Learn the Core basics of Digital Marketing before spending money on Ads.
By: Shreyas Pangal
Tags: Personal Branding, Marketing Strategies, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Whenever we hear about digital marketing, we think about the ads that show up on our YouTube videos or Facebook, and Instagram in a story or post format. Is digital marketing just about these ads?

The things mentioned above are just a part of digital marketing and there are more things to it than just ads. Follow this article with me till the end to know more about the right way to create and implement marketing strategies.

Social Media Apps

Most people make the mistake of starting a digital marketing plan or process for their product directly with ads on social media platforms which just takes a lot of time to start going into effect and waste both time and money.

If you run a small business or you are an entrepreneur who wants to get started with your product to sell in the online market. Then this article is for you because it is going to help you understand your potential customers better and maintain relationships that matter to you and your audience.

First, we need to understand a simple model to scale the business and start earning profits in 4 different ways. (look at the image below to understand more about this)

A simple example to understand product sales growth in 4 different ways

1st Example:- Price= 100 Rupees*Customer =1,00,000 = 1 CRORE.

2nd Example:- Price= 1,000 Rupees*Customer =10,000 = 1 CRORE.

3rd Example:- Price= 10,000*Customers =1,000 =1 CRORE.

4th Example:- Price= 1,00,000*Customers =100 = 1 CRORE.

In the 1st & 2nd examples, the product cost is low and the customer size is big.

Example:- Daily used essential goods or services may come in this category - | like- bed table, digital accessories or wearables; delivery services, websites for order placements & searching custom goods.

In the 3rd & 4th examples, the product cost is high comparatively and customer size shrinks to a smaller number.

Example:- High quality, expensive goods or services may come in this category | like- premium durable products; medical services.

The time frame to reach 1 Crore revenue may differ as per the product/service sold by the seller. So making sure that the product is solving a burning problem in the customer's life is important, may not be always a big problem that you are solving.

Now let’s dig deep into the essential topics in applying digital marketing knowledge the right way and producing the results like the examples given above.

Agenda:- Know the Top #5 essential elements to consider before starting the marketing journey of your product or service on Social media and other online platforms.

#1 Fundamentals of Marketing

Many people think advertising and marketing are the same. Advertising is the latter part of the whole marketing process. Advertising starts when the product is ready to sell. But Marketing begins way before the product is even made.

These are the core concepts of marketing that almost revolves around everything -

4P’s Of Marketing

Product- The physical good or service that we sell.

In marketing, we need to determine what kind of category does the product belongs to?. For example, (i) fashion clothing is designed for what kind of events to wear on — for business events, weddings, casual party wear, etc. (ii) a service that provides a quick solution for delivery of the products from one place to another in just a few clicks.

2. Price- The cost at which the product is sold to the customers.

There are 2 main points -

At what price does a similar product being sold(if it exists) or what is the market price at this point in time(evaluate the willingness of the customer to buy the product and the cost at which it is produced).

Financing abilities of the customers. If they can pay it upfront or they would need financing options. (mainly for high priced goods or services).

3. Promotion- Once a product is out there, it needs to be promoted so people know it exists.

There are 2 main points -

What channels do we use to promote the products? Online platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Each platform has its own set of audience, so before deciding on one platform, knowing where the audience of the product exists is very important.

Knowing the Product’s core message for the audience. The audience needs to be communicated with the right message that will encourage them to buy the product(which may kill their pain point or make their task easier).

4. Place- The right distribution centers to meet a big chunk of the audience where they are.

The product needs to be available at a place and time where it is needed the most and is required according to the usage conditions of the product.

Example — The special kinds of health drinks, if sold in a place which is not an urban city and their lives are not busy enough then it may not succeed.

#2 Personal Branding

In this day and age, where everyone is on the internet selling something to the people. Making a difference, by building your personal brand and establishing your authority the right way will help to build sustainable & long term growth and relationships with your customers.

The following steps are really helpful for people who want to re-think the way they started marketing their products.

Do you have your Personal Brand yet?

Step 1:- The personal branding process starts with understanding your audience or user needs who will use the product and reap the benefits from it, we can also know more about our audience by making a Buyer’s Persona (click on Buyer’s Persona to know more about it).

Step 2:- Then, Design a Product (“bundle of benefits”) that satisfies those needs better than existing products. It can be anything that is making the customer feel delighted after receiving it and would extend the relationship by buying more of your products in the future.

Step 3:- After the first two steps of doing research and then creating products based on real metrics. Let's talk about “Building an audience”.

