SEO & Digital Marketing Module 1 – Marketing and search foundations
Digital marketing: channels, media and the funnel
What digital marketing covers: the channels a small business can use, owned, earned and paid media, the customer journey, and how to choose a first channel.
What you will learn
- Define marketing with the AMA definition and name the main digital channels a small business can use
- Sort marketing activities into owned, earned and paid media and into stages of the customer journey
- Explain why one order usually passes through several channels, and what that means for crediting a sale
- Pick a first channel for a business from where its customers already look for it, not from trends
What you’ll learn
What you will learn
- Define marketing with the AMA definition and name the main digital channels a small business can use
- Sort marketing activities into owned, earned and paid media and into stages of the customer journey
- Explain why one order usually passes through several channels, and what that means for crediting a sale
- Pick a first channel for a business from where its customers already look for it, not from trends
On this page
Pune Bakes, a fictional home bakery that sells cakes online at punebakes.example, does 14 different things to win customers, from reels and a newspaper leaflet to a WhatsApp list and a stall at a festive fair. Its owner cannot say which of the 14 bring orders, so every new idea is added and nothing is ever dropped.
That list is what most small businesses call their marketing, and it can be sorted. By the end of this page you can name the channels a small business can use, sort any activity by who controls its space and by the stage of the customer’s journey it serves, see why one order passes through several channels, and choose where to start from where customers already look. The site’s address ends in .example, a name reserved for examples (RFC 2606), so it can never point at a real business.
Marketing is an exchange of value, and digital channels carry it
A 1 kg eggless birthday cake is the bakery’s offer. Before anyone pays for one, people must hear that the bakery exists, trust it enough to order, receive the cake on time and, ideally, come back. All four are marketing. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings” that have value for customers, clients, partners and society (AMA). So marketing is more than ads: it starts with the offer itself, here a cake without egg that arrives the same day, and ends with the exchange.
Digital marketing does the same work through channel: A route by which a business reaches people: search results, its website, email and messaging, social platforms, marketplaces or paid media. Each does a different job, from answering demand to creating it. on a screen. Six of them cover almost everything a small business can do:
| Channel | What it does well | At Pune Bakes |
|---|---|---|
| Search results | Answers people who are already looking | Its Business Profile and pages showing for “eggless cake near me” |
| Website | Holds the whole offer: prices, photos, delivery, ordering | punebakes.example |
| Email and messaging | Reaches people who agreed to hear from you | A WhatsApp list of weekly specials |
| Social platforms | Shows the product to people who were not looking | Reels of cakes being decorated |
| Marketplaces | Puts the product where shoppers already browse | Not used yet; a food-delivery app would be one |
| Paid media | Buys attention in someone else’s space | A boosted reel, leaflets, a fair stall and search ads |
Read the middle column as the job each channel does best: the first answers demand that exists, the fourth creates demand that did not. Search has one rule worth knowing before you spend anything on it. Google says that “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google” and that it never accepts money to include or rank sites in its results (Google Search Central). Ads appear in separate, clearly labelled ad sections, and buying them buys no better place in the unpaid results (Ads on Search).
Checkpoint
Check: The six digital channels
Owned, earned and paid media differ in who controls the space
Take three things the bakery did last month. It posted a reel on its own Instagram account, a food blogger reviewed a cake she had bought, and the bakery paid to show its festive reel to people nearby. The same cake appears in all three, but the bakery controls a different amount of each space:
- owned media: Spaces a business controls itself, such as its website, its social accounts, its Business Profile posts and the list of people who agreed to hear from it. They keep working when spending stops. are spaces you control: your website, your social accounts, your Business Profile posts and the list of people who agreed to hear from you. You decide what they say, and they stay yours when you stop spending.
- earned media: What other people choose to say or share about a business, such as reviews, press coverage, links and tagged photos. It can be earned but not written, edited or bought. are what other people choose to say or share: reviews, press coverage, links from other sites, customers’ tagged photos. You can earn them with a good product and by asking, but you cannot write, edit or buy them, which is exactly why others trust them.
- paid media: Attention a business buys in someone else's space: ads, boosted posts, sponsorships and paid listings. A post made in return for a free product counts too. The reach stops when the payment stops. are attention you buy in someone else’s space: ads, boosted posts, sponsorships, paid stalls and listings. They start fast, and the reach stops when the payment stops.
