Project Overview: This is the journey of obtaining my Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate from Coursera and a strategic decision fueled by my desire to propel my digital presence to new heights within 6 months.
Enrolling in this complex program was driven by a commitment to leveling up my skills and extending my digital marketing areas. The six-month duration served as a comprehensive experience, designed to build up expertise across the diverse spectrum of digital marketing disciplines.
In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, where trends evolve at an unprecedented pace, my mission was clear: not merely to keep pace but to lead the way, setting new standards for success in the online realm.
My Role
Responsibilities
➤ Course Engagement
➤ Learning and Application
➤ Skill Development
➤ Assessment and Quizzes
➤ Time Management
➤ Problem Solving
➤ Portfolio Building
Challenges & Objectives
Challenges and Achieving Objectives in the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certification Journey
One of the challenges I encountered throughout the certificate program was to comprehend and apply new digital marketing concepts within the constraints of strict deadlines for final assignments at the end of each chapter.
Moreover, the practical application of acquired knowledge proved to be equally demanding. Translating theoretical insights into tangible, real-world scenarios demanded a thoughtful approach and effective time management.
My goal was not just to navigate the intricacies of SEO, Social Media, Email Marketing, Google Ads, and measuring campaigns with Google Analytics but to level up these areas, ensuring a significant impact on my online presence and business outcomes, and emerge as a more adept and versatile digital marketer, ready to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of online marketing.
The program's emphasis on e-commerce stores and platforms like Shopify was very helpful, and offered me the opportunity to learn how to navigate the complexities of the online retail landscape, leveraging key insights to optimize sales and user experiences.
Course Structure
Navigating the Structured Pathways of the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate
Beginning with the important step of developing customer personas, I learned the significance of understanding target audiences before embarking on any marketing initiative.
The course then navigated into the four essential stages of the marketing funnel—awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. Within each stage, I acquired practical knowledge and skills in various tactics, including SEM, email marketing, remarketing, and testimonials.
A focus on search engines and Google Search mechanics equipped me with the fundamentals of keyword research and list building. Exploring site structure and organization provided clarity on optimizing websites for better visibility in search results.
The optimization journey continued with an in-depth exploration of SEO, offering strategies to enhance a website's appearance when potential customers search for relevant products or services.
The chapter's final segment covered online advertising, with a specific focus on SEM benefits, diverse ad formats, best practices to achieve campaign goals, display advertising, and learning about ad formats and crafting effective responsive display ads.
Crafting customer personas that represent a group of similar people in a desirable audience, highlighting their goals and the challenges they face.
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Crafted titles and meta descriptions for two web pages in an online store and improved them to make it easier for search engines and consumers to find different pages on a website.
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Practicing writing headlines, descriptions, and ad extensions for a Google responsive search ad to improve the campaign’s performance.
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Evaluated assets for responsive display ads and suggested how to optimize them based on creative best practices. Google’s responsive display ads automatically combine assets—such as headlines, descriptions, images, and logos—to deliver the best-performing ads to potential customers.
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Exploring the Essential Pillars of Social Media Marketing Strategy
Next, I mastered the five core pillars of social media marketing campaigns: strategy, planning and publishing, listening and engagement, analytics and reporting, and paid social media. These pillars seamlessly align with every stage of the marketing funnel.
Initiating campaigns involves crafting a strategic foundation, defining goals, identifying target audiences, and selecting platforms. Planning and publishing follow, focusing on post frequency, timing, and the creation of a social media calendar. Throughout the campaign, social listening provides invaluable insights into customers, potential customers, and competition.
These insights inform content development and strategy, facilitated by tools for data gathering and analysis. To enhance engagement, tactics include swift comment responses, an authentic brand voice, valuable content creation, and repurposing of top-performing content. Analytics come into play, evaluating campaign performance against metrics and shaping future strategies. Social media reports communicate findings to stakeholders.
Paid social media serves to complement and amplify organic content, utilizing a strategy tailored to goals, audience, and budget. Tactics like remarketing and varied bidding strategies enhance campaign effectiveness.
This comprehensive approach ties all of an organization's digital marketing efforts to work together to support the company's overall marketing goals and business goals.
Made a social media calendar to plan posts and organize the content in one centralized location.
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Filtered and analyzed social listening data to identify audience insights and industry trends. And also suggested actions to take based on those insights.
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Responding to different types of customer comments posted on social media.
