Are you a business owner? Are you an Entrepreneur? Are you planning to start a business? Are you a student willing to make a career in marketing? Then you are in the right place, as I am going to discuss some very important points about Marketing – not to be neglected! It will help you to understand the Myth of Marketing. Also better understand Digital Marketing over Traditional Marketing.
What is marketing?
“A market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange.” @ Wikipedia. This exchange or transaction may be goods or services. A market can be in form of a physical market, like if you want to buy a car – you may visit a nearby car dealer, select your choice able product and buy that. Or a market can be a virtual one – like if you want to have ice cream in the middle of the night – just open the app of Swiggy or Zomato and order and get it delivered.
Now, the process of creating a market is called Marketing. To be simple, you have to create a market where you can sell your product or service to the desired consumer.
Let’s discuss this in a wider way:…..
The Law of Marketing – Fundamentals of Marketing
As defined by Dr. Philip Kotler – Marketing is “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.”
To be precise – “Marketing is based on science, not on creativity @Digital Deepak.” Feeling confused? Let’s take an example – assume you decide to do a business of firecrackers. Procure some firecrackers, design & package them well, and provide a good name. After all, set for selling it in the month of June or July. Here my question is, will you be able to generate a good amount of revenue out of your business? The answer is clearly – No. The reason behind it, firecrackers demand during the festival seasons, especially during Diwali. But, May or June doesn’t have a big festival to be celebrated with firecrackers.
Or, suppose you have a retail outlet for Sarees and have a good amount of sales. You thought of going online, so you contacted a technical team, set up an eCommerce portal, uploaded products to the website, and integrated the payment gateways. What do you expect from it? Will you have a huge sale from the very fast month? – Maybe, you can have some sales (conversions) due to your popularity with your locals. But surely, it will not meet your expectations!
These are very small examples to describe what I am trying to tell. I have learned from Digital Deepak, and also from my experience that, marketing actually starts before creating your product. The product depends on your customer’s needs. And if you have the product already, then you have to identify your potential customers, and then plan the strategies to reach them, convince them, and generate conversions. It is tough to acquire customers, and even tougher to retain the customer for the long term. For this, you need to focus on quality products & services with good communication. These two factors can help you build the trust factor, which can help you in a long run.
Take Away:
- Marketing starts before creating a product, it helps you to understand the needs of the customers, so that you can provide the perfect products or services.
- Marketing is all about sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
- Happy Customers – Communicating with your customers will help you build a good relationship & retain the customers for the long term.
- Never let marketing become more important than the product – If you can build a product that is best in quality, and fits the requirements of your customers, maybe the product or service of yours needs no marketing after it makes a position in the market.
Why is marketing needed?
What is the importance of marketing? – A good and proper way of marketing will help you to create & build a brand. After your brand is established, then the sales will be generated automatically.
There are many examples that can be given as established brands like Google for search engine, Apple products, Bose or JBL for speakers, etc. But, here I would like to ask you – to name one toothpaste company in India? 8 out of 10 times, the name which will be pronounced will be “Colgate”. Just remember that without a brand, your product and services are only a commodity that competes with price, which can be defeated anytime by your competitor.
Building a brand will create trust and faith in your customer. It will lead to generating conversions or sales by referrals – the word of mouth.
*Always remember, that building a brand is an easy task. You just need to identify your audiences, make your product, give a brand name, and start promotions. But, to establish a brand, to gain a brand image among the crowd, it needs proper strategies, hard work, dedication, sincerity, proper communication, and time. No shortcuts – as the word goes “Rome was not built in a day”.
Personal Branding
When speaking for brands, an entrepreneur or a start-up or a businessman – specialized in any niche, it’s very important to build his/her personal brand also.
“Having a personal brand is important for an entrepreneur because now more than ever, it’s important for CEOs and founders of companies/brands to come out to the forefront and connect with their audiences. People connect with people.” – Kevin Stimpson.
There are many such examples you can take as personal branding. Elon Mask – actually have much more follower (Twitter), more than combining his three companies. You must be knowing Sandeep Maheswari – the great motivational speaker of India. Having millions of followers around. Do you know the name of his company? He is the CEO of Image Bazar- the world’s largest collection of images.
Benefits behind personal branding – There are several benefits to creating a personal brand. An image – an image of trust, and faith in authority. Build a strong network, creating a long-lasting platform not only for yourself but also for your business or businesses.
MassTrust
Have you ever heard of this word? I came to know about it from the internship program of Learntoday founded by Digital Deepak. It’s a concept created by DD for a better understanding of how personal branding helps you to excel in your niche.
MassTrust is a word defined as a quality of a good marketer. Trust builds relations, so specifically, if you as an entrepreneur can build or gain your trust in the market (among your customers), it will build a strong relationship, finally leading the business in the long run.
The image represents how MassTrust Works:
- Learn before you earn. It’s always advised to learn the specific skill you are interested in.
- After learning the skill, start working on it. Practical experience will help you to identify the issues and also find a way to resolve them. Making your skill even better.
- Start writing Blogs – all about your experience. It will help you to reach many, gradually building your personal brand.
- Start Consulting with the knowledge you acquired in your niche.
- Start Mentoring your skill to the interested ones in the same field.
- Finally, you are ready for Starting your own company and sell your product.
Why Marketing?
Before you learn marketing, you should know why you should learn marketing! Marketing is a subject that will never end. In this fast-changing world of technology, nothing is fixed no such profession is eternal. Every profession is overtaken by technology itself. But, as discussed earlier in the article, marketing is based on science – understanding human psychology and analysis, it’s a game of perceptions. And clearly, no such technology can create such communication with humans that can be replaced.
