Important role of marketing fundamentals in Digital marketing and Importance of economics in Entrepreneur’s journey.
This article is useful for all the budding Digital Marketers & budding Entrepreneurs, I will be writing about the importance of Marketing fundamentals, Economics, Digital marketing, Personal branding, Communication skills, CATT marketing funnel and Integrated Digital Marketing in this article.
What if I tell you Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large
Seeing the above definition you wouldn't give damn as you did to your syllabus in your college, loll! Let me help you in simplifying the definition of marketing “Marketing is Systematically communicating your value to people who can buy it”
According to the father of Marketing Philip Kotler “Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value different from your competitor to satisfy the needs of the target market at a profit.”
After going through these definitions you might have several questions in your Mind! Like I am Digital Marketer, why the heck do I need to understand these stuffs? I am OK with digital marketing, this the exact thoughts I had when I chose Digital Marketing career and believe me I literally failed after some campaigns then realized the importance of what Marketing Fundamentals.
Without any knowledge on Marketing, I ran my first Facebook Ad campaign and lost 5000 bucks on the same. After getting strong in fundamentals the same ad was ran at lower cost than previous, this is the power of Fundamentals of Marketing.
Marketing is that branch which is necessary for every business from a roadside shop to big corporate worth billions of dollars.Come I will explain you some important stuff about marketing below:
The biggest misconception people have is, that they think creativity is marketing but in fact marketing is complete science. Also it is about 3R which means Sending right message to the right person at the right time.
Keep in mind that marketing is not all about only bringing awareness to the people but also,communicating & building trust with the existing customers for rest of the life. Your customer is brand ambassador of your products or services and they might refer others to buy your services or products hence always word of mouth is best ever channel for marketing. Also, Advertising copy writing and sales are the components of Marketing.
Why it is important to learn Marketing?
Marketing is one of the oldest profession that existed since the dawn of civilization, it has long shelf life since it is rooted with Human Psychology & understanding the market. For example, as technology is upgrading & automation is emerging there are high number of chances that the professionals from the different fields might be replaced by the robots which is already an ongoing process in many of the Industrial sectors like manufacturing units and others, however the marketing cannot be replaced by the AI or robots since it is upon complete perception of Humans.
If you are someone who knew how to market and sell the products then you have a safe and sound career. Unlike other industrial sectors like HR, Manufacturing units, accounting departments marketing is such sector which has immediate Return on the Investment in short time comparative to other sectors.
If you are an entrepreneur or a founder of a business/Start-up, don’t think of hiring an agency or a company for your marketing strategies of your services or products because others will not have such close touch with your business/company as you do. Hence I believe that a founder should be a good marketer too.
After remembering all the above marketing stuff now it is important to know the significance of communication skills in Marketing.
The more you read the more you write, the more you write the better you can write and speak. As you all are aware that Good Marketing is all about good communication, that doesn’t mean you need to have very sophisticated English and British accent with vocabulary of Shashi Tharoor. If you are able to convey your messages and thoughts to your Target audience or the person standing in front of you that’s enough.
So these were somethings that you should know about marketing!
Why understanding Basic Economics is Important?
Every person who is having businesses or companies need to understand the economics foundation to predict and forecast the business market and the future opportunities in particular place or country.
Samuelson and Nordhaus defines Economics as the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and to distribute them among different people.
When I wanted to understand economics, I bought Indian Economy by Ramesh Singh to get detailed overview of what Indian Economy is Up to.
How will we get to know if country’s economics going up was the question that was in my mind then I got to know that “A country’s economy goes up as the average of the country goes up”. I am not a economist, however it means that as the youths population goes up the increase in needs goes up either for a youth or his family then the products or things gets consume that will in turn lead to increase in economy of the country.
An entrepreneur should always keep in mind that he should learn and beware of both the Local and Global economies to understand the business and the market. This understanding of economics will help Entrepreneur to make decisions and forecast his business stuff.
I have an example, I live in a TIER 2 city where businesses are as slow as turtle. when my decided to open a start up without knowledge of economics and without predictions only thinking that he would conquer the market of TIER-2 city he utterly failed and lost big monies, this is the reason that makes economics important.
Also, you should remember one rule in economics “Debt creates Money”. It is one of the biggest subject however, I will not bore you any more by going into detail. will write another blog on this topic
Another important thing that an Entrepreneur should keep in mind is that “Recession creates the storm of helplessness in the Economy, however the survival companies will get stronger and those companies who do not survive will be driven out of the market as weak companies”.
If you want to have the overview of what exactly is Economics, I would strongly recommend you 3 books to read:
- Economics 101
- Currency wars
- Capital
I hope you got an overview of Basic economics.
Which Marketing is best? Traditional or Digital?
If someone asks me that hey man you have two eyes chose one, which is important for you. If i obey the orders of that person chose any one of the eyes I would be know as the foolish person because both the eyes are important for me. The same logic applies to the above question.