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Created a post for Instagram using Canva, a graphic design tool provided with the following scenario:
"Nature’s Pet is a pet food and supply company. They make their products with all-natural, safe, and sustainably sourced ingredients. In honor of National Pet Day, Nature’s Pet will offer customers 25% off their entire purchase. You will use Canva to design a post for their upcoming campaign.
To prepare to design the post, review information about the campaign’s goal and target audience, and the company’s brand voice:
Campaign Goal: Drive traffic to the Nature’s Pet website
Target Audience: Pet owners between the ages of 25 and 34
According to your research, people in this age group care about things like animal rights, sustainability, and environmental protection. They also tend to favor soft, natural colors and simple designs.
Brand Voice: Casual, warm, friendly, and sincere"
Writing an email to stakeholders to report on the performance of a social media campaign.
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Developed a social media ad campaign based on a given scenario. I planned the campaign’s objective, platform, audience, ad format, creatives, and call to action.
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From Concept to Campaign: Unveiling the Layers of Email Marketing Insight
Moving forward, I gained a profound understanding of how email marketing seamlessly integrates into a digital marketing strategy. The journey began with creating strategic contexts using PESTLE, SWOT, and SMART goals to lay a robust foundation.
Exploring various email types and understanding what makes each effective provided valuable insights. Practical exposure to popular email marketing tools such as MailChimp, HubSpot, and Salesforce enriched my skill set. The last part of the chapter emphasized the crucial aspect of analyzing metrics and presenting data effectively to stakeholders.
A highlight of the program was the hands-on experience of applying learned skills in a fictional setting. As a digital marketing coordinator for the fictional upscale furniture company 'Feels like Home,' I crafted an end-to-end email marketing campaign.
This practical application allowed me to show my knowledge and skills, showcasing the ability to create impactful campaigns in a real-world scenario, even if fictional.
Writing email subject lines and preview text for different scenarios. Effective subject lines grab the reader’s attention, while preview text tells them what to expect when they open the email.
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Writing a customer retention email announcing a new fitness app based on the specific scenario:
"Power Zone Fitness Clubs provide a wide variety of strength, cardio, and functional training equipment, as well as group fitness classes and personal training sessions. Power Zone is just about to launch their new app, Zone on the Go, which features online classes, progress tracking, virtual personal training, custom workout routines, and exclusive deals. To encourage existing club members to try the app, Power Zone is offering a free, three-month trial.
You’ve been tasked with writing a retention email to announce the launch of the app. You are currently working on a version of the email targeting current customers who have identified themselves as parents or caregivers. Your goal for this campaign is to get at least 5% of these customers to download the new app and sign up for the trial."
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Writing an email to fix and apologize for the mistakes in the previous message based on the below scenario. Even the best email marketers sometimes make mistakes. Knowing what to do when errors occur can help you recover and maintain a good relationship with your subscribers.
"You’re a digital marketer at Pixelated Games, a video game design company. Your team has sent out the launch announcement for the company’s latest release, Infinity Gateway—the hotly anticipated fourth installment in a time-travel game series called The Thelos Chronicles. Unfortunately, the announcement was sent with two major mistakes:
A significant error: The email listed two different launch dates. May 15th is in the subject line and July 15th is in the message body. The correct launch date is July 15th.
A broken link: Clicking the pre-order link prompted an error message and prevented customers from buying the game. Note: The company is fictional and the link in the template and exemplar will not work.
As an apology, Pixelated Games will offer affected customers a 15% discount on Infinity Gateway pre-orders for the next 24 hours. Your task is to write an email that apologizes for the errors, links to the correct page, and offers the discount to affected customers."
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Created SMART goals for a fictional email marketing campaign for the below scenario. Businesses often use the SMART format to outline the what, how, when, and why of their goals.
"You’re part of the digital marketing team at Feels Like Home, an upscale furniture retailer that does most of its business online. The company is launching a new line of furniture called For All, which is designed to expand its customer base. The For All line features the brand’s high level of craftsmanship but at a lower price point than their previous offerings. Feels Like Home’s main business goal for the For All line is to grow its total active customer base by 30% within a year of launch.
You’re in charge of the email campaign for the launch of this new line. You and your team have set marketing goals to support Feels Like Home’s overall business goal:
Goal 1: Grow the email subscriber list by the end of September"
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Crafting Effective Media Plans, Advanced Metrics, and Strategic Stakeholder Communication
In the last part of the course, I developed the skills needed to craft effective media plans and performance goals for digital marketing campaigns. Utilizing advanced software tools like Google Analytics, I learned how to monitor website and campaign performance metrics seamlessly.
