Untold marketing secrets to come up with product ideas, sell like insane and live the life you want.
By: Anoop Appukuttan
Tags: Digital Marketing, Digital Transformation, Digital Marketing Agency, Digital Nomads, Digital

Untold marketing secrets to come up with product ideas, sell like insane and live the life you want.

Did you ever felt curious about how successful brands have positioned them on the market in an irreversible manner?

Did you ever feel overwhelmed about how personal brands have generated mass trust among their audiences and create consistent wealth?

If you are an entrepreneur, freelancer, coach, mentor, professional, or a marketing enthusiast, who wishes to launch a new product or service or to take your product or service to the next level, then this article is for you.

I am going to break down all the barriers you have encountered till today so that you can come up with a product or service idea and figure out what you need to do in order to succeed in your marketing whether you are a solopreneur or a company.

The clarity for your financial goals.

Before discussing the core concepts, I want to make yourself clear about your own financial goals.

Let me share insight into how you can plan your financial goals in an effective way.

All businesses are for making revenue irrespective of the product or service being sold. You might be having a vision of making enough wealth out of your business.

Let’s say you want to earn 1 crore in revenue in one year.

You might be thinking that how can it be possible?

Ok, let me break it down.

Look at the infographic.

You can create a product of 100 rupees and sell to one lakh customers so that you can generate 1 crore in revenue, or

You can create a product of 1,000 rupees and sell to ten thousand customers so that you can generate 1 crore in revenue, or

You can create a product of 10,000 rupees and sell to a thousand customers so that you can generate 1 crore in revenue, or

Even you can create a product of 1,00,000 rupees and sell to a hundred customers so that you can generate 1 crore in revenue.

It is totally upon you, your niche and your targeted audiences. Later in this article, I will tell you, what is a niche and how can you choose the niche.

I can even break it down into the simplest way if you are still feeling it is not achievable in the span.

Let’s say you want to sell a product of 100 rupees to 1 lakh customers.

You can set your targets for four quarters and can effectively monitor where it is going.

Let’s say 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% of total sales you want to obtain by the end of one year, to be obtained for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarter respectively.

That is 10,000 sales for the 1st quarter, 20,000 sales for the 2nd quarter, 30,000 sales for the 3rd quarter and 40,000 sales for the 4th quarter.

That means 10,000+20,000+30,000+40,000= 100,000 sales by the end of year.

So, instead of thinking how am I going to make 1 lakh sales in one year? you can start working on getting 10,000 sales for the 1st quarter. If you haven’t achieved that target at the end, you can do the necessary assessment and evaluations so that you can improve in the next quarter.

Hope you understood clearly.

Now we can talk about the marketing of your product or services.

Well, before talking about the main ideas, I would like to make clarity about a common misconception I have seen among people that Marketing and Advertising are the same.

They seem to be the same, but they aren’t.

Marketing is your systematic planning of strategies and implementation of those strategies to create brand awareness and trust, create a valuable product or service and decide the pricing, generating sales and retain the customer for a lifetime.

Advertising is only a part of marketing strategies, where you advertise your product or services, to get customer attention and generate sales.

The fundamentals of marketing.

Now that you are pretty clear about the difference between marketing and advertising, we can discuss marketing fundamentals in detail.

The classic definition of marketing according to AMS (American Marketing Association) is “ the activity, set for institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large”.

The first thing is, whenever you come up with an idea of a product or service you must validate the idea to confirm whether it is viable or not. In order to validate this, you must answer these questions.

What is your product?

Your product or service idea may be a unique idea or an existing one in the market.

If there is a similar product or service already in the market probably there will be competition.

Don’t worry, knowing your competitor is half your success.

Now you know your competitor and you shall differentiate your product from your competitor. And this differentiation is called USP or unique selling proposition. There shall be something unique that differentiate from your competitor’s product. It may be the design, it may be the price point, it may be your refund policy or it may be the user interface.

Ok, don’t be confused. Let me explain through an example of a product that is already in the market.

You might have seen a portable blender that is common nowadays in Amazon and Flipkart and probably in the local market of all countries.

Blendjet is a company that sells a similar product around the world. Blendjet has over 1 million customers around 195 countries.

