Have you heard of Marketing?

Hello! Ever wondered what is marketing? Is it about big brands? or advertisements with celebrities?

Does marketing need a good product?

Can marketing make a poor product better?

I know there are a lot of such questions !!

I am sure this article will be useful for any person on this planet who wants to decipher Marketing and its basics.

So let’s dissect it and let’s learn from square one – M for marketing?!

What is Marketing anyway?

To answer your question in a simple manner – M = P+P+P+P

Don’t get alarmed seeing the above equation, it just means Marketing = Product + People + Promotion + Place.

Marketing isn’t magic. There is a science to it.

a wise man

It is based on the synergy of science and creativity. It is not only about Likes, Shares, Comments, and Followers. Generally, marketing is all about Leads, Conversions, Profits, and Brands.

I’m sure every one of you might have seen the advertisement where our Golden boy Neeraj Chopra is showing his acting skills or the one where a simpleton uses fevi-kwik to catch fish or the one with a famous tagline – Men will be Men.

To begin with what is common in all of these advertisements??
It is how these creative advertisements leave an imprint on the viewer’s mind. In short, it is not just about the Product, but it is usually about the Product + People + Promotion + Place.

Marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Consequently, as a marketer, you should strive hard to keep the existing customers happy, so that they remain loyal.

One super important rule to keep in mind is to never let marketing become more important than the product.

Like any science, Marketing also has its laws and fundamentals.

Fundamentals of marketing

I see you are still reading this article, so let’s deep dive into our pursuit of understanding marketing better.

It is a game of perceptions. However, it does not mean that marketing should have a greater priority than the product.

If your product is great there is no need to market it. Above all the people buying the product will become the medium of publicity.

For example, Apple is not only a tech company that creates good quality products. Likewise, it also markets its products as elite and high class. As a result, the customer buying the product feel special/elite.

So marketing not only helps in discovering products but also creates a perception about the products.

Advertisement, Sales, and Copywriting are the components of Marketing, it encapsulates them. However, people mistake them to be synonymous with marketing.

There are 22 such immutable laws of marketing, which I would discuss in my upcoming articles.

Communication is one of the core aspects of marketing. Without communication, there is no marketing.

Communication doesn’t mean people talking amongst one another. It means putting your message in such a manner that your audience feels they are talking to a friend.

Perception is another core aspect, which can be achieved by subtle communication. Hence write like you talk and talk not to people but their minds.

Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Now let me explain to you the difference between Traditional and Digital Marketing.

Traditional Marketing

The main difference between digital and traditional marketing is the medium through which an audience encounters a marketing message.

It involved making use of traditional media for marketing. You may have seen billboards, magazines, newspaper advertisements.

These are how a brand tries communicating with its audience. As a result, there is no personalization as such. The marketing is pretty much direct.

In a country like India where the Internet penetration rate is not high, hence it makes sense to go ahead and use Traditional marketing to get a better reach at a lesser cost.

Digital Marketing

Imagine a situation – you are relaxing on your couch, and suddenly you get that urge to have a delicious piping hot pizza.

Now would get up, and visit a nearby store to order that pizza? or just Zomato/Swiggy the pizza?

Covid-19 was the biggest catalyst to push the world towards Digitization.

Omkar Naidu

Digital marketing uses every touchpoint of your daily use of the internet to reach you.

Using the internet for several hours each day is a normal part of most people’s day-to-day life.

Hence Digital marketing just uses this to its advantage by intelligently marketing communications into every digital channel.

This brings us to one of the core components of Digital Marketing, i.e. Direct Response Marketing.

Direct Response Marketing is a type of marketing designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action.

It must trigger immediate action from prospects, since the goal is to generate leads quickly as a result the ROI is quick.

The main intention of a direct response campaign should have a specific goal — sign up, share with contacts, register, etc.— and, in exchange, provide prospects with an irresistible offer.

CATT Framework

To achieve anything big it is necessary to have a framework or process to follow.

CATT framework is one such technique that helps in building a process that will take your game to next level.

The wealth is equal to niche to power CATT.
CATT stands for Content Attention Trust and Transaction. Hence it is paramount to understand these aspects to understand the framework better.

[C] Content

Create useful content that is relatable and useful for the targeted audience. The content can be anything like Blog posts, videos, podcasts,s, etc.

[A] Attention

Once you have started creating high-quality useful content, it is time to drive traffic using the content, so that you can leverage this traffic to build a community.

[T] Trust

Once the process of building a community picks up, it is vital to building trust among the community. As we have already discussed once you are into the minds of the consumer, you will always do good.

Marketing is a game of perception, therefore to ace the game of perception you better build a sense of trust among your audience.

