Marketing can Make or Break your Business!!
‘Marketing’ is a term that everyone in this world has heard of. But very few understand its true meaning. So what actually the term ‘Marketing’ means?
In this article we will be answering this question for you and we will talk about the following topics in depth:
- Marketing and its Fundamentals
- Traditional vs. Digital Marketing
- Why You should Build a Strong Brand
- CATT Marketing Funnel
- Integrated Digital Marketing
- Personal Branding
- Evolution of a Personal Brand
This article will help the budding entrepreneurs and business owners who want to start their journey but not sure whether should opt marketing or not.
Marketing and its Fundamentals
Simply Put: Marketing is the process of delivering the customer satisfaction at a profit of your own.
Contradicting to what many people believe marketing is not limited to only advertising. Advertising is just a part of Marketing.
Marketing is a process which starts way before the product is created. Knowingly and unknowingly we have been doing the marketing all our life.
Marketing starts and consists of the following:
· Figuring out a need in the world
· Researching about that need
· Developing a product according to the need
· Researching the competitors and their prices
· Setting a price for your product
· Selecting a location to sell
· Letting people know your product and its benefits (Advertisement)
· Approaching the customers
· Following up with customers
· Making a sale
· Following with the customers to up sell or take feedback.
And so on, marketing consists of everything.
Marketing is about building the trust and it is about building a brand and capturing a position in the minds of the customers.
In fact, Marketing is the most valuable investment in a business because it gives direct returns. Everything else like production, manufacturing, HR, Accounting, administration etc is an expense that does not give immediate return on investment.
Now you must be thinking that marketing is everything!
No marketing consists of everything but it is not everything. One thing that is more important than marketing is you PRODUCT. You should never let marketing become more important than you product.
Because a good marketing strategy may give you new customers but a good product makes them stay with you and purchase again. If your product is not as good as your marketing strategy then you will lose your customers.
Now that you know what exactly marketing means, let us look at the different ways of marketing.
Traditional vs. Digital Marketing
Traditional marketing as the name suggests is done through traditional mediums like TV, Radio, and Newspapers etc.
Digital marketing on the other hand is done through the new age digital mediums like search engine, websites, social media platforms etc.
Now how can someone decide to choose what kind of marketing is suitable for him/her?
Digital marketing is better in many ways as compared to traditional marketing. But that does not mean that you should not consider traditional marketing at all. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the reach of digital marketing is nowhere close to TV based on the numbers alone. TV has a reach to around 197 million households, which accounts to 800 million to 1 billion people.
According to the Financial Express, Radio has a reach of 65% of the Indian population.
According to the Business Standards, Newspaper has a reach of 465 million.
Whether you should go for traditional marketing or should you go for digital marketing depends on the kind of product you have.
For example, if you have very generic product, like mobile phone, which everyone can use, then you can definitely opt for TV commercials. TV ads can reach millions of people at a very low cost.
But if you want to do a personalized interaction, sale and marketing then it is not possible through traditional marketing and you have to opt for digital marketing.
Why You Should Build a Strong Brand
Whether you choose the traditional medium of marketing or digital medium of marketing, you should always focus on building a strong brand. Because a strong brand builds the trust and perception in people’s mind that they can purchase your brand without much of thinking.
But the question is how you can build a strong brand?
You can build a strong brand by becoming the leader in a certain category or market, because majority of people remember only the number 1 and tend to forget the number 2. Not many people know the second person to land on the moon, second prime minister of India, second person to climb Mount Everest etc.
You should decide the category that you want be the leader of. Because when you decide where to compete you ensure half of your success.
But in many cases there will always be a market/category leader. So does it mean that you should give up? The answer is a BIG NO!
If there is already a category leader, then you should focus on bringing in a unique angle and be the leader in one of the sub-categories. For example:
1) BMW can be the best car manufacturer so it positioned itself as the Fun-to-Drive car manufacturer. So if a person is looking to buy a driver enthusiastic car then he is more likely to buy a BMW car.
2) Similarly, Volvo positioned itself as the safest car manufacturer. So if someone is looking for a safest car then he is more likely buy a Volvo car.
