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What you may think about Marketing is Wrong !!
Do you think marketing is all about manipulation? Have you fallen anytime into the trap of marketing and bought a low-quality product? Are you sure that you can understand the actual needs of your target audience? Do you feel marketing is just for selling? Do you have any idea what will be the future of Marketing?
If you have answered yes to any of the above questions then this article is for you which will add a 10x value to your Marketing Knowledge. By the end of this article you will come to know what is the game of marketing, the end goal of the marketing practice, the Positive and negative impacts of marketing in long term, the Evolution of marketing from past to present & future as well. How marketing is subliminally involved in our purchasing patterns and behavior.
If you are an entrepreneur, Marketing enthusiast, Freelancer, Digital marketer then this article is for you. Without an understanding of the basics of marketing our lives are on toss personally & professionally as well.
We buy products for our daily use. And also we think that we are just buying the products which we need right? But the answer is no…
We are more likely to buy feelings & emotions that are related to the products that may be from a First thing that we use in the daily morning such as toothpaste and the last thing that we use which is your mobile phone.
Everything has its own story and connection with you or might be with your family and so on.
Let’s take an example of what salt do you use? Most probably Tata salt.
Have you ever thought about why Tata salt comes to your mind when you think of salt?
The reason is that you are personally connected to it that may be due to your family purchasing patterns etc.
I hope by now you somehow understood that some particular brands are subliminally stored in your mind which makes you blissfully ignorant while choosing those products.
Many people often keep saying this effect is probably due to the manipulation of marketers which is absolutely no.
These marketers are positioning in a way that these products are connected to your behavior and needs may be connecting these products with your emotional state of being so that you less cognitive while choosing their products.
Okay before talking about Marketing traps, the Needs of the target audience, and other stuff let me take you to some basic fundamentals of marketing along with how Digital marketing is different from traditional marketing, the Process of conversion funnel CATT, Personal branding. And in order to get a full-fledged success how integrated digital marketing helps you.
Fundamentals of marketing:
Marketing starts with finding the gap in the market where customer need is not fulfilled and filling the gap with your product or service.
There is a misconception in minds that marketing is all about creativity and customer attention towards the product after the marketing is on the toss.
But marketing is a science where customer attention will be earned if the marketing practice is properly executed.
The four p’s of Marketing:
As we are focusing on the basics of marketing it is better to know about these 4p’s which were developed by marketing thought leaders in the 20th century. “Marketing mix” a set of concepts and tools that helps the companies achieve their objectives within the market.
Product: What you are selling? How your product is different from others? What are the features of the product? How you are packaging your product? And many things that are purely related to the core product or service that you are providing. If you are a freelancer then your clients will probably see your skills and potential up to what extent you will be able to fulfill their needs.
Price: This can be estimated based on your cost incurred and the competitor’s pricing along with how much your customers are willing to pay for your product or service.
Promotion: As there are lots of products and services in the market the same as in that way lots of channels have been established for promotion. How you are promoting your product? Whether it’s online or offline, best of all promotions are word of mouth. Word of mouth plays a major role in creating trust and further selling, In order for word of mouth promotions you need high-quality products that provide a better value to your audience. Advertisements, copywriting come under components of promotion as a part of marketing.
Place: Where your audience can interact with you? From where you can provide your products or services? In this case, if you are a Digital mentor or a freelancer you probably provide your complete service online.
Let’s get into other parts of the article. Do you accept the truth that everything that we use now will get outdated one day? The answer is most probably yes. The things that we are habituated with now aren’t part of our lives in our childhood likewise the marketing that we are seeing now is different than we have seen since our childhood traditionally.
Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing
How often you see a poster of a product or service offering on the walls of a road while you are walking and pay attention to it? How often you see a mail from xxx brand sending you a mail regarding the latest festival discounts on their products and you actually buy the products after you saw that? Which ratio is more?
Most probably we are into the second category in the above-mentioned cases. That’s the sample to believe that we and our lives are Digitalized in a holistic way right.
Marketing has been changed drastically along with changing consumer interests and trends.
Marketing digitally increased the ease to market our products a lot when compared to traditional marketing. In terms of reaching Target audience, Marketing Approach, Documentation, Consumer interaction, Marketing cost, Marketing Analysis, Communication
From the past few years, we are more likely to purchase online this is leading to a tremendous increase in online purchases and you bought that particular product through online advertisement, offering mail, social media, etc which all comes under various components of Digital marketing.
Through this, we can say that Digital marketing made our lives easier and easier at the same time gives scope to reach infinite people even though in this pandemic situation.
CATT Marketing funnel:
The end goal of any marketing activity is to sell that’s how you can reach more audience and provide more value.
Consumers are not gonna buy your product because you have a need to sell the product. They’ll only buy when they trust that they will get high value from your product or service offering.
In order to sell your products to your consumers, you have to keep interacting with them from the first interaction to the last transaction and then creating a long-term relationship. This is when you need to choose the right funnel.
To guide the consumers by providing consistent high-quality value and building trust and then converting them into paid consumers.
CATT funnel is the best funnel that will give the best results in sales conversions.
It works more effectively with your niche.
The more you know about your niche the more wealth you generate.
The formulae are as follows:
Wealth= n^CATT
Niche (N)
Content ( C )
Attention (A)
Trust (T)
Transaction (T)
Let’s deep into it with some practical examples
Niche: Selection of niche is based on three principles, Talent, Passion & Market. Even if you choose the niche according to your Talent, passion if there is no market then your efforts will be meaningless & vice versa.
