“Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
With this quote, I would like to share what I have learned about Marketing Fundamentals from my Internship Program. Let me share my learnings, thoughts, and research on this topic. So people who all want to kick start their marketing knowledge from the base of this article will help you to get the outline of basic principles.
Let’s dive into the topics!
Marketing is an ocean, it’s a very vast subject. It comprises Sales, Copywriting, and advertisements. There are many streams of marketing there, it keeps on evolving over the period of time.
Marketing is not just about selling the products, it’s about keeping the customers happy and caring for them. Let’s say any premium car, if they market the right product to the right people, then only the people know about the premium features in the car, else people hang up with their car without the premium features. So hereby the way of marketing only, the customer came to know about the premium feature in the car, this leads them as a customer for the marketers this way the marketing makes the customer happy.
When we talk about Digital Marketing, it’s one kind of medium/tool to market, but people who are having sound knowledge in the digital medium and having lack of knowledge in marketing fundamentals, they can not succeed in their goal.
Because they’re not considered a digital medium is a tool for their marketing, rather they think like if we have expertise in the digital medium they can easily market. Nope! it won’t work out, you should have basic and strong fundamentals in marketing.
You may have a bit of confusion in that, let me clarify that!
Yes, Digital Marketing is a modern way of marketing, which means the way of marketing is adopting modern people. It’s a transformation from how we market in older days, so the way of marketing is changed but the marketing principle is the same. When we talk about Digital Marketing, we should know about traditional marketing first.
Consider I need to market a product, ex. BMW Car. So in traditional days of marketing, we were marketed in the traditional way as advertised in a Newspaper, Magazine, and TV, right. So will it give you any information like,
“Which age group are interested in the Product”
“Which segment of a user interested in the Product”
“Will you able to re-target them”
“Will you get any insights”
“Will you be able to convert the user into lead generate”
Nope! In traditional marketing, we are not able to get these kinds of data in an effective way, and we can’t make lead generation. That is what evolved in the marketing way in the digital medium that is called digital marketing. So here the thing we need to note, the marketing strategy and way of marketing can change not the marketing principles. I hope you got the clarity on the importance of marketing fundamentals.
Here the five sections to know the thumb rule of marketing
- The Law of marketing
- Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing
- CATT Marketing Funnel
- Integrated Digital Marketing
- Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint
Table of Contents
The Law of marketing
Do you agree, the market starts before creating the product?
Yes, this also one technique by the way creating a hype about the product like having product links to buy is available only if you fill this form, you will get a mail, like this, some companies will market their product before their product creation.
Marketing is about targeting the right customer with the right content at the right time. Let’s say I want to market a BMW car, so I won’t flood the emails, and send messages to everyone. Instead, I will do some analysis about the people, who are all having buying capacity to this car and what age group, people profession so all data I need to collect and pick the particular segments people like, business people, people are having income more than 20 lakhs, and age also be a factor to segmenting people. Then we need to target them with good content at the right time. This is how we need to target the right customer with the right content.
We need to understand the customer’s needs, so we need to know very well about our customers. Whether the product suits them, it will satisfy the customer’s needs. Then only we have to do the marketing. Let’s say I am creating a product, then we are doing a market for that product, later came to know that this product does not opt for the customers. Then our sales will be down. Our effort in marketing is useless. So we need to understand our customer’s needs.
Capturing a position in the customer’s mind with good perception.
Never let marketing be more important than product quality. Having a low-quality product, if you are doing the market very well, the sales may happen but you will lose your goodwill from the people. So in the end, your strategy is not getting good results. We have to focus on the product quality more prior to marketing, because a good product will market itself either through mouth marketing, etc… Marketing is used for a kick start, but having a good quality product is giving you more mileage. Never compromise yourself on giving a good quality product.
Mouth marketing is the best channel for marketers, people will trust recommendations from their circumstance people. The chain of lead conversion from mouth marketing keeps on growing. Let’s say if we try to buy something rather than search it online we will get a recommendation from our friend’s circle.
Marketing is a very vast subject, advertisements, copywriting, sales are one of the components in marketing.
Building a strong Brand:
Why we have to build a strong Brand,
“Don’t be the no.1, Be the only One”
If I ask you something which you don’t have knowledge about, you will search it online, When you do so, automatically you will search it in google rather than some other search engines like bing, yahoo. Why because the people’s perception of Google that makes the people automatically search it. So that is how they build their brand very strong. Not Goole, if you think from any category every brand will have this perception. That is why we have to create a strong brand.
Choose the category and become the leader of that particular category. I can say, I am the prominent solution provider to the Real Market stream.
Mastering in Marketing:
Why do we have to learn and master in marketing?
Marketing education has along with shelf life. When Digital marketing comes the traditional marketing is less important, likewise if any evolved new technology comes older one will fade out from the market. But in the case of marketing, it’s not like that, because it’s aligned with people’s psychology.
Marketing is the most valuable investment in the business.
Importance of Communication Skill,
Good marketing is all about good communication skills and does not manipulate the people to buy. Marketing helps the customer to discover their needs.
How global economic impact in marketing,
Being a marketer we need to make a decision in our business based on the economic condition. The economic condition will impact any business, considering the current scenario about covid19 issue, most of the business is in the down face and share market price plunge now. Because this time people don’t have a buying capacity, these kinds of things will impact our decisions, so we need to consider this for the decision in any business.
