"Is Digital Marketing more of Digital or Marketing?" - Dissection of Digital Marketing

What do you think Digital Marketing is? Is it only about using digital mediums to sell a product?

It is much more beyond that. 

What if you’re the best social media manager, you post great quality photos, videos, memes, gifs but don’t know how to communicate to touch the psychology of the audience to buy the product. Are you a marketer?

This article talks about the basics of marketing, its roots, components, mediums, ways, future, how to do, what to do… everything and anything about marketing. 

Let’s get started with the Game of Marketing! 

Marketing, but what’s that?

It’s something that starts even before the birth of a product/service. It travels from:

1. The pre-sale phase – Understanding and fulfilling the needs of the audience by creating the right product, to
2. The sale phase – Reaching the right audience at the right time, to 
3. The post-sale phase – Building relationship and trust within the customer even after the sale

Hence, marketing is the science of reaching the right people with the right product at the right time. 

And it’s actual purpose is to build a brand by capturing a place in the minds of customers. 

Once the brand is built, the need for marketing decreases. Because then the product sells on its own with the help of the base that marketing has created in the minds of customers. 

But the question arises, how to build a strong brand in this competitive world? 

There’s this quote “Don’t try to become the big fish in the big pond. Strive for becoming the big fish in the small pond.” Becoming a leader in our specific niche makes you a better brand. 

So choose your category/niche, and try to become No. 1 in that. E.g. You know Instagram, become the No. 1 Instagram Marketer. Get known for Instagram only and build your brand in that niche. That makes you the big fish (leader) of the small pond (Instagram marketing) 

You can enter into a competitive field as well, but to survive and flourish; it’s better to come up with a Unique Selling Point (USP) 

Once the concept of marketing is sorted, then comes how to choose a medium for the same? Whether to go for Digital marketing or Traditional marketing?

The answer lies in when you have a generic product to be reached to a very wide audience like toothpaste, soap, chocolate – We can go for TV Ads, can be reached to millions at a low cost. 

Let’s look at the numbers: India has 197 mn TVs out of 298 mn homes, with 4-5 members/home = TV has a reach of 800 mn – 1 bn reach. Digital is nowhere close to this. (Source: Digital Deepak Internship Program) 

On the other hand, Digital Marketing is the best medium when our audience is affluent with English speaking with good spending power. This would revolve around a 100 mn audience base (India) 

According to Indian Express, radio is 65% of the Indian Population while Business Standard states there are around 465 mn newspaper readers in India. 

How to measure whether we earned from TV/Radio/Digital advertisements or not? If yes, how much? 

Digital agencies also step back when the day of the report comes up. They can just say that there’s an increase in brand awareness, but who knows how much? 

“Direct Response is the type of marketing designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action” – marketingevolution.com

For instance, 

• Asking for an Email Id on the landing page 
• Newspaper ad with a phone number to call 

This gives us the number of email ids and calls we received, there we can get measurable results for further decision making. 

Keeping an action instigating thing i.e. call to action can get you measurable results and the idea about return on investment (ROI) 

Now is the time to know how to do marketing in the right manner: 

Because our money lies in how we do our marketing. 

Wealth = N to the power of CATT

N – Niche: Choosing a category or genre

C – Content: Creating useful content that attracts the right people from the niche 

A – Attention: Drive attention towards the content using different channels – SEO, SEM, Social Media, Email, Paid Ads, Referrals 

T – Trust – Build trust within the audience with retargeting, marketing automation, tripwires 

T – Transaction – Convert leads into customers with natural sales methods (Because you can’t eat trust, we need that trust to be converted into leads but with natural sales and not forced or cold sales)

The above model is the framework with which we can smoothen our marketing and get better results. 

Now, how to choose the niche?

The niche should be that in which we are skilful/talented + we’re passionate about + there’s also have a market for the same. Even if one is missing, we may lose opportunities. 

Now, you won’t be able to get results when you just do Social Media or SEO or Email. The successful digital marketing model stands on the integrated approach. 

When we strategise the CATT framework and execute it with Integrated Digital Marketing, our marketing gets on auto-pilot mode and runs smoothly like a machine. 

Here we come to the last but the most important part of marketing – Personal Branding! 

Personal branding is branding your self. 

But, why it’s important? 

• “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you” – Zig Ziglar
• People love to listen to people and not from company names/brands
• Personal branding can give rise to many brands with his or her influence but one can’t sell/invest in it.

How to build a personal brand? 

1. Learn a new skill through understanding the concepts, remembering the facts and practising the procedure 
2. Work: Implement the skill in real-world by working for a company or freelancing
3. Blog about your learnings and experience 
4. Consult other businesses 
5. Mentor the ones who want to become like you
6. Startup: Start your own product/service business with the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem and your skills

This ever-going model can help you earn the Trust of Mass – MassTrust! 

The Bottom Line: 

Want to have a safe & sorted career? Learn the skill of marketing. Everything can fade away but humans and psychology can’t. And marketing stands on psychology. 

Learn Marketing -> Implement and leverage right Marketing Channels & Frameworks -> Build MassTrust -> Build Brand. End of Story! Now your product will sell/market on its own. 

Sometimes, the right thing comes to you at the right time. Same happened to me when I got my digital mentor at the right time – Digital Deepak 

He says “Learn. Do. Teach. If you want to remember something better, do and teach. It forces you to organise the concepts in your brain better” 

If you have an intense passion for Digital Marketing, nothing can be better than this program which teaches you, gives you cash-back and also helps you earn money out of it. 

I forgot to market my blog. Don’t forget to leave a comment below ???? I want to see what value I could provide.