How Law of Marketing could help you win the Game of Thrones
“Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them to do so.” — Bryan Eisenberg
Marketing is perceived by various people differently. Some say marketing is the promotion and advertisement of any product or service, whereas some consider it as a process through which products and services are reached to the customer. Marketing is not just limited to the promotion of a brand, product, or service, nor it is just for reaching out to potential customers. It has a broader concept. It includes all the activities that bring buyers and sellers together.
Marketing is the process of developing, pricing, promoting, and distributing products, services, or ideas that are tailored to the market. It includes all other activities that create value and systematically leads to increased sales or another desired response, establish a good reputation, and ongoing relationships with customers, so that all stakeholders achieve their objectives.
Marketing starts before creating the product. It starts with understanding the market demand for a product or service. A marketer has to survey the market need, what the consumer wants, is there any need and demand for the product or service, would it be a scalable one, all such sorts of questions must be brainstormed by the marketer.
“ A wise marketer always tries to understand the market’s demand and need.” — Chinmay CM
After gathering information about the need and demand of the market, the creative and scientific procedure of designing the product must be put in that leads to creating a product that fits.
Before the product is launched into the market, the price must be decided wisely. Price is an essential factor that influences the buying behavior of a consumer. Every consumer has varying spending capability. All cannot afford to buy at the same prices. So a marketer has to tailor the product and price keeping an eye on its targeted customers’ purchasing ability.
“ A right product at right price always excels.” — Chinmay CM
Then comes the communication between sellers and buyers. Effective communication in marketing is all about sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Promotion helps in creating brand awareness among the consumers and position the product in the market. Very few products sell themselves. Potential buyers first have to be made aware of the product and its benefits. Effective communication is needed to inform, persuade, or in the case of established brands remind them of a product.
Promotion or marketing communication includes advertisement, sponsorship, sales promotion(such as gifts, contests, and product demonstrations), direct marketing, and personal selling and public relations activities, including free publicity. Developing a promotional strategy requires various decisions, such as establishing communication objectives, determining the advertising budget, and selecting the best combination of promotional instruments and media including social media. Other decisions involve using displays efficiently, offering special discounts, attending trade fairs, and finally, assessing the effect of these promotional activities.
Promoting a product or service helps in communicating with potential buyers but the distribution of the product often matters in determining its success than the product itself.
Distribution strategy is concerned with decisions about which distribution channels and intermediaries should be used, the number of sales outlets, the necessary stock levels, and the best forms of transportation. An efficient distribution system ensures that the right products are on sale in the right place at the right time.
Product, price, promotion, and distribution are used together to have a proper marketing strategy.
A great product always converts your customers into brand ambassadors. When the users or customers will use your product and get satisfaction from it then they themselves will start promoting and recommending that product to their friends and relatives, and such a word-of-mouth marketing chain will go on. For example, when Xiaomi launched its smartphone in India under the brand name ‘Redmi’, at that time the smartphone market of India was dominated by Samsung, but due to the better quality of the smartphones of Xiaomi, it outperformed in the smartphone market of India. Xiaomi understood the market demand and tried to fill it with its tailored supply strategy and positioned its brand in the market. And due to the better quality of smartphones and at a reasonable and affordable price they succeeded in acquiring a good customer base. Due to their good product quality they didn’t have to spend much on the paid promotion and advertisements, word-of-mouth played its game. That’s why word-of-mouth is the best channel of marketing.
“Let your customers be your brand ambassador.” — Chinmay CM
A marketer applies various marketing strategies to persuade people to buy the product and the most effective technique of getting the sales lead is by applying copywriting techniques.
Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing the text for advertising or other forms of marketing. The sales copy is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action.
“ A good and well-known brand always sells great.” — Chinmay CM
Building a strong brand is very essential for sales generation at a low cost of marketing in long run. A good brand is built through ‘trust’. If a brand is trustworthy towards its customers then it will help in retaining existing customers and also attract new customers.
When plotting the strategy, experienced marketers also focus on the company’s reputation, on the relationship with customers, and the desired response in the exchange process.
An organization develops a certain reputation- the image that buyers have of the organization and its products or brands. To make a positive impression on the consumer, a company has to do more than simply sell quality products. It also has to do more than simply sell quality products. It also has to offer buyers excellent service in the long run. Once customers are not only satisfied but also enthusiasts they will most likely favor the organization.
Interaction with the customer will eventually create a certain loyalty which helps develop a relationship. To create a bond with their customers, firms try to expand and deepen their communication with the customer.
