This article is about Understanding Marketing. We shall discuss the Fundamentals of Marketing, the difference between Traditional & Digital marketing, the CATT Marketing Funnel, Integrated Digital Marketing, Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint.

WHAT IS MARKETING?

Marketing is mostly based on Science. Though many argue that marketing is more about how artistically or creatively you sell a product, it is more about understanding your customer’s need than actually trying to sell them the product that has been created.

“Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them to do so.” — Bryan Eisenberg

Marketing needs to be started even before the product is created. Yes, of course. This is because it is very important to understand the need of the customer and then create a product they need than trying to sell a product that has nothing to do with their current requirement. Catering to the requirements of the customer at the right time is what is to be done in marketing.

When we say that by marketing we just sell a product to a customer, it’s not over there. It’s not about just selling a product to the customer, it’s more about how the relationship between your customer is so that they remain your customers forever. In Marketing maintaining a healthy relationship with your customer becomes crucial. The Customer can be regularly updated with new products and about all the applicable offers to retain them as your customers. Simply putting just keep your existing customers informed every-now-and-then about your products. That way, your brand is always in the minds of your customers.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself”. — Peter Drucker

Also, one of the most important points to remember in Marketing is to never make marketing more important than the product itself. A great product always sells itself. Marketing must only help a customer discover the product and to create a good impression of the product. We can use some of the major components of marketing – Sales, Advertising, Copy Writing – for the same.

WHY LEARN MARKETING AT ALL?

• Marketing is something that never goes out of style. No matter how much ever technology advances, marketing would be still needed. Also, Marketing is something that is rooted in human psychology making human-human communication very important. Machines will not be able to understand the perceptions or Psychology of people and do marketing. This gives Marketing a very long Shelf Life.
• Marketing gives direct ROI(Return on Investment).
• Marketing is the backbone of Business. So it is recommended that the founder knows Marketing himself. We really can’t outsource Marketing from an Agency, sit back and relax. Founder need to make some strategies suitable for your product by understanding your customers better. And, the better you understand marketing, the better will be your business.
• You have a safe career when u master these skills- Getting Traffic, Marketing, and Sales. This sets a very firm foundation for helping grow your own business or help others to market their products as an affiliate, the options are many.

HOW TO BECOME A GOOD MARKETER?

There are some things you need to keep in mind in order to become a good Marketer.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

The most important skill of all is the Communication skills. Marketing requires good Communication Skills. Communication skills are only about conveying your thoughts to the customers.

All that matters is if the customer is able to understand what you are trying to convey. It is not always necessary to use the most complex sentences. Keep it as simple as you would talk to a friend.

DIGITAL vs TRADITIONAL MARKETING

Now let’s understand what is Traditional marketing, its pros and Cons, and also how Digital Marketing is more viable than traditional marketing during this time.

Traditional marketing is useful when you are trying to market some generic product to get more wider reach. Digital Marketing, on the other hand has a better reach, specially when you want to reach affluent Indian Population.

With traditional marketing you will not have any direct response to your marketing. You cannot have direct communication with your target audience or do any natural sales. But with Digital Marketing all these can be achieved.

Now, you may ask what is Direct Response Marketing?

Direct response is a type of marketing designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action. — MarketingEvolution.com

The Major advantage of Direct Response Marketing is that it is easy to track if your ad is working or not. If u have come across ads where they have given their phone number or email id in Newspaper ads or TV ads etc, then that is direct response marketing.

THE CATT MARKETING FUNNEL

CATT represents Content, Attention, Trust and Transaction.

Wealth = n ^ CATT where ’n’ is your niche.

Selecting your niche is very important. Only when you are sure in which nice you will be providing your products and services you can sustain in the market. Because you really cant try to provide services in too many niches. Hence be specific here.

Select a Content that is related to your niche. Be clear about what you are trying to convey to the audience about your niche. Create such a content which will be useful for the audience of your niche.

Next, using SEO, Social media marketing, paid ads etc drive traffic to your content. This is Attention.

Now build Trust with your audience. Building trust in the sense, to send them personalized messages according to their requirement.

For the Transaction, i.e., to get the customer to buy your product, use natural sales.

INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING

There are a lot of ways in digital marketing through which one can reach one’s audience. But separately using them will not help much. Say you are doing content marketing but you have used only SEO for promotions. Your content might not rank much. Or, if you use just Social Media alone too you might not reach much of the target audience.

In order to effectively reach more target audience, integrating all of them is the key. When you do content marketing along with Sales, SEO, Social Media, Paid Advertising, and Email Marketing, it helps reach a lot of the target audience.

PERSONAL BRANDING

When you have a personal brand, it helps people identify and remember you. People will end up discovering you for their requirements instead of you promoting yourself or your servies. People will know that you are their”go-to” solution for all their needs. They will be naturally interested to communicate with you when a person but not the company itself, contacts them.

Only drawback of personal brand is it can neither be invested on nor sold. But a personal brand can help influence other brands to people.When you have a personal brand people would want to hear from you. You can benefit by becoming Brand Ambassador.

HOW TO EVOLVE AS A PERSONAL BRAND?

Mass Trust Blueprint helps a lot in evolving as a personal brand. The key to evolve as a personal brand is to LEARN new skills. Learn those skills by knowing first Understanding the CONCEPT, Collecting FACTS/DATA.

Not just understanding them, you need to PRACTICE and IMPLEMENT the skills you have learnt. That means to work for a company or as a freelancer. Unless you practically implement it in real world how are going to get results?

To Evolve as a Personal Brand you Can:

• Write a Blog about your experience about the work you have done.
• Work as a freelancer.
• Become a consultant when you have a written about your experiences in your blog and reach some people so that they can consult you.
• Mentor people with all the experiences you have gained. You will not only help people in understanding the content but you too shall gain more knowledge and experience while mentoring.
• Start a business with all the expertise you would have gained by now.

Conclusion: This article covers most of the basics of marketing required by a beginner. All of the points discussed here would be very useful for any one looking to learn about marketing. If you like to know even more in depth about Marketing then stay tuned for my next article.