Content: Content is the key to success. If you are reading till here you somewhere felt this article is attractive and you believed that it’s going to provide some good value while you are reading. So this may be the reason you are up here. That’s the power of the content. Content is not only a blog that can also be videos, images, emails, or anything that provide value to your target audience.
If you Motorcycle rider and you ride almost every day. What will be the one major thing that you need to run your motorcycle?
As you know the answer is the fuel you can’t ride your bike without fuel right, in the same way, any company or individual providing a product or a service needed to be consistent in creating content that provides value to your niche.
Attention: Content that is created needs attention to get marketed, without attention towards the content the efforts you invested in creating content are going to be wasted.
If you are a youtube and you are consistent in uploading video content then you probably need to do a Youtube SEO in order to reach more audience with your video content
Paid ads, SEO, Facebook ads, etc are components that are working to grab the attention of consumers towards the content.
Trust: Trust plays a major role to convert the consumers, once they trust they don’t look back.
It is a long-term game, trust makes your consumers stand with you at any cost. That’s the reason why brands thrive to build a relationship with their target audience.
Retargeting your existing consumers and converting is only possible with trust.
Transaction: Once the consumers pass through your funnel from taking value from your content and paid their attention to your offerings with targeted ads or emails so that trust will get build, once the trust is get build the final step is to convert the customers to paid consumers.
Leads into prospects into paid customers.
Integrated Digital Marketing:
As the whole country is getting Digitalized there are lots of companies and a lot more competition in the market to reach the target audience.
Out of all others if you want to stand ahead and get the attention and trust from your target audience you need to have combined digital strategies which are popularly known as integrated marketing.
· Web Design and development
· Search engine optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
· Content Marketing
· Social media marketing
· Local Listing Management
· Paid Advertisement (PPC) campaigns.
If you are choosing an individual strategy even though it has its own impact growth from it might be limited. But if we combine all the strategies into work it can bring growth holistically. So this is what most digital marketing agencies do.
Let’s assume that you are having very good knowledge and experience in a particular field &worked with well-known companies and provided high-quality value for many thousands of customers through the name of your company.
As we are assuming for suppose you are not interested in your company that you are working and you want to change your company.
You have forwarded your CV to some other good company for a position. In the same scenario, there is another person who applied for the same he has the same knowledge as you have but instead of providing value through the name of the company he himself provided high-quality value for many with his own identity.
That’s obvious that the company would prefer the other person( just assuming).
Because he is providing value to many as he himself a brand which is known as a personal brand
Power of Personal Branding:
Personal branding is marketing people and their careers as a brand.
Whether you were a Great Digital marketer, Top motivational speaker or a stand-up comedian so on and so forth
You are your own brand that will add value to your tribe.
― Bernard Kelvin Clive
A personal brand can create more trust than just a fancy brand logo in the consumer's mind.
It’s a continuous lifetime process of providing value to your tribe with your own identity then you have less need to convince to buy your product or service.
They convert on their own with the trust that you have built-in them.
Mass trust blueprint:
Let’s get into the steps to create mass trust
Learn: Before starting anything you should try to keep your efforts to gain knowledge and skill in that particular field at most, Understand the concepts and memorize them by applying.
Work: Without practical implication of the skill and knowledge which you have been learned over time will not be useful in the long term. So always implement what you have learned.
Blog: Blogging is always a great way to share your knowledge that you have gained through learning and with your experience.
Consult: Once you have good practical knowledge and potential as a decent personal brand through blogging then you can start working as a freelancer helping the clients in your niche
Mentor: With years and years of knowledge, skills and experience start as a mentor so that it would help more to build your personal brand increasing your tribe as your fans.
Startup: As you have all the above skills, experience and mentorship now you are capable to serve your niche and fulfill the gap in the market by providing your product or service according to the needs of your target audience.
This Learn, work, blog, consult, mentoring, the startup is a lifetime ongoing process.
Confused about how to know the Needs of your Target audience?
While reaching your target audience you probably have some idea who is your target audience and their interests
Before getting to your niche you should have proper market research (reading articles, newspapers related to your niche, etc) then reveal your marketing strategy according to the analysis.
Okay now let’s get into an interesting part of this article, As I always like to explain situational-based rather than theory-based. Assume the two scenarios mentioned below.
If you have ever been to a star hotel, How was your experience?
Most probably you would observe the respect they will give right from the start while you are entering the gate of the hotel, And a well-uniformed server may come to you and ask politely for your order and after the completion of your eating, even the manager may come to you ask for your feedback.
And now imagine now you are in a local hotel which you may see at the end of every street.
What are your observations in both cases?
In a star hotel, you may observe that they more focus on knowing your needs and satisfying them at the most.
In a local hotel, you will see that they just want to transform goods into money they don’t care about your satisfaction. As you are paying less comparatively.
In the same way, Marketing focuses on finding the customer’s needs and satisfying them with their service.
Whereas selling focuses on transforming goods into money.
Selling is a component of marketing, And selling is as important as marketing but has its own approach.
Conclusion:
I hope you got a pretty good idea about Marketing and the future of marketing i.e Digital Marketing and how positioning helps the brand to stand on top of the customer's mind along with a Funnel that helps to increase conversions.
As this was my first blog It may not be a perfect one but I am sure that I will try to make my content writing perfect, with all your suggestions and constructive criticism.
Any suggestions and questions? Leave a comment.