AMA PCM Digital Marketing cheat sheet

SMART objectives name one KPI plus a baseline, target, and deadline; vague goals such as 'increase awareness' fail the measurable and time-bound tests.

Funnel KPI mapping: awareness uses reach, impressions, and CPM; consideration uses engaged sessions, CTR, and CPC; conversion uses CVR, CPA, and ROAS; retention uses repeat rate, churn, and LTV.

Budget reallocation rule: shift spend toward channels or campaigns while marginal ROAS exceeds the target; stop or test smaller when incremental ROAS falls below it.

LTV:CAC ratio = customer lifetime value / customer acquisition cost; a 3:1 ratio is a common healthy benchmark, and payback period = CAC / monthly gross margin per customer.

Customer journey stages: need recognition, information search, evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase; message and channel choice vary by stage.

Attribution decision rule: last-click undervalues upper-funnel content; use data-driven attribution for tactical optimization and incrementality tests or marketing mix modeling for budget decisions.

Measurement plan hierarchy: business objective -> marketing objective -> KPI -> metric -> data source -> reporting cadence; each KPI has one accountable owner.

Test-and-learn rule: define hypothesis, sample, primary metric, minimum detectable effect, and decision threshold before launch; a result below threshold does not justify rollout.

Content audit decision rule: score each asset on relevance, accuracy, traffic, conversions, and freshness; keep high scores, update near-misses, consolidate overlap, redirect obsolete URLs, and remove only after redirect or noindex handling.

Content brief elements: audience, search intent, primary keyword, outline, proof points, internal links, CTA, and success metric; the brief precedes drafting.

Brand story framework: customer as hero, brand as guide; narrative sequence is problem, promise, proof, and plan.

Funnel content types: awareness uses educational and explainer content; consideration uses comparisons, buying guides, and webinars; conversion uses demos, case studies, trials, and ROI calculators.

Message hierarchy: one primary value proposition, two or three differentiators, proof points, and one CTA per asset; competing primary messages reduce recall.

Pillar-cluster model: a pillar page covers a broad topic and links to cluster articles; cluster pages link back to the pillar and to related clusters.

Content ROI = (attributed revenue - content cost) / content cost; upper-funnel assets use assisted conversions or pipeline influence rather than last-click revenue alone.

Distribution rule: repurpose one core asset into channel-native formats (article, video, email, social post, infographic) and track each variant with unique UTMs.

CPM = (ad spend / impressions) x 1,000; CTR = clicks / impressions; CPC = ad spend / clicks; frequency = impressions / reach.

Objective mapping: awareness -> reach, impressions, CPM; consideration -> traffic, engagement, CPC; conversion -> leads, purchases, CPA, ROAS.

Audience structure rule: use core, custom, and lookalike audiences; exclude existing customers from acquisition campaigns and cap frequency to control fatigue.

Platform learning phase: ad sets typically need about 50 optimization events per week to exit learning; frequent budget or creative edits can reset it.

Creative test rule: change one variable per test, run until sufficient impressions and conversions, and refresh when frequency rises while CTR and conversion rate fall.

Attribution comparison: platform-reported conversions use default click/view windows; compare 1-day click, 7-day click, and incrementality holdouts before scaling.

Pixel plus server-side events improve match quality and recover signal lost to browser restrictions; consent and platform policies govern data collection.

Paid social auction inputs: bid, estimated action rate, and ad quality; higher total value improves delivery, not bid alone.

Crawl control: robots.txt disallows fetching; noindex meta or header removes a crawlable page from indexing; canonical tags consolidate duplicate URLs.

Search intent mapping: informational -> guide or article; navigational -> brand or login page; commercial -> comparison or review; transactional -> product or checkout page.

Core Web Vitals thresholds at the 75th percentile: LCP <= 2.5 s, INP <= 200 ms, CLS <= 0.1.

Keyword mapping rule: one primary intent per URL; use separate pages for distinct intents to avoid cannibalization and unstable rankings.

E-E-A-T means experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust; YMYL topics receive higher scrutiny for author credentials, citations, and accuracy.

Technical audit checks: XML sitemap, status codes, redirect chains, hreflang, mobile usability, index coverage, and structured data validity.

Link attribute types: rel=sponsored for paid links, rel=ugc for user-generated content, rel=nofollow as a hint; search engines can treat these as hints rather than directives.

SEO reporting: Search Console impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position diagnose visibility; rankings are a diagnostic, not a business KPI.

Quality Score is a 1-10 diagnostic from expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience; it affects Ad Rank and CPC.

Ad Rank combines bid, Quality Score, and expected impact of extensions and formats; it determines eligibility and position.

CPA = cost / conversions; CVR = conversions / clicks; ROAS = revenue / cost; target CPA and target ROAS bid strategies optimize to those goals.

Match type control: exact targets close variants of the exact meaning; phrase includes meaning; broad reaches related queries; negative keywords block unwanted queries.

Search terms report rule: add converting queries as exact keywords and irrelevant queries as negatives; review close variants for intent drift.

Impression share = impressions / eligible impressions; lost IS (budget) signals constrained spend, while lost IS (rank) signals bid or quality gaps.

Ad copy testing: responsive search ads combine headlines and descriptions; pinning can control message order but may reduce ad strength.

Conversion tracking rule: define primary conversions for bidding and secondary for observation; use consistent attribution windows when comparing campaigns.

GA4 engaged session: lasts at least 10 seconds, has a conversion, or includes two or more page views; engagement rate = engaged sessions / sessions.

UTM taxonomy: source, medium, campaign, term, content; lowercase and consistent naming prevents split reports; UTMs do not pass across offline or app installs.

Bounce rate in GA4 = non-engaged sessions / sessions; it is not the same as the Universal Analytics pageview-based bounce rate.

Attribution lookback windows: GA4 reports use configured click and view windows; modeled conversions fill gaps when consent or identifiers are missing.

A/B test design: random assignment, one primary metric, 80% power, alpha 0.05, and a precomputed minimum detectable effect; peeking inflates false positives.

Data quality checks: internal traffic filters, bot filtering, consent mode, thresholding, sampling, and UTM validation before trusting dashboards.

Funnel exploration: define steps, optional open funnel, elapsed time, and breakdown dimensions; drop-off identifies the step with the largest loss.

KPI tree: business outcome -> driver metric -> supporting metric; leading indicators such as add-to-cart predict lagging revenue.

Email metrics: open rate = unique opens / delivered; CTR = clicks / delivered; CTOR = clicks / opens; unsubscribe rate = unsubscribes / delivered.

Deliverability authentication: SPF lists authorized senders, DKIM signs messages, DMARC sets policy and reporting; all three reduce spoofing and improve trust.

List hygiene rule: suppress hard bounces, cap soft-bounce retries, and re-engage inactive contacts before removal; high bounce and complaint rates damage sender reputation.

RFM segmentation uses recency, frequency, and monetary value; lifecycle segmentation uses welcome, active, at-risk, and winback states.

Automation flow structure: trigger, delay, message sequence, exit criteria, and suppression rules; cart abandonment flows typically start within one hour and escalate over 24-72 hours.

CRO hypothesis format: because [evidence], we believe [change] for [audience] will [effect], measured by [primary metric] with [guardrail].

CRO test rule: randomize users, run to precomputed sample size, use one primary metric, and monitor guardrails such as revenue per visitor and latency.

Form optimization facts: each additional field tends to reduce completion; multi-step forms can increase perceived progress; trust signals near the CTA affect completion.