3) Mercedes positioned itself as an executive car manufacturer.
4) Zomato as a search engine for food and restraints.
5) Practo as a search engine for Doctors.
CATT Marketing Funnel
CATT Marketing Funnel as the name suggests is the funnel through which your marketing process goes through.
And your wealth will be the CATT times of your niche.
Wealth = n^CATT
Where:
· ’n’ represents the ‘Niche’
· ‘C’ represents the ‘Content’
· ‘A’ represents ‘Attention’
· ‘T’ represents ‘Trust’
· ‘T’ represents ‘Transaction’
Now let us see in details what these terms mean.
Niche: Niche represents a particular set of customers that you are targeting. Your success and wealth will depend on the niche you choose. For example: 1) If you are into fitness and produce content/product related to fitness then your niche will consist of people looking to get fit or are looking for fitness products. 2) If you are an automobile enthusiast and produces content related to automobile, then your niche will consist of people looking to buy new car or bike or are looking for reviews and feedback of a particular car or bike. 3) If you are into Digital Marketing then your niche will consist of people looking to learn digital marketing or people who want to apply digital marketing to grow their business.
Content: Once you select your niche, you will have to produce content/product for your niche. You will have to do research and figure out what your niche is looking for. You will have to identify the need of your niche and then produce content/product accordingly. There are various ways of creating content like blog posts, videos, lead magnet, podcast, live webinars etc.
Attention: Once you have generated the content the next part is bringing attention to your content, because if no sees or goes through your content then there is no point of creating it. You should bring the content to the attention of your niche. There are many ways of attracting people to your content like SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads, referrals etc.
Trust: Once you have managed to gain attention of your niche then you need to build trust with your niche so that they feel comfortable in consuming/buying your content/product. You can build trust through trip wires, marketing automation and retargeting, deep marketing etc.
Transaction: Last and most important part of the funnel is transaction. Once you have created content, have brought it in the attention of your niche, and have successfully built trust then your niche will naturally transact with you and you will be able to generate revenue.
Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated Digital Marketing is a framework through which we implement the CATT Marketing Funnel. Since the funnel starts with creating the content, so in middle of this framework sits the Content Marketing. Once the content is created we attract our niche to the content through paid advertisement, SEO, Social Media and Email Marketing. And then we finally do the transaction by selling and converting the prospects.
We cannot depend on only one medium and expect the results, rather we have to use an integrated set of tools to generate results and implement the CATT funnel.
Personal Branding
The best known will always beat the best. People will not trust you and will not buy from you until and unless they know you. You may be the best but if people do not know that you are the best then they will neither trust you nor will they buy from you.
A personal brand is one of the most valuable asset that you can build. Your personal brand helps to establish credibility, increases influence and build trust.
A personal brand can sometimes outgrow the company brand. For example: Elon Musk has a bigger following than Tesla and SpaceX. In fact, Tesla and SpaceX are growing because of the personal brand Elon Musk.
A personal Brand can give rise to many other brands from his/her influence. In fact, a personal brand can become an influencer and brand ambassador for other brands that it owns.
Evolution of a Personal Brand
A personal brand is evolved through a series of phases. Let us look at these phases.
Learn: First phase in personal brand evolution is the Learning phase. In this phase you learn a new skill through concepts, facts and procedures. You understand, remember and practice various concepts, facts and procedures.
Work: Next phase is the implementation of the learning in the real world. You can implement them by doing a job, or you can do freelancing or you can implement them on your own projects.
Blog: In this phase you write about the things that you have learned and experienced through the real life working. You let the world know about your knowledge and experience through writing.
Consulting: Once you have learned and experienced the things and now the world knows about it, you can start giving consultation to the people who looking for your set of skills.
Mentor: At this phase you can start mentoring people who want to be like you. Once you start mentoring you take your understanding to a whole new level.
Start-up: In this you can start your own product or service business with the understanding that you have through learning, working, blogging, consulting, and mentoring.
So this was all about Marketing. I hope you liked this article. If you have any doubt, suggestion or disagree with us at some point then please let us know in the comments. We will get in touch shortly.
