“Digital marketing specialist” is now, according to LinkedIn, one of the world’s top 10 job skills that are most in-demand in today’s economy and the discipline is only going to grow in the future.

That’s no surprise to us — we’ve been saying more or less the same thing for the last decade — but now the promise of Digital Marketing is no longer “in the future”, it’s right here, right now.

Digital Marketing is now New Zealand’s most important advertising medium.

According to the NZ Interactive Advertising Bureau, New Zealand digital advertising revenue generated $1.26 Billion for the full year in 2019, leapfrogging expenditure levels for traditional media and representing nearly half of the year’s total advertising expenditure.

Here’s how the medium has grown over the past several years, in terms of advertising turnover:

In other words, Digital Marketing is now THE most important skill to master.

We have many courses which cover various aspects of Digital Marketing but NOW we’ve drawn key elements together from across our range of courses to unveil our Certification Program in Direct Marketing.

This course draws on the latest developments in Digital Marketing, covering key competencies and new and emerging technologies.

This an ONLINE COURSE which you can ACCESS FROM ANYWHERE at your own pace, ANYTIME 24/7.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE?

Marketers at any level (from junior to senior) who want to acquire comprehensive training in all aspects of Digital Marketing based on the latest technologies. Those who successfully complete  the course will receive a Certificate in Digital Marketing to add to their credentials.

Certificate in Digital Marketing

Course Content for THE CERTIFICATE IN DIGITAL MARKETING includes:

1 The Digital Environment

We start by giving you an overview of today’s digital environment and how much Kiwi consumers have taken to living a digital life. Some of that is driven by the near-universal spread of smartphones, which in turn has turned us all into always-connected global citizens.

In this lesson, we talk about:

• how consumers can now browse, research and shop anytime, anywhere
• what convergence means for television viewing
• how consumer expectations have changed (and their ever-increasing desire for instant gratification because everything is connected)
• how Covid accelerated an already-existing adoption of digital behaviours (in many industries, compressing an expected three years of transition into three months)

2 Strategic Planning

Before you undertake digital marketing activities — or, in fact, any marketing activities — you need to prepare plans and determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve. In this lesson, we step you through the essentials of strategic planning, drawing upon both our many years in traditional marketing and our decades of digital marketing experience and expertise.

3 Understanding The Customer Journey

The customer journey (also Customer Journey Experience, Customer Engagement Cycle) refers to the stages customers travel through in their relationship with a specific brand (as defined by DJS Research).

In a digital world, the customer journey is both enriched and accelerated by the resources and the tools available, and if you’re not taking advantage of that, you risk being superseded by those who are.

In this lesson, we step you through what you need to know to map out your brand’s digitally-enhanced customer journey and implement accordingly.

4 Organic (Unpaid) Search

Turns out that there’s quite a science to being found online (and an industry has grown up around the challenges of what’s now known as Search Engine Optimisation). In essence, if you want your prospects to find your web pages, those pages need to contain content that prospects are looking for. In this lesson we explore the How, What, When, Where & Why of SEO.

We also talk about the most recent developments, including:

• Zero-Click Searches
• Featured Snippets
• Voice Search
• Long-Tail Searches
• Topic Clusters
• Structured Data
• EAT
• Knowledge Graph Optimisation

5 Paid Search (Google Ads)

Not every page can be Number One on Google. So if you want to hit the top of the search engine rankings (especially for the most popular search phrases), sometimes you have to pay. In this lesson, we talk in detail about Google Ads and other Pay Per Click advertising tools.

6 Selling Online (Ecommerce)

More than half of New Zealand (58%) now buys products online! Seven out of ten Kiwi internet users aged 25-44 purchase online — and 94% of NZ web users who research items online (even if they eventually buy the products offline). And, thanks to Covid, in the first half of 2020, 170,000 Kiwis shopped online for the first time. In this lesson, we introduce you to the principles and practices of effective ecommerce.

7 Lead Generation

Generally speaking, as a business marketing online, you either want online buyers, online followers or online leads (those prospects who will convert into buyers later). In this lesson, we listen to highly-experienced digital marketers and draw on their collective wisdom to understand the best ways to generate leads (and turn them into buyers, consistently and efficiently).

8 Closing the Sale (Conversion Optimisation)

In Lesson Seven, we talked about Lead Generation. In this lesson, we focus on what you need to do to convert those leads into sales. Every little improvement turns into extra dollars, so it’s definitely worth the effort optimising your conversion rates.

9 Social Media Management

Once upon a time — up until about 2012 — if you had a Facebook page and posted content to that page, all of your followers would see it. Sorry, not any more. In this lesson we explore exactly what you need to do to build an effective presence in social media and get your posts seen, interacted with and action taken as a result.

10 Paid Social Media Advertising

So you have thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram? Congratulations! Unfortunately, only a handful of those followers are going to see your posts — unless you pay to advertise. In this lesson we introduce you to the principles and practices of Social Media Advertising.It’s now an essential part of your activities in social media.

11 Email

It’s the oldest digital marketing tool of all, but it’s still the most effective for most target audiences. In this lesson we talk about email marketing strategies and best practices, and the tools you should use to promote your business as effectively as possible through email.