How can they sell a similar product when giant e-commerce brands like Amazon, where there are thousands of sellers selling a similar product around the world?

The answer is simple. Most of the portable blenders are manufactured in china and sellers those who are selling a similar product might be purchased in bulk and probably of low quality.

Blendjet products are manufactured without compromising in the quality and added uniqueness in their product design. It is USB C chargeable and powerful enough to make 15 blends, quantity markings on the jar. Look at their logo, product design and custom packing. That makes them different from other sellers or brands.

Look at their website to see how their USPs are demonstrated throughout the site.

Who can resist buying this product from blendjet, when so many problems are solving.

Now you might have an idea about how to differentiate your product from the competitor.

2. Who is this product for and where to sell?

This question answers who are your target audience.

If your product or service is a problem solving one it will be easy to define your targeted customers.

And these involve several questions such as;

Who is it for, men or women? What is the age group, income, education, ethnicity, purchasing behavior, etc?

See who all are Digital Deepak’s customers?

Let’s take his Digital Marketing internship programme.

It is simple, men and women.

Age group is no limit; whoever wants to learn digital marketing basics can join the course. He has students even older than him. Still, we can assume that 18 to 60 years of age group as his audiences.

Not finished, anyone who wishes to start a new career in the digital platform, any business owner or anyone plans to start a business, anyone as a beginner in the digital platform, professional who wants to expand their business etc. are also his targeted customers.

The USP of his product is his internship program has a cashback system where you get almost all the amount you pay for the course and it is fully practical oriented.

No, let’s think about how he comes up with this unique idea.

They are a lot of enthusiasts who wish to learn digital marketing skills for their varying purposes. But nobody was there to deliver a structured course that enables them to be a digital marketer. He was brilliant to identify this requirement and the possibility of the requirement of digital marketing professionals in the coming future. And these enthusiasts would be from any part of Indian from a small village to a tier 1 city.

3. What is your pricing?

Pricing is also a very important factor for the success of your product or service. If your product is a physical/ digital product, whether it is a problem solving or impulse buying its price should be proportional to the perceived values. You cannot sell a product for 250 rs that is available for 100 rupees in the local market unless it is having unique characteristics that defeat the competitor’s product characteristics.

If you have a digital product, you are supposed to price your product based on how much value is getting to the customer, not based on how much days or months you have worked on it.

Remember people don't by features, they buy benefits, experience and emotions.

4. What marketing promotion you have to choose: Traditional & Digital?

Marketing is that you create a brand in your prospects mind. The thought that comes into your prospects mind when seeing your logo or hearing your brand name.

A careful approach to be taken while choosing a marketing strategy.

Old age marketing methods are gone. Of course, marketing is the same where you communicate what you have valuable to give to your customer in exchange for money, whether it is the traditional or digital marketing

Old age marketing types such as fliers, posters, TV ads, radio ads etc. still works. But it has limitations also. In the digital era, we are required to think about how to reach maximum targeted customers with the least expenditure. Here comes the role of Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing vs. Traditional marketing.

Digital marketing is the same as that of traditional marketing. The only difference is the medium has changed. In old times, traditional mediums such as print media, TV, Radio, Fliers, pamphlets and mouth to mouth marketing are being used to communicate, wherein digital marketing mediums such as the internet, social media platforms, search engines, emails SMS etc. are being used.

The difference is these digital platforms can be highly customised to reach your targeted audiences precisely.

Imagine you have started a baby store in your locality and a 1,000 pamphlets have been delivered along with the newspaper to reach your customers. How many people will read and take action on your ad? Some may read and some may throw the pamphlet.

Imagine if you use a marketing method where you are able to reach audiences who have just born babies, or children less than 5 years old, or those are just married. Your ad will reach more accurately to the customers.

If you have spent 2 rupees for each pamphlet then you will spend 2,000 rs for 1,000 pamphlets.

What if you can directly communicate to your exact targeted customers, one to one, with half of this expenditure or probably less than that?

That is the power of digital marketing.

Later in this article, I will elaborate more about how you can use Integrated digital marketing effectively to grow your business.

CATT Marketing Funnel for your massive success!

Before explaining what a CATT marketing funnel let me explain what is a marketing funnel?

A funnel is something that you set up, containing a set by step process, your customers go through before making a purchase or conversion.

