Marketing in Digital World
As the title suggests, in this article, you will gain a foundational overview of digital marketing and some of its aspects that can help you to grow as an individual and your business as a marketer.
So, What exactly is this “Digital Marketing”?
As my mentor, Digital Deepak always says that ‘’Marketing is not about creativity. It’s a science’’.
It’s about finding the right people to convey your message to and delivering your precious content through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, and emails. Digital marketing is a method by which companies endorse goods, services, and brands by using these online media channels.
Talking about the mindset of a marketer then it should be more like a customer’s so that he can think by putting himself in his shoes and trying to think like a customer.
There are no such rules to follow but digital marketers are now required to have a more creative mindset to contribute new ideas that will allow them to interpret situations and to overcome the many challenges of today’s marketing world, effectively.
The ability to make rapid changes and adapt to new demands is what makes any marketer one step ahead of others.
But why learning and master marketing?
To understand this, let’s consider an example where someone has an interest in your business and they are curious to know more about your brand. The first thing that they will do is to search you online and see what they can find out about you.
It’s very much obvious that they would expect to find you there with a website and your presence on social media platforms. They may also be looking for some reviews so they can learn what other people are talking about your company and whether it is a good place to do business or not.
Yes! because this is how people do business today.
If any potential customer is unable to find you online, the chances are high that they may conclude your business not to be a legitimate one.
So if you want to connect to a wider audience for your business and to grow it globally you have to get your hands into digital marketing.
So, let’s read more about digital marketing and its fundamentals.
Before jumping to something new, I want to ask you a question. Do you know that digital marketing starts even before doing the actual marketing?
And the answer to this question is, Yes! because marketing is not about coming online and starts to advertise the goods and services. In fact, it’s more about the process that goes before actually getting on board. Various things matter before the actual journey starts. Such as,
| Knowing your target audience
Well, this factor is something which plays a crucial role. To be able to make an audience and then to know them, is one of the most important things to do. You should know your audience and for this, you can start having conversations on social media platforms or blogs, by running surveys and paying attention to their comments or their responses to surveys. By interacting with people, you can find out, What they are looking for? What exactly do they want? What is keeping them up all night? And then, you can work on the solutions which you can offer to them, for which multiple tools and methods are available to help you find out who your customers are and what do they really seek.
| Importance of the product and needs of the customer
The product should be made by considering the needs of the customers. It’s better to first think of your buyer’s pain points and then to create a product so that it can address them and that gap can be closed.
Giving people information about topics where there is no need for information will be a wasted effort in terms of words and time. Similarly, providing services when and where they don’t need them all goes in vain.
| Perspective and the angle of your approach
Creating an audience takes a lot of time, and time is money. As marketing is about helping more and more people to buy products and services, try to reach out to them with different perspectives and unique angles. And if you approach them with a different angle in terms of providing services then you would definitely attract profitable sales that eventually improve the cash flow for your business.
| Building a brand
Building a brand and shaping the identity of the brand is very important. The concept stretches itself from choosing a category to developing trust among the audience.
Most marketers start on a level of “Hey! we should run this campaign because it’s a good idea!” But, that’s not really how the engagements are being built.
And with this, I remember a quote by Neil Patel, “Mediocre marketers think in terms of campaigns. Great marketers think in terms of growth frameworks.”
Relatable, no?
And last in the list,
| Trust of your audience
Trust is the key in marketing. Usually, after providing the services to the customer some folks think that their work is done because the transaction is done.
But is that just all? Are we really done here? If yes, fine! If not, then what after that?
The thing is even after delivering the services, create content that helps you to make a constant connection between you and your customer. After all, it’s the list that you have created by putting effort, so obviously, you won’t let it just pass, by offering a one-time service.
Connect to them through different platforms even if it’s not direct communication, try to connect over webinars, posting informative posts on social media platforms such as on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
By going this way, you start to build a relationship with your customers and you become more like a trusted partner to them than just a business. Surveys tell that people are much more likely to buy from businesses that they have already bought from.
And it’s not at all wrong to say that “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” Couldn’t agree more, Mr. Andrew Davis.