How many of you believe debt creates money?
Yes, debt creates money. If you are planning to buy a car, let’s say for 5 lakhs you are going for the bank loan, from bank A. So the amount 5 lakhs will be credited to the company after making a purchase. What he will do is, he is going to deposit the amount to bank B. Now bank B offers the amount as a loan to someone like you and me. Have you got what I am trying to say? You borrowed 5 lakhs, but according to the car company and bank B, the amount 5 lakhs is their own. This is how debt creates money. So that is based on many factors our country’s wealth generates. That is why the government and RBI offer a repo rate cut for housing loans.
Recession creates a strong company and drives out the weak companies out of the market.
Also, we should have knowledge about segments of people like whoever lived in Tier1 city and whoever has a sophisticated life with gadgets, and income level. This will help us when we approach markets to get a clear idea about who the market is, who the buyers.
Please refer below books for understanding the Fundamentals of Marketing
- Economics 101 by Alfred Mill
- Currency Wars by James Rickards
- Capital in the twenty-first century by Thomas Piketty
Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing
As I mentioned earlier the way of marketing medium is different when comparing digital marketing with Traditional Marketing. Considering Digital medium there are a lot of tools available for the people insights, lead generation, conversion, analytics, and CTR.
But Digital marketing is evolved from Traditional marketing,
We can not get insights about the target audience in traditional marketing whereas in a digital medium we can get a clear idea with insights for the lead conversion, by the way of deep marketing.
When talking about personalized communication that is not possible in a traditional way but in a digital medium, we can do so effectively, let’s say if I need to target the audience via email marketing. I can send them a personalized email by welcoming them with their name whereas in traditional it’s not possible, right.
Direct Response Marketing,
Direct response means when the people taking the action immediately, that kind of strategy is Direct response marketing.
Examples for direct response marketing,
- When seeing the advertisements in the newspaper really if we are interested we are taking action by making a call to the advertised contact number.
- Whenever you spend time on the internet if any advertisements make you click the advertisements you will be landed on the landing page, this way they are doing the marketing by taking the action by the visitors.
- And somewhere we can see any deal website page, the counter will be there, so that counter makes us take the action to buy something, else we may lose the deal.
You can also read about, The Best Way to Become a Successful Digital Marketer
CATT Marketing Funnel
CATT is the marketing tool funnel, it is a structured way of technique to create wealth in our business.
the formula is wealth = n^CATT
[n] Niche – Be clear on niche selection, cause your success and wealth depends on the niche you choose
[C] Content – Create useful content that attracts people from the niche. You can create a blog with any solution, and you can make video content and publish it on all the mediums. And you can do a webinar also.
[A] Action – Drive attention to your content using any kind of medium like SEO, social media, paid ads, and referral.
[T] Trust – Build trust with your audience
[T] Transaction – Convert the leads into customers with sales.
Creating content from your niche, you will target the right audience with your analytical sense by seeing the insights. Then you need to get the attention of the people, by displaying something, announcing an offer, or creating some hype about the product to grab the people’s attention right. Then we need to create trust by showing and giving them proof of product lifetime or through influence marketing, we have to build trust among the people. Then we need to make them buy the product, the way of making conversions.
Tips to choose your niche:
The way of success and wealth creation from your niche selection. So you have to choose your niche precisely. Your niche selection from the combination of Talent, Passion, and Marketing. You have to be passionate about and having sound knowledge about your niche selection and also you should have marketing skills to make your success and wealth creation. It’s a combination of three, each one complimenting each other.
Integrated Digital Marketing
If you are doing digital marketing, you have to produce results from different types of marketing. You should not rely on specific marketing, integrated marketing will give massive outcomes. From the below picture it depicts, we are getting the traffic from different perspectives, I am driving traffic to the content via paid advertising, SEO and Social Media and Email Marketing so this integrated platform will provide you with good results.
Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint
Why creating a Personal Brand is important?
People want to hear from people not from the brand. Let’s say Elon Musk has a huge following than SpaceX and Tesla. People trust Elon Musk more than his brand. A personal brand can not invest in and can not be sold. A personal brand can give rise to many brands from its influence. Thorugh his influence Elon Musk can build many brand values for any company. A personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassador for the companies that they run.
What do you need to build a personal brand? Like Elon Musk
Learn a new skill through concepts, facts, and procedures
Put your new-found skills to work, you can go from practice to implementation. And find a mentor, he will provide you good inputs to mold your knowledge. Like how I got mentorship from Digital Deepak.
You can do the blogging, so whatever you have learned and experienced through your work you can share your knowledge, by the way, doing this you can create trust among the people.
Once you established your knowledge sharing and having sound knowledge in a specific niche, you can start your own consulting firm.
You can do a mentor also, being a mentor you have to give away your knowledge to your mentee.
Then gradually you can have your own startups, start your own product. That will give you a priceless thing.
Hope, you’re getting some basic idea about importance of the basic principles of marketing.
I truly was inspired when Deepak introduced these concepts. I had a great time learning from him. I gained more knowledge from this internship program. They are not just training, they are making us taking action from your niche selection. So if you want to gain the knowledge from Digital Deepak, you can enroll in the next batch of internship, you can apply the below link. Please drop your comments.
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