Marketers — The Architects that build brands in your mind
Do you feel stuck and reaching out to a mass audience gives you nightmares and chills down your spine?
You have landed on the right page then. I have a magic pill that will calm you down. MARKETING. You read it right, it’s marketing! Now you may ask me how to do that and I don’t know anything about it, I can’t do that, etc.
What if I tell you that you have been doing this unknowingly for others for years now?
Yes!! Remember when in school days when we bought a new compass or a dress or a game, we shared the details with our friends from where we got it, the cost of it, so even they could buy it so you could enjoy it together.
It all starts with word-of-mouth publicity. Word of mouth publicity is one of the oldest yet one of the strongest ways to market anything. This will only be achieved when you deliver the best.
In simpler terms, marketing is all about letting people know about your product/service and letting them know why it is the best fit for them or why they should buy your service/ product.
It would be pointless if you are the best at something but the world doesn’t know you. As our mentor Deepak Kanakaraju rightly said, the best known can beat the best.
I have heard a lot of people say “Khud ki Tarif Kya Karna” which means why to brag about ourselves.
Why not? It will help you drive your business, build new connections and, you will meet new people who will help you grow, and also help you understand a different perspective of life.
Let’s dig a little deeper to understand how marketing is defined technically. Marketing can be defined as efforts taken by the company to promote their product/services using different channels (includes all the social media platforms) to reach as many people as they can. The long-term goal through marketing is to gain the attention of its potential audience, building trust by reinforcing brand loyalty through connections built over time, thus increasing sales.`
Trust me I was one of those people who never thought I will be able to pull off marketing thinking it’s not my cup of tea. But here I am learning more about it.
It feels amazing to push yourself out of your comfort zone and learn how to grow from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
Before we dive in further, let me tell you what marketing is not. “Marketing is NOT Manipulation”.
I repeat Marketing is not manipulating people. You manipulate people when you know your product/ service is not good enough. No marketing strategy will give you profits if you are providing a compromised service or product. Don’t negotiate on the quality. It says more about you than your product/ service.
Also advertising, copywriting and sales are components of marketing. They are a subset of marketing.
Marketing is not just restricted to marketing companies or digital marketing agencies. Every great entrepreneur is a marketer. The best example is Steve Jobs. He is one of my favorite marketers because he fulfilled both the conditions being he delivered the best product and also allowed his audience to know about it. Remember iPod and the popularity it got back then. Go watch one of his videos where he is launching an iPod and the details that he has given to convince the audience why an iPod is better than the rest of its competitors that were available in the market and, why it’s the best.
He proved that the iPod is not the only one but the number one in the market.
Unleashing these marketing secrets will help take one from being a good to a great marketer -
- Method marketing
Have you found yourself caught up in a dilemma about whether I should opt for traditional marketing or digital marketing?
You can opt for Tv marketing ads if you have a generic product that anyone can use. Ensure you use a creative storyline that touches the human emotion. The reach of digital marketing isn’t close to its counterpart. There are about 197 million households in India that have a tv. You can use radio as well, it will help you reach 65% of the Indian population.
Digital marketing can be used to reach approximately 100 million affluent English-speaking people living in tier 1 cities in India, who have a good spending capacity.
Traditional marketing using tv and radio can be used for generic products that are not biased with age and gender. It will help you reach a wider audience base. With tv ads, you really need to be creative while selecting the storyline that will connect people. Tv ads can be a little high on budget.
With digital platforms, you get ample chances to reach the target audience
based on area, gender, and age with a smaller budget.
2. Communication:
Communication is the key to any connection you build in today’s world.
Communication has nothing to do with you knowing fancy words. No big brands have used fancy words to communicate about their generic product. Communicate what you want in the simplest possible way and trust me you will be heard.
Don’t push people where you want to be, meet them where they are.
-Meghan Keaney Anderson
Start your ads with questions you think your customers will have in mind. For example, are you struggling to market yourself in this digital world? Want to know the secret to bring leads for your business? Here is an insider’s guide to surviving in this digital world? What should my USP be? Want to promote your business online?
Ensure that you deliver quality on not just clickbait stuff.
You can’t expect your audience to be there and know everything on their own, else your product won’t be of any use. Meet them where they are and take them on a journey with you where you’ll actually be able to sell your products/services to them. As it’s rightly said real marketing doesn’t look like marketing at all. It’s effortless.
3.CATT Marketing Funnel:
So there is this small secret that I am going to tell you
Wealth = n * CATT
Where -
n = Niche that you select
C = Content you create to attract your audience
A = driving Attention to your content via SEO, paid ads, and social media
T = Trust that you build with your audience
T = Transaction they perform by purchasing your product or service.
In this formula for wealth, the most important is the niche selection. If you can’t figure out the right niche then the CATT won’t deliver you the results you want. You will have the talent, passion but you don’t know to market yourself then it's pointless.
Select your niche smartly and design content of value to people. When you bring value to people’s lives, that is the time they will start trusting you and your brand. This in turn will make the transaction process easier.
4. Integrated marketing
Integrated Digital Marketing is like building a team each having its own best quality that will help the team grow better and more powerful, thus making your revenues multiply like never before. Becoming an expert at each module is difficult but you need to understand how each component can add value to you.
- Search Engine Marketing (Paid ads):
SEM (PPC ads) had caught Digital Media Attention helping the end meet.
2. Search Engine Optimization (Organic Traffic)SEO is getting ranked on google search engines, it is a bit time-consuming but will help you sustain in the longer run.
3. Email Marketing:
Email marketing initially worked but eventually, people started unsubscribing to all marketing messages. But content marketing through email will always be evergreen
4. Social Media Marketing:
Social Media Marketing is one of the most innovative ways to present your product/ service in front of your audience. Creative images, videos, reels, ads, and a lot more.
5. Digital Display Marketing:
These are those ads that you see on a website that has no relevance with the website it’s displayed on. Choose the site your displaying ads on carefully
6. Content Marketing (Team lead):
Content Marketing: More valuable and creative higher are the chances of people knowing about your brands. When you put your best foot forward i.e when adding value in people’s life via content, the content will market for itself.
5) Personal Branding:
It’s the most important thing to build where people are building bots to interact and build real connections and community. This will help you build trust among the audience. People want to hear from people not from brands.
Of Course, you can’t scale a personal brand but definitely scale your business with the help of it. When people trust you, they will invest in your business( buy your services/product). Don’t undervalue personal branding. It will take you a long way. It will help you sustain the market. Keep Hustling!!!!
To summarize, Marketing can change your life significantly if used the rightway. Make the right choices that will help not just sustain the market but also build yourself in this competitive world. I personally believe communication plays an important role in today’s world be verbal, through mails or content conveying the right message using digital mode. Learn to communicate better by selecting the right niche.