A founder’s starter guide to Marketing!

Do you have a brilliant product/service to sell? Do not forget the ONE thing that will make your product stand out and reach out to the right target audience. Marketing. This article is written for anybody who is either planning to start their own business or is already running a business. It will help the founders (or future founders) to understand the lesser-known facts about marketing as we know it. I will be doing a quick crash course with you, on understanding the importance of marketing, and how you can practically execute it.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” 

– Peter Drucker

Let us first understand what marketing is.

Is it Advertising? Is it Digital Marketing? Is it posting on Instagram? Is it creating brochures?

Marketing is a combination of 4 different elements: known as 4 Ps of Marketing - Product, Price, Place and Promotion

Let’s understand the basics of Marketing before learning how to market your business.

• Marketing is pure science. Do not confuse it with creativity!
• It always starts with first understanding the customer and their needs - which leads to creating a product that fits. So, take a step back - understand who it is you are marketing to, and then create a product, that fits your customer.
• It is particularly important to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time! Otherwise, your efforts are wasted!
• Do not forget - marketing is not just selling, but retaining the existing customer, as they have already invested in your business. It is important to continue marketing to them after they have purchased your services. Ultimately, they are the ones who will buy more of your services. You must develop #masstrust.
• Marketing is means to an end. The purpose of it is to build a brand and capture a position in the minds of your customer.
• Marketing is a game of perceptions. The product is rooted in reality, and the product is greater than marketing. If you have built a great product, it will sell itself.
• Your customers are your biggest brand ambassadors.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what marketing is, let us dive right into how best to market.

More specifically, understand Digital Vs. Traditional Marketing

Purely in terms of reach, here is the estimated reach for different platforms:

• Newspaper - 465 mn people
• TV - 800 mn to 1 bn people
• Radio - 65% of India
• Digital - 100 mn people

You will see that there is a big difference in the reach between traditional platforms such as Newspaper, TV, Radio and Digital platforms, however, both serve a different purpose.

• If you have a mass product that requires countrywide penetration, along with big marketing budgets, go for traditional media. Digital media would never have that kind of penetration in the country.
• If your product requires targeting a specific demographic, and the budget is limited; digital is the way to go.
• Even though the internet users in India are much less than those listening to Radio, for eg, you would be able to reach the right people, at minimum spends.

Create Wealth Using the CATT Marketing Funnel

Wealth = n^CATT

[n] Niche: Your success and wealth depend on the niche you choose. The idea is to solve the problem of your customer via your product and your niche.

[C] Content: Content is the KEY to connect to your tribe or your target audience. You must create useful content that attracts people from your niche to you. The content can be social media posts, blogs, videos, live streaming across platforms.

[A] Attention: Once you have created interesting content, you must make sure that you are driving attention/traffic by using tools such as SEO, Social media, paid ads, or referrals.

[T] Trust: You must build trust with your audience using various marketing automation tools and retargeting.

[T] Transaction: The final step of this funnel framework is Transaction. You must convert your leads into customers with natural sales method. If the above process is followed, then sales should happen in a natural/organic way. It will not be forced. But you must make sure that the sales tools are in place - your brochure, calling mechanism, etc, so that sales become a seamless process.

Choosing a good niche is fundamental because that multiplied by Content, Attention, Trust and Transaction will determine how much wealth you can create.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing has many components within it, such as Content Marketing, SEO, Paid Ads, Social Media, and Email Marketing.

To achieve success, these components mustn’t be looked at individually, but in an integrated manner. Hence, the Integrated Digital Marketing framework.

Integrated Digital Marketing Framework

This framework should work like an engine that will run your CATT funnel.

At the centre is the content. Create good content, and then run paid ads to grab the attention of your target audience. Post your content on social media.

Grab attention via content, rather than asking people to transact directly by running ads with your products/services listed.

Then get people to sign up and share their email ids, and build trust by communicating with them via email marketing.

The transaction then will happen automatically – which is the Sales & Transaction part.

All of the above elements need to happen simultaneously, as different customers are in different lifecycles of interacting with your brand.

The CATT Funnel framework we learnt about is a linear one. To execute it, we need the Integrated Digital Marketing Framework.

Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint

The best known will always beat the best. Unless people know about you, they will not hire you. You need to market yourself and build your personal brand with time.

People want to hear from people, and not from brands. It feels unnatural to hear from a logo, instead of a person. They need to know your story and who you are. You need to associate yourself with your company. A personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassador for the companies they run.

MassTrust Blueprint

This is the process and evolution of a Personal Brand.

Step 1: Learn a new skill, through concepts, facts, and procedures. You must understand the concept, remember the facts and practise the procedures.

Step 2: Work – Put your newfound skills to work. Go from practice to implementation.

Step 3: Blog – Write about what you have learned and experienced through work. This will also accelerate your personal brand development.

Step 4: Consult – Start consulting businesses and other brands, instead of working for them.

Step 5: Mentor – Mentor others who want to become like you. This will only happen once you have completed the above steps in the evolution blueprint. It will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.

Step 6: Startup – Start your own product or service business with the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem and your own skills.

This process is called a MassTrust Blueprint, coined by Digital Deepak.

Conclusion:

I urge you to re-read this article, as many concepts will become clear. And once you have a good understanding of the basics of marketing, combined with topics such as CATT Funnel, Integrated Digital Marketing and Developing your personal brand via MassTrust Blueprint; you will approach marketing with a fresh mind, and bring in wealth to your business.

Also, every entrepreneur must be in sync with the historical and current global and India economic situation, as it will help you make some important decisions for your business.

Because I could not talk about it in the article, I’m sharing some names of books for further reading that will help you.

1.     Economics 101, by Alfred Mill

2.     Currency Wars, by James Rickards

3.     Capital – in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty

Hope you found this article useful. Please let me know in the comments if there are any other marketing tools that you have used, and other budding entrepreneurs should know about?

Disclaimer: This article is a part of the DigitalDeepak.com Internship program