Any materialistic or non-materialistic costs incurred to create your product will never give a direct return. But, marketing will provide you instant ROI.
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.” – Warren Buffett. Marketing, getting traffic & selling are the three major skills that will lead to your safe career. Suppose you know selling very well & become an expert of Affiliate Marketing – the result can be that you are earning while you are sleeping or touring.
To be a Good Marketer
Communication is the most important quality or skill needed to be a good marketer. Good communication with your prospects or customers will help them to learn more about your product and services. The more your customer learns the more relationship and trust become stronger. The communication that you establish should be simple to understand the knowledge you want to share so that your target audience can relate very easily.
Being an entrepreneur or a start-up, you need to have an idea about global economics. Economics is a very broad chapter. But, having some information & knowledge will surely help you to select the regions you can target for your business. It will help you with better strategies to market your products and services. For example, at present time, if you are planning to start up a business and your targeted regions will be India and the neighboring countries, then it’s for sure that you will exclude Srilanka from your list, as, Srilanka is going under a financial crunch.
Digital Marketing over Traditional Marketing
Nowadays, there are so many debates, controversies, and discussions about Digital Marketing gaining its space over Traditional Marketing.
You need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of both before you start your discussion.
The mediums of traditional marketing are newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, hoardings, banners, flyers & pamphlets, etc.
Now the mediums of digital marketing are content marketing, email marketing, SMS & WhatsApp marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM( Search Engine Marketing), SMM (Social Media Marketing), and PPC (Pay Per Click), affiliate marketing, podcast, webinar, etc.
Digital Marketing, needs some extra features like having a website or building a landing page, and creating backlinks(<a href=”https://www.freewebsubmission.com”><b>FreeWebSubmission.com</b></a>), where you will take your customers from the ads you will run. This can be for engagement or conversions. For bloggers, generally, the target is for engagement of their articles, whereas for e-commerce – it’s conversion.
It is totally based on the product and the business type that decides which form of marketing to use or both to use. Like, if the product is generic, then the modes of traditional and digital both can be an advantage for the business. But, if you are looking to sell any digital product, then you must have your target audience for sure. In this case, digital marketing will be benefited.
Coming advantages and disadvantages – traditional marketing has no target audience. For example, if you are advertising your product on TV channels or by hoarding, then you cannot specify that advertisement to a targeted person. Secondly, you cannot measure the ROI against the expenses you made to promote your product. It only helps you to build brand awareness, still can’t be measured. The cost of traditional marketing is on the higher side compared to digital marketing. Even if you want to change the advertisement, that will incur an extra huge cost.
Whereas, digital marketing is an easy way, to reach your target audience, at a cheaper cost. You can measure the ROI, and track your responses. In here, it is much easier to communicate with your target audience. Based on the analytics, you can set your goals (next step) for your brand, product, and services. It becomes easy for you to stop a running campaign (if the analytics shows a disappointing result), then restart your advertisement in a new way, with a new strategy.
Though there are many if & buts regarding the two modes of marketing, still it depends on the product and the target audience of that product.
The CATT – Marketing Funnel
Is the word CATT new to you? I have learned this from DDIP by Digital Deepak. If you are specialized in your niche, and you also know your target audience, you want to sell your expertise, product, and services to your target audience, then CATT is a secret to boost you and your wealth.
As explained: Wealth= n^ CATT
Wealth or success – this is all you need. For that, you have to power up your Niche with Content, Attention, Trust & then finally Transaction.
- (n) Niche: It is the road map to your success. Select a category, in which you can add value and deliver to others.
- (C) Content: After selecting your category, add value to it. Create content that is useful to others, solving their problems. This will lead to attracting more people, especially potential leads who are interested in your niche.
- (A) Attention: You have to create attention towards your content to drive potential traffic. For this, you have to use Social Media, SEO, Paid Ads, etc.
- (T) Trust – Once you are successful to attract potential traffic to your product or service, try to build trust. Until you build trust, the leads will not be converted.
- (T) Transaction: Transaction or conversion or sales, is what creates wealth for you. So, convert the potential leads to sales.
The image here represents the CATT Funnel concept described above.
What is Integrated Digital Marketing?
Integrated Digital Marketing – to be simple is the process of integration of all the mediums or channels of digital marketing combined rightly to generate sales & wealth for you. It is the method used for the execution of the CATT funnel discussed previously in this article.
The image here represents how Integrated Digital Marketing works.
Summarise:
So, here in this article, I have discussed the fundamentals of marketing. Why marketing is important and why you should learn it! Various methods of marketing. Becoming “No One” to “The One”. Marketing funnel framework. Differences between traditional marketing & digital marketing, etc.
Hope this article will be able to give you some ideas about the concepts. All the topics discussed in this article, are for giving you a general idea about all. Digital Marketing itself is a vast subject that cannot be discussed or covered in one article.
I would like to hear from you, whether you liked it or not? Whether it helped you to have some information and ideas? Surely let me know in the comment section.
Also follow me for the upcoming articles, discussing in-depth each and every aspect.
To summarise :
“Digital marketing is just about social media.”
“You only need a website to be successful in digital marketing.”
“Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing.”
“Digital marketing is only for big companies.”
“Email marketing is dead.”
“Paid advertising is the only way to drive traffic.”
“You only need to focus on SEO for search engine success.”
“Having a large following on social media guarantees success.”
“You don’t need to measure your digital marketing efforts.”
“Once you’ve set up your digital marketing strategy, you can sit back and relax.”
“If you want to earn more, learn more.” – by Zig Ziglar
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Wow such a brilliant way to explain Marketing , loved the definition by Dr Philip. Amazing article.