This part also emphasized creating A/B test plans, an important step in optimizing the effectiveness of advertisements. A key emphasis was placed on the significance of measuring campaign success through the monitoring of KPIs and metrics. Leveraging the power of Google Analytics and Google Ads, I gained experience in measuring and interpreting data to inform strategic decision-making.
An additional highlight was observing how to adjust communication for stakeholders, recognizing the importance of anticipating their needs, tailoring messages accordingly, and sharing data with different types of stakeholders, ensuring effective and impactful communication in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing.
Additionally, I possess proficiency in working with data in Excel, including the creation of pivot tables, further enhancing my ability to analyze and present insights derived from campaign data.
Determined performance goals for a company’s email and social media marketing campaign for a specific scenario using formulas:
Conversion rate:
Conversions / Total Clicks x 100 = Conversion Rate Percentage
Click-through rate:
Total Clicks / Total Impressions x 100 = Click-through Rate Percentage
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Signed in to a Google Analytics demo account and explored the metrics collected in the tool. Reviewed a scenario with metrics of interest, found the values for those metrics, and recorded the results.
"As a new marketing associate at Google, you have been asked to familiarize yourself with the metrics in Google Analytics that are available for the Google Merchandise Store. To help you do this, your manager has given you a list of metrics for user acquisition, engagement, and monetization that you can view under the Life cycle section of the tool. Normally, someone reviews these metrics on a monthly basis. Since this has been incorporated into your training assignment, everyone on the team is thrilled that you’ll be helping to get some real work done!"
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Signed in a Google Analytics demo account and created an Exploration using a template available in the tool. Reviewed a scenario with metrics to monitor and then created the Exploration to display the metrics of interest and analyze the data.
"As a marketing associate at Google, you have been asked to use Google Analytics to try to determine if user visits and purchases in the Google Merchandise Store trend upward when developer events are held. You want to answer the question: Do active users and purchases in the Google Merchandise Store go up when developer events occur?
To complete the analysis, you’ll select three developer events and create a free-form Exploration in Google Analytics to visualize the metrics during and in the days immediately before and after those events. The Exploration will enable you to see if there is a possible correlation between developer events and Google Merchandise Store purchases."
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Assessed the short-term ROI of a campaign. To do this, I performed return on ad spend (ROAS) and lifetime value (LTV) calculations. And also evaluated the overall LTV to customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio for the campaign and for each channel.
The following scenario was:
"You are a marketing associate who just completed work on a multi-channel ad campaign for an e-commerce business. Your team plans to present the campaign’s ROI during a project debriefing. You have been asked to calculate estimates of ROI using ROAS and LTV. Your team is known for its accurate use of data. You understand that this step is a critical one, especially since the results will also be used to inform future campaign spending decisions.
Your team will use these insights along with other performance data to make budget decisions for future campaigns.
To help you complete the activity, review the following calculations:
ROAS = Revenue/Ad spend
LTV = Average order value (AOV) x Purchase frequency
LTV to CAC ratio = LTV/CAC
Also, recall the guidance for LTV to CAC ratios:
A result of 2 or higher is considered good
A result of 3 is ideal for profitability
A result higher than 3 indicates you have a steady revenue stream"
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Completed an A/B testing plan for an ad campaign for the following scenario:
"Stay Hotel is a global hotel chain that needs you to create an A/B testing plan for their ad campaign. Their goal is to increase the conversion rate. The current conversion rate for the campaign measured in Google Ads is 2%, and the hotel is expecting an additional 5% in conversions (a five percentage point increase) after updating the headline.
Recently, the hotel researched their target audience and discovered that their customers are deal seekers. The hotel’s hypothesis for the A/B test is that customers will respond more favorably to an ad that calls out a special offer or deal in the headline. The hotel is currently running a special promotion for deals up to 20% off, which they would like to feature in the headline for Variant B of the A/B test.
One of your colleagues will run the A/B test, so you don’t need to run the experiment in Google Ads yourself. Your task is to make sure your A/B testing plan is complete enough for them to be able to run the ad variation experiment for you."
