Leveraging Laws of Marketing: A Game Changer for Digital Success
Introduction:
Many people who learned digital marketing often forget that the core of Digital Marketing is marketing. They strategise too much on the digital part rather than the marketing part.
Digital Marketing isn’t just uploading a reel on Instagram, running Facebook Ads, Google Ads or doing SEO. These are just a medium through which marketing is done. Digital marketing is Marketing 2.0.
When you understand marketing very well, digital marketing becomes easier. Moreover, the fundamentals of marketing are rooted in human psychology and don’t change much compared to the dynamic nature of digital platforms.
Fundamentals Of Marketing.
1. The Law of Marketing
Just like the Law of Attraction, assume there is a Law of Marketing. Some of the salient features of this Law of Marketing are given below.
Marketing is based on science, not on creativity.
Subjects that bring clarity and application through the use of assumptions, concepts and principles are called science. If you jump out of the window you know you won’t go upward but the law of gravity will pull you down on earth. Just like that, in marketing you know if you apply certain input you will get a certain result.
For example, a creative slogan for advertisements is useless if you don’t know how to send the right message to the right person at the right time. And finding out the what, the who, or the when are based on science?
Marketing starts before creating the product.
“The aim of marketing is to understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” – Peter Drucker
When you understand the customer and his needs so well and start designing products and everything including the logo, color, tone of advertisement etc, based on his needs, he will naturally be happy using that product. Selling becomes so much easier, you won’t even need to apply pressure to sell.
Many companies fail because they force marketer to sell their crappy product instead of presenting a quality product that fits the market.
Marketing is maintaining a healthy relationship with customers to make them customers for life.
Marketing doesn’t end with making a transaction. It is about acquiring a customer for life by making them happy, communicating, building trust and maintaining a relationship.
Moreover, when your customers are happy they will refer people to your product.
The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and capture a portion of the mind of the customer.
When a customer wants to buy a product, he can’t ignore the best-known brand.
Just like market share, if it is mind-share, marketers are trying to capture a portion of the customer’s mind.
Everything is driven by the brand. Eg. Apple and Samsung mobile phones stand taller among the mobile phones.
Marketing as a game of perception.
Marketing is intricately tied to the perception people have about a product, service, or brand.
It is about building trust and credibility with consumers.
This involves consistently delivering on promises, being transparent, and aligning with the values and expectations of the target audience.
So, never let marketing be more important than the product.
2. Building a Strong Brand
Marketing is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The purpose of marketing is to build a strong brand. A strong brand is built with good products, communication and customer experience.
People find it easy to remember a strong brand. Consequently, the expense of marketing comes down to the strong brand as people trust it.
In every category, there is a market leader. Everyone knows that brand in that category. For example, in search engines, it is Google, in e-commerce Amazon, in mobile phones Apple etc.
These market leaders brands have become synonymous with the category. They have become verbs. Eg. Google it, D0 Xerox, Zoom Call etc.
Usually, the No. 2 is far behind, that too if people want a choice other than the No.1 brand.
In the long run, the market becomes a two-player market. People can, at most, hold only 2 brands in mind. Very few people care about other brands in the rank if there is any.
So, if it’s about building a brand, try becoming the only one in that category.
However, if you cannot become a leader in a category, be a leader in a sub-category.
For example, Zomato has become a sub-category (of food) – search engines. Practo has become a sub-category (of book doctor appointments) – search engine.
The trick is to start from a very small niche and occupy market leadership in that category.
Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
In this digital era, if you think digital marketing is the only way to go, then think again. In places like India, traditional marketing still has a massive reach.
Out of 320 million homes in India, 182 million have TVs. That’s a huge audience that digital platforms haven’t matched yet!
With a reach of 65% of the Indian population, radio is still a key player in spreading the word.
Both Traditional and Digital have their strengths and best uses in different contexts. Choosing the right one depends on who you want to target and where they are.
Products which are generic and wider target audience find effectiveness in TV Advertisements, eg, Apple iPhone Ads on TV. It can reach a million people at a very low cost.
Digital Marketing is best for targeting the affluent, English-speaking crowd in urban areas. It’s great for precise targeting and getting real-time feedback from your audience.
Marketing Framework
There are lots of marketing frameworks to understand and implement marketing. Here are two such frameworks 1. The CATT Marketing Funnel Framework for understanding and 2. Integrated Marketing Framework for implementation.
- The CATT Marketing Funnel Framework
This is a marketing framework developed by Digital Deepak.
Originally it is written as Wealth = n⌃CATT
The abbreviated n⌃CATT is the combination of the following letters:
n – Niche
C – Content
A – Attention
T – Trust
T – Transaction
- [n] Niche: It means your wealth or success depends on the niche powered by content, attention, trust and transaction.
Choosing a niche that touches all bases of Talent, Passion and Market is crucial.
A niche without a market value but just talent and passion will make you a struggling artist. If you have passion and market but no talent – you are not going to sell. If you have talent and market but lack passion – you will get tired
- [C] Content: Content is the foundation of everything that we do in digital marketing. Creating useful content will attract people who are interested in your niche. You can create content on many platforms like blog posts, video, webinars, ebooks, books, newsletters, community posts, social media posts, and so on.
- [A] Attention: You need to actively promote the content you made. You can drive attention (traffic) to your content via organic traffic like SEO, social media and/or paid traffic through Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc.
- [T] Trust: Once you have driven attention to your content, you have to build trust with your audience. Trust is built through long-term association through community, events, and follow-up messages.
- [T] Transaction: Building trust alone doesn’t convert your leads into revenue. All your trusted leads are of no use if you do not sell to them. Only when you sell (transact) you generate revenue.
This is called a funnel because the numbers of people taper down as one goes down from content to transaction.
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