As the topic starts with a question of why our world would end if marketing disappears, I am going to walk you through some insights on how marketing is important in this current world like our essential things: water, air and food. Every industry in today’s world needs marketing. Also, we can dive into some concepts essential for marketing. The general explanation for the term marketing is the process of selling products and services by promotion includes market research and advertising. There are many numbers of the medium through which the products/services that can be reached out to the people. To list some of them would be Television, Newspaper, Radio and Digital Marketing. The medium may vary but the basic technique involved and the purpose of this action’s to be carried out remains the same. This article is useful for people who are enthusiastic about marketing and its concept and this article will give you a basic idea about marketing.
“Amazing things will happen when you listen to the consumer.” –Jonathan Midenhall, CMO of Airbnb
Do you believe it? Every month like you pay your phone bill or electricity bill or any other bills, you have been marketed with something or you have done the marketing of something to someone. Yes, you read is correct. Many of us are thinking that marketing is an MBA concept or business concept but according to me, it’s not true. Marketing has evolved before 2000 years and will be there forever. I would go ahead and say marketing is pre-installed in each and every one of our genes.
4P’s of Marketing
In a business, during the process of taking the product/services to an individual or to another business, there are 4 important aspects to be considered they are: Product, Promotion, Place and Price. I can explain to you the 4P’s with an example. Take a cell phone company XYZ. The company will manufacture cell phones for different categories of people based on their needs. Based on the features and Place they will be setting up the price based on market standards. And the final process will be running their promotions in different mediums. Selling ice creams at the top of Jammu and Kashmir is the best example of a poor place selection or product selection. In J&K selling of Tea will get more sales than selling ice cream at the top of the snowing region. Another type of strategy business use is setting prices like $1.99 or Rs 299. An example of this is Bata stores. When people look at this pricing their minds will register the product price as a continuous number of $1 or Rs 200. So they end up thinking the product price is lesser and purchase the product.
According to me, the first thing a business does is to select the target that they want to reach in a particular period of time. It could be 1 lac, 1 million or even more in 3 years or 4 years or 5 years. The next research is would be to select a niche selection. Based on the niche, products/ services price to be selected. Usually, people in a country can be categorized into people below poverty, middle class, upper-middle-class and rich people. Based upon the targeting audience we need to select the price based upon their annual income. Like if we are going to target people from the middle class and from India. Their yearly earnings will be between 80,000 INR — 3 lacs. Based on this hand on info, we need to set up a price for the product that can market to the targeted audience. When these products reached the target audience, the reach of the brand will be high and it can also attract other groups of audiences into the sales. With the hand on data, we can create new products for the other set of products and price them based on the targeted group of people. This created brand awareness and create a brand trust for your customers.
The best example to demonstrate this concept would be “Netflix”. Netflix was a DVD rental company in the starting stage and they approached a market research company and wanted to expand their business online. The research company recommended going with a higher population target group and movie category. But the management decided to go with the less population target group and category. This decision was because of the less competition or there was no competition at all in these segments. Once they entered the market there was a good response from people and many movies available with them were not available anywhere around and people were happy to spend extra bucks for the movie. And later on, when the company became the market leader in these segments, they started to invest in other categories and the company is now the market leader.
Traditional Marketing Vs Digital marketing
Digital marketing as the name states marketing through the digital medium is called digital marketing. More and more people are starting to use the internet day by day and it keeps on increasing in numbers. There are many channels that can be used to reach out to people and our customers can also interact with the marketing groups. Some of the mediums of digital marketing are social media marketing, PPC & sem marketing, email marketing, websites, affiliate marketing, marketing automation, inbound marketing, content marketing. Traditional marketing is marketing done through methods like printed medium or television or radio.
Both mediums can help the business to take their products to the audience in their own ways. If a business wants to target a particular group of people they can go with digital marketing. To explain this more let’s take an example of school uniforms. So this business can target school-going children and their families. If they are going to market in a traditional medium then chances of ending up in non-users are high. If businesses want to reach out to a larger set of people in this case they can go in for traditional marketing. The best example of this situation would be Maggi Noodles. People of all age groups and gender consume noodles. So the best practice for this company will be advertising its products in the Traditional medium.
Push vs Pull Marketing Strategy
Product or services can be sold in a market with two strategies. One is a push marketing strategy and the other is a pull marketing strategy. As the name says products are been taken to the customers. People are not much seeking these products but the companies promote them through TV, notice boards, etc., Business implements these strategies through face to face marketing at their outlets, point of sale counter’s, Trade shows. In digital marketing, this kind of marketing is done through cold emails and display advertisements.
Pull marketing strategies are used to attract loyal customers without much field marketing. This kind of marketing can be used for business that has brand awareness, brand value, brand trust and loyal customers for the brand. In offline marketing this is used in extensive advertisement campaigns and in digital marketing this marketing type is used in search engine optimization, social media marketing and pay per click.
