ARE YOU AFRAID OF MARKETING ?

Whenever the word “MARKETING” comes to our mind, we become a bit hesitant. We see a person standing in front of us, wearing a tie in a smart look, selling some product. This makes us uncomfortable & we feel, it’s not my cup of tea. I can’t do marketing; I can’t go door to door to sell something. All these feelings make us to choose some other career opportunity.  

Let me take you an old saying: Mother also doesn’t feed the baby, unless baby cries.You must be thinking, I have deviated from the topic & you must pull me back to the point. Okay, that’s fine. Let me reassure that I am well within the preview of the topic. My point is that marketing starts from the moment we step into this awesome world. Baby steps in this world with a an amusing sound, we take it as, baby is crying & we feel happy because baby makes us feel it’s presence. In some cases, baby is not crying, doctors / nurses make effort to get the baby crying.  Mother starts feeding the baby since baby is crying. Near & dear ones start showering love & affection to the baby just by seeing some movements in baby’s body. I mean baby start marketing of emotions, am I right?                                                                                                                                                                                              

Friends, you might not have realized but the fact remains that Business involves transaction of Love, Feeling, Emotion, Knowledge, Technology and Product & Services. Marketing is the fulcrum of any business & hence marketing deals with everything from love, feeling to technology and product & services. Since we have learnt marketing emotions from the very beginning, we can’t say we don’t know marketing. Marketing is in our blood; only thing we need is to sharpen our marketing knife.  

With the fast changing age, we need to understand that traditional marketing will not serve the purpose in the current scenario. An efficient marketing technique is the need of hour. With the technological advancements, evolution in marketing technique is bound to happen. Currently, we are hearing a lot about Digital Marketing. It has become very popular, but to sustain in the days to come, we need to look beyond that. As such we shall be discussing future course of action in Marketing Field.                                                                          

Hope I am clear to you, you have been marketing since your birth & there is no reason for you to have “Fear of Marketing”. What is needed most is to sharpen our knowledge of marketing at regular intervals & thinking beyond current marketing techniques to have an upper edge in the market.   

You are very right in questioning, why do you need to go in details of marketing?                   The person, who is doing marketing job, needs to learn all theses. Here, I am looking at it   from a different perspective. Whether you are a student, employee, businessman, innovator or an entrepreneur, you need to develop your marketing skill. In every sphere of life, one has to do marketing of ideas / thoughts / emotions / views / product or services. To become successful in one’s own life marketing skill is one of the most important skills.

TRADITIONAL Vs DIGITAL MARKETING:

Marketing can be done in traditional way or on digital platform. Every mode has its own advantage & disadvantages.  For marketing of Generic products, traditional marketing such as TV advertisement campaign works well, as it has wider reach at low cost. However, for marketing of innovative products, digital marketing is a better option.

Most of the people, who run ads, don’t know whether ad works or not. Marketing Executives in big companies run branding campaign, which don’t give specific & measureable results. Increase in “Brand Awareness” is also not measurable.

DIGITAL MARKETING:

But to have a wider reach, with less effort, Digital marketing has an upper age. Whenever we think of Digital marketing the picture below come tour mind –

With the help of social media one can reach to wider population. Young generation loves to use social media platform for business transactions. In current scenario, with an average age of around 27 years, India is considered as young country. The younger the country, the more is the growth of the country. Our country is a developing country & we have excellent opportunity carry out business transactions digitally.

To cope up with the fast growing atmosphere, investing time & energy on learning Digital Marketing is a must. Marketing education has a long self-life, because it is rooted in human psychology. It is a topic that has existed since the dawn of civilization, since the first market square appeared in a village. It is the most valuable investment in a business, because it gives direct returns. Everything else like production, manufacturing, HR, accounting, administration is an expense that doesn’t give immediate ROI. That’s the reason; marketing can’t be outsourced completely to a marketing agency. To be a successful businessman, one needs to be a successful marketer. In case you are an employee & you have good marketing skill, you have a safe career. No business can survive without proper marketing.

To have a good marketing skill, one needs to have good communication skill. The better one communicates with the prospective clients; the better is the chance of business getting closed.

