In this article, you will learn about the fundamentals of marketing and realize that how marketing is deep-rooted in human psychology and it is not just an activity to generate sales.
This article will be helpful for management students, teachers, sales & marketing professionals, managers and individuals who want to know the fundamentals of marketing and the difference between marketing and sales.
For instance, you wake up at 5am, do physical exercise, start your work on time, complete your work on time and finally go to sleep on time by 10 pm. This kind of lifestyle portrays you as a very disciplined and effective person.
Consider another instance, you wake up at 8am, do not do any physical exercise, struggle to start your work on time, struggle to complete your work on time and go to sleep around mid-night. This kind of lifestyle portrays you as undisciplined and an ineffective person.
The above two instances describe only your lifestyle but nevertheless leave an impression on the minds of your family members or roommates who observe your daily chores and activities very closely and consequently develop a perception about you as per your lifestyle.
Hence, with or without your knowledge, these daily chores become your self marketing activities which make people develop a certain perception about you.
The word ‘Marketing’ is a very broad term which consists of every activity that you do like your communication skills, relationship building skills, timeliness, non-verbal skills, etc. which make the people whom you interact with, develop a certain perception about you.
Similarly, the same concept of marketing can be applied to the organizations that you work with, the product that you buy, the movies that you watch, the friends that you make, the museum that you visit and the list is practically endless.
You decide to work with an organization when you get a good feedback from the people who are associated with the same organization. You watch a movie, when you find that it has good reviews. You choose or leave friends based on the perception that you have about them.
So by now, you must have realized that Marketing is a broad term which includes everything that makes you perceive somebody or something in a good or bad way.
Most often, professionals and organizations mistake marketing as a pre-sales activity. They think good marketing activities lead to good sales and miss to understand that ‘Generating Sales’ and the perception of the product or service after the sale are also components of marketing.
The famous management guru Peter Drucker once said, “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.”
Considering what Peter said, don’t you think that perception of the product or service after the sale should make further sale of the same an effortless venture!
The Fundamentals of Marketing
Though creativity in communicating your messages to your audience is an inherent part of marketing, nevertheless your marketing efforts should not be based on creativity but on the science of understanding your audience.
Understanding the need of your audience and fulfilling it with a product or service, makes selling your product or service an effortless venture.
In this highly competitive age, marketers go beyond just fulfilling their customer’s needs because ‘Customer is King’ and he has the privilege to choose.
The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and capture a position in the minds of the consumers. Hence, marketing is a game of perceptions. Advertising, copywriting, selling are all components of marketing.
Xerox, Google, Zoom have become such strong brand names that they have become verbs.
Traditional Versus Digital Marketing
Advertising on television, radio, newspapers is an example of traditional marketing. Whereas, advertising on YouTube, social media like Facebook, Twitter is an example of digital marketing.
Digital marketing is the best medium to reach the affluent English speaking population in India, which is approximately 100 million users. So if you want to market your online course on lifestyle, then use digital marketing. But if you have a generic product like soap or detergent, use traditional marketing in order to reach more people including the people who are not as affluent as the above mentioned 100 million people but need soap and detergent.
Direct Response Marketing
It is a very challenging task to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities like running advertisements on television, newspapers and email campaigns to increase brand awareness. Therefore, marketers use direct response marketing activities like an advertisement on the newspaper with a phone number to call or a sales page with a link to purchase the product in order to elicit an instant response by encouraging the targeted audience to take a specific action.
The CATT Marketing Framework
Selecting your ‘Niche’ (n) is the first step in the CATT marketing framework.
After you select your niche, you will be able to make content (C) in the form of blog posts, videos, live webinars, etc. on it. Using search engine optimization, social media, paid advertisements and referrals, you can drive traffic, that is, attention (A) to your content (C). You can then focus on building trust (T) with your audience through newsletters, follow up mails, etc. And finally, with the trust of your audience, you can convert leads into sales, that, is, transactions (T).
As per CATT marketing framework:
Wealth = n ^ CATT
While selecting your niche, you need to ensure that you have the talent and passion for your niche and there is a market available for it, in order to make your niche profitable. For example, you want to start your fitness training course, then you need to have passion for fitness, you need to have the talent to teach fitness techniques and there should be people who need such fitness training course.
Integrated Digital Marketing Framework
In order to execute CATT framework, you need to integrate digital marketing activities like Search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, paid advertising with social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, etc.
Through SEO, paid advertising and social media, you can get traffic, that is, attention to your content. And by encouraging the audience to subscribe to your content, you can build trust with them through email marketing. And finally, with the trust of your audience, you can convert leads into sales.
The Power of Personal Branding
What is common between SpaceX and Tesla?
Elon Musk is the founder of both SpaceX and Tesla.
What is common between Paytm and Ola?
Ratan Tata is an investor in both Paytm and Ola.
Take a look, how the personal brand of Elon Musk dwarfs the huge brand names of his companies SpaceX and Tesla, and how the personal brand of Ratan Tata dwarfs the huge brand names of his funded companies Ola and Paytm.
It is very important to build your personal brand because people love to listen to people more than the brands. Your personal brand can become the brand ambassador of the companies that you get associated with.
The Evolution of Personal Brand
The first step towards creating a personal brand is to learn through concepts, facts and procedures.
The second step is to put your new found skills to work. Work could be a job or freelancing or your own project.
The third step is to write blog posts about what you have learned and experienced through your work. When you write, you understand your work experience better and build your personal brand.
When you have a personal brand through your blog posts, the fourth step to evolve your personal brand is to become a ‘Consultant’ for other businesses instead of working for them.
The fifth step in the evolution of personal brand is to become a ‘Mentor’ for others who want to become like you. Mentoring will scale your understanding to a whole new level.
And the sixth step in the evolution of personal brand is to start your own product or service business with your acquired skills, the understanding that you have developed about the market and the problem that you are going to fix for your customers.
You have now reached the closing part of this article and if you have reached this point then you must have realised by now that marketing is a part of your daily life. Your daily activities including your daily chores are your self marketing activities which promote your own image because of which people whom you interact with, have a certain perception about you. Similarly, marketing activities like advertising, selling, client servicing, etc. promote the image of the company, its product or service and its people.
Hope you now understand the concept of ‘Marketing’ much better and if you like this article then please go ahead and share it as much as possible.
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Note: This article is part of an assignment of ‘Digital Deepak Internship Programme’. To apply for this internship programme, please follow the link: https://deepak.me/internapply. You may also visit www.digitaldeepak.com for more details.