Why Digital Marketing Is Important Now More Than Ever

Are you struggling to get back on track as an entrepreneur post-pandemic? Do you think the conventional marketing tools aren’t helping you much to gain back your ground? Is the answer to these questions a thumping yes? Then you must adopt digital marketing right now.?

If you are unsure how digital marketing can help you over traditional marketing, then keep on reading to get some answers.

“ Business has only two functions- marketing and innovation.” - Milan Kundera.

So as this famous writer rightly states, marketing is inevitable for any business, and in this indispensable digital era, we gotta innovate and invest in digital marketing asap.

Digital marketing works on the same fundamental principles of marketing but is less generic and gives more instant results, helping you create a long-lasting brand value.

Fundamentals of Marketing

To begin with, marketing is actually sending the right message to the right person at the right time. And what better way than to do it with digital marketing, where you can precisely reach out to your target customer through various integrated digital marketing tools, thus creating potent instant communication with them.

Communication brings us to our second principle: marketing is not just selling products; it also has constant two-way communication with your existing or prospective customers to retain/convert them. This we can very well accomplish through social media engagement, email marketing, and so on.

In addition, marketing is basically a means to an end, and that logical end is creating a brand value for your product or services. Consistent, relevant content creation helps in doing that- where you empathise with your customer's pain points and offer them the best solution to their problems. This gradually helps in creating a brand value that they can trust enough even to endorse it.

Another essential aspect of marketing is that it is a game of perception that is woven around the reality of a product that is an excellent value for money to its customers. So a great product will be its own brand ambassador, like Apple, as people already know the credibility of an Apple product; you don’t have to push that perception through advertising. So marketing will only help if you have a good product.

When Is Digital Marketing Better Than Traditional Marketing?

So we saw that the basic principles of digital marketing are not any different than traditional marketing. However, suppose your product is not a generic one like an automobile or a mobile phone and is a more personalised service or product like a coaching centre for IELTS preparation or a financial consulting outfit. In that case, digital marketing works the best, as it offers a very customised reach and better response generation.?

Moreover, digital marketing is more effective in an urban setup with a moderately English-speaking demography.

Next, let’s understand the very basic digital marketing framework, which is CATT Marketing Funnel. As a student of ever-evolving digital marketing, what remains constant is these four…rather five concepts that we will touch upon now.

CATT Marketing Funnel and Framework

This digital marketing principle states that your wealth creation depends on the four factors (content, attention, trust, and transaction) that you apply to the niche market that you choose for your products and services.

First and foremost, identify the target market, and narrow it down into a niche. This will help in better penetration and, hence, improve the chances of converting potential customers into actual customers.

Secondly, create content that is relevant to that niche, talk about their pain points, empathise with them, educate them about the solution that you have for it and then, in the end, give a call to action.?

Then ‘A’ in CATT is for attention. Grab their attention through social media, SEO, referrals, paid ads, and so on.

This will help you build trust with the consumer. Marketing automation, re-targeting, and tripwires are some of the ways to strengthen this trust.

And finally, this trust will help you convert your lead into your client or customer, and it will all be done organically, without pushing anything into their faces.

Now that we have understood these five variables of the very linear framework of the CATT marketing funnel, now let’s navigate through various interlinked sub-categories of digital marketing.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Any good digital marketer will tell you that digital marketing is not a straight-line process. It has various aspects, and you have to come up with correct permutations and combinations of email marketing, paid ads, content marketing, social media, or SEO. None of them can work in isolation for lead conversion. These all elements of digital marketing have to work in tandem to derive results.?

For instance, through paid ads, you get your target audience to sign up for your free webinar; for that, they need to subscribe to your email marketing. You take them to your blog through your emails, where you generate interest for your product and get their attention. That webinar then might help you get that trust, and then you get conversions. This is called integrated digital marketing.

So if you are wondering why digital marketing is not working for you, then you need to introspect and see what you aren’t doing right in this very integrated process, and then it will be easy to fix the problem.

Now that we have talked about all the basic premises of digital marketing, it is only natural to end this conversation today with an understanding of personal branding. Human beings are a sucker for stories; we are always curious about the lives of others. This curiosity is actually an excellent tool for building a personal brand.

Building Personal Branding

People want to hear from people, not from brands. They relate more to human stories, so it's always good to create a personal brand for your client as a digital marketer. Personal brands can also work as influencers.?

There is a roadmap to creating a personal brand.

• First and foremost, identify a skill or learn one that will be your USP.
• Then act on it. Apply that skill in the real world. Like if you are a language coach, then teach a few people. Get hands-on experience.
• The third step would be to start writing blogs on your core competency.
• Then you can start consulting. It would be a one-to-one session with your clients or customers.
• Once you have consulted quite a lot of people and have gained confidence, you can start mentoring a group of people.
• In the end, you might go ahead with your start-up.

This systematic approach will help you create a personal brand for yourself in due time.

In the end, I’d say that digital marketing is simply inevitable, and I’m sure this post must have helped you see that quite clearly. However, if you have anything to add to it or have any other opinions, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to drop in your comments.