Marketing Fundamentals – A must read! 

Is the journey from Traditional to Digital marketing making life any easier? 

This article tries to capture the basics of traditional and digital marketing.

Once we reach the end of the article, it will be easier for us to put away our apprehensions that we have about digital marketing. This will help us in understanding the techniques of digital marketing and establish the advantages of practicing the same. 

This article will also briefly talk about the advantages of having a personal brand. How we can build our personal brand and use it to market our products and services. 

To become a successful marketer, it is absolutely necessary to have a good understanding of the overall economy and the market where we intend to operate. This helps the marketer immensely to identify his niche, consumer aspiration and the consumers’ purchasing ability. 

Marketing starts even before a product has been conceptualized. The journey ideally starts with finding out and pinpointing the latent needs of the consumers. Consumer may not always be vocal about his needs as he himself is unaware of the same. Therefore, a good marketer is the one who can find out one’s requirement, builds a product to satisfy the needs and thereafter create demand (want) for that particular product/service. 

Identifying a specific target segment and coming up with a relevant product / service for the said segment ideally should be the starting point of building a successful business. 

How to find a profitable niche? 

Your niche is the pie where your talent, market and passion satisfy each other. 

If someone has a passion or talent for his or her niche, but there is no market for him or her niche, then it is definitely not a profitable niche.

If a person is passionate about his niche and there is a market for his niche, but he is not talented. So he earns from his niche because there is a market but slowly he comes down. He is not talented and can’t survive the long-term competition.

If one has all the three traits then he will grow bigger and bigger in his field and will soon become rich. 

Traditionally, marketing was all about conventional marketing. But during the course of time and along with the advancement of technology, changing media habits and change in preferences, digital ways of marketing have become very powerful. 

Both the marketing methods have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of its reach, measurability and turnaround time. Therefore, it is always advisable to adopt a mixed approach while marketing a particular product or service. 

The way we have the AIDA approach in traditional marketing, it is the CATT approach that is followed in digital marketing. 

What is AIDA in conventional Marketing? 

AIDA simply stands for –

- Attract Attention
- Create Interest
-  Evoke Desire
-  Encourage them to take Action

To learn more about the AIDA model and how it works click here. 

Likewise what is followed widely in digital marketing is CATT marketing funnel.

CATT stands for Content, Attention, Trust, Transaction.

CATT describes how your products or services are working in the Internet world.

Content: — Everything you do before selling a product or services is to create content and tell people that their product or services can solve your problems or help you with something.

This will create a discussion among the internet users. Content can be in the form of blogs, short videos, webinars, articles, etc.

Attention: — After creating content, it's time to get the attention of a serious internet user who really needs your product or services.

There are some signs of an internet user who will let you know that people know your product or services, eg, share, comment, retweet, stories, followers for your product or services.

Getting more attention means that more users know about your product or services.

Trust: — This is a very important phase. Trust among people is a very important part of digital marketing.

After attracting user attention, you create an atmosphere of trust with your user. You can do this by testimonials, good results from the previous user.

When people trust you, they automatically come to you. When it is not, it is difficult.

More trust means more transactions.

Transaction: — Now people trust you, it is time to sell tour products or services. Convert them into transactions.

This CATT marketing funnel and framework helps you find out where you are lacking for not having enough transactions. 

It is highly recommended to put an integrated effort in digital marketing instead of trying out just one way of marketing. You will reap better results only when there is an integrated effort in marketing your product or service. 

Integrated digital marketing is a method of engaging customers and prospects with your company or brand that combines all parts of marketing communications to work together and assist the customer along their journey of awareness to loyalty and advocacy. 

It simply means to integrate all your efforts to reach a common goal i.e conversion and sales. 

There has to be a fine balance between Content marketing, email efforts, social media integration and paid advertising. Each of these efforts should complement the other to successfully convert a lead into a successful sale. 

Integrated Digital Marketing strategy is something that needs to be developed over a period of time with the right kind of contents, lead generation, lead nurturing, social media efforts, robust SEO and paid advertising before you could witness results. 

It is always a good idea to build your personal brand. It gives your product or service a rub off effect and definitely acts as a tail wind to your marketing efforts. 

The best known will always beat the best.

As they always say, visibility and recall creates all the difference.

Create your own story, be approachable and friendly and check out the differences that you are being able to make. 

As a personal brand, it is absolutely necessary to enrich yourself continuously and evolve to a better version of you. Upgrade yourself with skills, implement and claim your authority over a particular domain. Present yourself as a new ‘Avtar’ always to have that continuous visibility and trust. 

This article has been developed as a part of Digital Deepak Internship Programme.
To participate in the upcoming course, please follow the link https://deepak.me/internapply