TheUnconventional Guide to Marketing Fundamentals
“Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” — Beth Comstock, Former CMO & Vice Chair, GE
Marketing is not as easy as it seems.
You can’t just make a product, put it on your website, and expect it to perform. There are some concepts and techniques that you need to use in order for your product to sell well. In this article, we will explore the same!
This article is for you if you are a human! because we all are selling one thing or the other all the time! Be it ourselves ( during job interview or finding a new partner) or our product, or if we are working for a client. Everyone should and must know marketing fundamentals.
Some Fundamentals
Most of the people or companies take the traditional way of marketing. They create the product and then market it to the customers, or they pick a product that is already selling well in the market, remake it with few improvements and sell it at a lower price.
Though this type of marketing works for few, but it is not the most efficient and effective way to sell. Instead the best way is to first survey the market, the consumers and determine the need of a particular product or service. This will help us create a product that will fit the need of the consumer and will lower the amount of effort required to sell it.
Also, some people focus all their energy on acquiring new customers and stop providing value to old customers. This is something which should be avoided at all costs. According to a survey, it is ten times more costly to sign up a new customer than is to keep an existing one. The more we keep our existing customers happy, the more we will be able to sell to them.
The aim of marketing should be to make selling superflous. If your product is the leader in that category, it will sell itself, and will convert the customers into brand ambassedors. Word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing available out there.
Traditional VS Digital Marketing
Most companies that sell a generic product like a cell phone or detergent go for traditional marketing which involves selling through TV ads, Radio, hoardings, etc. Surprisingly, TV has a reach of close to 1 billion people, with radio having a reach of 65% of Indian population. Newspapers have a reach of 465 Million People.
Digital Marketing on the other hand is the best medium to reach the affluent English Speaking population in India with spending power. They are around 100 Million in number.
CATT Marketing Funnel
Catt funnel works on a basic formula.
Wealth= n^CATT
[n] Niche: Here you select a very particular category of people who’s problem you will solve. The more narrow audience you have, the better you will be able to market your product.
[C] Content: Content creation will be your asset and will attract relevant people to your tribe. After they consume your content, you can redirect them to your product!
[A] Attention: You have to drive attention(traffic) to your content using strategies like SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads, and Refferals.
[T] Trust: You need to build trust with your audience by providing them value regularly and using methods like Marketing automation, and retargeting.
[T] Transaction: After you have selected your niche, you have put the content, you have the attention and trust of your target customer, the final part is the transaction where you will close the sale.
Integrated Digital Marketing
This is an extremely fundamental and effective marketing technique. Here all the methods of markting and sales are integrated, such as Email marketing, paid ads, content marketing, social media, SEO and all these work together to complete our sale and sell our product.
We can use paid ads to advertise our free content, and get those people into our email list. You should have content everywhere to do that. After driving attention to your content, you build trust using email marketing. Finally you will transact with them using sales and conversion.
The CATT funnel is extremely linear and to use it to its best potential we combine it with integrated digital marketing. This framework is the engine which drives the CATT funnel.
Personal Branding
If you are good at something, lets say making cinematic videos, and you never upload it anywhere, just keep it in your computer, then no one will ever hire you as a videographer, because no one will know about your talent!
People like to hear from other people, not from brands, because people connect with other people. Someone would more likely reply to an email received from a person than one received from a brand.
Jeff Besoz who was the former CEO of Amazon had a bigger following than Amazon itself. This is the power of personal brand.
A couple of downsides of personal brand are that it cannot be invested in and it cannot be sold. But, at the same time, a personal brand can give rise to many brands from his/her influence.
Also a personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassodor for the companies that they run.
Communication
Communication is a skill that has unlimited benefits. It will help you in each and every aspect of your life, be it job, relationship, travel, study, there is no end. It also helps a lot in conveying your ideas accross the table and sell your product.
There are a few ways using which you can build your communication skills:
- Read more books, choose the genre which interests you more and start with fiction if you want to build a habit.
- Try to talk to yourself in your mind in english.
- Write more, you can journal or write blogs.
- Watch Sitcoms repeatedly. Best one is The Office. Watch it till you die.
- Learn one new word daily, OR start reading Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis.
In conclusion, marketing is not that complex if you use all the methods and frameworks correctly. It will inevitably result in more sales and help you grow your brand more! :)
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