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Created pivot tables then analyzed the data for themes and trends and recommended changes to ad campaigns based on the findings. The following scenario was:
"L’Acier is an online cookware retailer that sells affordable, restaurant-quality kitchen equipment for home cooks. The company has many international customers, so they run paid advertising and social media campaigns 24 hours a day, seven days a week. L’Acier’s digital marketing leadership is pleased with the website traffic these campaigns are generating. However, the average number of new accounts created each week is below the expected target.
One of the company’s marketing goals for this quarter is to maximize the number of accounts created. The company is focusing heavily on growth because they’ve found that potential customers who create accounts make purchases more frequently and have a much higher lifetime value (LTV). To support this goal, your team plans to run additional ads offering a one-time discount to customers who create a new account. You’ve been asked to examine performance data for the past month to determine the best times to run these ads. The dataset includes the following metrics:
Users: The number of unique individuals who visited the website
Sessions: The number of sessions (site visits) per user
Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who leave the site after visiting a single page
Pages / Session: The average number of pages users visit per session
Avg. Session: The average number of sessions per user
Duration: The average length of session visits
Conversion Rate: The percentage of all site visitors who create an account
Conversions: The number of site visitors who create an account
You’ve already pulled the data and used sorting and filtering to answer questions, like which block of time has the highest conversion rate. Now, you’ll create three pivot tables to identify broader trends within the dataset. The pivot tables will let you examine and compare the following KPIs over the course of a typical week:
Average number of sessions (site visits) at each hour of the day
Average number of conversions (account creations) at each hour of the day
Average conversion rate (account creation rate) at each hour of the day
Once you’ve analyzed the pivot tables, you’ll write an email to your team sharing your insights and recommending when to spend more money running the new ads and when to spend less."
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In this activity, I created a presentation using insights and data visualizations from the previous activities. The following scenario was:
"L’Acier is an online cookware retailer that wants to increase the number of new accounts created by customers. The company is focusing heavily on growth because they’ve found that potential customers who create accounts make purchases more frequently and have a much higher lifetime value (LTV). To support this goal, the digital marketing team plans to run additional ads offering a one-time discount to customers who create a new account. You’ve been asked to examine performance data for the past month and determine the best times to run these ads.
So far, you’ve analyzed data using pivot tables and made suggestions for how to adjust your campaign strategy. You’ve also made data visualizations to present your findings and recommendations to digital marketing leadership. Since your audience is made up of senior stakeholders, they have limited time. They don’t need a comprehensive analysis, but a high-level summary that addresses their interests and concerns. Specifically, your audience will want to know:
What changes do you recommend, and why?
How will your recommendations benefit your department or company (by improving performance, raising efficiency, or supporting growth)?
You’ve already created a slide presentation from your data visualizations, but still need to interpret the data for your audience and write a conclusion. The presentation includes eight slides:
Slide 1: A title slide
Slide 2: The background and questions you wanted to answer
Slide 3: A list of key performance indicators (KPIs) visualized in your presentation
Slide 4: A stacked bar chart with the number of sessions (site visits) at each hour of the day
Slide 5: A stacked bar chart with the number of conversions at each hour of the day
Slide 6: A bar chart with the average conversion rate by day of week
Slide 7: An area chart with the average weekly conversion rates at each hour of the day alongside a line chart with Monday–Wednesday conversion rates at each hour of the day
Slide 8: Conclusion and next steps"
Mastering E-Commerce Essentials: From Customer Navigation to Shipping and Fulfillment
Concluding with gaining a foundational knowledge of e-commerce and studying the advantages of online selling. I explored customer navigation and the mechanics of e-commerce platforms. This exploration provided valuable insights, complemented by hands-on experience using Shopify to create and manage my own mock e-commerce store.
The course extended also into the areas of digital advertising, covering Google Ad campaigns and Smart Shopping campaigns. I also gained an understanding of seasonality and optimizing marketing strategies for e-commerce success.
Last, I learned strategies to engage customers online and optimize the checkout process, reducing shopping cart abandonment.
The final part provided a comprehensive overview of the shipping and fulfillment process, ensuring a better understanding of how products reach customers efficiently.
Performed a competitive analysis by gathering and analyzing information about the competitors of an e-commerce business. For this analysis, I performed secondary research on each competitor’s background story, customer service, content strategy, marketing strategy, shipping and return policies, and product details.
Secondary research is a fast and budget-friendly way to start your market research. Using the internet to research information on your competitors is one of the ways you can perform secondary research.
