The Insider’s Guide to Basics of Digital Marketing & Personal Branding

Overview

This article is for people who want to understand marketing basics, types of marketing, personal branding and its economics at simple terms / Layman language.

What is marketing?

Marketing is the process of driving profitable action by customers. It’s a strategy/tactics an organization uses to promote products/services in the marketplace, and motivate target audiences to make a purchase.

The P’s of Marketing:

There are many articles which talk about various P’s of marketing, so let’s see basic P’s and its simple definition of it.

• Product: You need to determine the niche product and variations of it that you want to sell or service and the effective marketing starts with a good understanding of your own product.
• Price: Marketing is all about driving profitable action, so you need to set the price at which people will be willing to pay (i.e. Market price).To know the market price do a market analysis of a product, how competitors are pricing the product and the niche you are in. And also understand that the overall cost of the product depends on how well you know it. Price is always the determining factor when it comes to things like supply, demand, profit margin, etc.
• Promotion: Once your product is set and ready to launch you want people to know about it but how you get the word out about your product and market it to your target audience is promotion. And it could be traditional marketing method like TV, Newspaper, Billboard ads etc. and digital marketing method like social media campaigns, content marketing etc.,
• Place: This is where your products are sold based on the type of product/service you want to sell to your customer. It can be your online/physical store based on product type.

These are the core concepts that you have to follow and it never changes whether it’s a physical goods or a service

Flow chart of marketing lifecycle

Now let’s look at some of laws of marketing to be successful:

• Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products or services.
• It’s better to be first than being in another position because mostly people remember 1st or 2nd position.
• Choose the right category that you can be first in and excel in it.
• Study your customers, market and trends to find the right move that works.
• Not every first is going to be successful. The timing also plays an important role.
• If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
• Ex: IBM was the first in computers. DEC competed by becoming the first in minicomputers.
• Forget the brand. Think categories and when you’re the first in a new category, promote the category. In essence, you have no competition.
• Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception.
• It’s an illusion. There is no objective reality. There are no facts. There are no best products.
• All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect.
• The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.
• Marketing is a manipulation of these perceptions.
• The essence of marketing is narrowing the focus. You can’t stand for something if you chase after everything.
• In the long run, every market becomes a two horse race (i.e. two player market).
• Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.

There are 2 types of marketing methods:

• Traditional Marketing
• Digital Marketing

What is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing is a form of marketing is a conventional mode of marketing that helps to reach out to an audience with various offline advertising and promotional methods.

Categories include:

• Print (magazines, newspapers, etc.)
• Broadcast (TV, radio, etc.)
• Direct Mail (catalogues, postcards, etc.)
• Telephone (telemarketing, SMS marketing, etc.)
• Outdoor (billboards, fliers, etc.)

Let’s look at Pros and Cons of it:

Pros:

• Reach local target audiences easily by advertising on FM radio and local editions of newspapers, Flyers in the mail also help target specific suburbs or areas.
• Your target audience can keep hard copies of your advertising materials, like flyers and magazine ads, which they go through repeatedly.
• This approach can be used to reach anyone without internet and people understand it easier as they have been used to it for some time

Cons:

• It’s a passive form of marketing, and there is very little actual engagement. It consists of providing information to the customer and hoping that they will purchase.
• Advertising in the newspaper, radio, and TV can be very expensive and TV ads are just a few seconds.
• Difficult to measure ROI as there are no numbers to measure and see how successful or otherwise your marketing campaign was,

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the use of online platforms to promote products and services.

Common digital marketing methods include:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Social media posts
• Clickable ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing(SEM)

Let’s look at Pros and Cons of it:

Pros:

• You can Target a Vast Audience regardless of their geographic location. When you post something on your Facebook page, you can reach someone who lives a couple of blocks away, or a continent away too.
• Digital marketing helps you explore and tap to undiscovered or untapped markets to enter.
• Depending on your ideal buyer persona — age, gender, profession, income, preferences, dislikes, fears, goals etc. — you can personalize the content so that it gets their attention.
• It is more engaging through social media, live chat, and email, to a target audience, which is not possible through traditional marketing methods. Liking, sharing, commenting on social media posts, rating products and leaving reviews are the ways in which the audience can communicate with you.
• It costs a whole lot less than traditional methods even if you include paid ads, and cost of hiring an agency for marketing. This means at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing, you can.
• Measuring ROI is easier by using Google Analytics and other tools which help you record things like the number of people who visited your website, how many clicked on ads, how long they stayed on the website, how many purchased, and so on.

Cons:

• The main drawback of digital marketing is that negative feedback or complaints left by unhappy customers are visible to the general public and that too could get shared quickly.
• To truly exploit the potential of digital marketing, you would need to employ someone who has the requisite expertise in the field.
• Digital marketing is subject to regulation by search engines like Google, they frequently issue guidelines as to what is acceptable and what is not. The search engine algorithms are also updated regularly, and you may need to make drastic changes in the strategy.
• Digital ads can be deemed as annoying.
• To get the most out of your digital marketing efforts there is a lot to learn. Each channel usually requires its own specialist, from search engine marketing to social media.

What is Direct Response Marketing?

