Create lasting impact with effective marketing ..
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. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” — Peter Drucker.
There are thousands of such definitions of marketing and lakhs of tools and techniques used.
Confused with so many definitions and tools?
What is the right way to do it?
In this article today, I will focus on how to create a long lasting impact using marketing methods effectively. We will go through digital and traditional marketing tools and focus more on combining the right tools. CATT marketing funnel will help you to get formula of creating wealth for your business.
If you carefully read above definitions, there are few common things such as identifying the customers needs and creating value to satisfy the need. So in simple words marketing is the process of need to satisfaction. It includes market research, studying consumer behavior, product prototyping and testing, sales and promotions, advertisement and also satisfaction surveys. It is a continuous process which keeps evolving.
Marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Lets further drill this down.
Right message: This means right content or the content which your target market is interested to read. Content marketing is the most important thing. If you put the right content then you can hook your audience and they will be interested to read and spend time.
Right person: This refers to your target audience. It is important to identify your prospective customers. Those who are looking for the product or service you are selling. Once you hook them with the right content, you will have to send personalized messages and ensure their interest is intact. Then by using some promotional schemes as a catalyst you will have to convert the interest into action.
Right time: You will have to reach your customers when they are in the right frame of mind. That too using the right tools. So it is important when to use which tools. Further in the article I will focus on some of the tools.
Digital marketing Vs Traditional marketing:
Marketing has evolved over the years with advancement of technology. In the pre internet era, marketing was more focused on traditional channels of communication. It mainly includes print ads in newspapers and magazines. Billboards and posters on roads. In shop branding and POS point of sale branding. This helped in increasing visibility of the products. Exhibitions and trade fairs was also a key channel to showcase your products. New channels such as radio ads came in as we got more options with FM channels and people started spending time listening to FM radio. Television ads also caught more attention with introduction of various channels. But all these channels were means of mass communication and were a costly affair. You can not control who is seeing or listening to your advertisement. Whether he or she is your prospective customer. So it was more of a blind game.
With the introduction of digital marketing channels, the advertising became more focused. You can now select your target audience based on their age, sex, geography, likings etc. Thus in a short time digital marketing became popular. Websites became a necessity, it is now the face of your business and now apps are becoming mandatory.
These are some important tools of digital marketing.
- Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
- Search Engine Optimization (Organic Traffic)
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Digital Display Marketing
- Content Marketing
It is important to select the correct marketing mix. This brings us to another important concept of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). in simple words it means integrating all promotional tools together so that they compliment each other. We should also have the same message across platforms to ensure consistency of brand messaging.
Let’s take a simple example to understand this concept. Suppose your company is participating in an exhibition where you have decided to launch a new product. Now before the exhibitions, it is important to create a buzz around it. Your prospective customers should get the news and should be excited to see what is being launched. You can use email marketing, social media channels and your website to create this buzz. At the same time, traditional channels such as newspaper ads and radio ads can be also used to send out teaser messages about product launch. This will ensure that you have more visitors during the launch at the exhibition. After the launch you can give press briefings and follow it up with social media to give special offers of the new product so that you can convert the buzz into transactional customers. Lets understand this concept using CATT funnel as well.
CATT Marketing funnel:
Let me explain this with a simple formula. Primary objective of every business is wealth creation.
Wealth = n ^ CATT where
n = Niche, C = Content, A = Attention, T = Trust, T = Transaction
Niche: This is the small group of target audience or the prospective buyer whom you will be focusing your efforts on. This is part of market segmentation. It is important to select the right niche for your product or service. You can not satisfy everyone out there and also can not focus on a vast audience at a time. You can select your niche segment using age, sex, geographical location, profession, interests, buying power etc. Once you know your niche then you can study consumer behavior and create your strategy.
While selecting your niche, take in to consideration these three things. Talent, Market and Passion.
Content: Create useful content. We already said that content can be used to hook your audience. It can be in the form of website pages, blogs, posts on social media, jingles on radio or video content. It should create interest and excitement. If you look at the AIDA model, content will help you to create awareness and build interest about your products.
Attention: Once you have hooked your customers, it is important to get their attention. This can be done using SEO, paid media advertising. With this you will have to ensure that your audience sees more and more content from you and become a loyal audience. This is a step where interest can be changed to desire.
Trust: As you keep communicating with your audience, a bond is developed between you. This is trust. Make more personalized communication to build trust.
Transaction: This is the final step of converting desire into action. In this step you want your audience to take a step and purchase something from you. This is a transactional step but important for revenue generation.
Personal Branding — Mass Trust Blueprint: Creating a personal brand is important to build trust of your audience. Usually while you read or listen to someone, you take into consideration who is saying it rather than what is being said. This is human psychology. That is why brand ambassadors work in India. When a film star or a cricketer says something we just believe it. There are also examples from business such as Elon Musk, Ratan Tata, APJ Abdul Kalam are some examples of personal brands. These personalities and separate brands than the brand which they have created.
To conclude, I will say that it is important to choose the marketing mix wisely depending on your target audience or niche and previous experience of what is working for you. It is advisable to do some permutation and combinations of different channels till you come to a right combination of channels. There is no fixed formula for the marketing mix. Use all these tools to get the correct marketing mix and create a lasting impact on your target audience.
Happy Marketing