The Process of Core Marketing

Do you think marketing is only done in traditional ways?

Is Marketing the same post COVID era?

Marketing is seen as a way of branding and selling products. But the core essence of marketing lies in the effectiveness of the product.

A product owner can spend lots of dollars in marketing budgets but if the product is of not that standard it will not run well in the market.

So this article is about the fundamentals of marketing, the techniques involved, and the economics related to it, the online way of doing marketing which is widely regarded as digital marketing, building a personal brand,having great communication skills and an integrated digital marketing approach.

So often business owners make a mistake to introduce a product in the market without doing proper surveying about what consumer needs and often it fails as it is not fit to the market setup. Thus in this process, he/she loses lots of money, time, and energy. But this is a bad strategy to go with.

This article will be beneficial for bloggers and affiliate marketers, product owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and startup business owners.

I will be discussing some points here to let you know how to do effective marketing in the current scenario.

Fundamentals of Marketing

Marketing is a process of attracting consumers that the product is existing in the market for which marketing is done. Basics of marketing stand on the point of branding and positioning in the market.

Marketing is a process to make your customer remaining with you lifetime by continuously nurturing and adding value even a product is sold to him/her.

Marketing is also an essence of product fit in a market that means the product must sell itself by its quality.

Financial Goal

I want to explain it with an example for better understanding.

A digital coach wants to make 10 lacs in revenue from his premium course.

If he wants to sell his signature course then he must be doing a lead generation campaign on the web space using paid ads by providing a lead magnet like an ebook, checklist, short 3–4 videos to get email ids , name and contact numbers.

So suppose he is providing 1000 people free lead magnets at the cost per acquisition kept at Rs 100 then his total cost incurred will be Rs 100000.

Now after getting email ids of 1000 people he arranged a webinar and in that he added lots of value and came up with his signature course priced at Rs 10000 and he got 100 people to get inside his premium coaching then he generated revenue of Rs 1000000 which is sheer profit as he has not paid any money on advertising so he gained a net profit margin of approx 8x which is amazing.

Impact of communication skills on Marketing

Communication skill is very essential in the marketing arena. If you have good communication skill then it adds a lot of value in the selling process.

I will explain this with a practical example. Suppose I need to sell a mutual fund to a client and he is, for instance, working in an MNC firm so when I am approaching him, I need to be well prepared and if I can explain him in a simple but intense way to showcase how much he can get ROI then high chances are there he will get the fund scheme. Here the product knowledge is of utmost importance but communication skills will play a pivotal role in cracking the deal.

Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing

If I want to make this understanding clear with an instance, will it be more clear I hope so.

Suppose Nike, a premium shoemaking company came up with an advertisement to sell its running shoes for ladies under 30, and that particular model named ‘spike’.

So the company started to resort to traditional marketing methods like creating billboards on the road, TV ads, and magazine ads.

The sales of spike were coming but not to a significant number as expected during the product launch and after detailed analysis, Nike came to know as the sales were not scaleable and not properly targeting.

So the company sat with its marketing head with a strategy to go with digital mediums and they resort to Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, and Facebook ads with properly targeted and within one week they saw a significant surge in their sales and the model ‘Spike’ went on to get a magnificent sales figure within 3 months.

The marketing team had an analysis of the sales process and found that with ads it reached to correct audience and the ads were retargeted to see such a surge in sales figures.

This case study shows clearly the significance of digital marketing over traditional marketing.

Indian Economy in context with Global Economies

As we all know that India is a developing nation with a population of 1.33 billion approx and as the avg age of the population in India is at 27 so fresh mind and young people will boost the Indian economy at a larger pace than many world economics, for example, China, Japan, Russia where the avg age of the population is at a higher number.

If people have a good spending capacity with the help of infrastructures then more business will happen indirectly boosting the country’s economy.

Tier 1 Countries like UK, USA, France and so many countries where the economy is not doing great due to businesses not running well and giving a nightmare situation to job seekers, India is at a balanced situation if compared.

A funnel to create a win-win situation in marketing

A funnel is the most impactful ingredient in marketing if anyone wants to get the best out of it.

I would love to explain this with a technique called ‘CATT’.

CATT stands for content, attention, trust, and transaction.

Content

If I talk about marketing then the first lookup will be the content involved behind the marketing. Contents will be of two types primarily-Video Content and Textual Content.

In textual contents primarily it is subdivided into content writing and copywriting.

Copywriting is the process of formulating words that will bring sales from customers so writing a copy with sales driven mindset along with the benefits and features correctly positioned will bring automatic sales if the product is of good quality.

Content writing is about giving information and engaging customers and creating awareness among the customers with a lot of Infos about the specific product to be sold.

