Insights To The World Of Digital Marketing — A Simplified Guide
O n the 24th Of March, 2020; when most of the world was already under restrictions, India was also all set to go in a lockdown to avoid the Coronavirus from increasing. With the spread of the virus, all institutions which were remotely active or not active on the digital front needed to be on a digital platform to have access to the life beyond our homes.
Where digitization and globalization had already been making our world digital, the beginning of this Covid Era and The New Normal made the world’s presence on the internet more predominant. Students of all age groups and professionals of various fields have learned to work the online way. If you’re reading this article, probably you’ve also seen the digital connect grow faster in this year 2020. Would you be surprised if I told you that even as you read this article, the count of digital users is increasing?
This is because of the growing demand of the digital world.
I am here, to give you insights into my understanding of this effective digital world of marketing and branding. I have been learning from the best in the field, Digital Deepak. https://digitaldeepak.com
As you pass by your Main Streets, have you come across big hoardings of an iPhone with its high-quality pixel Camera and sleek finesse? This is what we call Marketing.
Marketing is promoting business products or services by engaging in and understanding the short term and long term needs of our customer audience. When these promotions of products and services with in-depth knowledge of customer needs and market demands, have been extended from hoardings to Google Ads, it becomes digital marketing.
When promotion of products or services come on an electronic device and is available on a digital platform to create attention, awareness, trust, build leads, and create sales. It is called digital marketing.
Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
We are in a digital era, where everything is just a click away. To excel in our digital presence, it is essential for us to know our basics.
Marketing in general is about, sending the right content or message to the right person at the right time. Probably, you clicked on this article to briefly understand digital marketing and you might be the right person reading the right content at the right time of your life.
Marketing is not just about selling a product or service. The purpose of marketing is to build a brand or a company and capture a positive position in the minds of the consumers. Marketing is perceived to be about creativity, but it’s not about creativity. Marketing is a science. It is about understanding customer needs or market demand and targeting the correct audience accordingly. This further leads to the development of a brand, and this helps consumers get a good perception of the offered product or service.
Marketing is a continuous process, it may start before creating a product or to boost an existing product in the market. It must not stop after selling the product or service one time around. Marketing should be done before creating a product with a probable prototype while selling the product or service and even after selling the particular product or service to build trust and a constant connection with your customer audience. A customer should be happy with the brand and its communication and making them stay as your customer for the rest of their life.
Marketing is a perception created for a product, but a product is a reality for the customer. The two must have a middle ground to be deep-rooted in the hearts of customers.
When you read the word “Search Engine”, which is the first brand that comes to your mind? Is it Google? That is what happens when the brand has developed trust in the masses. Does Google now compulsorily need advertising? No, it doesn’t. This is because it has reached a position where the masses trust the brand, after a brand has made it big or is trustworthy in their area, consumers start trusting the name. Marketing then becomes less important, brand name sells. Now if we have to check for something online instead of saying “I’ll search it” we end up saying “I’ll google it”, that’s the kind of #masstrust a brand eventually wants to develop with its consumers.
Peter Drucker, once said “ The Aim Of Marketing Is To Know And The Customer So Well The Product Or Service Fits Him And Sells Itself.. The Aim Of Marketing Is To Make Selling Superfluous”
Marketing is a process in itself, it need not be associated with areas like social media marketing or SEO alone, they are ways of increasing an audience, leads, etc but associating marketing according to platforms given is not the correct way of learning. If an App learned goes obsolete, the grounds of your marketing will also go obsolete. It is important to know marketing basics to function, and the skills learned can be then applied on any digital platform or app, but associating marketing to its subsections or parts alone is only making basics weak. It is essential to learn marketing as a whole, Advertising, copywriting and sales are components of Marketing. Once marketing basics are thorough all the other components will follow
Focus
The main player is the product. The quality of the product is essential.
Marketing develops attention and awareness of a product or a service in the market and creates a good perception and image of it to the customer audience.
If you go and buy a new brand product after a fascinating google Ad, which delivers below-average product performance and after-sales service, would you trust it the second time around despite appealing marketing? I doubt. A great product makes your customers your brand ambassadors.
Loyalty and brand identity grows only if the product or service is good. If the product or service is good, marketing will accelerate the company or the brand with its sales. Whereas, If the product or the service is not good, great marketing is only temporary and will help get sales for a very short period.
