Digital Marketing! Just one of those fancy, new words we keep hearing nowadays.
Now, if you are a beginner to Digital Marketing and you want to cut through all the confusion that is created with all the tremendous information that is out there, then this article is definitely for you. I will take you through the essential concepts of Digital Marketing.
But seriously, What is Marketing?
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”-This definition is provided by Wikipedia
In simple words, Marketing is bettering something, understanding the needs of the consumer, and solving their problems.
If we hear the word marketing, the first thing that comes into our mind is sales, promotions, packaging, advertisements. This is not marketing. Marketing has changed tremendously over time. Sales and ads are moreover small components of marketing. Marketing is a holistic process, and it includes everything.
Marketing begins way before creating a product.
It starts with understanding the consumer and understanding their needs. If you want to sell a product, you can’t just go out there and sell it. Firstly you need to research whether there is a demand for the product you want to sell. Marketing is about Product planning, pricing, packaging, product promotion, and distributing the product or service to the people who need it. When you help people solve problems through free valuable content that is relevant to your business, you reach a larger audience and build trust. If you show people how your product and services can help them solve their problems and fulfill their needs, then the product will sell itself.
“It’s ABOUT SENDING THE RIGHT MESSAGE TO RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME.”
It is essential to target the right people with the right message at the right time. Marketing is not just about selling. It is about keeping the customers happy as well, so they remain a customer for life, and this can only be done by building Trust. Trust is the most critical asset.
It’s essential to find a group of loyal audiences who are going to love your products and services. These are the people you should target more because we know that it’s hard to please everyone. You need to make your customers believe that you simply care. The Sole purpose of marketing is to build such a brand that will always be remembered by people.
Who needs Marketing?
Anyone and Everyone who has a startup, company, or a business and is trying to sell services or product need marketing. Marketing educates the customer/potential customer about the products or services the company is offering. When your potential customer doesn’t understand what you’re trying to sell, then that information is pointless. Marketing helps in informing the customer about what the product does and how it works.
Small Businesses typically run on limited resources, but they want a good logo, a lead generating website, and an eye-catching marketing message, but these small business owners are not willing to pay a professional for this. Therefore they end up going for cheap options or hire unskilled people to get done with it. They want to get maximum profit without investing in it. This eventually ends up wasting their time and money.
No matter how good your product or services are with Poor design and no marketing, how will people even know about the product?
Businesses need to convince consumers to buy their products and services via marketing. With High Quality of design and Right Marketing can scale up the Businesses. Marketing is not just about selling something to the customer; it is a complete life cycle that starts way before the development of the product through the execution phase.
So now that you have understood that Marketing is understanding about what consumer wants to buy rather than what the buyer wants to sell. This brings us one step closer to finding our Niche.
What is the Niche Test?
Selecting a proper Niche is extremely important and the very first step towards your business.
The best way to find your niche is to ask yourself three things.
1. Do you have any skill/talent?
2. Are you passionate enough to pursue that skill/talent?
3. Is there any market for the talent that you have?
If your answer to all these questions is Yes then you can go ahead and build a business around that Niche. The key is to identify a Niche that you can master and has viable customers/audiences.
Now that you are familiar with the concept of Marketing let’s move to the most exciting topic.
Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing.
Marketing has been around for a long time. In this digital era, every day, there is a new advancement in technology. People are more inclined towards digital mediums for apparent reasons.
Now, What is Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing?
Traditional Marketing is offline marketing, which uses print media, TV, radio, Billboards to reach local Audiences. At the same time, Digital Marketing is the marketing of products or services using various Digital Medium such as Websites, Search Engine, Social Media, etc.
Traditional marketing will work when it is strategically designed and executed on the conventional market; it can provide excellent results. Traditional marketing can help you to reach local audiences in the quickest way possible. For example, if I am selling edible oil, then a TV ad will make more sense because I can reach millions at a low cost. However, if I am selling a Kathak dance course online, then opting for tv ads will not make sense. It will be expensive, and it might not help to reach my targeted audience.
Digital marketing is cost-efficient, effective, and allows you to measure, monitor, analyze, and test at a faster rate. In Traditional Marketing, you precisely don’t know who you are targeting. Whereas in Digital Marketing, you can accurately target who you would want to see your offer or checking up your website. For example, using Google Adwords, you can target the keywords people are searching this way. You can put your website or your message in front of the consumer, so whenever they are searching for the keyword, they will find you.
Both Digital Marketing and Traditional marketing has its pros and cons. An integrated marketing approach using both digital marketing and traditional marketing strategies can help to spread the message of the product or brand in the best possible way. Therefore it is up to you as a businessman/marketer to choose which marketing strategy will suit your product or brand.
Now let’s get to know about the marketing funnel.