As a digital marketer I might say in future digital marketing would die but Traditional marketing is here forever. Both Traditional and Digital marketing has their own Target Audiences. If digital marketing booms it will not be able to affect traditional markets in India.
Total of 197 millions of Indian homes out of 298 million homes with an average of 4–5 members per household has TV’s which has reach to 800 million to 1 Billion people. Here Digital marketing’s reach stands nowhere in competition with TV however as our India is progressing it might take sometime for digital marketing to have reach equal or similar to that of TV in future that is why Digital Marketing is considered to be one of the booming industry with future, remember that predictions are predictions until we face the reality.
According to the reports of Financial Express 65% of Indian population use Radio and according to the report from Business Standard Newspaper has the reach of 465 million people. ( Note: These research were done some while ago and it is not the exact and present data)
If you have the product which is generic with a very vast and wide targeting then Television advertisements are the best suitable medium to reach millions of people at low cost. However, Digital Marketing is the best medium to reach affluent English speaking population of estimated to 100 millions of users having spending powers.
I hope you got an idea of Traditional and Digital marketing
What is this direct response marketing??
There are Marketers around working in big corporate companies and advertising agencies run simply the branding campaigns and do not yield the specific and measurable results. Also, most of the people who run ads don’t know if ad works or not. may be this is because they don’t have any call to action or other mistakes.
Direct Response Marketing is that type of marketing designed to elicit on an instant response by encouraging the prospects to take specific actions
Examples:
- An Ad in the news paper with a phone number to call
- A leading to landing page with a lead form
- A sales page with product with a link to purchase products
The CATT Marketing funnel& framework
CATT marketing funnels completely depends upon a a formula
wealth=n^CATT
n — Niche: Your success and wealth depends on your niche you chose, your niche should neither be too narrow nor too broad
C- Content: Bill Gates said Content is the king, here you need to create useful content that attracts people/prospects from your niche. Blogs, posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars and more are some of the examples
A- Attention: Drive attention(in other words bring the traffic) to your content using different methods like SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads & referrals.
T-trust: Build trust with your audience via tripwires, Marketing automation & re-targeting
T — Transaction: Convert your leads and prospects into your customers with natural sales methods
The picture below represents the CATT marketing funnel.
Selecting the right Niche
The most challenging step is selection of your niche. Your niche should compulsorily have 3 important ingredients that are
- Talent
- Passion
- Market
If you miss one of the 3 steps you will not be able to select your niche. Talent comes from the work experience. Passion is derived from the love and affection towards the particular subject and next comes an important thing that is market which creates demand about your subject. All these 3 things are interrelated missing any one would not help you in selecting your niche. All the best in selection of your niche.
Integrated Digital Marketing
The biggest mistake a digital marketer ever commits is depending upon a single platform as funnel which is worst in many scenarios. Example if one becomes dependable on Instagram and everything is going well and good until one day Instagram changes it’s algorithm then it would be difficult for that person to sustain in the market. This is the reason where Integrated Digital marketing comes into picture.
IDM is interconnected with other platforms where your prospects can be easily converted to clients.
Personal Branding
You believe it or not! Personal branding is most trustworthy and valuable than that of corporate branding & it is deep. You might question me how is that even possible buddy ?
I have an answer for you. People do trust a person than a company agree? you didn't get? Wait I will explain you. Recently a hacker hacked the twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates & other personalities to raise million dollars remember? why would strangers transacted the monies to personalities like Elon Musk? Assume the same if Microsoft had asked to transact monies would the people transacted the monies to them? Noooo because people do trust people not companies.
If you observe Elon Musk. He has more popularity than the companies he founded/co-founded. That is the power of Personal branding. Tommorow Elon Musk announces that he is starting a company and asks people to invest money, wouldn’t the people invest ? They will because it is again the personal brand. I mean to say personal branding is powerful if you have the proper niche and also, if you are personal brand be the best, here people do remember best and top number 1 or Max number 2.
Like everything in this universe has pro’s and con’s. The same applies to Personal Branding too’
Pro — A personal brand can give rise to many brands from his/her influence
A personal brand becomes influencer & Brand Ambassador for the companies they run.
Con — A Personal brand cannot be invested in nor it can be sold.
Evolution of personal Brand
- Learn a new skill through concepts, facts & procedures. Understand concepts.Remember the facts and practice the procedure.
- Work: Make your newfound skills to work. Go from practice to implementation. Implementing in real world gives you the better understanding.
- Blog: Write a blog about what you have learned & experienced through your work like case studies. When you write you understand it better and in turn your personal brand is built.
- Consult: Now you have a personal brand through your blogs, have experience & learned the fundamentals, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them.
- Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring helps you scale the level of your understanding to a whole new level.
- Startup start your own product or sevice business with the understanding that you have developed about the matter, problems & your own skills.
I believe and trust that this article was very helpful for you. If you have something to say about the article or anything please do comment and let me know. Your feedback do encourage me.
Have an amazing day!
