How to Learn digital marketing
The law of marketing
“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
Marketing starts before creating the product
Marketing is not something that you do when the product is ready, instead marketing comes at the very beginning.
It starts with finding out your niche in the sub-market. Niche is a very specific segment of the market for example, a high protein diet is a niche in the sub-market of health and fitness. It is very important to select a niche because, in a highly competitive sub-market, the product eventually becomes a commodity and since you cannot offer any differentiation sometimes you have to sell your products at a loss as well. Therefore you must select a niche so that you can serve your customer as well as keep some profit.
How to select a niche
Now you must be thinking okay i get that but do i select my niche?? Your selected niche must meet 3 things, your passion, talent and market.
Let us look at each of them
- Passion- while selecting a niche it is important that you are passionate about the niche. So that you can work effectively and work does not seem tiring. If i am interested in fitness then i should not choose gaming as my niche. Let’s get to the next one.
- Talent — just having passion will do you no good unless, you have the talent. You must acquire a relevant skill set that will help you dominate the selected niche and provide the best service possible to the customer.
- Market — now you have passion as well as talent but there is no market to serve. What would you do? Therefore it is necessary to ensure there is market demand for your product/service.
Choose a niche that satisfy all three and you are good to go.
Right message> Right person> Right time
Now you have chosen your niche you must focus on getting the right message to the right person at the right time.
Right person is the one who is in problem and your product/service would help them get out of the problem. You call him/her your dream customer. You can list out all the possible features you think your dream customer would have. And the next step is to find where they are hiding. People like to spend time on the internet with groups they share their values with. So now you know your dream customer and places they gathering on.
You have get your message out in front of them with hook that grabs their attention long enough for you to show them your offer.
Don’t just sell
Instead marketing is about building rapport, relationship with your dream customer and helping them solve their problem. All while keeping your existing customers happy so that they keep coming back to you again and again and again.
Never let marketing become more important than the product
“ great marketing of a bad product will kill you product faster”
Marketing is important but not more than the product. One must invest time to prepare a good product because it is said that one unsatisfied customer can lose you 10 potential customers. Though one product cannot satisfy every customer, having a good quality product will at least make them give you a chance to correct yourself.
If you build a great product that gives customers results they want, help them solve their problem, make them reach their goal, it will converts your customers into brand ambassadors. Now they will spread word of mouth about your product/service and this is best kind of marketing. Try to create a good perception of your brand.
traditional vs digital marketing
Even though digital marketing is future of marketing and is growing at rapid pace, still traditional marketing has not gone away. For a generic product traditional marketing still offers best marketing solution. If we look at the stats, in india,print newspapers have reader base of about 465 million individual and digital marketing can reach upto 100 million people only therefore it has a long way to go.
The more and more people start using digital devices like smartphones, laptops, gadgets, the more digital marketing opportunity will start coming into pictures.
traditional and digital marketing have their own advantages and disadvantages therefore you must pick one that suits the best.
CATT marketing funnel
wealth = n^CATT
where,
n = niche which also ensures wealth and success (as they say riches are in the niches)
C=content(everything you show to your audience i.e.post,video, lead magnets, webinars)
A=attention. Drive attention to your content using tools like SEO, social media, paid ads, refferals etc.
T= trust. Once you have audience’s attention, stat building rapport, trust and relationship with them
T=transaction. Finally to sustain the business, convert those leads into customers
All these things combined in a proper way, will ensure success and wealth in your business and life.
Integrated Digital Marketing (IDM)
Now there are multiple ways to do marketing it can be done through social media, Paid ads, SEO, email marketing etc. many times one focuses on one type of marketing more than the others. One says ‘social media is best marketing tool’ while others say ‘No!! email marketing is best’. However best results are obtained when one uses all of these tools and integrates them in such a way that whole setup becomes a digital marketing machine.
This is called Integrated digital marketing. In this you not only focus on one tool but whole lot and arrange them, sync them so that you can get your message out to the customer, generate leads and make sales seamlessly. You are using the best possible tools to reach out to your audience.
Personal Branding
Personal branding is where you establish yourself as a brand so that you connect with the audience on personal level, they can feel human connection and automatically start trusting you. As it is said best known will always beats the best and hence you must be going in front of people, telling them what you can do for them, how you can help in their journey to achieve certain result.
When you share your journey with them, you tell them what hurdles you faced, how did you overcome them, then you are becoming empathetic, people can relate with you.
Evolution of personal brands
Now we understand what is personal branding, why is it important, but how to build it
Here are the steps-
1. Learn
it all starts with learning. Learn a new skill or polish the exciting one you have. Read books, do courses, attend webinars, listen to market leaders, etc.
2. Work
once you learn the next thing is to put it to work. You understand better when you practise. Do freelancing, work in firm or start your own things. Test whatever you have learned.
3. Write
as you are putting your skills to test,you can document the journey so that later on it will help people who will through same problem as you are facing now. you can write about it publicly. It could be a blog or a social media post or vlog anything.
4. Consult
now that you have mastered the skill by learning and working, you start consulting other people in your niche. Help them with your expertise, push them to achieve their goals.
5. Mentor
start mentoring people who need you. It could through a webinar, an internship or course. Guide and advice them
6. Startup
in the final stage you can launch a startup. Now you have a following Of raving fans it will give rub off effect to your startup and help it grow more and more. You can easily promote and grow it.
It is overwhelming, right??
So let’s recap all the learning -
1. select a suitable niche and understand fundamentals of marketing
2. Marketing is important but not more than product
3. Focus on personal branding
4. Understand and master Integrated digital marketing
5. CATT marketing is the foundation of digital marketing
let me know in the comment if you like this article about marketing and for more information about this topic click here.