The three work as one system. A paid boost can bring new people to the bakery’s reels; owned media, the website and
the WhatsApp list, keep them; earned media, the reviews, persuade the next people who compare. The program below
checks the bakery’s whole list of 14 activities, each tagged with a media type and a journey stage, and counts how
they spread. Run it, then press Edit, put an activity you would place at another stage into MOVES, such as
"blogger-review": "consideration", and run it again to see the counts change:
"""Check a channel map and count its activities by media type and journey stage.
channel_map.json lists what one business does to win and keep customers. Every activity needs an id, a
description, a media type (who controls the space: owned, earned or paid) and the journey stage it mainly
serves. The program refuses an entry with a missing field or an unknown value, then prints how the
activities spread over the stages, so the gaps are visible at a glance. To put an activity at another stage,
add it to MOVES and run the program again.
"""
import json
MEDIA = ["owned", "earned", "paid"]
STAGES = ["awareness", "consideration", "conversion", "loyalty"]
# An activity you would put at another stage, for example {"blogger-review": "consideration"}.
MOVES = {}
with open("channel_map.json", encoding="utf-8") as f:
data = json.load(f)
for a in data["activities"]:
if a.get("id") in MOVES:
a["stage"] = MOVES[a["id"]]
problems = []
seen = set()
for i, a in enumerate(data["activities"], start=1):
where = f"activity {i} ({a.get('id', 'no id')})"
for field in ("id", "activity", "media", "stage"):
if not a.get(field):
problems.append(f"{where}: {field} is missing")
if a.get("id") in seen:
problems.append(f"{where}: the id is used twice")
seen.add(a.get("id"))
if a.get("media") and a["media"] not in MEDIA:
problems.append(f"{where}: media must be one of {', '.join(MEDIA)}")
if a.get("stage") and a["stage"] not in STAGES:
problems.append(f"{where}: stage must be one of {', '.join(STAGES)}")
if problems:
print("The map has problems:")
for p in problems:
print(" -", p)
raise SystemExit(1)
activities = data["activities"]
count = {(s, m): 0 for s in STAGES for m in MEDIA}
for a in activities:
count[(a["stage"], a["media"])] += 1
total = len(activities)
print(f"{total} activities checked: each has a media type and a journey stage.\n")
print(f"{'journey stage':<15}" + "".join(f"{m:>8}" for m in MEDIA) + f"{'total':>8}")
for s in STAGES:
row = [count[(s, m)] for m in MEDIA]
print(f"{s:<15}" + "".join(f"{n:>8}" for n in row) + f"{sum(row):>8}")
by_media = [sum(count[(s, m)] for s in STAGES) for m in MEDIA]
print(f"{'total':<15}" + "".join(f"{n:>8}" for n in by_media) + f"{total:>8}\n")
for s in STAGES:
n = sum(count[(s, m)] for m in MEDIA)
used = [m for m in MEDIA if count[(s, m)]]
note = f"; only {used[0]} media" if len(used) == 1 else ""
print(f"{s}: {n} of {total} activities ({n / total:.0%}){note}")Output
14 activities checked: each has a media type and a journey stage. journey stage owned earned paid total awareness 1 2 3 6 consideration 2 1 0 3 conversion 2 0 1 3 loyalty 2 0 0 2 total 7 3 4 14 awareness: 6 of 14 activities (43%) consideration: 3 of 14 activities (21%) conversion: 3 of 14 activities (21%) loyalty: 2 of 14 activities (14%); only owned media
Recorded with Python 3.14.8 on macOS 26 arm64. To run it yourself: mise exec python@3.14.8 -- python3 check_channel_map.py
Runs on this device, in your browser. The first run downloads Python (about 13.5 MB), which is kept for the next runs.
