Mastery Reflection: Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies

The Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies course from Full Sail University has met my objective of preparing me for a career in digital marketing.  I am now able to define the elements in building primary relationships online and create consumer engagement goals with the AIDAS model to produce conversions.  I can also identify the different levels of the funnel navigation in which the consumer drops out, thereby providing focused optimization efforts.  I can now utilize metrics to determine costs, project traffic, and perform conversion to measure campaign effectiveness.  Over the course of four weeks we also explored identifying customer personas, conducting demographic research, creating a unique value proposition (UVP), special promotions strategies, and managing online communities (Cornell, 2020).

I will apply what I have learned in Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies professionally.  For example, I will have the necessary skills to perform media-buying and planning tasks.  I will also be able to provide consulting services regarding digital marketing.  I learned how to create digital marketing strategy such as: Relationship Development Strategy, Conversion Optimization Strategy, Traffic and Promotion Strategy, Testing Methods, Advertising Pricing Models, Advertising and Revenue Metrics, and Campaign and Revenue Goals.  All of these strategies will be important in my future career in the field of digital marketing. Lastly, I will be able to responsibly manage an advertising budget and make knowledgeable decisions concerning placements.  The creation of the Internet Marketing Action Plan Presentation at the end of week four combined four previous assignments into one polished marketing roadmap.  With the added challenge of presenting the report with a recording, Professor Timi Cornell MBA ensures that all of her students will pass her course with the skills needed to create and present an Internet Marketing Action Plan for their future company or personal venture (Cornell, 2020). 

Reference

Cornell, T. (2020). Course Syllabus: Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://fso-lms4-immortal-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/297/20192/54203ba9-e373-44c1-8342-29fe69fee8be-b7ffe238-d012-40b0-829c-954bf1dbe46b/AVD-O_Syllabus.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200531T001200Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAI4QJ7YJDQ7JYMBXQ/20200531/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=e8e548cf26b268274db8aa2aed2e8049b2469654348fd3df7bb62d528b3eaa6c

Mastery Reflection

The course Mastery: Personal Leadership and Development from Full Sail University met my personal goal of self-fulfillment for my master’s degree program.  In this class, I learned from studying a master in his own right, Robert Greene (Greene, 2012).   His best-selling work entitled Mastery encourages those on the path to mastery to work on cultivating negative capability, thinking like and outsider, using active imagination, and subverting one’s patterns of thought (Talks, 2013).  

This wisdom in cultivating a logical yet open mind is key to my personal development not just in my personal life but key to my professional career.  My original goal was self-improvement specifically in working professionally in digital marketing.  Cultivating negative capability will help me directly when I work for a digital marketing firm.  This piece of advice means that one must be able to turn negative experiences into positive ones through learning from your mistakes.  For example, in digital marketing I will be tracking negative comments, unsubscribes, and complaints.  Rather than getting disheartened by these metrics I will be able to use them to improve my content.  

Thinking like an outsider was a surprising suggestion from Greene at first, but now it makes sense.  Even though organizations rely on some forms of homogeny we should not allow ourselves to become biased toward only tried and true practices.  In order to avoid stagnation, we need to address things as scientists, considering points of view from disciplines outside our own.    

Robert Greene as well as professor Daniel Spellman encouraged original work.  Using active imagination is what many people are talking about when they mention being in “the zone”.  In active imagination it is crucial to examine many sides to a given problem and to be okay with paradoxes.  In active imagination we tap into our child-like curious nature which can be tempered with logic later.  I will apply this professionally when I am writing engaging copy and creating graphics. 

Subverting my own patterns of thought is the most challenging call to action Robert Greene placed upon me in Mastery.  How can I subvert my own thoughts?  It is actually a matter of separating my own thoughts from what I perceive as real.  It is the simple admission that my judgements might not be right.  They are formed out of repetitions but there are always exceptions to every rule.  I have to be able to look at my own thoughts as a passing river and not as absolute truths.  I cannot become overly attached to ideas just because they are mine.  I think this goes a long way toward personal humility and working well with others.  In this way the class the course Mastery: Personal Leadership and Development from Full Sail University set me up for success in becoming a master of digital marketing.  

Watch Robert Greene’s enlightening talk at Google in 2013 where he speaks personally about his work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1191&v=J4v_34RRCeE&feature=emb_logo (Talks, 2013). 

Reference

Greene, R. (2012). Mastery. New York, NY: Penguin

Talks at Google. (2013, April 7). Robert Greene: “Mastery” Talks at Google. Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1191&v=J4v_34RRCeE&feature=emb_logo.

Mastery Reflection: Digital Marketing and the Law

My original objective of securing a career in a top Atlanta company has been achieved.  My new position is not in marketing, however, is a skilled position in a company I am extremely passionate about that I could see leading to marketing work in the future.  My interest and knowledge in marketing secured the position because the skills required to create and maintain marketing campaigns can be applied to other fields with many logistic considerations.  Also, I can use what I learn in my new position to inform my marketing. 

This position is a great reputation builder and one that requires excellent team building skills.   I have learned that calmness of emotion is one of the single most important factors when it comes to working effectively.  The hills as well as the valleys should be appreciated fully for their lessons, and that advice will come in handy when say my ROI projections were a little high or a campaign does not go as viral as I think it will.  Active listening, empathy, and attention to detail is invaluable for working effectively.  Having high expectations is great, but when ego gets involved and attached a negative result can occur.  The show must go on.  It is better to stay clear headed so you can be a reliable pillar of the team.