Video marketing can be done using youtube and Instagram and its reach is awesome and target specific audience is aimed to make the customers getting hooked with the product.

Attention

In the process of going through the phase of content marketing, one should understand that the intention behind it to create attention among the customers and it should be properly taken care of.

Trust

If I continuously add value to my customers using email marketing or paid ads or giving freebies and if they find that valuable then the trust will be automatically developed and its the process before actually the product is sold.

If we carry out digital campaigns or write blogs and continuously add value to the lives of customers, the mass trust will get developed which will make your product sale automatically if it fits the need of the customers.

Transaction

If the customers are nurtured properly from the phase of content absorption to creating a trust then this phase will come out so easy as the customer will be ready to take out their credit cards to buy your offerings.

Though this phase may seem the most difficult and crucial, if the previous steps are taken care of , this will fall in place automatically without a big deal.

Integrated Digital marketing approach

Many business owners don't give value to this very crucial approach. But I will showcase it with an example to have a better understanding.

Suppose I want to sell my premium themes in the market which is already substantially overcrowded.

So I started with content marketing in the form of blogs and videos and started showing the importance of themes in a blog post. So the visitors who are visiting my blog with give me his email details with the help of a chatbot installed on my blog’s homepage.

So in this way, I got a lot of email ids and each week I continued to give them value over email and they subscribed to my blog as well as getting regular value additions from emails they will get from me.

To get more subscribers i ran a lead generation campaign using paid ads and got their email ids in the form of providing a freebie.

Now I am sharing my blog posts in social media which is giving a signal to google and suppose I am getting substantial visitors then it will rank my blog post in the top and by this method I am getting traffic from both social media and organically and if these blog posts add value then it will be shared which will also enhance the visitor count.

In this process you can judge the intensity of Integrating all the platforms together in digital marketing with a single approach to sell your product more efficiently.

Impact of Personal branding in selling process

I will explain this with a diagram attached below-

whenever you are learning a new skill to do something different in life then you need to approach a evolution.

step1

Learn a new skill so that it can fetch you later on in some way or the other.

step2

After learning a specific skill,work on that skill ,until you are not practically experimenting things you can’t have the holistic understanding of the skillset you learned.

You can get a job around that specific skill or work as a freelancer to get better understanding of it.

step3

After working with your skillset,create a blog and start writing around it to develop authority in the market and by blogging a personal brand will be developed at a faster pace and it impacts more than anything else.

step4

The next step to do is to undergo one to one consultation who seek your advice and by now you will get traction in the market that people will be ready to pay premium fees only to get a consultation from you.

step5

By this time you will be becoming a substantial big brand and will not get much time,now you need to undertake a mentoring program to cater a large audience seeking your service.In this process you can save time but earn a decent amount by mentoring a larger audience and automatically this will make your branding take a great step forward.

step6

You can now indulge in setting up a startup by providing service or comeup with a product if already you have taken the above 5 steps.

This evolution is extremely important to undertake to become a successful marketer and this is a circle that keeps on going and you need to prudent enough to undertake all these steps to make your journey a successful one in marketing space.

My Experience in sales and marketing

I will share my personal experience in a nutshell that once I came with digital approach in my marketing strategy in my business ,it impacted my business by leaps and bounds with proper targeting,continuous nurturing and retargeting my audiences using digital platforms.

At the end I would like to state some points to view at a glance-

1. Marketing will only proof to be effective if the needs of the customers are properly analysed and a market fit product is launched keeping in mind the requirements of the customers.
2. “Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing” by rebbecca lieb shows the importance of content in marketing.
3. “The aim of marketing is to reduce the need of selling” by Philip kotler shows that if your positioning,strategy and branding is good,the product will sell itself.

I would like to summarize the entire content in a nutshell through top 7 points-

1. If you are capable enough to solve your customer’s problems then it might not be a herculean task to sell your product.
2. The basics of marketing will remain same though the medium might change so think it from the root to make the most out of your marketing strategy.
3. Post Covid ,the world will see a significant traction in digital marketing so getting aligned to it and properly executing it will indirectly bring a significant surge in revenue.
4. India will continue to grow and compete with the global economies,thus investing your time,money and energy in Indian market will definitely fetch a positive outcome.
5. Communication skill will play a crucial role in the days to come as more businesses will resort to online and thus having a good communication skill will keep you stand apart in the crowd.
6. If you want to make a great revenue out of your business,you need to come up with a funnel strategy and follow CATT process to eventually get it done.
7. The evolution of personal branding is to be undertaken to have a holistic view of your business.

Lastly I would love to get a feedback from your end if you have gone through this content and kindly put a comment below.

PS:This is a part of Digital Deepak Internship Program.