Your run, in this browser
{
"business": "Pune Bakes (punebakes.example), a fictional home bakery with an online shop",
"activities": [
{ "id": "reels", "activity": "Reels of cakes being decorated, on the shop's Instagram account", "media": "owned", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "reel-boost", "activity": "A paid boost of the festive reel to people nearby", "media": "paid", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "newspaper-leaflet", "activity": "Leaflets with a QR code, inserted in a local newspaper", "media": "paid", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "fair-stall", "activity": "A stall at a residents' festive fair, for a fee", "media": "paid", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "blogger-review", "activity": "A food blogger's unpaid review of a cake she bought", "media": "earned", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "tagged-photos", "activity": "Customers' photos of their cakes, tagging the shop", "media": "earned", "stage": "awareness" },
{ "id": "profile-posts", "activity": "Photos and posts on the shop's Google Business Profile", "media": "owned", "stage": "consideration" },
{ "id": "profile-reviews", "activity": "Customers' star ratings and reviews on that profile", "media": "earned", "stage": "consideration" },
{ "id": "product-pages", "activity": "Product pages on punebakes.example with prices and photos", "media": "owned", "stage": "consideration" },
{ "id": "order-form", "activity": "The order form with online payment on the website", "media": "owned", "stage": "conversion" },
{ "id": "whatsapp-orders", "activity": "WhatsApp chats in which customers confirm their orders", "media": "owned", "stage": "conversion" },
{ "id": "search-ads", "activity": "Search ads for cake delivery that open the order form", "media": "paid", "stage": "conversion" },
{ "id": "whatsapp-broadcast", "activity": "Weekly specials sent to customers who asked for them on WhatsApp", "media": "owned", "stage": "loyalty" },
{ "id": "thank-you-card", "activity": "A thank-you card in the box asking for a review", "media": "owned", "stage": "loyalty" }
]
}Six of the 14 activities, 43 %, chase awareness, and three of the four paid ones sit there. Loyalty, the stage after the first order, gets 2 activities and only owned media: nothing asks happy customers to tell anyone else, apart from a card in the box. The program also refuses an entry with a missing field or an unknown value, so a typing slip such as “ownd” cannot quietly shift the counts.
Calling a gifted post earned media
A creator’s post about the cake you sent them for free looks like earned media, but it is not: you paid in kind. The US Federal Trade Commission counts free or discounted products as a material connection that the creator must disclose (FTC). Classify it with paid media, and keep earned for what people say without being paid or given anything.
Checkpoint
Check: Owned, earned and paid media
The funnel is a plan; real journeys loop across channels
The marketing funnel: A planning model of the stages a customer passes through: awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty. Real journeys loop between stages and channels, so it plans better than it describes. names four stages a customer passes through: awareness (learning that you exist), consideration (comparing and deciding whether to trust you), conversion (the order, booking or enquiry itself) and loyalty (what happens after: reorders, reviews and recommendations). It is useful for planning, because it asks whether every stage has something working for it.
It is a poor description of any one customer. Step through how one invented customer, Meera, came to order a cake. Notice each A moment when a customer meets a business on one of its channels: a post they see, a result they open, a page they read or a message they send., the channel it belongs to and where the path turns back on itself:
The drawing shows the whole scene; its 7 steps are listed below.
Every step as text
- A reel she scrolls past. Meera sees a reel of a cake being decorated, posted on the bakery's own Instagram account. It is owned media at the awareness stage. She does not order; she only learns that the bakery exists.
- A need, days later. Five days later her son's birthday is tomorrow and she needs a cake without egg. She types eggless cake near me into Google, a search that shows she is now comparing options: the consideration stage.
- The profile answers first. The results show the bakery's Business Profile: its photos and posts are owned, its 4.7 stars come from customers' reviews, which are earned media. Reviews written by strangers are what she trusts most at this stage.
- Price and delivery. She taps through to the product page on the bakery's website to check the price of a 1 kg cake and whether it can arrive tomorrow. Still consideration, still owned media.
- The order. She wants a name written on the cake, so she orders in the bakery's WhatsApp chat instead of the order form. This is the conversion stage, and the chat is owned media: the bakery controls what it says there.
- After the cake arrives. A thank-you card in the box asks for a review, and she leaves one. Asking is owned media at the loyalty stage; the review itself is earned media, because the bakery cannot write or edit it.
- The journey loops. Her review now sits on the profile where the next searcher reads it. Each of the five touchpoints did part of the work; a report that gives the whole order to the last one, the chat, would say the reel and the profile did nothing.
Meera’s order passed five touchpoints in four of the six channels: a reel (social), a search and the Business Profile it showed (search results), the product page (the website) and the WhatsApp chat (messaging), and her review then fed the next customer’s decision. A report that gives the whole order to the last channel she used would say the reel and the profile did nothing, and a bakery that believed it would stop doing the very things that started the order. That is why the analytics lessons of this track measure channels together instead of crediting one, and why every link you share should say which channel it came from.
UTM Builder (Campaign URL Builder) Tag the links in your reels, messages and profile with UTM parameters, so analytics can tell the visits of each channel apart.Key idea
Plan with the funnel so that every stage has something working for it, but expect each order to pass through several channels, and never credit one channel with all of it.