That means the process of converting visitors to customers.

I learned about this strategy from Digital Deepak’s Internship program.

It has four stages called Content Phase, Attention Phase, Trust Phase and Transaction.

Let’s familiarize each one in detail.

Content phase to create awareness

The first step in the process is to create contents around your niche. And these contents must be educating contents for your customers. Delivering educating contents consistently will create awareness among your targeted audiences. It can be a youtube video, blog post, Instagram or Facebook post, ebooks, webinars, reviews, anything about latest updates in your industry or combination of these.

For example, see Sorav Jain’s Instagram page. Every week he posts a carousel image post on his Instagram that includes 8-10 images about new updates in the digital marketing industry. You can visit his profile here

Anyone interested in such content will follow him without a doubt and will wait eagerly for the next content after one week. That means his targeted people have gone through the top of the CATT funnel.

And he is able to take his audiences up to the bottom of the funnel.

Remember content is the king.

Tip: You can plan your contents around your niche and create a content calendar to make it effective.

Later I will publish a detailed article on how you can create an effective content calendar.

Attention Phase:

Now that your audiences are gone through the first stage of the CATT funnel, the next stage is grabbing their attention. This can be done by driving traffic to your website or landing page by organically SEO, Social media organic reach etc.) or by paid ads ( FB ads, LinkedIn ads, google ads etc.)

Let me share an example. It is only one way. There are a lot of other ways.

Robin Sharam is trying to drive traffic to his landing page and thereby capturing the attention of customers by delivering a free audiobook ( content & Value).

Here is what happened when I clicked on the link.

It directly took me to the landing page where one more call to action was there. When I clicked on the CTA a pop up has been appeared and asked for my email in order to get the free ebook.

A smart move. What I am going to get here is a Free audiobook to my inbox and he is getting my email to his database.

Yes, I got the ebook in my email. After confirming the email.

And the podcast was really worthy and amazing in terms of knowledge he has delivered. He really succeeded in grabbing my attention.

Trust Phase :

Here in this part, your strategy is to gain the trust of your customers. It can be done by enabling your audiences to engage with your contents repeatedly, through your email sequences, asking to follow on Twitter or Facebook, by showing the client success stories or testimonials, and even through retargeting ads.

In the above example, I have found the podcast very much valuable and, by the end of listening to the podcast an interest and trust has been created inside me to read his books or articles. Even the reviews below his podcast page blew up my mind. I have noticed that peoples have listened to his podcast multiple times.

One thing is, even if I don’t visit his website again he will keep me updating his contents through his emails. He is too smart that and has already captured my email. From next day onwards, I have started receiving his emails on my inbox. Again he was delivering free content.

Here he is trying to make me engage with his free contents to create trust.

Let me tell you another example.

See below image. How many emails I am getting from Digital Deepak? He is regularly nurturing me as a targeted customer through his blog updates, email sequences, asking to turn up for the webinars scheduled and entertaining me to attend the cashback webinars.

Transaction phase:

This is the most important part of the CATT funnel as the revenue comes from this part.

The point is, once you are able to attain the trust of your targeted audiences, it is easy to sell your products or service. That means you can sell your product (Problem-solving/need of customer) effortlessly if you can gain the trust and have a great offer.

That is why I have joined the digital Deepak’s course and am writing this article now.

Here is an example, how CATT funnel applied to me?

I heard (Mouth to mouth) about Digital Deepak from one of my unseen friends. He just sent me a link to a webinar.

I have joined the webinar and that was amazing. (Content phase which created awareness ).

As the webinar was useful, again I have attended the webinars on different subjects. I was added to his email sequences and continuously nurtured me through emails. ( Attention phase)

Attended webinars repeatedly and gained knowledge from him and knew about his internship program. I have also seen several reviews of the Internship program. ( Trust Phase)

I have attended the Digital Deepak’s Internship Program’s announcement webinar and joined the course that day itself. ( Transaction phase)

Wow! Interesting right.

At this point, I would like to say, anyone who achieved massive success using digital marketing has been through an Integrated digital marketing approach.

Now, let’s discuss Integrated Digital marketing and its importance in your success.

