Do you think Marketing is just about selling the product?

Are you amongst those people who think Marketing is not a very reputable profession?

Have you thought that the job of Marketers is the same as a salesperson?

Do you believe Marketing to be outdated?

These are a few myths that will be busted after you read this article:)

First, let’s talk about the very basics of Marketing. WHAT IS MARKETING AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

Many of you’ll think marketing is advertising the product and getting the potential customers. However, Marketing has a role throughout the entire process and product lifecycle. It starts way before the product comes into the market place. Marketing is not restricted to selling. The best marketer is the one who keeps his existing customer happy and keeps communicating with them so they remain customers for life long. The very first step of marketing is understanding the customer and their needs and then creating a product or service that fits your customer so well and sells itself.

Amazing things will happen when you listen to your customer.

The one thing that every company should ask themselves is: What business are we really in?

We all have seen so many reputed brands vanishing from the market however all these brands at one point in time enjoyed the very high brand image, billions of customers, decades of market leadership, and innovative business models. But unfortunately, none of these aspects helped them to sustain in the market. The prime reason for the failure of all these well-known and respected brands is only one, which is called ‘Marketing Myopia’.

Marketing Myopia occurs due to the organization’s one-sided and narrow-minded approach, short-sightedness, poor management, and temporary viewpoint while marketing the products of their brand. In simple words, it means when a company views marketing from standpoint of selling a specific product rather than from the standpoint of fulfilling customer needs.

Having any doubts? Okay so let me give you a few examples to make you’ll understand better.

• Kodak lost its market share because of this very underestimated and often overlooked concept of marketing myopia. It ignored the potential of the digital camera and photographic technologies which forced it to fail in the business and Canon, Nikon, etc focused on customers’ digital needs and formulated strategies to triumph over the Kodak. Kodak would also have been enjoying the supreme position in the market today had it focused on customer needs rather than focusing on selling its products to customers.
• Nokia lost its market share to android and IOS.
• Yahoo (worth $100 billion dollars in 2000) lost to Google and was bought by Verizon at approx. $5 billion (2016).

The Marketing Myopia concept leaves us a reminder of the dangers that a company may face if it doesn’t pay close attention to customer needs and industry trends as a whole. To summarize this topic I would like you’ll to remember that businesses don’t need highly sophisticated innovations to sustain in the market, they just need to find out the present need gaps and future needs of the customers.

A SATISFIED CUSTOMER IS THE BEST BUSINESS STRATEGY OF ALL.

Before we dive further into the topic of marketing first let me clear a few concepts of marketing. There are 5 basic concepts.

 

 

1. The Production Concept: The idea of production concept is that “Consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable”. Such an approach is probably most effective when a business operates in very high growth markets or where the potential for economies of scale is significant. Example- Developing countries to output cheaper products in higher quantities. Another example of this is Amazon or retail stores and how their market is flooded with cheap products from China.
2. The Product Concept: The product concept is not so much about the production and business output but focuses more on the customer. Potential customers favor products that offer quality, performance, or innovative features. In this marketing concept, businesses will concentrate on making superior products and improving them over time. Example-Logitech makes very high-quality computer products such as keyboard, mouse, and webcams. These high-quality products are priced higher but people still buy and they get almost free advertisement from independent reviews.
3. The Selling Concept: The selling concept holds the idea that “Consumers will not buy enough of the firm’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort”. Businesses that choose to use this marketing concept must be good at finding potential customers and emotionally sell them on the benefits of their “not needed product.”
4. The Marketing Concept: The marketing concept is the concept of competition. It is a marketing concept that believes that the success of a business depends on the marketing efforts that deliver a better value proposition than its competitors. Here marketing management takes a “customer first” approach.
5. The Societal Marketing Concept: The societal marketing concept holds the idea that “Marketing strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains or improves both the consumer’s and society’s well-being”. It puts Human welfare on top before profits and satisfying the wants.

Thus from this, we can conclude that companies follow a mix of Marketing Concepts in Real-world. Companies don’t follow a single marketing concept rigidly. They usually use a mix of marketing concepts or change it depending on the market situation, competition, and sales numbers.

DIGITAL MARKETING VS. TRADITIONAL MARKETING

At some point or another, we all have been exposed to Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing. So let’s take a short tour and get to know something more about them.

Traditional marketing is nothing but a conventional mode of marketing that helps to reach out to a semi-targeted audience with various offline advertising and promotional methods. It includes the traditional ads we encounter on daily basis.

Digital Marketing or Online Marketing refers to the marketed related work that a business does through the Internet or any electronic device. Any business (regardless of its size) can leverage digital marketing to reach out to their target market, connect with prospects, and convert more of them into customers/clients.

THESE ARE SOME HEAD TO HEAD DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL MARKETING:

1. Marketing Approach: Traditional marketing is more of a personal approach as it is easy for marketers to have a person-to-person relationship for promoting their brand’s name whereas Digital marketing does not require the physical presence of the marketers.
2. Target Audience: Through Traditional marketing, it is easy to reach out to the local audience. Digital marketing lets you reach the targeted audience globally from all over the world.
3. Consumer Interaction: In Traditional marketing, very little interaction is involved as the promotion mediums are not flexible enough to incorporate the customer’s interaction. On the other hand, Digital marketing offers a number of digital platforms to customers/ buyers like social networking sites, e-commerce websites, different apps for collecting their feedback where they can put their views about the product and services.
4. Marketing Cost: Traditional marketing is expensive as it involves printing, radio, television advertisements which costs more to the company. Digital marketing is less costly than Traditional marketing as everything is online and marketing on social media doesn’t cost a penny. Based on the marketing requirement the business can opt for paid ads.
5. Marketing Analysis: The result analysis is complex with Traditional marketing as the companies need to rely on the surveys and the findings of the market. On the other hand, in Digital marketing, data and facts are recorded and stored online which makes it easy for the marketers to analyze the marketing result.
6. Real-time Results: With Traditional marketing methods, the company has to wait for weeks or months to get the results. Digital marketing, however, gives quick results, and thus it is easy to get real-time marketing results.