Checkpoint
Check: The funnel and real journeys
Start with the channel where your customers already look
A small business cannot do all six channels well at once, so the first question is where its customers already look for what it sells. When people say “eggless cake near me” into their phone, they are searching, near the bakery, for something it sells today. That makes the Business Profile a strong first channel for Pune Bakes: creating a profile and listing a business on Google costs nothing (Google Business Profile), and a business qualifies when it has a place customers visit or travels to them, as a bakery that delivers does (guidelines). Local results are ranked mainly by relevance, distance and prominence, and Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking (local ranking), so the work is a complete profile and real reviews.
A trend is not evidence. A new platform or format may suit a business whose product nobody searches for yet, but the choice should follow facts about the business: whether people search for it, whether customers visit or receive deliveries, whether a list of past customers exists, and whether there is money for ads. Answer those four questions for a business you know in the table below; it rules channels out with the reason:
Answer the questions above: the table then marks what fits your case and says why the rest does not.
| Channel | Money to start | Time to first orders | Who it reaches | What you keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Profile Reaches: people searching for what you sell near you | Good creating a profile costs nothing | Good answers people who are already searching to buy | Mixed only people searching near you, on Search and Maps | Mixed reviews and photos stay, on a platform you do not run |
| Website and SEO Reaches: people searching anywhere | Good a domain and hosting, then your time | Poor slow, and nobody can guarantee a ranking | Good anyone who searches, near or far | Good the site, its pages and its address are yours |
| Social posts and video Reaches: followers and people a feed picks | Good an account costs nothing; posts cost time | Mixed depends on what the platform's feed chooses to show | Mixed people who are not looking for you yet | Poor the audience lives on someone else's platform |
| WhatsApp or email Reaches: past customers who agreed to hear from you | Good little: these customers have already found you | Good one message can bring a reorder the same day | Poor only people who bought before and agreed | Good the list is yours, as long as they agreed to it |
| A marketplace listing Reaches: shoppers who are already on the marketplace | Mixed a fee or a commission on every sale | Good shoppers there are already ready to buy | Mixed the marketplace's shoppers, in the order it ranks sellers | Poor the customer relationship stays with the marketplace |
| Search ads Reaches: people searching right now, for a price per click | Poor you pay for every click, from the first day | Good brings visits as soon as the ads run | Good people searching right now, in the places you choose | Poor the visits stop when the spending stops |
How the answers decide
- “Do people already search for what you sell, in words you can name?” No, it is new to most people: rules out Search ads and adds a caveat to Business Profile and Website and SEO. With no searches to answer, search channels have little demand to catch at first: posts, video and creators make people aware before they can search.
- “Do customers visit you, or do you travel or deliver to them?” No, we only sell online: rules out Business Profile. A Business Profile is for a business that customers visit or that travels to them; an online-only shop does not qualify.
- “Do you have past customers who agreed to hear from you?” No, or we never asked: rules out WhatsApp or email. Messages need people who agreed to hear from you. Without that list there is no one to send to yet.
- “Can you pay for ads from the first month?” No, only our time: rules out Search ads and adds a caveat to A marketplace listing. Search ads cost money from the first click. With time and no budget, start with channels that cost time; a marketplace takes its fee from each sale.
- “Do people already search for what you sell, in words you can name?” Yes, they search for it and “Do customers visit you, or do you travel or deliver to them?” Yes, a place or an area we serve: adds a caveat to Website and SEO and Social posts and video. For nearby searches the profile answers first, and a website and posts still help the people who compare.
For a local business that people already search for, the profile comes first, with the website and posts close behind. With no budget, search ads wait; with no list, messages wait; for a product nobody searches for yet, posts, video and creators come first, because they make people aware before they can search.
Search in India mostly means Google
StatCounter, which counts the visits that search engines refer to more than a million sites using its tracking code (methodology), puts Google at about 97 % of search-engine referrals in India and Bing at about 2 % (India), against about 90 % for Google worldwide (worldwide). It measures referrals, not searches, so check your own analytics for where your visitors really come from.
