Digital marketing is more of digital or marketing?
What are the differences and similarities between Digital vs Traditional marketing?
Is marketing something that excites you but do not have much clarity?
Well, marketing is not new; it is being practiced from hundreds of years. It has always been about need, want & demand. Are consumer aware of their needs or they need to me made aware?
Need is a problem that requires solution; remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ? Now for marketing perspective, just compare it with an iceberg model. The visible iceberg is the part where consumer feel that need and called ‘Felt Need’ where as the underwater portion is called ‘Latent Need’. Here, felt need is something consumer is aware and latent need is something they need to be made aware.
Want is also a need; it is not at psychological level. Food for hunger can be a need where as a Burger, Ice cream may be a want.
Now, Demand is a want, which is substantiated by willingness and ability to pay. It is something that a consumer agreed to pay; associated with a price.
So it becomes a responsibility on the part of marketer to focus on need, want and demand part of consumer. It is just about consumer. A product has to be customer/consumer-centric; ensure to make your Customer Avatar.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that product or service fits him and sells itself.. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous” – Peter Drucker
Perception plays a major role in marketing. Focus on the quality product; it will be easier to market. Perception here is nothing but Just noticeable difference. Did you notice that Parle-G do not reduce the price of a packet of biscuit but keep on reducing weight from time to time (packing to the price). So, it is about Absolute vs relative sensation, Sensory adaptation etc.
Important to observe here is that focus must be on product. A great product will always have a high NPS score. It will be advertised through word of mouth and consumer would become its promoter.
Advertising, copywriting, sales are various components of marketing.
I believe you have understood what need to be the point of focus now. So it the the product and its brand. How do you create a brand? Do you think it is easy to be number one or two (usually every market is 2 player market in the long run) ? Of course not. You might have heard about Blue-Ocean strategy. Yes, it is easier to become the only one.
Create a category for yourself. If not possible to create a entirely new one, create a sub category for yourself. Google created a category of search engine for itself. Zomato created a category or sub category of food search engine. This unique angle is very important as you are going to enter the same market but with an unique perspective.
Therefore work on a brand that has good product. Brand here can be personal or professional. However, personal branding mostly works. Note that people want to hear from people. Work on being known to as many as possible. In many situation, a personal brand is bigger than the product brand. Elon Mask is a bigger brand than Tesla. Digital Deepak is a bigger brand today than many digital marketing companies. This in fact enables the person to become an ambassador for the products and in a position to influence the consumer.
Thinking how this can be done ? How to create a personal brand in today’s digital world? Let me explain..
Learn — A new skill, things through concept, fact and procedure. Understand concepts, remember facts and practice procedures.
Work — Use the new skills in work, implement your understandings in a real work scenario. Note that Work = On the job / along the job
Blog — Write what you have implemented. Writing will make you understand better and also develop your brand
Consult — Consult business and solve their unique scenarios; always better than working for them as you can experience multiple problems/scenarios through consulting
Mentor — Becoming a mentor will not only help other but also help yourself the most; take your understanding to different level
What are the other important skills for marketing ? Do you get worried about communication skill when I have mentioned this ? If yes, do not worry. It is important to make a connection with a person; not necessarily speak in sophisticated English, hi-fi vocabulary or grammar. Focus on pure communication to connect such as need, want and demand of consumer by understanding customer really well.
It is also important to have a very good understanding of economy; global as well as local (your country, target location). Decision making need to be based on economy. Usually a country’s economy goes up once average age goes up. India is youngest major country in the world; so it has very high potential. Set a financial goal based on a segment of consumer mix. Work on available customer base as well target customer to start with.
For example, India is divided into 3 segments and key points for a digital marketer would be to notice would be..
- India has approx 560 million users of the Internet, 500 Million users of smartphones.
- India has 10-15 million Amazon subscribers.
- India has 20-25 million online shoppers.
- Your target customer with buying power will be around 30-50 million until 2025.
Target customers have credit cards, laptop/desktop, car make more than 5 lakhs per year of income - All your targeted customers are concentrated in the top 10 cities of India.
- If your target customer should speak English, approx 10% population of India speaks English.
Here, digital marketing is the best medium to reach out to 10% of affluent English speaking population of India with high spending power ~100 Million users.
Have you noticed that you have just moved out of traditional marketing such as Radio, TV, Newspaper and got into targeted digital marketing.
Question now is how would you do this targeted marketing ? I would strongly suggest you to follow the CATT marketing framework with doubles up as marketing funnel as well.
Wealth = n^CATT
Here,
Step1: Choose the right Niche (n) for success and wealth
Step2: Create useful Content (C) in form of blog, videos, page etc.
Step3: Drive attention (A) or traffic by using social media, adds, referrals, SEO etc.
Step4: Build Trust (T) with trip wire, marketing automation, retargetting
Step5: Convert leads into consumer [Transaction (T)]
Let me quickly explain a bit on selecting the right Niche. It must be a subset of your talent, target market and your passion.
Here, Integrated digital marketing is the engine to drive this CATT funnel.
It is the combination of various digital marketing channels
Thinking how this can be done? Name itself suggests this – Integration.
Work on
- Create content
- Optimize search engine (SEO)
- Generate paid adds
- Email marketing
- integrate your content to social media by buttons
- Convert to sale
It is a cycle strongly connected by content, which is for a strong product.
After all the above are accomplished to a large extent, time to create a startup. It can be branded on the product as well as person. If your personal brand is bigger, then have this start up in your name. Only thing is that if you would not be able to sell a personal brand later. However, a strong personal brand can also give rise to multiple other brand. Here is MassTrust Blueprint
There is no shortcut to success.
This 10 minute read is not sufficient to make you a good Digital marketer; however it should has given you a bit of clarity about digital marketing and gets you more interested in it. If you are able to follow steps mentioned above, start something along your current work. I would also recommend the following books..
- Economics 101 – Alfred Mill
- The Adweek Copywriting Handbook – Joseph Sugarman
I would also recommend to enroll in one of the best Digital Marketing course and Internship offered by Digital Deepak.
Let me know what you feel in ‘Comment’ section.
Note: For Digital Deepak Internship