Understanding the Concept of Marketing
Why do you think marketing is important?
hy companies focus so much on marketing?
To sell a company’s products?
To acquire more customers?
To make more money?
I cannot disagree, but marketing is not just about all these things. It is a lot more.
In this blog, I am going to explain the fundamental concepts of marketing and the big reason why marketing is not just about selling products and earning money. I am going to cover the major marketing funnel and various concepts of digital marketing, through which you can increase your brand value. If you are a professional, freelancer, student or a person who wants to build his personal brand, you must give this blog a read.
Fundamentals of Marketing
So let me address the important question first — What is Marketing?
As I told mentioned earlier, it’s not just about selling. Marketing is all about building the trust of your audience in your brand by providing them value and high quality service. So that they know and believe in the brand
“Marketing is a contest for people’s attention” — Seth Godin
So, marketers focus on delivering value to their targeted audience, not everyone. Now when I say Target Audience, I mean the people who will genuinely be benefited from your product or services.
Here comes the first work of a marketer — Identify what is his ideal customer. And reach out to only those people.
India’s one of the top digital markets — @digitaldeepak said — Marketing is about sending the right message to the right person, at the right time.
If you choose all these things wisely, then no one can stop your brand to grow.
Now let’s take about another misconception that people generally have. “Marketing starts after the product is ready to sell”.
I do not agree with this. Marketing actually is the first step that a brand must take, even before building the product.
Confused?
Imagine these 2 scenarios —
You build a product and then find people who can use it.
On the other hand. You first identify the problems people, interested in your niche, face, and then develop a product that will suit them.
Which one is better?
Yes, the second one, as here you won’t be putting a lot of effort into selling the product. Your customers will walk towards you, by themselves.
Now let us see the basic Step-by-Step Procedure of Marketing —
- Identify your niche
- Conduct surveys ads to understand people’s needs
- Build a product that suits their needs (Make sure your product has a high quality, only then it will generate high value).
- Launch the product in the market.
- Advertise the product
- Convert your customers into clients.
These are the fundamental concepts of marketing.
Nowadays, people generally hear about the term Digital Marketing. And think that this is the best way to market their products.
That’s not true. Let me put light on some of the traditional marketing methods that have outstanding conversion rates.
Traditional v/s Digital Marketing
Several companies have been using various traditional marketing methods to draw their audiences’ attention towards their product.
Several Mobile and Car companies put advertisements on TV or newspapers so that they can reach out to a very mass audience. TV and newspaper commercials are traditional ways of marketing and are very beneficial when you have a very large group of people who can buy your product. For example, in case of a car company , the target audience is quite vast, in general it includes people who can be from any background, any place, and coves very wide age-group. Their audience is more inclined toward newspapers and TV, rather than mobile and internet.
So Traditional Marketing strategies are beneficial for those who have a very generic audience and want to reach a very large mass of people at once. Some of the commonly used traditional marketing methods that brands use are radio marketing, TV ads, newspaper ads, billboards, and hoardings.
On the other hand, Digital Marketing is a kind of marketing that involves the internet. And it is best for products/services that target English affluent customers.
I’ll write more about various ways of digital marketing in some other blog.
Now I’m going to write about one of the very effective marketing funnels that’ll help you earn and grow exponentially in your business.
The CATT Marketing Funnel
Everyone wants to earn money, right?
Yes, of course! It is the main reason why we work.
So here is a simple formula that’ll help you become wealthy.
Wealth =n^(CATT)
Here n stands for Niche.
Let’s talk about Niche Selection before we dive into the CATT funnel.
Your niche is the most important thing. You need to choose your niche wisely. It must not be too generic that you have 1000s of competitors in this, at the same time, it must not be something that does not have enough market. Choose something that you are interested in, and it has a decent market.
Once you choose your niche, you have done a lot of difficult work already. Now comes the marketing funnel that will bring you a lot of money.
CATT stands for Content-Attention-Trust-Transition
If you follow this marketing funnel, you will not have to work much on the selling part.
Content must be creative, very relevant and attractive. This content will work like a magnet and pull all your target customers. Content is everywhere. Be it the content in the email that you send, or the content in your social media posts or in your blogs. Your content must be very creative and attractive.