Digital Marketing V/S Traditional Marketing
The main difference between the two is of medium, Digital marketing as the name suggests is exhibited digitally for example through instagram ads, googles ads and traditional marketing is promotion of products and services through offline strategies and channels, like magazines and newspapers. Word of mouth is another channel. Though, traditional marketing channels and strategies have not died, but digital marketing has taken over the world much more as the audience and the reach of marketing through online platforms is far beyond what traditional marketing can possibly ever reach.
One constant among the two are principles and fundamentals, that is the very essence of promotion. Thus, the fundamentals of marketing must be strong, medium may keep changing as we keep adapting to new technologies and the growing world with new innovations
Branding
Do you think Hermes as a luxury brand needs advertising amongst Fashion bloggers, influencers, or fashion followers? No. But is Hermes the only brand in luxury handbags? No, again. Yet it is one of a kind. This is important for understanding the basics of personal branding. The idea in branding is not about being number one, it is about being the only one in their category or their market space. Which further makes us wonder how that can be achieved?
Taking the example of Hermes, Hermes is a luxury handbag brand that has been led by a rich heritage of 5 generations, with exquisite craftsmanship, detailing, and an extremely high level of quality. Hermes is all about a position of superiority and richness. It exhibits bags made of premium leather, alligator skin, crocodile skin, and even ostrich skin. An Hermes iconic, Birkin Bag is considered royalty. It can be sold at auctions, it is considered an investment around the world. This is its USP i.e. Unique Selling Point. Hermes as a brand has reached a position where it doesn’t need advertising yet it is iconic in the world of luxury.
Similarly, every brand must consider themselves as the only one in an identified category or sub-category, with an identified unique selling point that makes it a reason for the consumers to come to a brand.
But, choosing a category and knowing your niche is the first step to Branding
Understanding Our Niche
Knowing and understanding your niche is like reaching halfway to Success
Understanding your product is a must, If you know your product, you know what is that you’re doing different than ten other competitors in the same field, you can use that to be the ONLY ONE. Once we excel in our specialty, we can grow and expand in other areas, but the focus of standing out and being the only one in a particular area of your product’s expertise is what helps know and understand the niche.
n^CATT (n= Niche)
C: Content
“Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing” — Rebecca Lieb
After a niche is identified, it is important to engage with our customers with worthy content as content is the key. Before a brand is developed and accepted in the market, it must have appealing content for the audience which grabs their attention and convinces them to buy the products or avail of the services.
A: Attention
Once the content has been exhibited on a platform, it must be reached out to the audience. They say, What is the point of knowledge if it dies with you? Similarly, what is the point of valuable content if it has not been conveyed to the target market?
T: Trust
Once the brand has presented its content and caught the attention of a stranger it is the trust through reviews, customer support, brand reassurance, positive feedbacks, and pleasant vibes from the brand that establish a ground of trust in the brand. This is the moment where the stranger may no longer be a stranger and may turn into a lead.
T: Transaction
Transaction happens when the leads are converted into potential buyers. For example, when we go window shopping and come back home with clothes? That is the final goal of every brand. An Increase in conversions is the ultimate goal of every brand, this can be achieved when customer needs and market demands are well-read, researched, and acted upon in an above-illustrated manner.
Integrated Digital Marketing
As the name suggested, integrated digital marketing is incorporation of a variety of marketing strategies, for example content marketing, social media marketing, Search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and more. These strategies when applied together create a better and wider impact in grabbing attention, spreading brand awareness, building trust, generating leads and eventually turning as conversions.
Communication Skills
Good Communication Skills = Good Marketing
In today’s world, English is the world language for interactions and communication but do you feel that you’re not good enough in English so you have less scope? This is a misconception. Good communication doesn’t necessarily mean Excellent English and flawless grammar. Good communication skills refer to effective communication, be it subtle and simple without profound and impactful words, but with words that are clear and that help the audience relate to you or understand you.
The idea behind good communication is engaging content. Content that is given undivided attention by the audience, and is considering appealing and simplistic. In a world, so complex, simplistic yet candid catches the eye and the heart more often than not.
One foolproof hack is conversing, presenting content in the way that you talk, this engages the audience in a conversation with you within their minds. Be straightforward and let them converse with you.
Other than all the mentioned points above, one generic essential for any growing field is staying updated. Other than working on the fundamentals of digital marketing, channelising your time in extensive reading and being aware about the happenings of this digital world is the most important for any individual looking for scope and potential in this growing field and in this digital era. What do you think? Leave a comment down below on your insights.