Direct response marketing is a sales technique designed to evoke an on the spot response and encourage a prospective customer to take action by opting in the advertiser’s offer.

Advertisers are able to access performance from the moment the campaign is launched.

It facilitates the delivery of a “call to action” via phone number to call or online interaction like a page leading to lead form or purchase order.

By creating an irresistible offer, advertisers push prospects through all marketing channels and generate leads.

Lead generation is a process of converting strangers into paying customers or in exchange for the free offer the advertiser may ask a prospect to sign up, share contacts, register on a website.

In comparison to traditional advertising, which focuses on raising brand awareness and promoting a brand image, direct response campaigns expect the return on investment right away.

The CATT Marketing Funnel

CATT stands for Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction.

This is the funnel method in digital marketing to drive sales through online to a business.

How CATT works?

Before following the CATT Funnel, you need to choose a niche and selection should be on the basis of your Passion, Talent, and Market need.

“Remember, choosing the right niche is a half battle won.”

Content:

After selecting the niche, you need to make quality content that is value-driven. You can provide quality content through blogs, videos, or in infographics forms which will provide the user with full information and help him/her make an informed choice in the market by consuming your quality content.

Attention:

You need to grab the attention of your user and you can do it by sharing your quality content on your social media channels that will drive traffic to your blog or any other medium. “Following” is made slowly by the trust.

Trust:

After having your user’s attention, you need to build good relationships with your readers. You should re-target them once in a while to hold their attention and give them value-driven contents.

Transaction:

Following each step right, you can make the sales pitch effortlessly. Users are now waiting for your premier services which will result in profitable transactions.

What mistakes do people make?

People without giving value-driven content or building trust, they try to sell their products in the market directly and fail. This is the reason why you need to follow “The CATT Marketing Funnel.”

Integrated Digital Marketing Framework

What Is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Integrated digital marketing is, as it sounds, the integration of multiple marketing strategies to form a cohesive online approach for your business. Here’s what it typically entails:

· Search engine optimization (SEO) and Search engine marketing (SEM)

· Content marketing

· Social media marketing

· Paid advertising

The idea behind integrated digital marketing is that, while each individual strategy doesn’t have a huge impact on its own, when used in conjunction, you can create a more influential online presence and provide better visibility and ROI for businesses online.

Integrated digital marketing is most certainly the best way to build an online presence

Benefits of integrating your Digital Marketing:

Brand Awareness: When you integrate the means of communication, they can easily build brand awareness.

And your company presence will be everywhere on the internet, available for customers to start a conversation.

Your business will be on the Social Media they use, on their email, and Google when they search for something.

Behavioral economics and digital marketing

Based on the theory that people tend to value things more highly when they believe they are scarce.

Ex: Apple, creates the illusion of scarcity to build up the hype of many of its products to fuel desirability and demand. The stories of limited supplies of iPhones and people queuing for days to get their hands on the latest model live long in the memory.

How is this applied in digital marketing?

Scarcity and urgency is a tactic that’s commonly used within e-commerce, using messages such as ‘limited availability’ or ‘only X left in stock’:

Loss aversion

We will often go to greater lengths to avoid the loss of something we already have rather than to gain something new.

People can find it twice as painful to lose something they own in comparison to how enjoyable it was to acquire it in the first place.

How is it related to digital marketing?

Many companies, such as Netflix, Hotstar offer free trials in order to leverage loss aversion.

By giving prospective customers the opportunity to use a product or service for free for a decent period of time.

Once the trial period has expired, the thought of losing the product, plus the minimal effort it often takes to sign up and pay, means that many people are convinced to commit to a purchase.

Authority

The practice of brand endorsement by well-known figures such as sports stars, musicians and other celebrities is a perfect example of how authority can be used to influence customers’ decision-making.

Much of Boost success is credited with their decision to associate themselves with sports stars.

Social proofing/ herding

Ratings and reviews are an excellent way to aggregate sentiment from past purchasers and give prospective customers confidence in the products they’re browsing online.

Personal branding

It is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry.

Elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately increase their influence and advance their career.

Individuals sometimes associate personal names with their businesses. Notably, Digital Deepak.

A personal brand is widely recognized and it’s an impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise and achievements within a community, industry.

So it’s important for you to build a personal brand if you want to be successful in your own niche.

Evolution of Personal Brand

Learn: You need to learn new skills through concepts and procedures. Understand and practice to become expertise.

Work: You need to work on new skills gained by implementing it in the real world which will give you better understanding. (Freelancing, Job, Own projects).

Blog: Write about your skills and experience you gained through work. When you write you’ll not only understand it better but you’ll start building your personal brand.

Consult: Now you have work experience, have personal brand through blogs and social media and have learned the fundamentals, start consulting other firms instead of working for them.

Mentor: Start mentoring others it’ll not only help others but help you scale your understanding to a much greater level.

Startup: Start your own business by products/service offerings with the understanding that you have developed about the market, problem and your own skills.

Conclusion:

If you want to be an entrepreneur, find your niche, learn skills, work hard on it, and build your personal brand through experience you have gained using all digital platforms available to monetize.

If you’re looking for a job understand the marketing, technology available and how behavioral economics used go in-depth in learning the skill to grow your career in digital marketing.