CATT Marketing Funnel
In most of the business, the success of the business is measured with the total profit or revenue the company has made. Here is where the CATT marketing funnel comes into play. CATT marketing funnels explain to you about your customer’s journey. This can be explained with the formula wealth= N^CATT. By analyzing this funnel you can see a large difference in your sales, brand awareness and loyal customers.
Here N represents the niche selection. Any business selection depends on the niche the business select. Choosing of right niche depends on 3 things. They are the talent, market and passion. Before choosing any niche for the first time or expanding to another niche, it’s a good idea to personally run a niche test. Hence it can be said that the business success or wealth is directly propositional to the niche selection. In the market research, a business should understand and select the niche they want to select and they can further expand to the other niches once the success cycle of the process goes around.
C represents content that the business needs to create for the products/services. Content attracts more customers fro
m your niche. These can be carried out through blogs, posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars, etc.,
A in the CATT represents attention. Attention for the products/services can be generated through the content we have created in the past. Attention for the content we have created can be generated through search engine optimization, social media paid ads and referrals.
T in the CATT represents trust. Trust plays an important role in people when it comes to decision making. Trust can make loyal customers for the brand and it is considered to be one of the biggest assets for a brand. Trust can be created with a repeated approach to the customers with correct information at the required time. They can be archived by tripwires, marketing automation and retargeting.
And the other T in the CATT represents a transaction. By doing this, a business can make a lot of leads out of it. This step is very helpful in converting your leads into customers with a neutral sales method.
Integrated Digital Marketing
For a biriyani to taste best, all the ingredients we use and cook should be the best. The same applies to digital marketing. All the aspects of digital marketing to be taken care, to run a successful business or to achieve a certain outcome. All the aspect I refer here starts from quality content, search engine optimization to rank the keywords, to social media advertisements, running ads, sending out emails and finally the sales. Each of these aspects is important. Some people concentrate on any one or two aspects and don’t care about the other aspects and as a result, their expected results will not be achieved. So this method is called integrated digital marketing.
Personal Branding
Try applying this formula for any case you know, this will be a business mantra:
Before I take you inside the concept, I would like to explain this topic with the example of Bill Gates and Baba Ramdev. Bill Gate the mastermind in today’s software industry when started the Gates and Melinda foundation there were many funds falling in this organization as donations and when he started “The giving pledge” in the year 2010 many people came forward to donate their property and wealth. As of August 2020, the cause has 210 signatories from 23 countries amount to a total of 1.2 trillion. The next example would be Baba Ramdev, a spiritual leader who entered the FMCG industry and the rest is history. The company has grown massively into India’s top brand. In both, cases the business and social causes were of extreme success because of the personal branding and now you will know the importance of personal branding.
“People want to learn from people, not from brands”
Source: DigitalDeepak.com
This process can be explained with the term “Mass Trust”. Mass trust helps in making a personal brand. The first phase of this is to master a field, continue learning and mastering the field you want to be a leader in. Once you have mastered you should work in that field to gain practical knowledge about your learnings and your findings. In this phase, you can understand that some of your learnings from theory are different from when you practically do that.
The third phase is where you should start saying the world you know about this field, best is to blog. The next phase is to start to consult with people who require this. You can do this by freelancing or by starting up a company. In this phase, you can gain some strong networks and with your knowledge, you can help the business grow.
The fifth phase is where you can start mentoring the people who are interested to listen to you. You can be a guide for people who seek help in the field you choose. This phase can be taken in two aspects: Giving to society & growing up your network and brand awareness. We all have taken a huge amount of help from society and it’s our responsibility to give it back to society. For example, we are going to school and traveling on road. Road’s and buildings were built by some other people and we are using the fruits of the tree planted by others. It will take a lot of time for us to construct our own roads and buildings and then to educate ourselves. So it’s our responsibility to give back to the society that has given us so many things.
The last phase is the startup phase. One can start his own startup with his personal branding. Here he already has brand trust, network, loyal customers, etc.,
“Best known will always beat the best”
There is no end in the learning process. So one should not stop at the start-up phase. He/She should again start from 1st phase and repeat the process. As day by day the technology and new improvements are happening in every field, we should update ourselves regularly to be in the race with the competition. If we miss the competition there are higher chances that this world will think of us to be outdated.
In this article, we have briefly discussed Why Our World Would End If Marketing Disappears. We have also discussed different marketing strategies and techniques that can be used in our personal and business life. I would like to end up this article with my quote:
“We have already won in the 30 million race before entering the world. To still continue on the winning side, market yourself well”.
Thank you so much for staying with me till the end. I really appreciate your efforts for your growth. Please comment below with your views about this article. Your feedback is very useful for me to improve myself.
No responses yet