The Marketing Fundamentals you should know before learning Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is one of the most demanding jobs out there and there is no getting around the fact that, sooner or later, almost all businesses must include digital in their marketing activities. And that is why many students and professionals are inclining toward this wonderful job opportunity.
But, what are the marketing fundamentals you should know before taking your first step in digital marketing?
In this article, I am going to explain to you the “fundamentals of marketing” and why is it necessary for every digital marketer to know this. It will help Marketers, Entrepreneurs, bloggers, freelancer and anyone who wants to learn marketing.
This article will talk about following topics:
- What is Marketing?
- Why one should learn Marketing?
- Importance of Communication Skill
- Understanding the target customer
- Digital Vs. Traditional Marketing
- CATT Marketing Funnel
- Integrated Digital Marketing
- Power of Personal Branding
Every story starts with a definition, so let’s have a look at the general definition of marketing.
What is Marketing?
If you will search this on your favorite browser, you will come across a variety of definitions, here is one of the formal definition of marketing:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. — American Marketing Association
But, let’s dive deep into “Marketing” and understand the real meaning of this terminology.
Many people believe that marketing is all about art and creativity and not everyone can have this creative skill, but that’s not true.
Marketing is part science and part art and it requires both and receives both from various disciplines.
Marketing starts before the creation of a product. It starts with understanding of customers, customers’ behaviours and their needs that leads to creation of a product that fits the need.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sell itself. — Peter Drucker
Marketing’s very purpose is to understand the behaviours of other people to bring those people closer to the brand, organisation, product or service.
Understanding behaviours, specifically from a psychology perspective, and studying how people react to certain stimuli, has become a focus for marketers in the last few decades. Introduction to digital has progressed the field of marketing to be more scientifically led with testing and experimentation.
The goal of marketing is to create demand by sending right message to right person at right time. Science can help determine the message to create this demand, but it can not deliver it. The delivery of core message to the person is a key element that we can confidently attribute to art. Art can form deep connections with prospects and customers by tapping into our most intimate needs. Creativity is required for the creation of unique and exceptional campaigns. The complex scientific elements of the products we deal with often need to be expressed, certainly as we are marketing to appeal to the emotion of the customers.
Marketing is not just about selling your product or services. It is also keeping an existing customers happy by communicating with them so that they can remain a customer for life.
A great product converts your customer into brand ambassadors. Word of mouth marketing is the best channel of marketing ever.
Why one should learn marketing?
Once, look around yourself. You will find that everything is marketing.
The device you are using, the clothes you are wearing, the books you are reading, the movies you are watching, even the education you are acquiring or acquired. You are paying for every product or service you are consuming. Everything is sold to you.
You are also selling something to others, either it is a product or service or both.
Marketing is rooted in human psychology, marketing has a very long shelf life.
Marketing as a topic has existed since the dawn of civilization — Since the first market square appeared in the first village.
If you are a blogger, freelancer, businessman or a founder of some company. You have to know marketing because if you don’t know your customer, their behaviour and their needs, how will you sell your products or services to them?
If you know how to sell and market, you have a safe career.
Importance of Communication Skills
Being able to communicate effectively is one of the most important life skills to learn. It helps in all aspects of life from professional life to personal life and everything falls in between.
Marketing is all about good communication skills. The fundamental goal of marketing is to deliver a message to potential consumer designed to convince them to purchase a particular product or service. To be an effective marketer, one must have a keen grasp on the different media of communication to understand the consumer need and to convey the message effectively.
A marketer should generate trust and confidence in themselves and the product or service they represent.
They should be good at making emotional connections to whomever they are dealing with.
They should be an experts at listening and understanding the needs of consumers.
They should be proficient at writing that convey a clear message to the audience that convince them to purchase a product or service.
Understanding the target customer
The most important step for a digital marketer is to know their target customers. As a marketer, you need to sell the product or service based on consumer’s needs. But how do you know their needs if you don’t know who they really are?
If you know what your customers want and you know what your product or service delivers, you can clearly explain to the customers what the results will be. You can effectively manage the expectations of the customers.
India’s top Digital Marketer Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju in his Internship Program explained this by taking an Example of India by dividing India into three different parts namely India 1, India 2 and India 3.
Most of the wealth of India is concentrated in India 1 which consists 6% of total workforce of India with around 110 Million population having per capita income around $8,800.
India 2 consists of 5.5% of total workforce with around 104 Million population having per capita income around $3,000.
And most of the population of India resides in India 3 which is having 88% of total workforce and per capita income around $1,200.
If you are reading this article on your laptop/desktop, then there is 99.9% chance that you are in India 1.
Your target customer belongs to India 1 with 23 M households having the buying power.
