Marketing is a very huge realm. It encompasses everything from research to finally selling your product or services. Digital marketing, the term floating around everywhere. Sounds interesting – Facebook ads, google ads, emails, search traffic, creating digital content. Before you start your marketing journey, let’s get into the fundamentals.
Marketing Fundamentals — 4 P’s
4 P’s basically stand for the 4 pillars of marketing. Product, Price, Promotion, Place.
Product: Product comprises of all the services you offer or the products that you sell. The product could even be an idea. Basically anything that is available to customer. It has to be presented right. Product should always be focused around need and usability. Features, aesthetics always come second.
Price: It is simple, price is the amount you charge your customer to use your product. A lot of factors influence the selling price of a product. Building a product that is unique has its own selling points and you can decide its price based on market factors. If product has competition in the market — competition pricing can be used as a factor in deciding your price.
Promotion: Now that you have a product ready to sell. It is time to promote and let the customers know that you have something in store. There are multiple channels through which promotions can be done. They range all the way from traditional television, newspaper, pamphlets, radio to new age digital mediums like social media.
Place: now that customers are aware of your product. They should be able to find your product. It could online offline or both. Accessibility is the key.
Now that fundamentals are in place. You can choose how you would want to start your marketing journey. Which would you choose traditional or digital marketing? Why not both? It is a long lasting debate. It all boils down to what fits your product right.
Traditional marketing:
Marketing that is not online is simply called traditional marketing. It includes print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, billboards, newspaper and radio. These are some of the oldest forms of marketing, most researched tried and tested.
Pros:
Significant and straightforward: A visually bold billboard or a striking TV commercial is a normal part of most people’s day to day lives. They’re easy to digest and often entertaining.
Printed marketing materials are more permanent: In the event that you have an advert in an issue of The Times of India it will be there until the newspaper is reused. Which is incredible if the purchaser is an eager gatherer and the promotion will last very long.
More significant: Seeing something in real life rather than on your phone is more likely to be remembered. The anticipation of the new movie ads is more likely to stay in our minds than an Instagram ad that you will probably scroll past in seconds.
Cons:
Difficult to measure: Traditional marketing campaigns are nowhere close to the tools available to measure digital marketing interactions.
Often Costly: A single full page ad in a national newspaper like Times of India for an entire country like India would average around 1.5cr. A digital post on social media to reach equal amount of audience would cost in thousands.
No immediate connection with the customer: It is hard to understand the reaction of your audience to your marketing efforts.
Digital marketing:
Inversely… Digital marketing is marketing done through digital mediums. Digital mediums include Social media, website, digital content, inbound, email, PPC, SEM.
Pros:
More options of engagement: Through channels, for example, social media you can truly observe what your crowd think about your image. In the event that your advertising has been shared, preferred and has a lot of positive remarks, you know you’re accomplishing something right.
Easy to measure your campaigns: Digital marketing campaigns can be tracked in depth. This provides lot of learning and useful insights.
Makes clever targeting possible: Want to target only teenagers, males, only around your local province. Digital mediums help you target perfect tailor made audience.
Cons:
Interfering and annoying: Browsing past your friend’s stories and suddenly have an ad pop up. Reading an important article on a webpage and have ads pop up constantly. Definitely annoying.
Not Permanent: If your target audience keeps scrolling through there feeds they can be easy to miss and it will be gone from there screen.
Keeps on evolving: As the internet evolves so do digital mediums. You have to constantly learn and upgrade.
Finally both work, you got to find what works for you. Know what your target audience use.
Branding
Coca-Cola is more than a soda. Starbucks is more than a coffee. Ray-Ban is more than a pair of sunglasses. Rolls Royce is more than a car. Rolex is more than a watch.
Brand names have become verbs — When was the last time you came across — Let’s get a cab, let’s get a room, use a search engine, print a page… Today’s its Lets Uber, get an OYO, Goggle It, Xerox it.
It’s hard to dominate segments with such powerful brands. Choose smaller specific niches and become the only one.
Example — Who was the 1st prime minister of India — Jawaharlal Nehru. And who knows that, everyone! Who was the 2nd prime minister of India — guess — Lal Bahadur Shastri. Maybe a few knew. Who was the 3rd prime minister of India — probably most do not know.
Who was the 1st Female prime minister of India — Indira Gandhi. Everyone knows that. Also, she was the 3rd prime minister of India. See how being on the top in a smaller specific niche can lead to more glory. Pick a smaller niche establish yourself and then expand.
Why learning marketing is important
Marketing has a very long shelf life. It is rooted in human psychology. Marketing can never go extinct. Marketing is a game of perceptions and perceptions can only be created by humans. Marketing keeps on evolving but the fundamentals will always remain the same.
Marketing is usually the initial and final investment made. Before coming up with a service or product it is important to understand the target audience and its necessity. Once a product is made — promotion is done to create awareness, funnels are created to get leads and make conversions.
Communication is a key in marketing:
Marketing is basically carried out so the audience gets educated about the product. If marketing campaign does not get that across, it is a failure. Communication does not have to necessarily have high end vocabulary. Keep the communication simple to have more effective result.
Direct response marketing
Direct response is a type of marketing which gets an instant response from prospects by getting immediate reaction such as — getting forms filled, giving basic information such as name & email, signing up for newsletters. Direct response gives immediate ROI. Marketers can leverage direct response on numbers of channels, including Television, print, radio, email, digital and social. Each 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 marketing funnel and framework
Wealth = n ^ CATT
(n) Niche your success and wealth depends on the niche you choose. Choose specific niche and capture the market. Become the number one.
© Content create useful content that attracts people from your niche. Blog, post, videos, lead magnet, live webinars etc. Create content constantly to keep the audience engaged.
(A) Attention. Drive traffic to your content using SEO, social media, paid ads and referrals. Make sure to always have your audience’s attention.
(T) Trust build trust with your audience with trip wires, marketing automation and re targeting. When you content gets attention your audience start building trust with your brand. Try to create as personalized message as possible with your audience.
(T) Transaction convert your leads into customers with natural sales methods.
Learn- Gain knowledge, gain skill — study, experiment.
Work-Work hard to accomplish your goal, start implementing the learned skill in your day to day life, it is OK to make mistakes but learn from it.
Blog- Write, write, write. Write about what you learn, what you experimented, the results of your implementation. This will improve your writing skill and also your thought process. You would have documented what works and what doesn’t.
Consult-Once your blog starts getting traffic and attention you can start guiding other folks. You can usually start consulting as 1–1 interactions.
Mentor- Mentorship is now taking your consulting one step ahead. It helps you become an “Authoritative Personal Brand” in the market. You can now teach guide multiple learns. These can be done through courses and webinars.
Start-up- Once you build your “Personal Brand” through consistent work, mentorship, and consulting, you can become an entrepreneur by setting up your own start-up and provide Consulting services to Companies.
I hope this article was informative.
