Have you ever thought, why your product is not generating the required profits?

Why sales are not increasing even after the best product in the market segment?

Or

Why the competitors’ products are more reachable to the customers even after fewer features as compared to my product?

So the answer to all the questions is “MARKETING” because without marketing we can’t even sell a pen successfully.

So, today we are going to learn something about marketing fundamentals, differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing, and will also learn an overview of the CATT model which is the base of digital marketing, and will provide you much more information in very simple and layman language. 

So let’s start with,

The fundamentals of marketing

Marketing is based on science, not on creativity. 

Marketing is not about how creative someone is or how creatively someone can market their products.

It does not relate with creative minds only. Everything includes science in some way or the other. 

It’s not just a simple statement to say, it has a deep meaning.

In Science, if we need to create a new compound then we have to first analyze the use and importance of the final compound, need to check the quantity and quality of required materials, need to make proper planning to mix different materials in different quantity, if fails, need to change the quantity and method of mixing to get required results.

So, In the same way,

If we need to do the marketing of our product then first we have to analyze the use and importance of the final product in consideration of market trends, need to mix the different methods of marketing to stand unique in the market, if the first experiment of marketing fails, need to change the method of marketing, so with all this we can become a good marketer.

So, don’t you agree that Marketing is based on Science only?

Marketing not only involves the analysis for our own product only but it also includes the analysis of existing same category products(if any).

Marketing is all about gathering customer’s needs, market requirements, price suitability of the product as per market.

And all these proper planning, marketing strategy leads you to the path of becoming a successful marketer.

A great statement said by a famous American-Austrian consultant Mr. Peter Drucker is that

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

Also according to him,

“marketing to be the responsibility of the managing leadership within a business, not a separate function”

means an entrepreneur or owner of the product or services shouldn’t outsource the full marketing campaign, instead, they should be in the lead of the marketing campaign.

Are Marketing and sales the same?

Big confusion among most of the individuals is between marketing and sales but both terms are quite different. Marketing starts from the beginning of product analysis requirements whereas Sales comes in the picture after the product production is completed and is the last step of the marketing cycle.

The Four Ps of Marketing

After understanding the basic definition of Marketing let’s understand the four basic pillars of Marketing.

In the current era of marketing-minded leaders, a developed concept of the “Marketing Mix” was introduced.

As the name indicates, it’s a mix of a set of concepts and tools that help companies to achieve their marketing-related objectives within a market.

The following concept is made up of four basic Ps which are pillars of marketing and those four Ps collectively known as The Four Ps of marketing and those four Ps are:

(Source: Google Images)

Let’s discuss all the four Ps:

1. Product: Marketers must be familiar with all the features and specifications of the products they are selling or they are gonna be introduced in the market.Also, they must have knowledge about all the existing products of the same category in the market.In and out of the product must be known to the marketers for the effective and fruitful marketing of the product.
2. Price: After knowing about the product requirement, finalizing the product cost is the next important step in marketing.The product cost should be finalized in such a way that must price should be fulfilling the production cost and also meet the customer price-related requirements too.
3. Promotion: Now you have all the knowledge about the product and have finalized the product price range, now it’s time to market the product in front of the people.It’s time to sell the product and promotion plays a major role in advertising.There are numerous ways to promote a product, whether to use an online(internet) or offline(radio, newspaper, or billboard) way of marketing, so selecting the best and feasible way to introduce the product to get the reach of the maximum number of people is important.
4. Place: Completed production, fixed price of the product, promoted the product, now the next, and the last step in the product marketing life cycle is the place from where it can be easily accessible in the market for the customers.Access to the product could be through the online platform or from an offline store.

So all these collectively 4 Ps steps are used to market a simple product and help a product to become a brand in the market and also help to become a requirement of the market.

Difference between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing

As we have discussed that for promotion there are different ways to promote a product either online or offline, so let’s discuss and understand those different ways of marketing.

These online and offline ways of marketing are popularly known as Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing respectively.

The main difference between the Traditional Marketing (TM) and the Digital Marketing (DM) is only “the medium of marketing” or the channel we are using for marketing that could be online or offline.

To get a clear understanding of the differences between both the marketing medium, let’s discuss:

• First, start with the definition of TM and DM.
  TM as the name indicates it’s a traditional way of marketing and is an old method of marketing that in the past people were using for marketing.
  Audience reach through this method is limited and local and also the target market that is required specifically for the product is sometimes missed out but still is effective in many cases.While on the contrary, DM is the latest and a new medium of marketing through which we get the maximum reach to the targeted audience globally all over the world by sitting in any corner of the world using the Internet only so it’s another name is Internet Marketing also.
• Now understand the use of channels used in each type of marketing.In TM, mainly TV, Radio, Print Media(Newspapers, Flyers, etc.), billboards across the roads are used.

