Digital marketing —A Game changer
The wonderful thing called the internet actually made our life easier. From reading the daily news in a mobile app to making the online purchase of household items, the internet has changed the way our lives used to be.
The above meme, if asked in the context of using the power of the internet then this digital marketing comes first in the minds of the people who are already in the business. I don’t wonder if in the future not knowing how to operate a smartphone considered to be a sign of illiteracy. Digital marketing is one of those bright prospects glooming due to the increased internet users and this article is clearly meant for beginners who think about digital marketing and are skeptical about the need for it in propelling their careers.
Before delving into digital marketing let's know why does marketing hold prime importance in any organization. Marketing in the modern world is all about making the product fit for the customers based on the research considering the customer preference and the problem that the product solves for a customer. Marketing mix explains the perfect blend of 4 Ps for effective marketing of a product.
Product: Product should be aimed at solving the pain point of a customer and an extraordinary product reduces the promotion cost to an extent and ensures customer loyalty.
Price: The value at which a customer buys a product and which is based on the manufacturing cost, R&D, wages, and salaries of the employees who are involved in bringing that product. We can even fix the price based on the value that a product offers to its customers (Value pricing).
Place: Where the customers come to buy the product and it has to be decided based on customer survey and type of products. Customers can be divided into many market segments based on their gender, lifestyle, and socio-economic status.
Promotion: Important process in making the product more visible to the end-users by combining the promotional activities such as above the line (mass media) and below the line (campaign, direct mail, one to one contact).
Many organizations try to be the best in whichever industry they’re operating, but to be sustainable it is important to be a synonym of the business you’re in. Just imagine the way “Xerox” is another name for photocopy and “Google’’ for the search engine. The marketing in this era is altogether a different ball game which is driven by the technological advancement that led to a new thing called “ Digital marketing”. Let us get into knowing about that game-changer.
Traditional V/S Digital marketing
Traditional marketing means marketing through conventional media like direct mail, one-to-one contact, cold calling prospects, campaigns, demonstrations, etc.
Digital marketing is a new age technique that uses the internet and electronic media to sell products. Anything that includes social media, email, websites, blogs, affiliate marketing to drive the traffic and to turn the potential prospects into customers.
Digital marketing is the future as the number of smartphone users has been increasing year by year and it is becoming easy to get the attention of the prospects through social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Advantages of Digital Marketing over Traditional marketing
- Digital marketing is cost-friendly compared to traditional marketing.
- More chances of following up with the prospect to turn into a potential customer.
- Customer engagement is high in the case of digital marketing as the customers can be reached through email and social media.
- Highly efficient in measuring the effectiveness of particular advertising which is way more difficult in traditional marketing.
CATT Marketing funnel
This one equation well describes the way forward for any digital marketing initiative.
Wealth =n^CATT
Where
n- Niche
C-Content ( blogs, webinars, videos)
A- Attention(Paid ads, SEO, Social media)
T-Trust ( Through live webinars, interactions, and feedback)
T- Transaction ( Conversion of prospects into customers as the demand-supply is well in place with the customer having problem and solution with you)
- Niche: Choose a niche where you feel connected and it is driven by your desire to achieve.Ex: Selling Online course
- Content: No doubt it has to be unique and also constant updates about the market and customer needs to help you to create better content.
- Attention: Driving the traffic through Paid ads, SEO, and social media ads to get more number of leads.
- Trust: Building the trust among your tribe through marketing automation and retargeting.
- Transaction: Converting your leads into customers with natural sales methods.
Integrated Digital Marketing
The integrated digital marketing approach is nothing but proper usage of every possible option for maximum output. It aims at blending all the aspects of marketing communications such as public relations, social media, direct marketing, and sales promotion through their methods and tactics which act as a single force to achieve the best results.
Personal branding
Self-branding or personal branding is a culture developing the best practices in an individual which helps to build a reputation of being the best. Personal branding enables more attention to a person than the organization which they can eventually get the benefit of it. There are some CEOs having more followers on social media than the organization they’re working for which underlines the importance of personal brand. Ex: Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX) Steve Jobs (Apple) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon).
The wonderful thing about personal branding is a person can actually make the organization acquire more brands due to his/her influence and reputation. A personal brand is often seen as more resourceful which makes the job easier to convince the people.
Let us understand more through Masstrust blueprint
These are the steps to be looked at in order to gain the trust of the masses. The blueprint is not limited to a particular industry.
Learn: Basic thing is to learn as it has got better ROI (return on investment ) than anything else in the world. People listen to you as long as you’re having the knowledge to influence them and the only way of getting expertise on a particular thing is by learning.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Work: This is the experimental thing as you have to implement whatever you’ve learned to know the efficiency of learning. If you are learning digital marketing the first step is to take a job as a digital marketing executive in any company to know what are skills an organization looks for in people in a particular industry which helps you when you start something on your own.
Blog: Writing the takeaways from a job to inspire others to take digital marketing and helping them to break the shackles and move further. This is the best platform to showcase the skills you have mastered through working in an organization and also to drive the traffic for scaling the next big thing.
Consult: Being a consultant you act as a single stop solution for the people who are trying to foray into digital marketing. Having the knowledge of what it takes to succeed in digital marketing be it in a job or blogging you can take the queries of the people and provide them the solution.
Mentor: Driving the leads through social media, email marketing, paid ads, and SEO which eventually becomes your tribe and this is where you can mentor the people about the abundant knowledge you have gained by the job, blogging, and consulting. Mentoring isn’t something you can do immediately after completing your formal digital marketing course and one has to go through above said stages to be a mentor. Mentoring is all about creating value and empowering people to become good at what they do which is digital marketing.
Start-up: When you have done all the job, blogging, consulting, and mentoring it is time to take the big step of venturing into the start-ups. By this time your name will be well recognized in the industry and that itself gives you good mileage to start something on your own be it an educational platform like digitaldeepak.com which has been doing good in the digital marketing industry by providing out of the box learning programs designed for all categories of people. This is the stage where you’ll have that mass trust to influence a particular tribe to purchase your product and by simply applying the learnings the door of success will eventually open for you.
The digital marketing industry is growing and the recent COVID-19 actually spiced up the bright prospects going forward. If you like the article feel free to leave a comment which encourages me to write more. Thanks for your time.
This article is a part of digitaldeepak internship program which is doing the best things in the industry for the newcomers.