If a brand has built a good reputation and relationship with the customers, it is more likely that the customer will give a positive response to the marketing offer.
To be a market leader, a brand must try to place itself as the only one. And to be the only one, it needs to be different from the competitors, the field which isn’t touched and acquired yet. Becoming a leader in any category or sub-category will help in building a strong brand presence for a targeted audience.
Besides marketing effort, a marketer must have some knowledge regarding the economic situation of the nation and the world. As it helps in tailoring the right marketing strategy at the right time. If the country is going through a recession period then people are less likely going to buy luxury goods and only prefer to buy essential commodities.
Marketing is really the blending of economics, psychology, and sociology. Ignoring economics is dangerous, wielding economics and marketing together helps in building a better marketing strategy. Building scenarios based on blends of econometric modeling and marketing- consumer behavior, culture, influence- makes for better forecasting than either alone. Pricing of the products is also the factor where the blend of economics and marketing may give higher profitability.
Knowledge of psychology and sociology is also helpful in understanding the market. Psychology helps in understanding the individuals whereas sociology for groups.
We are now clear with the meaning and fundamentals of marketing. In the next section, we will compare digital marketing with traditional marketing.
Traditional Marketing vs Digital marketing
- Traditional marketing is a conventional way of marketing that helps in marketing for the general audience whereas digital marketing helps reach out to the targeted audience.
- Traditional marketing like classified ads in newspapers and magazines, TV ads, Radio are very much costly whereas digital marketing uses internet-based platforms like social media, blogs, etc. for the marketing which costs less.
- There are no KPIs(Key Performing Indicators) to measure the effectiveness of the marketing campaign and budget spent on it whereas, in DM, analytics helps in measuring the effectiveness of the marketing campaign and thus helps in deciding the budget.
- The traditional way of marketing consumes a lot of time, and it's a prolonged process to acquire customers. It is generally helpful in creating brand awareness but digital marketing is excellent in getting the sales lead.
Now, as we have understood the difference in traditional marketing vs digital marketing, we will understand what is CATT approach of the marketing funnel.
CATT approach of the marketing funnel
CATT's approach to marketing is based on niche-specific marketing. CATT stands for Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction. In this approach, a niche is targeted and the ‘Content’ is drawn based on the niche and it attracts the ‘Attention’ of the public. Then the ‘Trust’ is built through communication. After gaining the trust of the people, ‘Transaction’ can be possible.
We are now clear about how to attract the customers and win their trust to get the transaction done through the CATT approach but to gain the attention of people in the digital era you need to know about integrated digital marketing.
Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated digital marketing is the approach of multiple marketing strategies to successfully run a marketing campaign for a brand, product, or service. In this approach, various types of marketing campaigns such as social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, paid advertisement, email marketing, etc. are used to attract customers, build relationships, and ultimately to get the transactions done.
Through content marketing you can build an audience and using SEO in the content you can rank up your content in search engines and gain organic followers. Further, you can run a paid advertising campaign to acquire a new audience. Social media marketing helps get a good lead generation. Email marketing is used to interact with the audience and generate sales.
Integrated digital marketing helps in building a set of audience and building a relationship with them through engagement and turn them into customers but there is another factor available that would help in getting the things done easier in acquiring potential customers and that is through personal branding.
Personal branding
Personal branding is built by gaining the trust of a large group of people. People when trust somebody is more likely to enter into a transitional deal with them than with strangers. Strong personal branding helps sell great products easily as the factor of mass-trust plays its role. Mass-trust is the process of evolution of a personal brand. This is a six-step process that helps in building a mass trust in the personal brand-
Learn: Learning helps in gaining a new skill through concepts, fact, and procedures
Work: Whatever you learned if you put that into work then you will have a better understanding of the working of the procedure in the real world.
Blog: What you learned from your own experience write it down on a blog. Your followers will gain some valuable information from the blog and it will help gain the trust of your audience.
Consult: After having a personal brand through blogging and gaining a good follower base, start consulting other businesses, and get paid for your time.
Mentor: Mentoring others will help you scale up your knowledge and experience and eventually you will get more followers.
Startup: With the knowledge that you gained from your work experience you can build your own startup and scaleup it.
With this six-step procedure, you can build your personal brand and reach a new high in your life.
Summing up all the things that we learned in this article about fundamentals of marketing, how to be a good marketer, the difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing, and building a personal brand, it is clear that one can be a good marketer if he/she understands the customer's need and ability to build trust with them to successfully create a brand which will lead to sales and profit.
(This article is a part of assignments of the Digital Deepak Internship Program by DigitalDeepak)