  (Source: Google Images)

  On the other hand In DM, as we use the internet as a medium to do marketing like social media, email marketing, SEO, SMM, Google ads, Facebook ads, etc. make the ways of DM.

  (Source: Google image)

• You might be having confusion about the reach to the audience. Let’s clear that confusion too.TMhas a very good number of reach to the audience but it lacks to get the reach in targeted audiences or targeted people in the market.Also, it has a very less direct-interaction with audiences/consumers, or in other words, we can say one-way interaction is in this marketing medium. From all these, we can conclude that this medium of marketing is quite rigid.On the other hand, DM gets the reach to the targeted audiences/consumers and has good reach to the people in the market.Also, it has direct interaction or in simple words two-way interaction with the people in the market.The two-way interaction is possible because of the mediums/channels we are using in DM and those are Facebook ads, YouTube Videos, Feedback Forms, and many more ways and we can include the comments section too in the DM channel to directly interact with the consumers.
• Now you have the idea of which medium to use but you must have a money factor in your mind which we can’t ignore. After all, everything revolves around money only. So let’s clear that doubt too.As we have gone through the channels of TM and DM so you might have got the idea about the investment required, so adding to that I would just like to say, “Yes! You’re on the same page as I’m on.”TM is an expensive method of marketing as it involves TV media, print media, radio, billboards etc.But as compared to TM, DM is very less expensive as it includes online marketing AD platforms like Facebook ads, Google ads, Webinars to reach a targeted market with the help of the internet only and with very little investment. 
• Selected the marketing medium? made an investment in the same? now what about the results, the results of marketing. Don’t worry you will get a brief idea about that too.If we talk about the results of TM, then the company must have to wait for a day, a week, a month, or more than a month because it doesn’t give us direct information on sales, consumers’ feedback, and product response in the market.
  
  But in the DM case, we get the results in real-time with the help of real-time marketing data.For example, if we run an advertisement on Facebook for selling an earphone then buyers can find that ad and click on that banner or ad to buy that product and we can get results of the reach of the product instantly.
• The final and most important question in everyone’s mind would be how to implement the marketing medium after getting knowledge about money, reach, and results. So finally let’s understand that tooTMstrategy takes time to implement, also media printing, ad making, placement of hoarding takes time and also it takes time to change in case of any failure or in case of change of using channels (For example, from changing TV ad to Print media or vice versa) so might be possible that we need to wait for weeks or months for that change to get implemented. Also, we will need to wait for a long to get the results and impact of the current or changed marketing strategy.
  
  In DM, we can implement or change the marketing strategy at any point of time and very quickly as and when required as per the current market requirements.
• Examples of Traditional marketing (TM) and digital marketing (DM)

Traditional marketing
(Source: Google Images)

Digital marketing

(Source: Facebook Ad)

Every coin has two sides and keeping that in mind we say TM and DM fit well to that idiom. But to conclude the difference between Traditional Marketing(TM) and Digital Marketing(DM), we can say that the DM has some upper hand as compared to the TM in the current era of the marketing process to reach out the specific targeted audience in very less time with very little investment.

But on the same node, we can not deny the impact of the TM in today’s time or it’s impact in past time from that only DM evolves and also TM helps to reach the maximum number of the audience, not the targeted ones but still has a very good reach to a greater number in the market.

We can use the “OLD is GOLD” in comparison to TM and DM and can say that TM is still indispensable for the audience that is itself still traditional.

CATT Funnel

Now after getting knowledge about the basics of marketing, why it is required and the different ways of marketing, let’s move forward to understand one interesting and very small formula or a concept for digital marketing because after differentiating the TM and the DM you have found that DM is much easier, cost-effective, and market-oriented.

Also would like to mention that the formula is coined by a renowned Digital Marketing mentor Mr. Deepak Kankaraju.

In the very beginning of the article, we learned that Marketing is based on science rather than creativity, and in Science, we have formulas for each and every desired result so in the same way to get success in the digital marketing field or to create wealth through DM we have a concept of CATT Funnel which is based on a very small formula that is:

W = n^CATT


(S0urce: Digital Deepak Internship Program)

Whereas,

W = Wealth, created through our action, our strategy.

n = Niche, the most important factor to get success in the DM field is to choose the right niche because success is directly proportional to the perfectly selected niche.

C = Content, with the help of attractive and reliable content we can put one step forward to get success. Content may be a blog, video, images, or can be anything that describes our product or services.

A = Attention, contents become useless if fail to make attention to our content. So, SEO, Social media marketing, and paid ads play a major role to make attention to content.

T = Trust, it places a major role in our personal life as well as professional, so without trust, we can’t win any deal in both segments whether it is personal or professional.

