Hey! Are you a Third Generation Brand? You landed on the right page then. But conditions apply! you should have an inner will to learn this skill of marketing. The more you execute, the more you earn, else it will work as a dead stock for you.
Dr Philip Kotler defines marketing as the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.”
WHAT IS THE LAW OF MARKETING?
Marketing as a discipline consists of tactics, a set of actions that a company uses to maintain a healthy relationship with its customers.
Networking with the past, present and future clients is a part of work too and it may include inviting prospective clients to a party or to play a sport, thank you emails, answering calls and emails quickly, or just meeting with clients for a tea/coffee.
Marketing is not just selling. Nykaa is one of the best examples, which was founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012 with a vision to help educate Indian women customers about how to use beauty products to look beautiful themselves. In the words of Nayar- “It is a type of women empowerment”.
They believe in 360-degree marketing and content strategy as the best way to establish relations with the customers. Nykaa opted for the influencers marketing strategy (small influencers are cost effective also) to educate and help customers in using the products through their videos.
The audience finds video tutorials more interesting nowadays. So, it is clear from the above case study that once a brand captures a position, it doesn’t always want marketing.
Customer attention and retention are also a part of marketing. The needs are not always in cash terms. For example, the Government advertises its schemes, which is also a form of marketing where the profit is not the cash flow but its SUSTAINABILITY.
Through this strategy, the governments try to build a strong bond and trust with the public to make them aware of their works. The ROI here is the election of the Government for the long term based on the work it has done.
To understand the real law of marketing, learn the fundamentals of psychology. For example, video content is becoming an interesting and engaging medium for customers. It creates more direct and personal connections between you and your customers.
Like AMAZON EXPLORE is an interactive live streaming service that allows you not only to shop but also to learn and discover new places right from your computer. To connect with hosts, ask questions, and investigate new locales. This all shows that marketing is beyond buying and selling and it is more a perception.
WHY LEARN AND MASTER MARKETING?
An important question must be arising in your mind, technology has the solution to almost every problem now, so why invest time, energy, and money to learn marketing skills. But it is the point to understand if want to excel in this field.
The beauty of this discipline is rooted in human psychology as we know that marketing works on perceptions.
The theory of demand and supply is the same for every country but its implementation is not. The demands of each country are different from each other. In fact, each household of a particular country has different demands.
This variation is because of the differences in geographical, economic, cultural, and social/ psychological factors. The product that matches the customer’s needs will be finally purchased ( mine can be different from yours). The role of the producer is most important here because only he knows what he is producing and for whom.
The crux of my story is if I ask Alexa — which colour saree suits me more for a party, Alexa is like- “I am not sure”. But my designer will definitely sell me the best that matches and satisfy my requirements 100% because bad feedback on my outfit is a big loss for him.
HOW COMMUNICATION IS THE KEYWORD IN MARKETING?
Communication, trust, understanding, etc. are the key players on which Principles of marketing work. These emotions work as tools to construct the whole business strategy which your customer feels very genuine in nature and it is, no doubt.
Good communication is the first requirement to establish a strong bond between a company and its customers and also retain your customer for the long term, but how do you do this? A clear answer is to write about your products and services, if you want to let people come to you.
How to write best, may be a stressful thing for you. Not to worry, just start talking, like talking to your friend, and whatever you are getting just take a note of that.
What I mean to say is don’t put stress on your mind. Whatever you are talking/asking a person, listen to that carefully what the person is replying to you. That’s it. Write down this oral communication in words. If you listen to the person carefully you will understand what he/she is looking for. Create and provide the matching products to your customers and make them happy.
A few more interesting ways of communication are there that proved profitable to the companies. I am talking about the communication strategy that Puma, Wildcraft, and Woodland adopted.
A few years back, an article published in Business Standard newspaper on how these brands are rewriting the marketing playbook to cater to WOMEN CONSUMERS, which were for years focused on men. Some companies are using women’s voices to convey their brand’s messages and some are aligning with women achievers in sports. (source: Business Standard)I repeat. Videos are a very dear tool to engage customers nowadays. Powerful Nike women’s Ad: “What Girls Are Made Of” is one of the communication methods they tried and succeeded in connecting with their women audience.
TO STUDY INDIAN ECONOMICS IS THE NEED OF THE HOUR
If India is our target for marketing (or any other country ), it is very important to learn about that country’s economic structure. In the case of India, you should first study the class division of Indian society using the parameters like GDP, Per capita income, technology users, car owners, credit card holders, etc
Also, study the Banking system and consumer behaviour of India because here you find a broad class division. In fact, the class division in India is also related to their caste structure. There are around 20–25 million online shoppers in India and 10–15 million (approx.) are Amazon Prime subscribers. It shows India is an emerging economy, adapting itself to technology. Hence, profitable deal for marketers/companies.