So, there’s no better way to build trust than to provide useful and basic information to common questions that people search for.
These were some of the fundamentals of marketing that are very important to understand that further helps you in personal branding, which we will discuss later in this article.
Now, coming to some skills that matter. But before that, I want to mention a very important and useful tip here: Every new or old marketer should ask one thing from themselves about the uniqueness in their work. Whether they find any or just going with the flow and still seeking good conversions.
So, what’s your uniqueness?
Nowadays, customers are literally bombarded by choices that they can get from just a single search online but the uniqueness of the product and the marketer, what matters the most. How you are presenting yourself and your brand, what attracts the customer to do business with you in the first place.
Well, I really hope that this little tip would help you to figure out the unique part of your ways of dealing with your customers.
| Life skill that helps Marketers
As we all know that communication is an act of transferring information that involves a sender, a message, and a receiver. It’s a way by which we say things to others. Imagine you are saying something to the person sitting next to you who is clearly not able to understand what you are trying to say. It irritates the one who conveys a message and the one to whom he is conveying, both.
Now, what if a similar situation happens when you are directing hundreds of thousands of people online, where the communication is just one way?
Here come the communication skills that help you to present yourself effectively and as a result, you get great results for your business.
Being able to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills to learn. Try to be natural with the message that you want to convey to your audience because poorly presented thought will not only provide poor results but may also hurt the brand’s reputation.
In fact, Beth Comstock once said “You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.”
Give a good amount of time in understanding and learning how to effectively put yourself in front of the target audience and get ensure with yourself. Undoubtedly, communication skills are something that every one of us wants to be good at as an individual but trust me if you are a marketer then it’s definitely a key.
It was all about the various aspects that we need to take care of and the skills that we need to have. Now, let’s put some light on the types of marketing that we have and their basic differences.
| Traditional and Digital Marketing
The market and marketing both were used to exist even when there was no internet. In those times, marketing used to takes place via sources like radio, billboards, and TV commercials.
Traditional Marketing is a conventional way of marketing your brand or product, where you can reach an audience with offline modes of advertising only. While via marketing digitally the scope of your business can reach well beyond your walls and you can attract a much larger audience, whereas this is something not possible via the traditional approach where you just cater to local prospects. The basic difference between both marketing styles is the way of connecting with the audience and of course, the sources.
To understand this difference, imagine a potential customer who has no way to physically come to you but creating an online presence means creating an environment where your customers can come to you irrespective of the time and transportation. They can send you emails with questions, make purchases, and can easily do business with you from anywhere.
So a quote by Jay Baer who said “Content is fire; social media is gasoline.” is absolutely true. What do you think?
There is also a term called Direct Response Marketing which is a kind of marketing that demands your target audience to respond with an immediate effect and tends to generate leads with their quick actions.
Now coming to a situation where most of us secretly wonder what the future will bring? What will the skill set of tomorrow look like? And with this, comes a thought of,
Why digital marketing is never going to get outdated?
It’s very much true and we can’t deny the fact how technology is replacing and taking over manpower in various fields. But the communication skills and an emotional aspect of doing marketing that comes from a person cannot be replaced, at least not by a robot.
So, no matter how sophisticated new technology becomes, it is human instinct and creative thinking by human minds that come up with content and strategies that tend to create trust and nurture loyalty and will keep on generating the same in the future as well. Since a robot or artificial intelligence can’t provide services with such emotional touch, I guess it clarifies the thought that digital marketing is never going to get outdated.
After discussing several factors, it’s time to know about some of the core terms that you would definitely don’t want to miss. So, pay attention and keep on reading.
| CATT funnel and Niche selection
The term CATT stands for Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction.
Before understanding “CATT” in detail, there’s another term which we need to discuss first and that is your Niche.
To make your plan work effectively and efficiently you need to select a niche which is a very important part of marketing. But what is this Niche?
A niche is something that focuses only on a selected section of a market and not on the entire market. I would say that it is something which comprises of your talent, passion, and of course your marketing skills.