T = Transaction, in short, “Sales” with all the above steps we can make successful sales at this point.

So, Wealth comes, when you choose the right niche, and connect with the right audience and put them in your funnel and proceed further with the funnel and make sales.

Personal Branding

Till now, we have understood the marketing, and way of getting wealth through marketing by converting our single product into a big brand. But what about your personal value? so let’s understand that.

Always keep in mind, “The best known will always beat the best!”

If you are good at something, you should let others know that you know something, you have achieved something great in some field.

Building an individual brand is more important and difficult than building a brand for your organization nowadays.

Let’s take the worst-case scenario, in that case, your organization’s brand value may fluctuate but if you have personal brand value in the market then the faith of people in you will remain intact and your organization will overcome the worst situation much more easily.

Also, Individuals want to connect a person rather than a company, want to get notification from persons rather than companies. They like messages or emails from a human rather than an organization sending them messages. It feels like one to one conversation is going on. And in real situation receiving emails from companies are ignored too.

If we take an example of Elon Musk, then we can see that we like to hear more about him as compared to his companies SpaceX OR Tesla.

(Source: Twitter)

(Source: Twitter)

 (Source: Twitter)

With the above images, we can clearly check that Elon Musk has more followers or branding value than his companies.

It is all because of personal branding.

When a person acquires skills of personal branding then he/she can become the brand ambassador of his/her own company as Baba Ramdev is the brand ambassador of his own company Patanjali.

Have you ever thought, why MS dhoni is the brand ambassador of many products whereas the owner of the product could have endorsed their own product and save money? It is all due to the personal branding value of MS Dhoni, people love to follow his endorsement rather than the owner’s.

So, the question arises:

How we can get skills of personal branding?

How much time does it take to develop those skills?

The answer to this is very simple, but note that it requires a lot of effort and commitment from your end.

Everything takes time to grow so as the same in this too, it takes time to have personal brand value in the market.

For example, just like a 3 years old baby takes time to learn the English alphabets, by time and practice the baby learns to speak out alphabets, the same case in personal branding, by learning and practice we can develop personal branding skills.

If we like to see in-depth, we have 10 golden rules for creating an engaging, unique, and inviting personal brand.

1. Have a focus.
2. Be genuine.
3. Tell a story.
4. Be consistent.
5. Be ready to fail.
6. Create a positive impact.
7. Follow a successful example.
8. Live your brand.
9. Let other people tell your story.
10. Leave a legacy.

Now a question strikes, why a personal brand is important before your organization brand value. Let’s go through the benefits of a personal brand:

1. You are known as an expert in your niche.
2. You are always 100% authentic.
3. People can trust you more in you as well as the brand.
4. You can attract the ideal opportunity.
5. You can make your own community.

Mass Trust

If we focus on developing personal branding skills then we can build trust in our customers or followers which is known as Mass Trust.

Mass trust is another important basis for marketing.

Personal branding is the blueprint of mass trust because while doing personal branding, trust is created with lots of people.

 (Source: Digital Deepak Internship Program)

To generate mass trust, communication skills should be great which helps to sell your product or services to the targeted market and to a large number of audiences.

(Here, good communication skill doesn’t mean to speak English fluently, rather than the good communicator should have great convincing skills to close the deal.)

Your conversation with your target customers must be like one to one.

Your target customers listening to you in a webinar should feel like you are talking to a friend on a one to one basis with them.

In the same way, we should write blogs, emails, and do webinars to create mass trust with them which helps in personal branding.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Integrated Digital Marketing as the name suggests, the integration of multiple digital marketing techniques into one process for your business.

Components of different digital marketing methods:

(Source: Digital Deepak Internship Program)

The main reason for integrated digital marketing is that each individual strategy doesn’t have a huge impact on its own but when used collectively with this you can create a more influential online presence.

In simple words, if we just create content only on each and every platform and we don’t do any SEO of that content then how can we get viewers to check that content?

Same like, If we do just email marketing and don’t put emphasis on sale conversion then what is the benefit of email marketing?

So we should focus on each and every segment of different marketing techniques to get the desired results.

At this point, I would like to conclude with the limited but handy piece of information about Marketing and more about Digital Marketing because DM is a deep and vast ocean that can’t be described in a few words.

So, I tried to cover a few pieces of information about what is marketing, types of marketing, benefits of DM over TM, then we learned about personal branding with Mass Trust also and in the last but not the least, we got an overview of the importance of integrated digital marketing(IDM). Shared and discussed all the information with you will help you guys to understand the importance of marketing and most specifically Digital marketing in today’s era.

Bye. See You. Ta-ta. Let’s meet in my next blog.

Till then,

Keep Blogging…

Keep marketing…

Keep learning Digital Marketing…

Keep sharing…

Looking for your suggestions.