The following scenario was:
"For the past year, you’ve been working for an e-commerce company with multiple online stores. The company specializes in home goods. Recently, the company has identified an opportunity in the market for eco-friendly bath products. They are planning to launch a new e-commerce store that sells sustainable bath products to customers worldwide, called Bath EcoShop.
The company needs to conduct market research to understand consumers’ needs and preferences regarding eco-friendly bath products. They would like to focus specifically on bath towels.
Your manager has asked you to perform secondary research by analyzing three competitors who sell organic or eco-friendly bath towels.
The competitor analysis template is divided into five sections: General information, Content strategy, Marketing strategy, Customer service and policies, and Product comparison for bath towels."
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Defined the brand values for an e-commerce store. And also explored how the brand’s values connect with the values of its customers for the following scenario:
"For the past year, you’ve been working for an e-commerce company with multiple online stores. The company specializes in home goods. Recently, the company has identified an opportunity in the market for eco-friendly bath products. They are planning to launch a new e-commerce store that sells sustainable bath products to customers worldwide, called Bath EcoShop.
Last week, the company invited a group of employees and managers to participate in a branding exercise, where they answered the following question regarding the Bath EcoShop brand: “If our brand were a person, how would you describe them?” The participants wrote their answers on sticky notes and compiled them in a Google Jamboard, which is a digital interactive whiteboard.
Your manager has asked you to review the sticky notes and find common themes that describe the brand’s values.
Your manager also asked you to brainstorm ideas for how Bath EcoShop can demonstrate its brand values to its customers.
As you complete this activity, it may be helpful to focus on what’s important to the brand’s target audience, which the company has identified as the following:
Concern for the future of the environment
Desire to create a healthy home
Belief that a dependable product is more important than following the latest trends
Preference for comfort and function over style
Desire to feel good about their purchase
Strong preference for quality products that last
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I learned how to finish creating a product and how to add products to listings in my mockup Shopify store based on this scenario:
"For the past year, you’ve been working for an e-commerce company with multiple online stores. The company specializes in home goods. Recently, the company has identified an opportunity in the market for eco-friendly bath products. They are planning to launch a new e-commerce store that sells sustainable bath products to customers worldwide.
The company needs your help creating this new e-commerce store. As an e-commerce specialist, you’ve been asked to add product listings on Shopify’s e-commerce platform. The two product listings you’ve been asked to create are for bath towels and a bath rug.
Your manager has provided the information you’ll need about the products, including pricing, specifications, and other details."
Analyzed projection data to determine a target return on ad spend (ROAS) and recommended budget during a seasonal, holiday period. I also analyzed the projected revenue-per-click on certain days during the holiday period and calculated how much to adjust bids on those days.
Seasonality is the regular and predictable fluctuation of e-commerce traffic around special holidays, events, and weather on a quarterly or yearly basis. Consider seasonality when planning your budget and bidding strategies for a given season.
The following scenario was:
"You are an e-commerce analyst for Personalized Presents, an e-commerce business that sells personalized gifts, decorations, and apparel. Personalized Presents generally experiences a large increase in sales around the holiday season in the United States (from Thanksgiving through New Year’s). Your goal for this holiday season is to maximize profits, and you have used Performance Planner to calculate how much revenue you'd gain at different ad spend amounts. Given the data, you need to determine a target ROAS and recommended budget for this period.
Additionally, Personalized Presents typically has drastic swings in revenue-per-click during the holiday period. In order to maximize your profits while still meeting your target ROAS, you need to analyze a calendar that contains last year’s revenue-per-click performance data and calculate how much to adjust your bids on certain days during the upcoming holiday season."
Evaluated the checkout process for an e-commerce store. My task was to identify the reasons why customers are abandoning the checkout process and provide suggestions for how to improve the checkout process because around 70% of customers abandon their carts without completing their purchases. Taking steps to reduce cart abandonment, however, can improve the customer experience and lead to more sales.
The following scenario was:
"Tee’s Shirts, which is the online T-shirt store that you’ve been working for, has noticed that customers are abandoning the checkout process at high rates. By analyzing their data, the store has been able to identify the four most common points in the checkout process where customers are dropping off:
Signing in
Entering their personal information
Choosing a shipping option
Entering their payment information
As an e-commerce analyst, you’ve been asked to figure out why customers are dropping off at these four points and provide suggestions for how to improve the checkout process."
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Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate
