Introduction: This article will explain how I understood marketing better with the fundamentals that helped me realize my mistakes and even money losses. I used to blame the algorithms and platforms without realizing my lack of marketing knowledge.
The wrong marketing approach might be draining your money and time. If you believe that marketing is not a cup of your tea, this article can 100% change your thoughts.
Reading two pages of the book will not help you pass your exams or make you an expert. The same thing applies to digital marketing; it sounds way too excellent when people say that and influencers explain you on social media and when you use it in real.
Your Problem or experience might be something like this:
Engagement campaign just giving likes but not business?
Reach ads giving visibility to lakhs, but your audience is not reaching out to you?
Lead ads giving you leads, but nobody is buying from you?
Conversion ads Giving you conversion costlier than the product price?
It generally happens to people like us who think that just after learning the technical skills to run ads or learning few organic ways can get the marketing done will give us some sales and Fame.
If I tell you my experience with marketing, then trust me, it's not enough and doesn't even work in most cases and situations.
So, what do you need to understand before going to Digital Marketing technical?
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Who is this article for?
In this article, I included my learning from the fundamentals of marketing, Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing, CATT Marketing Funnel, Integrated Digital Marketing and Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint. This article is for everyone who runs their business, Digital Marketers and Marketing geeks who want to grow any business through marketing.
To get results from digital marketing, you need to understand marketing first (Fundamentals).
And these are marketing lessons that helped me to understand marketing better and realize my mistakes.
These are some explanations that I understood from the laws of Marketing.
The reality is, marketing never starts after you made the product and start a company, but it's something you keep in your mind before even making the product.
Marketing is a waste if you are promoting something which doesn't have any buyers in the market.
Or
If you are selling something already available product or service in the market at a better price and lower cost in the market with an existing brand and company.
"Nobody remembers the man whoever came second" - Viru Sahastrabudhhe (3 Idiot)
The top thing I learned from the fundamentals is that being the first one in the category gives you leverage in the market. Being the first in your class provides you the power and a reason for people to remember you.
But, most of us, including me, used to believe that the main focus of marketing is selling more products, and if we show our ads to a large audience, then we probably generate more sales, but that's not the reality.
People don't pay the company that offers them more ads, but they pay to their trust.
The result we all want from marketing is sales, but if we go straight for sale through advertisement and marketing, we will get disappointment only because the purchase path goes through the trust.
So, our focus in marketing needs to be more on building trust first because when costumer started trusting, they did not just become our client but also become our Brand ambassadors and suggest it to others.
Why our customer suggestions to others of our product are essential?
It's essential for our Brand because mouth publicity is above all the expensive marketing, Branding, and advertisement.
Let me share how I experienced the power of mouth publicity or (Word of mouth).
When I was in class 10th, my mother uses Harpic to clean the toilet because the ads for Harpic usually comes on television and paper ads. My mom started buying it from the general store and using it.
Powerful marketing and Branding of the Harpic got my mother as a customer. Still, after few months, our neighbour came to our house after using our washroom she felt that our toilet is clean but not smelling good it was just her opinion because many of my friends used to go to our bathroom daily, but nobody ever complained.
But, my mother took this complaint very seriously, and our neighbour suggested to my mother a non-branded Acid which comes without any label and costs around 40rs.
Just the next day, my mother started using it, and even after spending crores of Rupee on Advertisement and marketing, Harpic lost its customer because of word of mouth.
Tradition Marketing vs Digital Marketing?
These days, it became a point of debate that traditional or digital marketing. Which one should be better for business growth? Still, it's less about who is better and more about who's suitable according to the business need.
Every coin has two sides, same as here in traditional and Digital Marketing
both have their unique impact on the market and people.
Traditional marketing is more sustainable than Digital Marketing because we publish content for once and create a more prolonged impact.
If we are going for giant hoarding in the city, Publishing an ad in a newspaper, or Running a T.V. Commercial, it leaves a more prolonged impact on people than Digital Marketing.
In Digital Marketing, we have to keep creating content to get the attention of our audience.
But there are points where we get the benefits of Digital Marketing more than Traditional Marketing; traditional marketing is like pay and pray. After traditionally doing marketing, we can pray that our Ad will be visible to someone interested in our product or services and contact us.
But in Digital marketing, we can measure and control who can watch our ad. It's easy to measure the ROI than Traditional marketing even with little investment, and delivering the Business ads to interested people makes our approach more meaningful.
Traditional marketing creates more credibility than digital marketing even after reaching a large number of people. Advertising traditionally costs a lot more than Digital marketing. From the psychological point of view, a company that can afford a big budget and advertises traditionally through T.V., newspapers, radio, and magazines looks more trustworthy and established.
CATT marketing funnel is an optimized marketing strategy.
It stands for Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction.
The funnel brings a formula i.e
Wealth=n^CATT, where n represents niche.
Niche is the interest or the area of expertise offered to the audience. The narrower your niche, the clearer will be your goal.
Content deals with the presentation of your idea. Catchy content via podcast, webinar, and campaign will draw better and more significant attention.
Once you have got people's attention, you need to gain their trust. Clear communication where you bond with the audience will build concrete trust #Masstrust. They need to believe that their expectations and desires with this particular program will be fulfilled.
The last step is the Transaction, where you finally implement your plan based on the connection built with your people.
A real-life example could be online courses. A typical way how CATT works. These courses focus on the public belonging to the learning sectors such as colleges, schools, and even interns.