Next comes Attention. Now as you create content, you need to draw people’s attention so that they see your content. For this, we use various ways, like search engine optimization methods, SMO, advertisements, etc. This will bring your content to the sight of customers.
Trust! It’s the most important thing that a marketer must do. By building the trust of your customers, you built a special bond with them. They believe in your and your products. They kind of feel connected with the brand. This can be done by deep marketing.
And the final thing is Transition, which means the conversion of customers. It can be done by using various selling techniques. After building trust, the last step is very easy. As people trust your brand, they tend to buy your products.
As I talked about the Marketing Funnel, many people get confused as to how to create content and how exactly should we attract an audience. There are several ways of digital marketing through which your product reaches your ideal customers. Some of them are -
- Content Marketing
- Email marketing
- Paid advertising
- Search engine optimization and social media optimization
and lot more…
Best outcomes from your digital marketing campaigns can be generated if you combine all the previously mentioned digital marketing methods altogether and prepare your strategy.
Whether you write emails or social media content. Or even do SEO. You have to make sure that your content is attractive. So content marketing goes hand in hand with all the other marketing methods.
Similarly, if you write an email, you can mention your upcoming products, and this will eventually lead to conversion if your readers are interested in the product. You can direct. The crowd from your social accounts to your website. All of this ultimately leads to conversion and an increase in sales.
So it’s better to go for integrated digital marketing methods. The image below will give you a better understanding of Integrated Digital Marketing.
I hope this will give you a better understanding of marketing, and various areas and methods of marketing.
Marketing is not only for companies who want to sell their products. You can also build your personal identity, your own brand, by marketing yourself.
So before I end this article, I’ll give a small introduction about building your personal brand. There’s a term that I learned which is #MASSTRUST
“The secret of marketing success is not secret at all. Word of mouth is all that matters” — Seth Godin
Building your Personal Brand — #MassTrust
As mentioned in the CATT funnel, trust is really important to convert your customers, and even to hold your current clients, so that they can buy some other products and stick with your brand for a long time.
Even for building a personal brand, your need to gain the trust of the audience. For this we follow, the Mass Trust Blueprint
This is how the cycle goes on, and you gain trust and value in the market. It is an ongoing process -
First, you Learn a skill. Whatever niche you choose to work in. First, you need to have enough skills to have a firm grip in that area. Hence, the first step is to learn. Research, explore and learn various concepts related to the area you want to be an expert in. After learning, you practice.
The second is Work. As you have enough skills, you implement your knowledge in the real world. In this stage, you find a job or do some freelancing work. The more your work, the closer you get to your niche.
The third is Blog. The concepts that you learn and the experience that you have got from working with companies or for yourself, you write them in the form of blogs. These blogs are proof of your knowledge that people can see. Writing down your experience and sharing it with others also gives you a better understanding of concepts.
Consult. This is the next thing you do after writing down your knowledge. You consult others and help them to grow their business and career. People will value your advice and will take guidance from you. As you have so much knowledge and experience, people automatically trust you.
Mentorship. This is like consulting many at one time. You get to know a lot of problems that people face, and as an expert, they come to your to provide them with solutions. As people trust you, they believe in your teachings and hence are willing to take guidance from you. When you mentor some people, they spread the word to others, and hence it builds you strong brand identity.
The Final Step — StartUp. This is the final step. As people trust you and you have a great value in the market, you can now start your own startup(If you wish to), and it will grow by itself. (You have to put some effort, though).
But this step does not end here. The cycle goes on.
You can still learn a new skill. You might be consulting some people personally and mentoring others at the same time.
Conclusion
Building a personal brand or marketing a product is a slow process. You have to be consistent and motivated all the time. If you are true to yourself and your customers, by putting in the effort, you can build a great identity. The only requirement is — you must be clear with the fundamentals of marketing.
Knowing that the more value you provide to your audience, the more they will trust you and your brand, the more they will advocate about your brand.
So did this article benefit you?
Share with me what is your niche and how are you planning to implement the Marketing strategy to grow your business.
Thank you for reading!