WHICH FORM OF MARKETING WILL WORK MORE?
DIGITAL VS TRADITIONAL
I like to explain the difference between the two on practical grounds without telling much theory. See, the year 2020 made us all think on our feet. The COVID-19 revolutionized and pushed traditional brands to move online.
This was the time when perspective towards marketing strategies changed especially in teaching and training. A child of class 1 taking online education. This was something beyond imagination in India, not because we cannot do it but because it is not preferred in our education system.
I too appreciate that at least the school education should be offline because there is a difference between playing a video game on a machine and playing football with a whole team of humans.
How healthy the positive social interaction is for us, we all get to know this in the corona era. The subscription/download/ purchase or we can say the marketing of video conferencing apps / Software like ZOOM, MS-Teams earned a lot during these times, which is a good thing. Still, it’s just a way to interact out of many.. this way alone is not sufficient for long term.
In short, Digital Marketing is one of the ways of marketing but it doesn’t have the potential alone to be the only future.
However, Traditional Marketing is a big part of marketing culture. Advertising on TV, Radios still work more. We get job ads, property buying/selling ads in the newspaper, and those BILLBOARDS/ POSTERS of best coaching/ schools (recall my childhood memories) are still found on busy highways and high traffic roads.
In fact, references given by our friends/neighbours to buy something (which most of the time we follow) also work like traditional marketing. It is an assertive marketing tool.
We can skip ads from YouTube or buy a membership pack so that ads will not be visible to us but here is the real hero- Radio, Cinemas, don’t give us a choice to skip .. we listen to what they say and we see what they show us.
DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING
Every person buys according to his / her affordability and needs. Both forms of marketing are sufficient to fulfil customer needs. But as a marketer, to make profits for the company it is important to look after the direct responses of your customer because it will decide your sales and that is ultimately where you achieve your goals.
Some of the good examples which actually work are to publish ads in newspapers with a phone number, giving offers/discounts, asking to comment/ subscribe, etc. this will help you in assessing the conversion of traffic into real customers.
LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST: GENERATING WEALTH IS THE NO.1 GOAL
THE CATT FUNNEL: Everything taking place in this process is to earn means to make profits/wealth. This is the first goal. To be efficient in achieving this goal, you should learn and try to implement a CATT Funnel formula, where wealth is considered equal to n raise to power CATT.
Kindly pay attention to understand this well.
Here ‘n’ stands for NICHE. It means that specialization in one area will work better. Your niche should not be too broad or too narrow. It should be competitive in nature because competitive areas give much better profits.
The ‘C’ refers to CONTENT, which is like the asset of the whole marketing world. You should publish content that people want and like. Content marketing not only builds awareness but also trust. This is the content that defines you and makes you different from others.
Until and unless you will not highlight yourself in other’s eyes that you are the best in your Niche, nobody is interested in you. So you have to market yourself to tell your worth. Content is the tool that helps you here.
To market yourself you have to seek people’s attention. This can be done by using marketing tools like SEO, INFLUENCERS MARKETING, PAID ADS, and REFERRALS. Basically, it is the ‘A’ of the CATT Funnel which helps in driving traffic to your content.
Now the first ‘T’ is TRUST which will develop with the communication skills that we have already discussed above. This is the TRUST that finally works for the second ‘T’, i.e. TRANSACTION. For this, the whole game is played. It is to convert your leads into real customers by applying Natural Sales Methods.
WANT TO WIN — HERE ARE YOUR WEAPONS (THE INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING FRAMEWORK )
Integrated digital marketing consists mainly of these tools shown in the picture (I call them weapons) that can help make the transaction (from the CATT FUNNEL) successful and hence you achieve your goal.
PERSONAL BRANDING AS A FORM OF MARKETING
Personal Branding also creates wealth, but what it is and how it works is what you want to know. The first rule to making a brand of yourself is to market yourself so that your expertise can be recognized by others.
For this, the first thing that you have to do is WRITE, WRITE and WRITE. Yes, friends, writing is the No.1 skill for a successful career. Write about your life journey, tell people who are you and how are you doing this. Reading creates mental proximity between you and your audience.
It will help in increasing their interest and trust in you.
Here are some tips: If you want to run a company, work as a corporate blogger. If you are an entrepreneur, then writing a personal blog works for you, as in this way you can directly engage with your customers frequently to keep building up your business.
Personal branding differentiates you from your competitors. It is suggested to choose one channel (at least when starting from scratch) for your personal branding. Apart from blogging, consulting, teaching, and mentoring will also help you a lot in creating your successful personal brand in the market.
CONCLUSION
I hope my article gave you a much better understanding of marketing tit-bits. The lesson here is if you want to play big, you have to focus more on how to SUSTAIN FOR LONG, profits will automatically come into your basket.
Cheers,
Deepti