Checkpoint
Check: Choosing a first channel
Practise: map a clinic’s marketing
The exercise gives you a dental clinic’s twelve activities. Classify each by media type and journey stage, then choose the clinic’s first channel from three facts about its patients and its budget. The sample tests check the classification and the choice; the prompt gives three points to check your reason against:
Exercise · Easy · Python
Map a dental clinic's marketing and choose its first channel
Riverside Dental (riversidedental.example) is a fictional clinic with two dentists. Its owner lists the twelve things the clinic does to find and keep patients. Classify each one in channels.py, then choose where the clinic should put its effort first.
channel_map()returns a dictionary with one entry per activity id inACTIVITIES. Each value is a pair(media, stage):mediais"owned","earned"or"paid", andstageis the journey stage the activity mainly serves,"awareness","consideration","conversion"or"loyalty".FIRST_CHANNELis one id fromCHANNELS, andREASONsays in two lines why it comes first.
The twelve activities:
| id | What the clinic does | | --- | --- | | newspaper-ad | An ad in the city newspaper's health supplement | | marathon-banner | The clinic's banner at the city marathon, which it sponsors | | instagram-tips | Short brushing-tip videos on the clinic's own Instagram account | | news-story | A local news site's article about the clinic's new children's corner, written by its reporter | | treatment-pages | Treatment pages with fees on the clinic's website | | profile-reviews | Patients' star ratings and reviews on the clinic's Business Profile | | directory-badge | A paid "featured" badge on a doctors' directory where people compare clinics | | booking-form | The appointment form on the website | | whatsapp-booking | The clinic's WhatsApp chat, where patients pick a slot | | search-ads | Search ads for a dentist nearby that open the booking form | | checkup-reminders | Six-monthly check-up reminders to the few patients who asked the desk for them | | aftercare-email | Aftercare advice emailed the day after a treatment, with a review request |
Facts for the first channel: four new patients in five tell the front desk that they searched for a dentist near them on their phone; the clinic has no budget for ads this quarter; it has never asked its patients whether they want messages.
When the sample tests pass, check your REASON against three points: it names the customers' behaviour that makes this channel first, it uses one fact from the list above, and it says what the clinic would do next.
Starter code · channels.py
MEDIA = {"owned", "earned", "paid"}
STAGES = {"awareness", "consideration", "conversion", "loyalty"}
CHANNELS = {"profile", "website", "social", "messaging", "marketplace", "search-ads"}
ACTIVITIES = [
"newspaper-ad", "marathon-banner", "instagram-tips", "news-story",
"treatment-pages", "profile-reviews", "directory-badge", "booking-form",
"whatsapp-booking", "search-ads", "checkup-reminders", "aftercare-email",
]
def channel_map():
"""Return {activity id: (media, stage)} for the twelve activities in the prompt."""
# One entry per activity, for example "newspaper-ad": ("paid", "awareness").
return {}
FIRST_CHANNEL = "" # one id from CHANNELS
REASON = "" # two lines: why this channel comes first for the clinicThe sample tests · test_channels.py
from channels import ACTIVITIES, CHANNELS, FIRST_CHANNEL, MEDIA, REASON, STAGES, channel_map
def test_every_activity_has_a_media_type_and_a_stage():
"""classifies exactly the twelve activities, each with a known media type and stage"""
plan = channel_map()
assert set(plan) == set(ACTIVITIES)
for activity, (media, stage) in plan.items():
assert media in MEDIA, activity
assert stage in STAGES, activity
def test_paid_media_are_the_spaces_the_clinic_pays_for():
"""marks as paid exactly the activities the clinic pays a third party for"""
paid = {a for a, (media, _) in channel_map().items() if media == "paid"}
assert paid == {"newspaper-ad", "marathon-banner", "directory-badge", "search-ads"}
def test_earned_media_are_written_by_others():
"""marks as earned what other people write about the clinic"""
earned = {a for a, (media, _) in channel_map().items() if media == "earned"}
assert earned == {"news-story", "profile-reviews"}
def test_stages_follow_what_each_activity_is_for():
"""puts each activity at the stage it mainly serves"""
plan = channel_map()
by_stage = {s: {a for a, (_, stage) in plan.items() if stage == s} for s in STAGES}
assert by_stage["conversion"] == {"booking-form", "whatsapp-booking", "search-ads"}
assert by_stage["loyalty"] == {"checkup-reminders", "aftercare-email"}
assert by_stage["consideration"] == {"treatment-pages", "profile-reviews", "directory-badge"}
assert by_stage["awareness"] == {"newspaper-ad", "marathon-banner", "instagram-tips", "news-story"}
def test_first_channel_follows_the_facts():
"""starts where patients already look, with no ad budget and no list of patients who agreed to messages"""
assert FIRST_CHANNEL in CHANNELS
assert FIRST_CHANNEL == "profile"
def test_reason_is_written():
"""gives a reason of about two lines"""
assert len(REASON.strip()) >= 60A hint
Ask two questions of each activity. Who controls the space it appears in: the clinic (owned), someone the clinic pays (paid), or people the clinic cannot direct, such as a reporter or a patient (earned)? And what is the person doing at that moment: learning the clinic exists, comparing clinics, booking, or coming back after a visit? A sponsorship is paid even when no click is involved.