Digital Vs. Traditional Marketing
Nowadays marketing trends are changing at a very fast pace and the marketing styles have drifted from traditional modes of marketing such as print media and television advertisements etc. to digital modes of marketing like e-commerce websites, google ads, emails etc. So rather than spending marketing efforts and money only on traditional ways of marketing, the marketers/businesses and companies are now switching to the digital ways of marketing using digital platforms for reaching out to the maximum number of targeted customers.
But, it is important to determine which marketing strategy is right for your product or service and will give you a good return of investment?
For a major section of the population of India who are not so tech-savvy, traditional marketing is still the best way of introducing and promoting products. The cost of traditional marketing is significantly high and therefore it remains a preferable domain for big businesses with huge marketing budgets. While digital marketing requires very basic expenses and is much more affordable. It is also suitable for small businesses and start-ups.
Digital marketing can get you real-time results on how effective your marketing strategy is? While traditional marketing can take weeks or months to get the results.
Traditional marketing has one-way communication and there is no direct interaction with consumers. While digital marketing promotes two way communication and thus helps the marketer to satisfy the customer and make the customer feel they are listened to and served.
So, if a product is generic with a very wide targeting. TV Ads can reach millions at a low cost.
India has TVs in 197 Million homes, so with an average of 4–5 members per household, TV has a reach to 800 Million to 1 Billion people. The reach of digital marketing is nowhere close to the reach of TV Ads.
CATT Marketing Funnel
The CATT marketing funnel is a very powerful marketing funnel and framework introduced by Digital Deepak.
Wealth = n^CATT
- n stands for Niche — It is the root of this funnel. Your success and wealth depends on the niche you choose. Choosing a niche is all about finding your excellence which is common in your talent, your passion and the market need.
- C stands for Content — After choosing your desired niche. Start creating useful content that attracts people from your niche and solves their problem. Contents can be delivered via Blogs, Posts, Videos, Lead Magnets, Live Webinars etc.
- A stands for Attention — Drive attention to your content using SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads and Referrals.
- T stands for Trust — Build trust with your audience by providing some quality content and using marketing automation, trip wires and retargeting.
- T stands for Transaction — Finally, convert your leads into customers by natural sales methods. Since the customers know the quality of your product or service, they will trust you and will pay for your product or service.
Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated digital marketing, as it sounds, the integration of multiple marketing strategies, a well-structured and well-defined marketing plan.
Each channel such as Content Marketing, SEO, Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing is powerful on its own, but when they are combined in a unique way, its power goes up exponentially.
Integrated digital marketing comprises the idea of creating a unique form of expression that is easy to identify in all of the channels your consumer uses.
Each campaign and approach using different channels complements the other, creating a consistent image on the mind of the users.
Some of the common digital marketing methods are:
- Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
- Search Engine Optimization(SEO: Organic Traffic)
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
Power of Personal Branding
Personal branding is an ongoing process of developing and maintaining trust and value of yourself in practice of marketing yourself and your career as a brand.
Your personal brand is how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of skill, experience, and the personality that you want your followers to see.
Building a Strong Brand
The best known will always beat the best.
People like to hear from people, not from brands or logos.Elon Musk has a bigger following than his own company SpaceX and Tesla.
Choose a category and become a leader in that category. Deciding where to compete if half your success.
If you cannot be a leader in a category, be a leader in a sub-category.
Personal brand is rooted in the minds of people in the market. A personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassador for the companies that they run.
Evolution of Personal Brand
Learn — First learn a new skill through concepts, facts and procedure. Understand the concepts, remember the facts and practice the procedure.
Work — After you have learned a new skill, put your new found skill to work. Go from practice to implementation. Implementing it in real world problems will give you better understanding.
Blog — Start writing about what you have learned and experienced through your work. When you write, you understand it better. By writing your experience and sharing it to the world, you will start building your personal brand.
Consult — Now that you have a personal brand through your blog, have work experience and have learned the fundamentals, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them.
Mentor — Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.
Start-Up — Start your own product or service business. With the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem and the skills you own.
Conclusion
Now with the end of this article, you have a clear understanding of fundamentals of marketing. You have understood what marketing really means. Why you should learn marketing. How good communication skills make you an excellent marketer. Why is it important to understand your target customers. You understand when and where to apply traditional and digital marketing strategies. You have an understanding of CATT marketing funnel, Integrated digital marketing and power of personal branding.
Hope you enjoyed reading this article.
Thank you for taking your valuable time, I really appreciated it.
If you have any queries, you can comment here or message me on LinkedIn.
If you also want to learn more about marketing and digital marketing, then enroll for this amazing Digital Marketing Internship Program by Digital Deepak. Click on this link, fill the form and apply today.