NICHE AREA:

For an effective marketing, we need to do business in our niche area. Niche area means such product or services for which we have talent (expertise), we have passion to work on such product & services and most importantly there is need (demand) of such product / services in the market. The below picture illustrate the niche area. Any business can grow multi fold, if it’s based on selection of product / services based on niche area concept.

DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING:

 “Direct response is type marketing, designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to make a specific action” ……. Marketing Evolution.com

Direct Response Marketing involves –

1.   An ad in the newspaper with phone no. to call

2.   A late night infomercial with a phone no. to call & order.

3.   An ad leading to a landing page with a lead form

4.   A sales page with a product with a link to purchase the product.

CATT Marketing Funnel:

 To enhance, digital marketing concept, a technique called CATT Marketing Funnel is very effective module.

Let me first explain what each letter of “CATT” stands for.

“C” Stands for CONTENT. To attract attention of the people, one need to create useful content on the product or services, you wish to market, in the form of blog posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars etc. Content creation helps you to fine tune your thought on the topic. The more clarity you have, the more confident you are in talking to your prospects.

“A” stands for ATTENTION. Once your content is ready, you need to draw attention of people to your content. This can be done by using SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media, Paid Ads & Referrals.

“T” stands for TRUST. Once you have drawn attention of people on your content, you need to build trust in your leads. Trust building is aided by Trip wires, marketing automation & re- targeting.

“T” stands for TRANSACTION. After building Trust in the leads, they are required to be converted into customers with natural sales method. This is the final step have business transaction.

CATT marketing funnel gives formula for wealth generation as under –

           WEALTH = n^ CATT

Here, “n” stands for NICHE            

To excel in Business, you need to find out your niche area. It is the outcome of three specific components, i.e. Talent, Passion & Market. This means your niche area is for the product or services for which you have talent, you have passion for it & there is market demand for that. Success of any business majorly depend on due research on one’s niche area. A well researched niche area is the foundation of a successful business endeavor.

Once Business is established, wealth generation becomes the prime object & hence wealth generation formula becomes important. The formula says, wealth is equal to NICHE tends to the power CATT. As such wealth generation is done by powering niche with CATT.  

We can observe that how wealth can be generated by applying the concept of working on Niche, Content, Attention, Trust & Transaction in a cyclic manner.  

                                                                                                                                                     Hope, I am clear to you on how to generate good wealth from a business endeavor.

So far we have discussed various techniques of Digital Marketing. Most of the digital marketing professional uses one particular method, based on their experience.

But, I am of firm opinion that we can’t get the desired result from any one of the techniques independently. Integration of various techniques gives optimum result in any situation.     For your information, I have applied the concept of integration in water conservation in industries to conserve water, which came out as Novel Idea in the field of Green Technology.

Let us explore the concept of Integration of Digital Marketing.  

Integrated Digital Marketing:

In Integrated Digital Marketing, Content Marketing becomes the point of Central focus. All other techniques support it to finally close the business. Optimization of Content marketing is done with the help of Search Engine Optimization, E-mail Marketing & Social Media. Paid Advertisement is used to boost Content Marketing & Email marketing. Content marketing & Email marketing results in converting Prospect into Customer and in turn closing the sell. Thus we see, Integrated Digital marketing utilizes various technique in a particular manner to explore business growth in an effective & efficient manner.

CONCLUSION:

Any business, whether it is a Regular or Start-up Business, we need to understand digital marketing in detail and focus on optimum utilization of Digital Platform. Integrated Digital Marketing is the key to success. Digital Marketing has an edge over traditional marketing as it enables greater reach with much less effort, in considerably little time. It has wider reach & it successfully captures young generation. In our country with majority of young population, it has a wide scope. Young population is addicted to Digital marketing. And hence success of Business in short span of time, lies with Integrated Digital marketing.

Friends, I think now with a deep knowledge of Marketing you have no reason to be afraid of Marketing. Marketing is in your blood. You just need to practice it & go on growing in a business on continual basis.

Hope you must have liked this article. Please don’t forget mention your views in the comment box. Your feedback is very important to me. This will encourage me to write anther useful article next week. All the best to you in becoming a successful Marketer!!