What is CATT Marketing Funnel?
The CATT marketing Funnel is a marketing funnel framework that you are supposed to go through when you are trying to build a personal brand.
According to CATT marketing Funnel,
W=n^CATT
Where,
W=Wealth
n=Niche
C=Content
A = Attention
T = Trust
T = Transaction
The formula states that your success and your Wealth depends on the Niche[n] you choose. So Choose a perfect Niche[n]. After that, you must create relevant content precisely in the form of blogs, Youtube, live webinars, audio series, etc. After Creating Content, you must bring Attention to your Content using SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads, Viral Marketing, etc. Once you got the attention, the next is to Build Trust with your audience using repetitive engagement.
If you have followed all of the above steps, then Transaction will happen. If you properly use the CATT marketing funnel framework, then you can gain enormous wealth.
So now that you have understood how CATT marketing Funnel Framework works, so let us move on to our next topic, which is the Integrated Digital Marketing Framework.
Integrated Digital Marketing Framework.
From the name itself, we can understand that it is the integration of various marketing strategies. Integrated Digital Marketing is about using all the Digital Channels(SEO, Email Marketing, social media marketing) in a way that compliments each other.
For example-You can use Email marketing to boost your SEO. Or you can use Social Media Marketing to increase your Subscriber Base.
The Main Idea behind Integrated Marketing is that each Digital Marketing Strategy alone does not have that much impact, but, when integrated, you can create a more influential presence. A good Quality of Content gets Attention, but without attention, you cannot build trust. Therefore the Content is the central piece in the Integrated Digital Marketing Framework, and all other Marketing strategies give a boost to the content.
Let us move to a very interesting topic that is Personal Branding.
Personal Branding
“The best known will always beat the best”
Personal branding is using your unique personality to influence people. It’s about the person. If you have an excellent personal brand, people are ready to pay you more and argue less.
Building a personal brand means that you have a personality and skill set that inspires other people. You should market yourself in other to build your community of people who will be loyal to you and trusts you.
People want to hear from you, not from brands. It is easier to build a relationship of trust between two individuals, but it is challenging to develop a relationship of trust with a brand. People think emotionally, so there must be a sense of trust between your brand and people.
For example, Kylie Jenner, one of the youngest billionaires, is the perfect example of a personal brand. She has her makeup line called Kylie cosmetics. How did she achieve so much?
Just because of personal branding. She used Social media platforms to boost her popularity and promote her makeup line. Kylie does not use any influencers, unlike other makeup brands, to promote her cosmetics. She is the brand ambassador of her brand; kylie uses her face to exhibit her makeup range. Once you successfully build your brand, you can try different things under your brand. After kylie launched cosmetics, she expanded to other beauty products and skincare.
Now that we know what is personal branding, I would like to share the journey of building a personal brand. I am going to explain the Mass Trust blueprint by Digital Deepak, so let get started.
Evolution of Personal Brand
Learn- You need to learn a new skill. Understand the concepts, facts, and procedures.
Work- Implement the skills which you have learned. And Put your skill to use in the real world.
Blog-Write about your skill and what you have learned and about your experiences. When you write, you understand it better.
Consult-Start Consulting people instead of working for them. If you have a talent and know something, we should teach others.
Mentor- Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring can help you scale.
Startup- Start your product or service business with the understanding and experience that you have acquired so far.
Now that you are familiar with all the concepts of Digital marketing, many of you might have this question in your mind. No doubt Digital marketing has many advantages but What is the scope of digital marketing? Will artificial intelligence take over Digital Marketers?
Will artificial intelligence take over Digital Marketers?
The answer to the above question is yes and no because Artificial Intelligence is tremendously increasing day by day, and it can exceed humans in specific areas like handling, processing enormous amounts of data.AI is already programmed to write content, comments, and even articles the way humans would write. But any machine cannot eliminate the human job but will automate the boring repetitive tasks to make it easier for humans to complete.
Artificial intelligence would not overtake or replace digital marketers but would support and facilitate digital marketing activities because only human beings can truly understand the nature and behavior of Humans. Humans will always be needed to control the direction of campaigns and to monitor the results and to make decisions based on results.
Conclusion
In the end, I would like to say that In this Digital Era every day some new Technology, Products, Softwares are Launched. Even though Digital Marketing has so many advantages at the same time Digital Marketing keeps on Changing. There is always something new that gets updated and You have to take a little more effort to keep up the pace to have that leading edge.
Now that you have all the information about Marketing and its strategies so go ahead and implement these. Learning Should not Stop. Marketing itself is a very vast Concept.No doubt Good Marketing and design can help Businesses grow at a very faster rate.
I hope you enjoyed learning these concepts with me. Please leave a comment below and let me know what do you think about this article.
Thank you for reading;)