Any course available online would not directly pitch for the enrollment of students. Reaching out to a massive crowd via social media advertisements and personal emails is one of the ways to set a target.
The free trials, workshops and courses lead students or interested ones to the information about the material and study guides offered in the system. It results in gaining trust and confidence at once.
After all, when there is a considerable amount of agreement from the receiver's section, the "buy the course" button pops up.
As marketing emphasizes understanding the customer's needs, hence providing them with the right services at the right time, CATT helps this whole procedure work simpler, better, and faster with higher efficiency.
Integrated Digital Marketing is a way of providing multiple sources to your services. It's like having more than one door to enter a house. It helps customers to access the resources via various mediums.
Numerous options lead to greater engagement. The liberty to approach a specific destination through various tracks enhances the overall ease of the task.
These approaches and campaigns would sum up in complementing one another that results in stability.
The different channels to the digital world support the marketing plan, making it well structured. By unifying these channels, you make sure that your audience has the same experience on various platforms.
Aiming at channels, an Organic search is one of the best ways to reach your audience. The SEO techniques help in positioning your content on the top, increasing the chances of user participation.
Another way could be the involvement of Social Media that is itself a package of many communicating grounds. The growing usage of social media with multiple communities brings an abundance of opportunities to gather people.
Along with this, content marketing and paid promotions also play significant roles in building an integrated digital market.
Hence, the concept of integrating your digital marketing offers a bundle of benefits. Brand awareness and brand loyalty mark the top.
It also maintains the consistency and integrity of your performance.
PERSONAL BRANDING
When someone asks your opinion, you surely want to be descriptive yet clear at the same time.
Similarly, when people show interest in your brand, it's better to get insight into you as a person.
If it's your brand, it has to be unique, just like your personality. Personal Branding deals with this sort of uniqueness. It shows the audience your skills, abilities, and experiences. It's like, whenever they see or hear about your brand, they also get an image of you.
So instead of presenting your brand all the time, you need to introduce yourself. What could be a better way to tell people about your potential and professionalism than to put forward your brand like you and promote yourself.
Earlier, there used to be cartoon characters such as a snowman or a flower whose jobs were to sell ice cream and maintain the garden. So as kids, it was easier for us to understand and recall that the snowman would come whenever there's any need for ice cream in the show.
In the same way, via personal Branding, if you are successful enough in creating a picture of yourself with your brand, the thought of you with your unique name and skills would be the first thing to pop into people's minds.
To achieve this, deep understanding and introspection are the keys. A transparent inner reflection is proportional to a strong response. Be direct with how you want people to see you and visualize your brand.
Also, it would be best if you marked your audience to ensure good performance, make sure your Branding matches the targeted crowd.
You need to be everywhere if you want your brand to be everywhere. Expanding your brand on various online and offline platforms will bring great fortune.
The best aspect of personal Branding is bringing your thoughts and emotions into the business. When people connect with you, they also connect with your sentiments.
Personal Branding is the presentation of a personality you want to show the world. Or it's the image of you the world is seeing.
"People want to hear from the people, not from the brand."
It's less about leading and more about communication with the audience, and the impact of communication become more powerful when trust happens.
Example: Elon Musk said, "Tesla's electric vehicles can now be bought using Bitcoin"
Once the statement comes from Elon Musk, suddenly the price of Bitcoin raised and we all witnessed a hype in the value of Bitcoins.
Then, He Said, "Dogecoin is the future" on Twitter, and the value of Dogecoin, which was created as a joke, was raised overnight.
The Question is, why it happened?
Why people trusted his statement?
Tell me, if a random person will come and say this statement to you, would you believe and buy what he's saying. Obviously No.
Why?
Because You don't know him and can't trust him.
Let's see why we trusted Elon musk?
Take a review of his life story:
Born in a not so wealthy family, he created PayPal; he is a founder of revolutionary companies like Tesla & SpaceX, the first private company to send a cargo ship and two astronauts to the ISS.
All of his work and contribution to humankind were revolutionary and seemed impossible when it wasn't accomplished. That's why he is considered the most visionary and revolutionary person we saw.
This was Elon Musk's Story, and that's why we still trust him.
And behind the curtain, his story or a personal brand makes people trust his startup and companies.
He has such a big and personal brand that even if he goes to the investors and people and says that he will create an invisibility cloak like harry potter, investors will fund him, and people will believe and trust him.
That's the power of the personal brand.
"People want to hear from the people, not from the brand."
Ask yourself would you be comfortable talking to a logo or an icon? NO, For sure
That's why brands use ambassadors to communicate with their audience, but that doesn't mean that anyone could be the brand ambassador; again story of the ambassador's matters can connect with the brand and audience.
Like Virat Kohli for PUMA
Diljit Dosanjh for BoAt Speakers
Shilpa Shetty for Bodycare International
Personal brand and trust can influence the person among people
concerning their story.
Conclusion: In this blog, I have explained that how I understood these important topics like The fundamentals of marketing, the Power of Digital Marketing vs. Traditional marketing, how the CATT Marketing Funnel works, how we can Integrate Digital Marketing, and the importance of Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint.
I hope this article will help your understanding in the very easiest way possible. If you have any better examples to suggest like I have used a few to describe or if you find any doubt related to the points which are still not clear then you can put them in the comment down below I will surely respond to it and it will help me to improve.
