Foundation of Digital Marketing
Are you new to Digital Marketing?
Do you want to start your business online?
Does the word ‘Digital Marketing’ interest you?
Do you want to learn something new about Digital marketing today?
Are you a recent graduate or post graduate and thinking of entering ‘Digital Marketing’?
Are you looking for ways by which people can recognize and pay you for your skills, talents or expertise?
If your answer to any of the above questions is a YES, then I have something really interesting for you that will make your journey to understand Digital marketing easy and amazing.
WORD OF CAUTION: Before we get started, first I would like you to know that all your perception about the term ‘Digital marketing’ may get changed.
Get ready to question your perception and change it into something entirely different and new.
Let’s get started then!
FUNDAMENTALS OF MARKETING
Do you know what Digital marketing is? Take your time.
No it is not a separate field. Nope, it has nothing to do with creativity. No it’s not even easy.
Okay, let me help you.
Digital marketing is just doing marketing on the Internet.
That’s it! Nothing so complex to understand.
So, my next question is, what is marketing then? You maybe aware of it.
Marketing is the act of facilitating the exchange of a given commodity for goods, services, and/or money to deliver maximum value to the consumer. It begins and ends with consumers.
FUN FACT: You remember ‘The Barter system’ we studied about in schools, that too included marketing. Yeah, way too old!
So, to provide maximum value to the consumer, a marketer should be well aware of his consumer i.e. it is about understanding and knowing your customer well. Knowing the customer would help a marketer to find a gap/void in his life i.e. the need that is retained unsatisfied.
No, it doesn’t mean that you need to be a psychologist to know that or need to enter into the psychology subject.
See it’s really easy to understand your customer’s behavior. Just try the same way you try to understand your Mom or Sis or maybe a Friend, yeah that would work.
Ask them questions, talk to them, try to understand why they are doing what they are doing, observe them, their behavior and habits.
Frequently, you’ll get to know all the answers to your WHYs that were troubling you for so long.
That’s it. Only this much understanding is needed.
Okay, now we know our customer with his need.
So, a need that is present in everyone of us is the basic human requirement like food, water, clothing, shelter. A want is something that satisfies this need in some form like Pizza for food.
And so marketing does not create a need. Instead, it helps to identify and satisfy the existing need that prevails inside the consumer through the creation of ideas for product or service that fulfills that need.
But remember, the product or service should be of value to the customer or your target audience that would solve their problem (their need) in-exchange for a profit thus benefiting the society at large.
Google, the first search engine; recognized that people needed to access information more effectively and efficiently.
IKEA, recognized the need for furniture at affordable or less expensive rates.
Thus, Marketing is the basis i.e. the fundamental requirement for the creation of any product/service for the human species.
Do you know that Steve Jobs had this gift better than almost any example. Henry Ford. Thomas Edison. Every innovation in the history of the world combined an uncanny understanding of human needs and the innovative vision to deliver it.
Isn’t this interesting?
So, You have probably got a clear idea what Digital marketing is now.
No? Still not?
Okay, let me help you with this using a different approach.
Do you know the Traditional Marketing or the Offline marketing that exist along with Digital marketing?
Let’s understand this way then.
TRADITIONAL MARKETING VS DIGITAL MARKETING
Running a successful business is not just about having a high quality product or choosing the appropriate market. It’s also about leveraging the right kind of marketing techniques inorder to reach out to the target audience.
Today, a business has two options to choose from inorder to reach out to the target audience to ultimately convert them into leads. The first option is performing Traditional marketing and the second is Digital marketing i.e. through online mode.
Okay, let’s dig deeper into it for better clarity.
Traditional Marketing, is a type of marketing that is hard to ignore. It’s an offline form of marketing through which one can reach a larger audience. Most common techniques are under the following categories:
Broadcast — TV, Radio
Print- Magazine, Newspaper
Telephone- Sales call, SMS, telemarketing
Direct Mail- Postcards, letters, brochures
Marketing may have evolved over the past decades but the fundamentals remain the same.
Yes Exactly, the 4 Ps. You remember?
Product, Price, Place, Promotion.
On the surface level, it may seem that traditional marketing is different from digital marketing but it’s not. Their roots or I mean their fundamentals remain the same….Promotion!
Now let’s have a look at what Digital marketing is.
As we see today, technology has grown and is enabling businesses to connect to their audience like never before. Every person just login to the web to carry out his day to day activities of purchasing, consuming and selling.
Any business today, no matter what the size is, can switch to digital marketing and enhance it’s chances to reach the target audience, connect and convert them into leads (their own trusted customers).