Additionally, this month I learned how to stay above water when it comes to the legality of marketing.  This is key as I would never want to cross the legal line or hurt anyone with my marketing tactics.  Also, it is important to be legally sound in order to have a great reputation as a marketer.  Intellectual property, copyright, domain names, trademark issues, and the First Amendment were explored this month in Digital Marketing and the Law.  

Now I feel confident that I will be able to draft a privacy policy for my own website because I did just that and explained why for every section of it for an assignment.  I also learned how to legally send spam which could be a cheap solution for my future small business to use in order to get leads.  Of course, that would be in accordance with CAN-SPAM if I chose to use it.  

I will also be able to protect my own privacy rights and make sure I will not violate other rights.  I also gained a better understanding of defamation.  Lastly, I learned how to prevent cybercrimes and gained insight on workplace privacy. 

Overall, I learned how to navigate a new position while learning valuable legal information.  The legal requirements taught in this class will allow me to create a website where I can offer consulting services and advertise myself as marketer.  The ability to write a privacy policy will be used by me if I launch an online retail site which is one of my long-term goals.  The pitching skills used to create the SPAM pitch are invaluable as I embark on pitching my final marketing plan for my final class. 

Advanced Search Engine Optimization: Mastery Reflection

The Advanced Search Engine Optimization course from Full Sail University has met my original objective for my master’s degree program of preparing me for entry into the field of Marketing.  Over the course of four weeks I learned pay-per-click advertising, how quality score affects costs and rankings, split-testing techniques, keyword research, keyword selection, keyword tools, understanding searcher intent, and many other important skills key to becoming a full service digital marketing consultant.  I spent a lot of personal research on bug fixes like canonical redirects and 301s.  Understanding how to make reasonable ROI was also a huge learning point for me.  The course gave me a much deeper understanding of how website architecture effects SEO.  I also enjoyed learning how to build link authority as I had wondered about it for a long time.  I am excited to start a new professional site of my own so I can use Google Analytics data.  I want to optimize my fiancé’s Motion Graphics site since it needs an update especially for local search. The tools used in class such as Moz, SEMRush, Spyfu, Webflow, Google Webmaster Tools, and Xenu’s link sleuth will aid me for years to come.  I was excited to find this tool through the class research: https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ to help me choose keywords for future sites.  Thanks to the rigorous exercises in this class I can now feel confident in my advanced keyword strategies.  I will also know how to build authoritative quality links to Google Best Practices standards.  Pay-per-click research will also have a firm basis in experience when I am marketing as a professional.  I am able to recommend keywords, links to pursue, paid advertising evaluation, online competitor identification, and how to outrank competitors to clients as a consultant, and that feels pretty good! 

Reference

Johnson, J. (2020). Advanced Search Engine Optimization. https://fso-lms4-immortal-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/566/201811/29470747-934d-4b6e-b33f-70ff047ff37e-9c9ca15b-1ee2-4907-92ef-cdbe1fffa8ed/ASE-O_Syllabus.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200629T030033Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAI4QJ7YJDQ7JYMBXQ%2F20200629%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=f432b7d11c44e86e35bda645a2fd2d416feea9f8bd32cb301731762582cad724.

How I Discovered My Creator Identity

(Putnam, 2020)

Kaye Putnam is a brilliant marketing artist. She created a brand archetype test to help professionals recognize which of twelve archetypes fits their brand best. You can check it out here https://www.kayeputnam.com. Her site uses enchanting alchemical imagery to encourage her brand archetype of magician with a secondary archetype of sage (Putnam, 2020). I took her test for the brand Rhen’s Nest Toy Shop for my class Digital Storytelling and Branding. This brand most aligned with the innocent archetype with caregiver being its secondary. I was really intrigued by the quiz’s accuracy. I took her free masterclass and then I decided to take the test for my own personal brand as a marketer. The results have been the single biggest breakthrough I have had in marketing. I received the creator archetype as my primary archetype and caregiver as my secondary. I will be speaking primarily about creator today. We can tackle caretaker another time.

What I learned

From the guidance of my professor Diane Sadler Diaz and Kaye Putnam I was able to realize that I needed to choose and stick to a particular brand archetype. From Kaye Putnam’s quiz I was able to narrow it down to the creator archetype. This unlocked my intentions to create as part of my career. It also gave me permission to identify as an artist. I will definitely use Kaye Putnam’s quiz every time I take on a new brand in my future professional life. I have already re-branding this WordPress blog to reflect a compelling creative narrative. I carried that to LinkedIn as well. When I create my next resume, the creative archetype will be the heart of the branding I create for myself. Additionally, I learned to flavor text with words that conjure my archetypes images to enhance the overall cohesive feel. Lastly, I learned to look to masters of the archetype to fully understand them. For example creative genius Kasumi embodies the creative archetype. Check out her art page here https://www.kasumifilms.com (Kasumi, 2020). Other examples of creative brands include Lego, Canon, and YouTube (Putnam, 2020). I will be able to apply what I have learned about archetypes to my final project, my Internet Marketing Plan.

References

Kasumi. (n.d.). Kasumi. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.kasumifilms.com

Putnam, K. (n.d.). About the Creator Archetype. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.kayeputnam.com/brandality-archetype-creator/