[T] Transaction

Any kind of marketing is considered successful if the customer does the transaction. Hence it is of prime importance to convert your leads into customers with natural sales methods.

Following the CATT framework, will surely take your marketing game to the next level

The secret ingredient – Integrated Digital Marketing!!

You might have seen the movie – Kung Fu Panda. Po struggles to find the secret ingredient in his father’s soup. Ultimately he understands that there is no secret ingredient…

Well, what if I say there is a secret ingredient which can help you to strengthen the brand personality, retain loyal customers, measure ROI and eventually drive the success of your business.

Yes!! All that is possible by adopting INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING..!!

Usually, people make use of SEO, email marketing, social media marketing separately, as a result, these efforts don’t yield high results.

The strategy in Integrated Digital marketing is to create such a process that works like a machine, all components working in tandem.

For example – Use paid advertisement to drive the traffic to your free content. Now instead of forcing your audience to subscribe to paid content, make them subscribe to your email list.

Now once they are in the email list, use your content again to drive them back to the website. Make use of SEO and social media for marketing content, so that new traffic comes to you.

Finally, you sell and convert your audience.

As you can see, paid advertising creates a snowballing effect that amplifies your reach and also follows the CATT framework.

Utilizing the momentum to push content and pull traffic to your content makes this strategy very powerful.

This strategy requires not just a holistic view of your business, but also a set of strong, versatile skills arranging from creative design, social media, SEO, SEM, email marketing

Personal Branding

Now that we have understood clearly that marketing is all about perception. Hence people want to hear from people, not from brands!

It is crucial to understand that being personal and deep with your audience is the key.

For instance, would prefer Rahul Dravid to ask you to use Cred? or some unknown guy doing the same? Therefore leveraging personal brand is necessary.

Here are some interesting facts –

• 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals (even if they don’t know them) over brands.
• Only 33% of buyers trust messages from a company while almost 90% of customers trust recommendations from someone they know.
• 53% of vendors have lost orders based on information found or not found about them online.

Customers frequently make decisions based on second-hand perceptions. This is known as the “Everybody Knows” principle.
Personal branding is the key that can help anyone unlock newer opportunities and a ladder to success.

Secret Weapon – MassTrust Blueprint!?

Everyone dreams of owning a business, working for himself. Well, the idea is fascinating but the real question arises?
Is it doable? starting from scratch?

Allow me to raise a scenario – Suppose you have a 12-inch monster pizza in front of you, and you are tasked to finish it.
Will it is easy to finish it in 1 go or will it be easy to finish it by breaking it into slices?

A little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. Break the largest of difficult tasks into smallest of steps and it can be done.

Dan Millman

Learn: 
Learn a new skill through Concepts, Facts, and Procedures. Understand the concepts. Remember the facts and practice the Procedures.

Work: 
Put your newfound skills to work. Go from practice to implementation. Implementing it in the real world will give you a better understanding. (Work = Job / Freelancing / Own Projects)

Blog: 
Write about what you have learned and experienced through your work. When you write, you understand it better, but you will also start building your brand.

Consult: 
Now that you have a personal brand through your blog, have work experience, and have learned the fundamentals, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them.

Mentor: 
Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.

Start-up: 
Start your product or service business with the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem, and your skills.

Never bet against India!!

Housing 560 million internet users, India is one of the largest online markets in the world. A whopping 68% of the country will have internet by 2023.

India is one of the top 5 economies in the world. What do you think is going to happen in the coming decade?
The consumption of such a young-growing economy is going to go up naturally.

The youth population in the country is of the highest ratio making up to almost 34% of the entire population.

Now, why am I stating these facts? The reason is simple, understanding the Indian economy is important if you want to succeed as a digital marketer.

Economic factors like personal savings, investment spending, and the rate of production in an economy will go north eventually.

Covid-19 has already pushed our country 10 years further wrt digitization, as a result, a digital era has started where opening a bank account is as easy as ordering a pizza or booking a taxi or rickshaw!

With every business wanting to have a digital footprint of itself, who do you think is going to be in a great demand?

Conclusion

I have tried summing up various terminologies of Digital Marketing. What is the meaning of Digital Marketing?!

To summarize I dissected various topics –

• Fundamentals of Marketing
• Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
• CATT framework
• Integrated Marketing
• Personal Branding

Now that you have understood the basic fundamentals of marketing, Id recommend some books to deep dive

1. The 22 immutable laws of marketing – Al Ries and Jack Trout.
2. This is Marketing – Seth Godin.

I hope I was able to add some value to your life with my article. If you liked reading my article, please do read my other articles here.

Note – This is an assignment for Digital Deepak Assignment. You can join the program here.

Thank you for the time you invested in reading this article in its entirety. It keeps me grounded and focused on delivering value to you as my reader.

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