There are some things which you enjoy and love doing them and those things indicate your passion. Then come to those things in which you are talented but you don’t enjoy or love doing them. This is where it all collapses.
If you want to be successful in your business, you have to make sure that you have a niche in that particular segment in which you have knowledge as in talent and about which you feel passionate. Because if you missing out on one thing then it would eventually become a dead-end situation for your business.
| CATT Funnel
Funnel is something that you need to develop for any marketing plan. Here we have such a funnel to which we call a CATT Funnel.
Wealth = n ^ CATT
It’s a basic representation in which ‘n’ stands for Niche.
It is very much clear with this equation that your selected niche is directly proportional to your wealth.
Content [C], After selecting your niche, the first step that you should be focusing on is your content. It is very important to have content from your niche which needs to be excellent.
Attention [A], the second step should be towards attracting the attention of your audience. It means driving traffic to your content by using a variety of tools like SEO, social media, paid ads, etc.
Trust [T], then we have the third step in which the primary focus should be on building trust in your audience’s mind. Retargeting and marketing automation could be helpful in this process.
Transaction [T], now when you’ve got your niche, prepared the content, and have built the trust, here comes the final step where you need to convert your trusted leads into customers.
| Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated Digital Marketing is a blended art of using all the medium which helps us to fetch customers for our business such as SEO, affiliate marketing, paid advertisements, social media or email marketing in such a way that it gives you the best result where each channel conveys a sole message to the audience.
An integrated approach helps you to reach out to many people. You must be aware that a single source cannot leave much of an impact on your audience so the basic idea behind integrated digital marketing is to grab their attention from all the marketing sources.
CATT Funnel is what tells you what to do for generating wealth but Integrated Digital Marketing directs you on how you apply those CATT fundamentals to do actual business that further helps you to generate wealth. In fact, there’s nothing wrong to call it an engine that propels the CATT funnel.
| Personal Branding-Mass trust Blue Print
Personal branding is about marketing yourself and telling the audience who you are. It’s about differentiating yourself from your competitors. It’s not enough to be just good at something, people should know you for that. It is a combination of your experiences and skills that very much makes you who you are.
Personal branding has its own pros and cons. On one side a personal brand cannot be invested in and it cannot be sold, on the other, a personal brand can give rise to many brands from just an influence.
Start with a brand (personal brand) → Create influence → To rub off your personal brand to a company brand → Let the company grow by itself.
| Evolution of personal brand
Let’s know about the evolution of personal branding step by step.
Step 1: Learn
Learn a new skill through concepts, facts, and procedures. Understand the concepts. Remember the facts and practice the procedures.
Step 2: Work
Go from practice to implementation. Put your newly found skills into work. Implementing in the real world gives you a better understanding. Work could be in the form of a job, freelancing, or owning projects.
Step 3: Blog
Blogging implies writing about all those things which you have learned, be it a case study or simply writing down your experiences. Writing helps you to understand the subject better.
Step 4: Consult
Consulting is where people pay you for your advice. The more you learn the more good you become in giving advice. And then instead of working for them, you can start consulting them which as a result would give you a different level of clarity.
Step 5: Mentor
Mentor others who want to become just like you (that’s the kind of level that you need to achieve in building your image or your personal brand). It will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.
STEP 6: Start-up
The final step suggests you in starting your own product and services based on your learning and experiences about the market.
| Conclusion
Coming to the end of this article where I’m sure you have learned plenty of things about marketing including some new terms, in detail.
Marketing is a science where customer behavior is one of the key elements and digital marketing is one of the primary focuses of almost any business. The more you embrace its possibilities, the more you’ll be able to realize the growth potential of your company or business.
Thank you for your time in reading this article. It was a part of my Digital Marketing Internship Program by Deepak Kanakaraju aka Digital Deepak. I hope it helps you to understand in building a successful marketing strategy for your business.
If you have any suggestions please leave a comment below and do hit on the clap icon if you liked it.
PS: If you want to know some marketing techniques in terms of selling products. Do check this link.
Also, if you want to explore and learn more about digital marketing then do check out this link.