Results of the sample tests
| Test | Result | Details |
|---|
What your code printed
The sample tests run on this device, in your browser (Pyodide): nothing is sent to mysmartcopilot.com. The first run downloads Python (about 13.5 MB), which is kept for the next runs. A check in your browser is feedback for you, not proof that the code is right for every input.
Then practise the four ideas of this page. Each round opens with the idea that your earlier answers show to be the weakest:
Practice that adapts to you
Practise this lesson
13 questions about 4 ideas of this lesson. Each answer is explained at once, and what you get right is kept in this browser.
Interview questions
Warm-up (fresher to 2–5 years): how do owned, earned and paid media differ?
They differ in who controls the space. Owned media are spaces the business controls, such as its website, its social accounts and the list of people who agreed to hear from it; they keep working when spending stops. Earned media are what others choose to say or share, such as reviews, press coverage, links and tagged photos; the business can earn them but cannot write or buy them, which is why people trust them. Paid media are attention bought in someone else’s space, such as ads, boosted posts and sponsorships; they start fast and stop when the money stops. A bakery’s own reel is owned, a customer’s review is earned and a boosted reel is paid. A post made in return for a free product is paid, not earned, and must be disclosed.
Two more questions about choosing and judging channels follow. Make the first decision of each before you open it:
Checkpoint
Your first decision
Model answers open with any pass: ₹79 for 1 week ($2.99), one payment that never renews.
-
Fresher to mid
A bakery spends a third of its marketing money on boosted reels and gets thousands of likes but few orders. How would you decide what to keep, change or stop?
-
Fresher to mid
A new dental clinic has no ad budget and has never asked patients whether they want messages. It wants "SEO, ads, social and email, all at once". What do you recommend first, and how do you defend it?
Key takeaways
- Marketing covers the whole exchange, from the offer to its delivery, and digital marketing runs it through six channels: search results, the website, email and messaging, social platforms, marketplaces and paid media.
- Owned, earned and paid media differ in who controls the space: you control owned media, others create earned media, and paid media last only as long as the payment.
- The funnel of awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty is a planning check, while real journeys loop through several channels, so no single channel deserves all the credit for an order.
- Choose a first channel from facts about the business, such as whether people search for it, whether customers visit or receive deliveries, whether a list exists and whether there is budget, not from trends.
Terms in this lesson
- channel
- A route by which a business reaches people: search results, its website, email and messaging, social platforms, marketplaces or paid media. Each does a different job, from answering demand to creating it.
- earned media
- What other people choose to say or share about a business, such as reviews, press coverage, links and tagged photos. It can be earned but not written, edited or bought.
- marketing funnel
- A planning model of the stages a customer passes through: awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty. Real journeys loop between stages and channels, so it plans better than it describes.
- owned media
- Spaces a business controls itself, such as its website, its social accounts, its Business Profile posts and the list of people who agreed to hear from it. They keep working when spending stops.
- paid media
- Attention a business buys in someone else's space: ads, boosted posts, sponsorships and paid listings. A post made in return for a free product counts too. The reach stops when the payment stops.
References
- Definitions of marketing (American Marketing Association)
- Do you need an SEO? (Google Search Central)
- In-depth guide to how Google Search works (Google Search Central)
- Ads on Search: how ads work on Google Search (Google)
- Get listed on Google (Google Business Profile) (Google)
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google (Google Business Profile Help)
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google (Google Business Profile Help)
- Disclosures 101 for social media influencers (US Federal Trade Commission)
- RFC 2606: Reserved Top Level DNS Names (IETF)
- Search engine market share in India (StatCounter Global Stats)
- Search engine market share worldwide (StatCounter Global Stats)
- StatCounter Global Stats: FAQ (how search engine share is measured) (StatCounter Global Stats)
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