Fundamentals of Marketing

Is marketing all about deception and corny advertisements? In this article, we will read about marketing and how it impacts different customers.

Marketing as a whole is about understanding the flexibilities of the human mind. Understanding how human psychology works, why humans are drawn to certain products and repelled by others.

Marketing is about analyzing and comprehending human needs and their general tendencies, to be able to understand why we seem to find certain products reliable and comfortable while some other products feel like a major inconvenience.

According to my interpretation, it is all about understanding what draws the margin between a good product and a bad product, and how marketing a product is not all about ads and deception, instead it is about building a strong product and marketing its strengths.

Fundamentals of Marketing

Marketing in its elementary form largely depends on how users/Consumers connect with the product.
When it is a no-brainer for a user to connect your product to a particular service, that is when you would have established a strong base audience.
For example, Xerox is a company that produces copiers(Appliance that generates photocopies), but it is so widely used, that it has eliminated all of its competitors in the market, and hence, people directly associate a copier machine with a Xerox machine. Similarly, there are other companies that are directly associated with their service, for example, Google and Microsoft.

• Retain current audience.
• Create a mental connection between your product and the consumer.
• Creative advertisements and good copies increase sales.
• Word of mouth is one of the strongest forms of marketing.
  People rely on each other’s opinions, and having a good word about your product out there, will always play out in your favor.

Digital Vs. Traditional Marketing

Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing differ from one another, mainly based on the medium they use to reach people.

While Traditional Marketing follows some conventional methods of marketing, including radios, TV, Pamphlets, etc.
Digital Marketing focuses on drawing the attention of people through digital media, which include social media marketing, SEO, Content Marketing, etc.

CATT Marketing Funnel (Wealth = n^CATT)

The funnel is the process followed to generate revenue from your content or service.

Niche — The segment of the audience that you aim to deliver your services to.
Selecting the right niche is crucial but can be complicated. Being interested in a domain is not enough reason for you to settle on it. It is important that you recognize your skills, measure the scope and your passion for the topic.
The intersection of 3 factors, Skill, Passion, and Scope will define your niche for you.
Factors like content, attention, trust, and transaction highly depend on the niche that you select.

• Content — The measure of the value that you can provide through your content.
• Attention — This refers to attracting traffic towards your work by using various strategies and channels like SEO, SMM, Ads, Referrals, etc.
• Trust — Proving to your users/consumers, time and again that you are worthy of their trust, is important in order to retain your customers.
• Transactions — The end goal of any marketing campaign is to generate leads and convert those leads into actual customers.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Integrated digital marketing is an efficient technique to execute the CATT Marketing Funnel.
This Technique is all about gathering all your resources and skills to promote a piece of content and/or service. It is all about targeting different audiences based on a single strategy through different channels.

The strategy is a compilation of different strategies or approaches, which is the most adhering and has a strong tendency to create a powerful impact on the customers.

In IDM we use a piece of content in the most efficient way possible.
SEO, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, Social Media, etc, are all channels, through which we can reach our customers.

Personal Branding

Creating your unique identity online massively impacts how your audience perceives you. If you can give off a positive and reassuring image online, your customer base is more likely to purchase your product and develop trust towards the services you provide.

Sharing your personality, your skills, and your experiences with the world is a part of building a strong online presence.

People connect better with personas than actual products/services. Your personal brand demonstrates who you are, and what you stand for.
Your public profiles exhibit a story and help create an online reputation.

Building a personal brand comes in phases. Diving into marketing your current skills without proper knowledge might not be the best path to follow.
For any given skill —

• Learn — Dive deep into the skill, gain actual knowledge, strengthen your fundamentals, remember facts and procedures.
• Work — Implement your work. Get out there and work on projects!
• Share your work — Publish your work online, publish your understanding and experience in the subject.
• Consult — Consult businesses, instead of working for individual corporations.
• Mentor — Scale your knowledge, help people who are trying to get to where you currently are.

Conclusion

Marketing is about people. Creativity and good communication skills are a ticket to reaching your customers and providing them with good quality services.

Successful agencies always maintain a good balance between managing business objectives and meeting customer requirements.

P.S: This blog is an exhibit of my understanding of the teachings of Digital Deepak from this digital marketing series.