“Aren’t you so successful as a marketer? Even though you hold masters in commerce, though you are creative, talented and speak very good English?”. If so this article is for you!! What went wrong?!, Why were you not successful?!, How did you fail despite being so qualified?!!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Please go through this entire article for top digital marketing tips. It would help you to understand the do’s and don’ts of digital marketing and the tips would help you to become a better and more successful marketer soon and would give you a career raise.

Here I am going to talk about:

· The fundamentals of marketing

· Digital Marketing vs. Traditional marketing.

· CATT Marketing Funnel

· Integrated Digital Marketing

· Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint

This article will be useful for anyone who is into Digital Marketing.

Law of marketing:

Let me first ask you, what you have understood about marketing. Like, What’s marketing?! How do you do marketing?! When to start marketing?!!

I know most of the answers will be, “Once the product is created, an executive will start marketing” OR “Marketing is a way to convince people to buy product/Service”, OR “One should be very creative/use creative technics to make people buy product”,… and the list continues…!!

NO! this is not correct!! First, of all, we need to understand marketing is based on science and human psychology. It starts right before we launch our product! First, we need to understand what a customer needs. The product/service needs to fit into their requirements. You need to research this before launching a product/service. If we sell what they need then most of the marketing work is finished here! and I can say, this is the first marketing tip to start with. Confused?! Let me simplify.

Say suppose, when you cook for your family, what if you cook something which they don’t like? You may need to force them to make it to the dining table and beg them to eat and they may not be able to eat completely as they don’t like the dish and the leftover food will be wasted/thrown out. Instead, what if you ask them what they like and cook the same dish?! (of course can’t consider each and everyone’s, but can count and go for the majority!) Then automatically food will be eaten by them and get over soon, without much effort of yours! This is human psychology. Sell what a customer needs!!

So, an entrepreneur also becomes a marketer here. Because as an entrepreneur without marketing knowledge if he creates/launches a product or service which does not fit customer needs and asks the marketer to sell them, then he would end up blaming the marketer for not selling products! so as an entrepreneur one must know the fundamentals and should hire a marketer for execution. Also as an entrepreneur it is a must to know about global economics and understand it, to make certain decisions in business. It’s better to choose the economy where “spending” is more. I.e., when the average age is 25+, the age which spends more money/expenses are more, then that countries economy also grows up!! So, the average age of a country decides that country’s economy. Developed countries like Japan have an average age which falls into senior citizens category and spending is less. But when it comes to developing countries, most have a new generation who spends a lot. These countries are best suitable for business.

“Marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time”, Digital marketing Mentor, Digital Deepak says. Once you launched the right product, with the proper marketing methods capture customers. Half of the spending on marketing is reduced when you sell what a customer needs. This is the main aim of marketing.

Good marketing is all about good communication. But good communication does not mean sophisticated English. If you can transfer your thoughts effectively to your customers then you are good to go. Sudha Murthy reaches readers more easily than Shashi Tharoor. People like to listen to you when you talk to them in easy and understandable sentences. Though English is a medium to communicate, especially in India people always don’t enjoy complex sentences. My article is also assembled with plain, simple sentences, no dictionary required! In case if you want to improve your English then start writing, reading, speaking, and thinking in English whenever possible.

Marketing is the only thing that gives direct returns. So, it’s the most valuable investment. Once sales happen, then don’t stop there. After selling your product/service, don’t let your customer go. Keep communicating with them, make them happy, build trust. So that they remain as customers till the end.

Once you build trust, the customer is happy with the product, then the word of mouth comes into the picture. Meanwhile, this builds a brand. A happy customer who has built trust plays an important role in this. He/She becomes your brand ambassador and this word of mouth is the best channel of marketing. The purpose of marketing is done once you build a brand. After this stage, you can do marketing only if u need. Always remember not to sell in an unethical way! Then the word of mouth can bring down the sales! The Product/service is more important than everything.

Let’s summarize in short:

1. Research and know customer needs.
2. Launch a product/service
3. Capture customers using various methods
4. Sell/build trust/keep customers happy
5. Word of mouth does marketing

When it comes to building a strong brand, as Digital Deepak says, “Don’t be no.1 be the only one”!! We all remember only the first ones and not the later ones. We do remember later ones only when they are only one in that category. It’s not always possible to be no.1 in a particular category, so be only one. This makes your work easier.