The only activity needed by any business today is to get out of it’s zone and grab the opportunity to gain exposure.
This will lead to more recognition and building of relationship with its customer for the long term like never before as there are various tools and segments(social media, email, videos, blogs, paid ads and many others) available digitally which are less expensive and time and effort saving that help to select the priorities of the business to reach it’s target audience fast.
Isn’t this cool that just by a click you get to see and carry out your business in the world?
The next question would be to invest in which medium?
See, with the advancement of technology there is no denying that one should opt for digital marketing as it will save your cost to a larger extent and provide you with the best of benefits available today.
The risk is definitely smaller when compared to traditional marketing where even the best efforts put in consistency would fail to provide you the best results.
FUNFACT: Marketers who plan digital marketing campaigns when executing their strategy are 356% more likely to succeed (CoSchedule).
Okay, then let’s move to our next topic!
PERSONAL BRANDING
Do you have a desire that people should know you, your work, wherever you go? Then this part will interest you.
Personal branding is telling your story to the World.
It’s telling about your skills, experience, dreams, ambitions, personality. This tells about your behavior, attitude, spoken and unspoken words by which people get familiar with and can relate to, thus building a level of trust and confidence in you differentiating you from other people and businesses.
Your personal brand can be vital to you professionally. It is how you present yourself to current and potential clients. It gives you the opportunity to ensure that people see you in the way you want them to, instead of in some arbitrary, possibly detrimental, way.
You liked how we can tell the World about ourselves, our skills and ideas?
It’s amazing how with the help of this we can attract the right kind of people. But for that you as a personal brand need to evolve.
You need to know or build your skill, talents and knowledge in the right way.
Let’s look at some steps that will help you.
LEARN- You can learn anything. Understand it’s concepts, facts and practice it as much as possible.
WORK- Out your new found skill to work. Go from practice to implementation. Implementing in the real world will give you better understanding.
BLOG- Write about what you have learned and experienced through your work and share with the world. This will eventually help you build your personal brand.
FUNFACT: Content with relevant images gets 94% more views (mediakix).
Wait, it doesn’t get over here. These were the initial steps. Let’s take a look at our next steps.
CONSULT- Now that you have a personal brand with your fundamentals, work experience all through your blog, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them. Yes, you are a Consultant!
MENTOR- You wanted to influence people, right? So start mentoring. Mentor others who want to become like you. It will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.
STARTUP- Want to create your own economy? Start your own product or service business with the understanding that you have developed about the problem, your own skill and the market
Isn’t this circular model just amazzzing!! It perfectly fits our life to which we can rely for sure. And it’s like a never ending process.
Now that you’ve studied how you can build your skills and expertise,
let’s discuss how people would get to know you. For that you need to have the right communication skills. If that is missing, then all this wouldn’t help much.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Are you a good communicator?
Do you feel irritated and find it hard to communicate with people?
Do you succeed in making people understand even the complex things in a simple flow?
Or, Let’s frame the question in another way.
Do you remember the last message any brand communicated with you?
How did you feel?
Were they kind of professional or personal with you?
Think….
Were they able to connect with your inner self?
Did you feel like you are actually being seen or heard or your queries are being solved?
Anytime?
I can guess that most of your answers would be a ‘NO’. Do you know the reason?
Then let’s talk about that.
Conveying the right message to the right people at the right time is one of the key ingredients of effective communication.
Many brands forget that their customer is a human and have an urge to be seen, listen and heard. And so, they tend to gain more of the ‘once there was a customer’ tag because these brands focus on what they want to deliver rather than what their target audience wants.
So, they fail in the long term.
To actually connect with a customer would mean putting more efforts interms of time, energy and also cost to get know them, their interests, their likes, dislikes and what they actually want.
These are the reasons or excuses that brands have and so due to which they just remain on the surface level of marketing.
To actually build a bond of trust and success, one really needs to do ‘Deep Marketing’.
FUNFACT: Loyal customers are 9 times most likely to try a new offering, 5 times as likely to repurchase, 5 times as likely to forgive and 4 times as likely to refer someone (temkin group)
Have you heard of the term ‘Deep Marketing’ before?
Grabbing the attention of the customer is the fundamental requirement of deep marketing. Without attention, the next step isn’t possible.
You know how to grab your customers’ attention?
Even if you know, I’ll suggest that you must read the next lines, it will surprise you.
But before that I would like to introduce you to a famous ‘funnel’.
No, not that which you use at your home.