Building a trusted audience who believes not just the product but also the person promoting behind it. The ROI(return on investment) rises by 50% on any platform.

The most prominent way to connect with them personally is, Email Marketing to your email list. If you build an email list, where you have your most trusted fans who would like to receive your weekly or daily newsletter with helpful content in it.

Here you can segment your audience based on the content you made & it also helps you to directly connect with them and know their problems in order to solve them and also promote your products at the same time.

You can use many third-party email marketing tools like - Mailchimp, Get Response, Convert Kit, Active Campaign, etc.

#3 Basic knowledge about Indian Economics

Depending on the scale and need of the business one needs to know at least the basic knowledge about Indian Economics to target and identify the right set of customers.

Indian Economic growth

It helps to make better decisions while planning to sell something in a country like India that has a very diversified culture and belief system. Which allows you to understand their pain points better and makes it easier to solve customers problem once we identify them with the right metrics.

4 important metrics you need to know according to your Target Market -

Average Age of the country (check India’s Avg Age…click here)

(check India’s Avg Age…click here) Location (how & where the customer trend is changing)

(how & where the customer trend is changing) Language (clear barriers if any)

(clear barriers if any) Spending power and patterns (how much do they want to spend on a product or service)

#4 CATT Marketing Funnel

CATT- Content, Attention, Trust, Transaction.

CATT Marketing Funnel

CATT Marketing Funnel starts with selecting a niche(a narrow market) of yours. If one try’s to be everything for everyone, one would be nobody for none.

To target the right audience who are interested in your product or service, “Quality Content” will be your asset which will help to attract the right set of audiences to your product or service.

Let's start with “n” in the given formula -

Wealth = n^CATT

How to choose your niche market

n — stands for Niche, which means choosing a particular category or narrow interests of people to focus on less and targeted approach and produce more results.

C — stands for Content. Create useful content, blogs, emails, videos, podcasts, webinars, posts, and much more to generate leads.

Quality content will always be useful to engage the customers and educate them about your product and make them the ambassadors of your product.

A — stands for Attention, pulling traffic to your content. Also through social media ads etc.

The attention span of the general audience shifts very quickly if they experience uncertainty in receiving useful content online at the right time. So, personalization of the content according to the audience’s pain points becomes crucial.

T — stands for Trust. Personalize your communication in emails.

To make sales happen automatically, building trust becomes very essential. This needs some time and effort towards building useful content and customer experience to gain long term relationship with them.

T — stands for Transaction. Convert leads into customers.

The transaction can only happen when there is proper trust and will uphold the relationship for a longer period of time.

#5 Integrated Digital Marketing

While combining all the powers of marketing, driving sales almost becomes automated. Let me explain how?. But first, let's have a look at -

A brief difference between Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing -

This will help you to understand more about how Integrated digital marketing works & is essential for small businesses -

Types of Online Marketing

Digital marketing consists of -

Email marketing

SEO

Social Media Marketing (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn…)

Content marketing

Paid advertisement

Display Ads

Traditional Marketing consists of -

Directly mailed postcards

Television or radio commercials

Newspaper or magazine ads

Billboards and fliers

Telephone calls and text notifications

Q:- How to know what are the right tools for you to use to reach and connect with your audience better?

A:- By doing a good research on where does the majority of your audience hangs out, is the platform that you start with. Take a look at the list mentioned above to get a better idea of your audience and their behavior on various online platforms. let's discuss the things in detail now -

Integrated Digital marketing

In the age of the Internet, the main drive for the audience to buy any product or service is to first search about it on the internet and check its reviews or ask their friends on social media.

When it comes to research done by the customers about the product, the more delighted they are with the knowledge about the product the more they share the word of mouth with their peers.

That can only happen with “Quality Content” present on the internet about the product. Not just any content but the need for Quality Content is because it gives the potential customers a way to trust and connect better by solving their problems with the right information at the right time.

After creating such content, if it is not marketed then it is of no use. Using this kind of useful content marketing strategy the latter part of the marketing techniques begins to play a role. But the most important one is “Content Marketing”.

This Content can be used to pull the right kind of customers who are interested in the product and will “Word Of Mouth Marketing” which is the best way to increase the audience size.

The above mentioned ways of marketing like SEO, Social media Marketing, Display Ads, SEM begins only after creating useful content. So the emphasis on Content Marketing is very important to make other forms of marketing success.

All kinds of marketing techniques co-relate with each other when the main element of marketing helps to create a snowball effect. Where one situation causes other events to happen on its own. It can only be possible with something that is very relevant and efficient at the same time.