If not possible in a category, then choose a subcategory. Ex: we can’t compete with the google search engine. It’s already no.1. but we can have a search engine for a specific category like arts or kids’ education or parenting or astrology etc. There are many top gold jewelry brands. So, try to sell unique designs which are not available with other brands. i.e., even if you enter a competitive field, your unique angle itself would get half of your success.

When it comes to marketing, it’s called a safe career! If you learn and master it. In many fields, most of the jobs can be replaced. An android app developer may need to switch to a different field if Android becomes obsolete. A manual tester loses his job when everything is automated. But in marketing, we need to understand human psychology and only a human can do that, not any robot. Marketing has a long shelf life. From the day you were born till today marketing exists! We will read that next!!

Traditional vs Digital marketing

If you belong to the 80s or 90s you might be known in those days the mode of marketing done was via print media, radio, TV, etc. Before that only maybe radio and print media. But till today same modes of marketing still exists in the more advanced version. Also, new modes of marketing like digital marketing got added.

T.V, radio, Newspaper, Telemarketing, door to door marketing fall into the Traditional Marketing(T.D) category. This is best suitable for a generic product that needs wide targeting and can be done at a low cost. For ex: appliances, phones, soaps, eatables, etc. Almost everyone uses this and needs this. So T.D is a type of mass communication. One disadvantage is we can’t personalize/have any deep marketing/can’t see the results.

In this case, Digital Marketing(D.M) comes into the picture. D.M promotes over the internet. Though DM is nowhere close to T.M if you see the numbers or percentage of reach, it best suitable when you want to reach a selected audience/customer. It reaches the people with spending power easily. Most of the people with spending power are digitized i.e., they are easily reachable on smartphones/social media/emails rather than TV radio, or newspaper. They have internet. They watch movies/web series on apps. They read e-paper. Also, in D.M we can personalize, do deep marketing, natural sales, and other techniques. A special feature like selected customers/audience is available. You can track results and improve too.

There is nothing good or bad in doing marketing the Traditional way or Digital way. Both are good and useful in their way. Just we should be smart enough to understand which to choose for our products/services. Whichever the marketing method, marketing is going to last forever, and it’s evergreen.

The CATT Funnel and framework

We all need money and success in life. Money is not everything but money is one of the important things. Here is the simple formula, from a digital marketing perspective, to become wealthy!

Wealth = n^CATT

n= Niche

Yes! your future wealth depends on the niche you select and success too. If you have failed to make money as a marketer maybe this is also one of the reasons. Choose your niche properly. Choosing the right niche adds to your success. Your journey as a successful marketer starts from here! Choose a niche with a hungry market. You might get confused when you have multiple niches in mind. Choose the best among them and keep the rest aside. Once you reach saturation in the first selected niche then you can invest this wealth in other niches.

We need Talent, Market, and Passion, a combination of all the three to choose a niche. It should be well balanced like proteins, carbs, and fats in your diet. If you eat protein more and less fat than protein left undigested, would irritate and then result in health issues. Likewise, If you lack any one of them also it will result in frustration, loss, or again failure.

And also, very important to know about C, A, T, T too!

· C — Content = Your niche needs quality content to attract people. So, create useful content that naturally attracts people to your niche via blog posts, videos, webinars, etc

· A — Attention = Grab people’s attention/traffic to your content using different methods of driving attention like social media, Paid Ads, etc.

· T — Trust = Build trust by sending out personalized communication to your targeted audience so that they buy from you.

· T — Transaction = Convert your leads into sales by having sales webinars, calls, etc this is the final part. Once you pass C, A, and T stages, this Transaction stage will be easy.

This completes the CATT Funnel.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has a lot of modules in it, like Content Marketing, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, etc. Concentrating on only one, would not make sales happen. And on other hand, it’s not easy for anyone to become an expert in all the modules. So we can integrate all these modules and make it work like a machine altogether. This is just like building an automation team. Say suppose if Integrated Digital Marketing is like a team, then the content is the leader and the other modules are its team members. Here it will make use of each member’s strengths, each module complements each other, and produce a result that is more than the sum of the individual achievements of each member. This runs magically reducing all your efforts and working effectively. Integrated digital marketing is one of the main reasons for successful marketing.