CATT MARKETING FUNNEL
It is an essential concept which marketers use inorder to acquire the right audience that would remain for a long journey.
One of it’s main ingredients is Attention. Yes, the one which we were talking about.
Let’s continue with that then!
Attention could be grabbed only through human interaction. A brand, company, logo or Robot cannot interact with a customer well.
Only a personal brand can…Yeah you remember we talked about personal branding. That’s the advantage of it.
So, to grab people’s attention would be by creating high quality content in terms of what they need, like and want.
Only then they’ll spare their time reading about it.
Don’t you belief so?
Observe yourself. You are reading this in-depth article because…. you get it?
But here’s a catch.
You need to create great content without wanting anything inreturn.
That’s when you actually think about your audience without being selfish and so you grab their attention for atleast 10 minutes which you were not able to initially. And you know what, it builds trust in them.
Trust is directly related to the attention people give to you with their own consent.
FUNFACT: The average consumer attention span is 8 seconds, so you need to make your content count.
So the next time you are posting anything, ask yourself will it benefit my audience or is it for my own needs?
I know that you need to earn money and do transactions. There’s nothing like a free lunch.
But you need to build trust first with your audience. Only after this you’ll be able to step in the last stage, the transaction stage.
Now that you have built trust with your audience and grabbed their attention, you can leverage the built trust to request your customers to do a transaction with you.
But remember that you need to explain to your customer how the product or service is beneficial to him and not taking advantage of them.
Don’t forget how valuable your customer is to you and how much effort you have put into building trust.
So, in short this is the CATT funnel where it stands for:
C= Content: Create useful content that attracts people from your niche like posts, blogs, videos, webinars.
A=Attention: Drive attention (traffic) to your content using SEO, social media, paid ads.
T=Trust: Build trust with your audience.
T= Transaction: Convert your leads into customers with a natural sales method.
Also, Wealth is in direct proportion to your niche (your expertise area) to the power CATT.
Wealth=n^CATT
Where, n= niche: Your success and wealth depends on the niche (specialized segment) you choose.
Wait, we are just on the last stop of our journey.
INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING FRAMEWORK
So, after all the content you’ve made and posted your videos and blogs, what’s the next thing one must do inorder to grab new customers and retain them consistently?
I would suggest ‘the Integrated Digital marketing' process.
So what is an Integrated digital marketing approach?
Its approach is to integrate communication and interactive experiences targeting defined audiences and right individuals which coordinate in all aspects of marketing of a brand.
Basically, the purpose of Integrated Digital marketing channels is to provide to its customers, seamless brand experience across all its channels including the paid and the organic one.
Integrated digital marketing therefore, relies on brand identity being communicated with consistency using channels and techniques that compliment each other and form a unified, integrated whole.
But there is something important to note here.
A lot of people try to perform digital marketing separately through each segment or channel.
And they fail.
Let’s say a lot of people just perform SEO and if sales don’t happen, they give up and complain that people don’t buy. Same with the case when performing other segments separately like social media or email marketing or Facebook ads, google ads.
FUNFACT: Google and Facebook ads earn more than $117 B in ad revenues more than the combined World’s traditional marketing revenue (mediakix).
But what if there is a better idea to do these things?
What if you try to integrate all these components?
Let’s see how it can be done.
You remember the CATT funnel we talked about?
Your Content would play a key role here.
Start asking for attention rather than doing transactions.
Start with advertising your free content that you have in your blog, videos and other places. This will help you get their email list.
So when you publish a new content, you can send them through the email list and people will visit your content page from that email.
Then do the same with search engines. Start listing your content on the search engines and people would see your free content there.
This way search engines would start ranking you and list you on top searches whenever something related to your content is searched upon by the audience.
Similarly with social media. You share your content on social media. People would visit your content from social media and would share aswell if they like it.
Lastly, with the help of paid advertising you can boost your content throughout social media, search engines and ads.
The essential essence of integrated marketing is that by coordinating messages across channels the results from increasing brand awareness, familiarity, favorability and purchase intent are far higher than when taking a less integrated approach which fails to coordinate.
All this helps in building a mass trust of people as the momentum is created with the help of CATT.
This is how the CATT funnel could be used through integrated digital marketing.
Isn’t is great how through content we capture the eyes of people for so long.
So now getting to my first question to you, tell me was this article helpful to you?
Did you learn something new today?
Will you start taking the required action today?
Hope this would help you kickstart your journey towards Digital marketing.
Keep learning. Keep sharing. Keep growing.
Thanks ☺