Summing up all the points we can conclude traditional marketing still has a role to play in advertising, but it will eventually be replaced by a digital world completely.

CATT MARKETING FUNNEL

Wealth = n^CATT

You’ll might be having many questions.

What is a marketing funnel?

What is this formula?

Let’s have a look.

Your ultimate goal is to accumulate wealth and to reach there these are the steps you should follow. This CATT Marketing funnel framework works irrespective of which form of Marketing you choose.

To create wealth,

Niche (n) = When you enter into marketing, you need to have a clear picture of what are you going to market. At this stage selecting a niche becomes important. This is a very crucial stage and if you start at the wrong note, the whole process might not work for you. Your success and wealth depend on which niche you choose.

Content (C): To get people’s attention a good quality content is necessary. It should be worth the time of the audience and relevant and specific. It can be in the form of blog posts, videos, webinars, social media, etc.

Attention (A): After you have selected the perfect niche and created the content, your next step is to grab your audience’s attention. This can be done with SEO strategies, paid advertisements, social media, referrals, etc.

Trust (T): Once you have their attention, build trust with your niche audience. You need to convince them that you are the right person for them. This can be done through deep wires, marketing automation, retargeting and deep marketing.

Transaction (T): Now finally convert these leads into customers using natural sales methods. If you follow the above steps in a proper manner natural sales are bound to happen.

PEOPLE DO NOT BUY GOODS AND SERVICES. THEY BUY RELATIONS, STORIES AND MAGIC.

INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING

What is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Why you need this strategy?

What do you get out of an integrated marketing strategy?

Before we get into the core of this topic lets have a glance at what is Integrated Digital Marketing.

The above flowchart describes the process of integrated digital marketing. Integrated Digital Marketing is like using a single language to speak in different situations. It is a technique and art of combining all digital marketing modules such as Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Paid Media in a unique way such that their power and results go up exceptionally. It attempts to meld all aspects of marketing communication as a unified force.

To simplify it further let me give you an example- Integrated Digital Marketing is like playing cricket. A game of cricket cannot be won only by a single player. It requires teamwork. Similarly in Integrated Digital Marketing, Content Marketing is the captain and the other digital marketing modules are like its team players. In this, the captain does not ask each of its players to play individually and try to increase the company’s sales. Instead, the captain uses every player’s strength combined which creates more efficiency than the sum of the individual achievements of each member.

The above integrated digital marketing process effectively utilizes all the digital marketing technologies available in such a way that the strengths of each method are used in the most effective manner which in turn leads to a much better and profitable output.

The proverb ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ fits perfectly with the ideology of integrated digital marketing. If you don’t bring different marketing channels together it puts your competitors in a superior and more favorable position in the market.

PERSONAL BRANDING

A personal brand is a unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are. It is how you present yourself to the world. Effective personal branding will differentiate you from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. As it is said the best known will always beat the best.

Why is personal branding important?

Personal Branding means to explore and promote a name, but not a company name. It means to create a better image for yourself.

Personal branding is important in today’s economy because you are the most important selling point of your service/product. This is a powerful statement, but true. People trust people, they are looking for someone they can proudly recommend and advocate for. If your personal branding is strong, you will have strangers telling everyone that you are the best of the best.

IF PEOPLE LIKE YOU THEY WILL LISTEN TO YOU, BUT IF THEY TRUST YOU THEY’LL DO BUSINESS WITH YOU

EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL BRAND

Elon Musk has a bigger following than Tesla. Steve Jobs is bigger than Apple.

But the real question is how to reach at this level?

I will explain to you how you can evolve your personal brand with the MassTrust Blueprint.

The first thing is you need to LEARN a skill.

• Once you have learned, implement that skill to get experience. That is WORK. You can do this by taking get a job, working as a freelancer, or working on your own projects.
• By now you must have earned enough knowledge and experience. So now create a BLOG with your name and share your experience and knowledge with others. This is also a very first step in building trust.
• After you have gained trust, you can gradually try your hands in CONSULTING. You can start consulting other businesses instead of working for them. It will also help you gain confidence within yourself.
• Now you might be having many people looking up to you. This is the perfect time to start MENTORING. Mentor people who want to be like you. It will scale your understanding to a whole new level.
• And the final step, start a STARTUP. Start building your agency on your personal brand. By now you have customers, a good reputation in the market, the knowledge and experience to run your company, and everything you need to be a successful entrepreneur.

However, this is a never-ending cycle. This circle never ends. Even when you have your own start-up you need to keep on learning, blogging, and so on.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Marketing is not something you can learn. It is an art and science that needs to be practiced by keeping in mind all the concepts of marketing.

Every business wants to make a big impact or go viral, but make sure you are getting attention for the right reason. Build a personal brand so huge that it becomes an influencer and brand ambassador for the companies you run.

What’s the best way NOT to fail at marketing? Start with a solid strategy. Follow the Integrated Digital Marketing technique.

Across all of these bad marketing techniques, the moral of the story is to always put a lot of thought into your marketing. Be intentional about your message, your offer, and the words and images you use to communicate. Proper marketing can lead you to the road of success.