, and create marketing recommendations based on the research I found. This information includes strengths and weaknesses found in Google Reviews, and analyzes that information to create recommendations to enhance their presence to consumers.

Social media Utilization:

As building this website was a big part of this class, we also utilized LinkedIn. Each week when we created a blog post on our websites, we would make a post on LinkedIn giving a brief description on what the post was about, and providing a link to the blog post. This allows for new people I have made connections with to see my post, and possibly visit my website. This can be a very important outlet to get more outreach to my website. Per an assignment at the beginning of the semester, we were told to get ten connections on LinkedIn. Many students added fellow classmates or friends. I followed that trend, and even followed a few other people such as my friend’s dad who is a financial advisor, and also one of my professors. Below is a picture showcasing my analytics for LinkedIn.

Through LinkedIn I did not get any connections from any companies, however I have had interviews with companies that have seen my LinkedIn due to my LinkedIn being on my resume.

Key Achievements and Insights:

This class has been a very important class for me and my degree. A company I applied for uses WordPress as their main website, so knowing how to work with WordPress, especially after the technical difficulties I had would be very helpful. I think that learning about the analytics and metrics of websites and the companies I researched was very important for me as I am hoping to go into marketing research. Understanding those concepts is really interesting to me, and this class solidified that career path for me.

Future Application Plans:

These skills I have acquired from this class can help me in future careers. I can help companies in their digital marketing presence because I understand social media and digital marketing. I can analyze metrics and different information to understand the positives and negatives of the company’s online presence, and brainstorm new ideas to get a better outreach. Overall, a lot of what we learned this semester can help me as a marketing and economics major for the remaining two years I have in college, and out in the world after college.

Contribution Plans For Target Companies:

This class has helped me a lot to understand digital marketing in a way I didn’t think I would. I really enjoyed how we had hands-on experience with creating our own websites. That alone can help me in my future endeavors. With all the research we did on the companies we chose, and working with AI was super helpful, and allowed me to understand things marketers look for when creating content for a specific target audience.

Personal Growth:

Overall I really enjoyed taking this class. The first few weeks were rough with how many technical difficulties I had with WordPress, but Professor Lee helped a lot. He would email me for many hours in a day trying to come up with solutions for my problems. Eventually my difficulties dissolved and I was able to work solely on making posts for my website. Fellow classmates helped to make sure I was finding the correct information, and ensuring my posts look okay from the outside perspective. This class taught me things I didn’t think I would learn in this class, but I really found an interest in it, and had a lot of fun researching these companies.