Marketing Fundamentals that you cannot afford to miss!
“People spend money when and where they feel good.”
- Walt Disney
Do you think that marketing is about pricing and promotions?
Right?
Wrong.
Marketing is not just about the 4Ps.
It is a whole lot more than that. I assure you.
Have you ever seen a beautiful collection of stars in the sky?
They align together to form a pattern.
That pattern is popularly known as a Constellation.
It looks beautiful because of how the stars come together to form something bigger than themselves.
That’s how marketing is.
Every effort that you put into your marketing leads to one thing.
Your Brand.
The trust that you develop with your customers is because of your marketing efforts.
On this journey, I’m going to talk about:
The fundamentals of marketing,
how marketing integrates everything,
the funnel that helps you build lifelong customers
and how it aligns with your brand.
So let’s start with the basics.
What is Marketing?
Is it promoting your product?
Is it generating leads and turn them into sales?
Ohh! please don’t be so mechanical.
Okay, so what is Real Marketing?
Marketing is a journey that a business takes to build a relationship with its customers. It helps to stay on top of your customer’s minds when they are ready to buy.
Sure, Marketing helps businesses but, is it a discipline of business?
Probably yes, but
Marketing is a game of pure Psychology. (At least that’s what I believe.)
If you can understand what goes inside people’s heads with decent accuracy, you are going to win.
Another quote that goes around is, “Digital marketing is the future.”
I mean, sure.
Marketing will always be the present & future because it is the best way to build relationships with people and make them buy from you. not because it’s digital or offline.
I love Digital Marketing but, the second word is why I love the first word and not the other way round.
I started learning about Marketing in the Pandemic.
I was fascinated by the digital world but, the process of building a relationship with your customers goes beyond virtual boundaries.
Traditional Marketing is not dead and, I don’t think that would be the case for a long time.
Tv, Radio & Print still have a lot of consumption in a country like India, and If Marketing helps to build more relationships with the help of offline channels then, great.
If you’ve read the article till here, I’m sure you remember how I referred to Marketing as a journey.
Now it’s time to hit the road and, by that, I mean the funnel which guides a consumer from content to a transaction.
1. Content
Content is the kingdom that accommodates everything else. Each & every marketing effort you take should be supported or at least accelerated by content.
Content is like money.
It is a medium of exchange for the value you provide.
Except in Marketing, free content is critical to get the ball rolling.
Content is what gives your business a chance to get attention.
Blog articles like these, in addition to videos, podcasts, and social media posts, all comprise content.
That is how you open your doors to a community.
Now that they are inside, what to do next?
Let me introduce you to the second part of the funnel.
2. Attention
Attention is how you bring people to your content. Your content helps you get noticed if you give a lot of it for free or provide a lot of value.
But, you can also attract them.
The concepts of
- SEO,
- Paid ads and,
- Social Media help you do just that.
- SEO is how you tell search engines to find your content. It means that when you post content on the internet, you leave footprints all over the internet to make the website crawlers find you. It cannot happen in a single day but, it is worth it and arguably free.
- Social Media is a dumbed-down version of a virtual house party where everyone is looking to find their tribe and, you need to create an environment so that people don’t want to leave your house. Give them a reason to stay but, not just in terms of content. Engage with your audience and involve them in your journey.
- Paid Ads are how you decorate the internet with your content but with the help of specialized tools that can get you in front of people quickly and with pinpoint precision. SEM & Social Media ads can help you drive attention to where you want it with just a few bucks at the start.
Now, let’s assume you’ve made great content and driven the attention of your audience to it.
What next?
Welcome to the club and meet Mr. Relationship Builder.
3. Trust
All the steps described above become null and void if you can’t build trust with your audience.
Plus, you could lose a lot of cash.
Don’ want that, now do you?
But how to build trust? I have already done so much right?
Well, yes but, no.
You see, people online, suffer a lot from this wild disease called Laziness.
So even though you’ve created good content & driven attention to it, it does not cut it.
No! Don’t be sad.
Being there every day and building a reputation of showing up to provide value is where trust lies.
It lies in consistent communication.
- Sending follow-up emails,
- Retargeting with ads,
- Freebies & Giveaways,
- and promotions or discounts
are some of the ways how you can communicate with your people and tell them:
‘’Well, Hey! Don’t forget me. I’m here to provide value to you.’
Okay so, let’s assume they trust you.
You have done something powerful and built a community.
Now comes the step where you need to get your magic wand and chant the sales mantra.
Now that people trust you and look forward to your content, it’s time to get to your product.
The product solves your customer’s problems and helps you pay your bills.
4. Transaction
The last piece of the puzzle that completes your journey and makes your community even more solid.
You direct your customers to a great product with:
- A good sales page
- Crisply written copy
- Highlighting the relationship made throughout this journey
- Testimonials from people that already trust you
- And closing the deal with a promotion or a great offer.
But has the funnel ended?
Technically, yes.
But now that you have a community that trusts you with their hard-earned money, it is the start of something bigger & better.
Can you guess what that is?
It’s your BRAND.
A brand is a word thrown around like confetti but, do you know how to build a brand that people love and trust?
It is where Integrated Digital Marketing comes into play.
So What exactly is Integrated Digital Marketing?
It is basically like a tightly-knit Indian Joint family.
Everyone benefits from everyone else and, it becomes a strong community based on love and trust.
Research says that an average customer comes across at least 7–8 touchpoints before purchasing a product.
It speaks volumes about how you cannot bore your customers with just one platform over and over again.
I mean, C’mon?
How many times do I need to watch that ad in my feed?
Instead, What you can and should do is repurpose content in the form of an email, social media posts, or even long-form blog articles.
It makes the customer feels like he/she is experiencing something different even though it solves the same purpose for your business,
Sales.
Word of the wise, never ignore content marketing and,
Make sure that you distribute content to multiple touchpoints for variety and trust.
Thank you for bearing with me through this long article.
Fun fact: It is my first time writing a piece as long as this bad boy. *Phew!*
So let’s come down to the final talk of the town.
Your Personal Brand.
It is the USP that provides the best ROI. (Game of Abbreviations here)
What’s that?
Belief.
Once your community starts believing you in everything that you do, they become brand advocates.
Word of mouth is still the best way to get sales because people love to hear from people, not brands.
(Check the followers of Microsoft or Tesla V/s Bill Gates or Elon Musk).
Building your Personal Brand is how you involve people in your journey and not your brand’s journey.
Being Best Known is better than being the best because people will know you better, engage with you better and trust you better.
Concluding this piece, I’d like to come back to what I said in the beginning.
Building a Constellation takes time. Your stars (Content) should align, your efforts should match, but in the end, it is all about the bigger picture, which is a brand that people trust.
Instructed & Mentored by: DigitalDeepak.com
