Digital Marketing and Channels
Core concepts
Digital marketing spans owned, paid, and earned media. Owned includes websites and email; paid includes search, display, and social ads; earned includes organic shares and reviews. Candidates must understand search engine marketing (paid search and SEO), display and programmatic buying, social media marketing, email marketing, and affiliate marketing.
Know the funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, advocacy - and which channels suit each stage. Understand key metrics: impressions, click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), conversion rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS). Recognize targeting types (contextual, demographic, behavioral, retargeting) and the role of landing-page relevance in conversion.
Traps in questions
- Confusing CTR (clicks/impressions) with conversion rate (conversions/clicks).
- Assuming the lowest CPC is best; CPA and ROAS matter more for outcomes.
- Treating SEO as paid media; it is earned/organic.
- Forgetting that retargeting reaches prior visitors, not cold audiences.
Worked example
A campaign gets 200,000 impressions, 4,000 clicks, and 200 purchases. CTR = 4,000/200,000 = 2%. Conversion rate = 200/4,000 = 5%. If spend was $10,000, CPA = $50 and CPC = $2.50. If average order value is $120, ROAS = (200 × $120)/$10,000 = 2.4.
Rule of thumb: Optimize for the metric that maps to the business goal - usually CPA or ROAS, not impressions or CPC alone.