12 Online Video

Online Video is now NZ’s most popular medium, and it’s a powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects. This lesson introduces you to the basic principles and explores some of the available tools.

13 Content Marketing

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. It’s particularly relevant to B2B marketers, but it’s important for B2C as well. In this lesson we explore the principles of content marketing, including Creation, Curation and Content Pillars.

14 Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing has come from nowhere to become a hot buzzword these days, as more and more businesses turn to “influencers” — those who have already developed their own followers, especially in social media — and sponsor posts to promote their products. In this lesson, we explore the Dos & Don’ts of Influencer Marketing, and how to find Kiwi Influencers.

15 Messaging

Messaging Apps, also known as Dark Social, have gone from strength to strength in recent years, with Facebook’s own Messenger and WhatsApp leading the way. In this lesson, we explore Messaging Apps and tell you what you need to know to use them effectively for marketing purposes.

16 Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation — software tools designed to handle repetitive tasks such as emails and web actions — can improve your efficiency and even (if used effectively) enable you to take actions that would otherwise not be possible. In this lesson, we explore the capabilities of marketing automation platforms and consider if and how you might use them in your business.

17 Writing for the Web

Writing online copy has become more important than ever — but there are processes to follow, and structures and formats that are forced on us by the various digital media channels. This lesson covers the key facts that you need to know when writing for the web, including the seven deadly sins you need to avoid.

18 Mastering Visual Marketing

Images and visual concepts are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text, according to 3M Corporation research. Add in our seven-second attention span (shorter than goldfish now) and it’s quickly obvious why visual marketing has become so important online. In this lesson, we explore how you can use visuals to multiply the effectiveness of your online content (and free and low-cost tools you can use).

19 Analytics

It’s free, and it’s packed full with information that can transform your digital marketing efforts. We’re talking Google Analytics, and a great many online marketers use the free Analytics service to track the performance of their digital marketing. In this lesson, you’ll discover exactly what you can learn from Google Analytics and how to master it (even if you hate maths and stats).

20 The New, New Marketing Technologies

In this final lesson, we peek into the digital marketing technologies of today and tomorrow, including such topics as VR, AR, IoT, programmatic advertising, chatbots & Artificial Intelligence. The digital tools are getting smarter and smarter, and you need to keep track of what’s possible (and what’s inevitable).

ONCE YOU’VE COMPLETED THIS COURSE

You will receive your own Certificate in Digital Marketing.

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WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING ABOUT OUR COURSES

Here’s a sampling of the feedback we’ve received from those who’ve taken our courses:

• Thanks for an informative and interesting course. Your presentation held a good balance of theoretical and practical information and was clear and simple enough for a non IT Facebook novice like me to follow. There are many ideas that I have gained that I will attempt to incorporate in the overall marketing plan my team is currently developing for our brand. Facebook can offer so much more than I thought as a medium for communicating with our current and prospective customers. Julie D

• I found this course fantastic, i started off knowing very little about facebook (just how to run my own personal page) to now having a thorough understanding of ALL the things you can (and there is a lot). The course format was great and allowed knowledge to be built up over time. Course length was great and this will definetly be something i come back to constantly as we develop our facebook pages more within my company. Aleisha H

• I have really enjoyed the course and the way it was structured. It was informative and interesting – liked the way you incorporated slide-shows, video, statistics and different forms of media to provide information. Lisa C
• Really informative course, definitely helping us whilst we start out on our first ecomm project in NZ — Rob. T
• Thanks for another great course. I found it insightful, in-depth and I know our web presence and web sales will improve because of it. — Bruce H.
• I have somehow managed to develop over 80 pages of my own notes to complement the course ones. I look forward to participating in another in the near future. — Mark J

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COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This course has been created and is tutored by Michael Carney.

Michael is a veteran marketer with an insatiable passion for whatever’s new, different, exciting or interesting in the world of communications (and especially in the digital space). Michael has been in the marketing game since 1971, online since 1987 — and can be variously described as a digital marketing trainer, adman, media director, strategist, researcher, copywriter, consultant, playwright and dad.

He is probably best known for his many years as Media Director of a number of leading NZ advertising agencies, including MDA Mackay King (now Saatchi & Saatchi) and HKM Rialto (since merged with Colenso BBDO). More recently he worked in strategic roles with MediaCom New Zealand and Grey Worldwide and was Strategic Planning Director for the Media Counsel before setting up Netmarketing Courses.

Michael is also the author of “Trade Me Success Secrets: How To Buy and Sell Effectively on NZ’s Favourite Auction Site”, now in its second edition.

Michael was chairman of the NZ Marketing Association’s Network of Digital Marketers from 2009 until March 2013.

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TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 09 January, 2025.

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To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you require an invoice in advance, or prefer to pay by bank deposit, please send an email to bookings@socialmedia.org.nz with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

You’ll receive our emailed confirmation of your booking. Then on the first day of the course we’ll follow up with details of your Login and Password, along with an Enrolment Key for the Certificate in Digital Marketing online training course.

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please email us at bookings@socialmedia.org.nz