Content marketing: Quality and relevant content via blog posts, video, live webinars, etc helps to attract people, drive attention and build trust among the customers. Customers spread the word and become brand ambassadors. This is considered as the leader in the integrated system and integrated digital marketing process is also known as Content Marketing 2.0!

Email marketing: One of the best communications and cost-effective tools to send out information about the content. It sends out personalized communication and builds trust.

Social Media: If email is one-to-one. Then social media is one to many. If the targeted audience likes your content, they share it among their friends and that drives more traffic. Also, people trust the feedback /review on social media, this, in turn, builds trust and can expect sales.

SEO: One of the most powerful tools in online marketing. Your website traffic is mostly from a search engine, as people directly search each and everything on search engines. Search engines like google rank websites according to their quality and relevancy.

Paid advertisements: In its various formats can ignite and helps to speed up the entire process. The traffic from paid ads helps to build trust and educate the prospective customers and in turn increases social media activity, search traffic, and email subscriber list.

Sell and covert: The best way to turn a prospect into a customer is to follow up with the lead. The lead data can be an email, a phone number, or both.

To understand more about these modules in the deep please click here.

Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint

Do you watch movies? Who is your favorite actor? You watch all his/her movies, right? You try to follow them on social media too. You would be eagerly waiting for their next new movie too. So, what makes you do so? That actor’s brand name!! This can happen in sports, politics, or any other field. This is called personal branding. People follow an actor’s page rather than any of his movie pages on social media. Likewise, when it comes to digital marketing, customers are most likely to hear from people instead of a logo or some machine/robot. Personal is always deep. People like to follow human beings; they like to listen and learn to follow. They can easily co-relate with humans. But not with a machine or logo.

A personal brand is how you promote yourself. If you are good at something and if you have not shown this to others what is the use of it?? Some else will grab the opportunity and creates a brand or become famous. Let the people know who you are and what are your skills. Market your skills.

Having skills is more important than degrees. Once you create a brand, you will be your brand ambassador for the company you run. Though Nobody invests in a personal brand and a personal brand cannot be sold, it contributes more towards your success. With your brand name, you can create one more brand and attract people who are already influenced by your brand. This is how a movie gets the audience. If the actor has a name/fame, all his movies grab attention, without any advertisements, and also he gets new projects easily.

Evolution of personal brand (Mass trust)

Let’s see, how to build a personal brand in your niche?

Learn: An artist won’t become famous in one night. He or she learns particular skills and practices them to build a brand. So, always learn new skills and practice them.

Work: After learning theory, we have to apply it practically. Practical knowledge is very important in any field. This helps to build confidence and upgrade our skills.

Blog: Keep writing about your skills and their implementation. Also, share your success and failures. Your experience helps others to learn from it. Meanwhile, when you write you can understand it better (Which is a known fact from school days). All this helps to build a brand.

Consult: Start consulting proactively before start working for others who can make use of your skills. This will be one on one. It helps to build good business relationships and trust.

Mentor: Mentoring is like consulting or teaching a group of people who want to become like you. We learn more in-depth when we start mentoring/teaching.

Start-up: Once you are ready with the above modules it’s time to start your product or services with all the skills learned and experience gained.

This is how you build your personal brand from your niche.

Hope you have enjoyed reading the article. Hope this valuable information/tips for successful marketing helps you to become a better and more successful marketer soon and would give you a career raise.

Please share your view or opinion on this article. It would help me to learn more and more. Thank you.❤

Read more related to Digital marketing by industry experts:

Learn Digital marketing from one of the top and best digital marketers: DigitalDeepak.com

How Marketing Can Help You Live a Better Life

Here are a few interesting and useful links:

https://www.merrymoppetsguild.com/blog/why-steam-education

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BUYING YOUR FIRST VIOLIN – GlissandoGlove

https://speakenglishwithsam.com/how-to-learn-english-with-web-series/