What is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Integrated digital marketing is the way of integrating all the possible marketing channels effectively into your business. Below picture will give you an insight about integrated digital marketing.

In this strategy, your content is the leader and other marketing channels are your team members.

What if you are using only one channel to reach out to your customer. Let’s say SEO. Of Course, the most cost-effective way to bring traffic to your website or landing page is SEO. But it only works when someone searches in on the search engine.

Studies show that a customer gets into a funnel when he sees your content minimum 7 times.

Now think if you are using Facebook ads only for reaching out to your customers and you need to show them the ads minimum seven times and it will cost too much money and time.

But, what if you can create awareness through your contents and generate interest in your products or services simultaneously through your blog posts, social media accounts, social media networks, Google search results and paid ads.

If you are using this method, at the awareness stage itself you will be able to capture the leads. A lead can be an email or a phone number and you will be able to nurture them through your automation.

When all these methods are integrated effectively and used efficiently, your targeted customer goes through the CATT funnel in very less time and finally converts into a buyer effortlessly.

That means you are saving tons of money and plenty of time.

We can say it as a natural sale!

You can read more about this strategy in this article.

Now that you have well understood about Integrated Digital Marketing, one more thing I need to discuss in detail so that you get more inspiration and take action ahead to create your product or service.

Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint

Have you seen personal brands like Sorav Jain, Digital Deepak, Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Fredlam etc. who are generating plenty of wealth and live the freedom life as they want?

It is why they created their personal brands, created the mass trust and generated wealth out of it.

Personal brands have pros and cons as well.

Others cannot invest in a personal brand as well as it cannot be sold.

But the good part is a personal brand can create multiple businesses out of it and can be a brand ambassador for his companies.

As an entrepreneur, if you wish to become a personal brand, creating mass trust is an inevitable factor for your success.

courtesy: Digital Deepak

How can you transform yourself as a Personal Brand?

By following the below steps, in a disciplinary manner, you can transform yourself into a personal brand.

Learn skills

Earn knowledge and learn the skills you require to succeed in your niche.

This includes mastering in your subjects as well as in marketing fundamentals.

Web copywriting, SEO, social media optimization, ads creation, image and video editing and several other things come into play.

You must invest in yourself to learn new skills on a daily basis so that confidence and self-esteem level will increase and that drives your passion.

2. Take action

Whatever the things you have learned, you shall put into work.

The best option is to start a blog around your niche. This way you improve your writing skills, SEO, advertising and a lot.

Practice and implementation make you perfect in your area.

You can even do freelancing, teaching online and offline and even you can work for yourself.

Remember, when you are staring, focus on one thing. Our brain is not multi-functional. If you concentrate on several areas, you will not get productive results. Master one area and move to another.

3. Create contents around your niche.

You can create contents like infographics, images and blogs, videos, podcasts etc.

You can either be a content curator or a creator.

Writing makes you more clear about what you have learned and implemented. It helps to talk to others confidently. You can write about what you have learned, what you got out of it and how others can benefit?

Good thing is, your blogs will help you to create your personal brand. You can also share your contents in social media and forums.

Remember, personal brands need their own contents.

When you start creating contents, people will eventually start to recognize you.

At this stage, you can even start a consultation service also. Even if free consultation will help you to gain trust in you.

4. Provide Mentorship

When you share your experiences that made a result for yourself and provide those strategies to improve other’s businesses, eventually you can transform into a mentor.

Who doesn’t need mentorship for his business from a successful marketer or strategist?

Once you start mentorship and helping others to generate businesses, your mentorship can be reached to several other businesses.

5. Your Startup Phase

If you want to start your own startup, all the way up to the mentorship phase will help you to launch a product to the market.

By this time you might have learned about what the market needs.

What are the solutions you can provide?

If you have an entrepreneur mindset, by this time, you will be having a beta version of your product.

Conclusion

All the strategies I have shared here are proven by multiple successful entrepreneurs. If you look around and observe carefully, you can realize the same things. By understanding the basic fundamentals of proven marketing strategies and implementing them into your business can help you to reach your goals and create a dominant place in your niche market. Obviously, it will not happen overnight. Scientists say that in order to succeed in a specific area, one shall spend ten thousand hours on it. Leaning, practising, implementing and learning from mistakes will make you perfect.