Everything you have ever wanted to know about Marketing and Branding
By: Subhamkumar Kapupara
Tags: Branding, Marketing, Traditional Marketing, Digital Marketing, Personal Branding

Everything you have ever wanted to know about Marketing and Branding Subhamkumar Kapupara Jun 28·7 min read

In this article, I am going to talk about what is marketing and branding. This article will be useful for Entrepreneurs, Marketers, Freelancers, Mentors who want to know about marketing and branding in simple ways.

So let’s start….

Fundamentals of Marketing

Marketing is all about helping people in solving their problems by providing a solution at the right place at a right time.

Most people think that marketing depends on creativity but it is not true marketing is purely based on science.

Marketing is what you tell and how you tell it when you want to explain how amazing your product is and why people should buy it.

At a fundamental level, marketing is the process of understanding your customers, and building and maintaining great relationships with them.

Marketing is not about who can talk faster, or close better. It is about a deep psychological understanding of customer needs.

Marketing does not help only in selling products or services but it helps in creating a product or service which fits with the needs of the customers.

One should not fully focus on just marketing because if the product or service is not good then even if your marketing effort is good your product will sell for sometime but not after that.

A great product sells itself. It needs marketing initially but after that it can sell itself through word of mouth. Marketing just helps people to discover the product. For example: OnePlus, OYO, etc.

Marketing helps your business in Raising brand awareness, Generating traffic, Building trust and credibility in your brand, Increasing revenue, Tracking your progress, etc.

Now the most common and important types of marketing are traditional and digital marketing. So let’s see which type of marketing is better.

Digital Marketing or Traditional Marketing which is better?

Marketing can be in the form of T.V. ads, In the form of a brochure, A press release is mostly called a traditional form of marketing. And more recently, in the form of Facebook ads, Google ads, Youtube ads, Blogs, SEO, etc. mostly called as digital form of marketing (Digital marketing).

Now you might be thinking which type of marketing is better but the answer is both are good, both have some pros and cons.

In traditional marketing your T.V. ad can reach more no. of people as compared to Digital ads such as Facebook ads or Google ads.

But in digital marketing your ads can be shown only to specific target audiences who will become interested in your products or services but this doesn’t apply in traditional one because the T.V. ads can be seen by everyone even by those who’re not interested in what you offer.

Of course traditional marketing doesn’t mean it’s old fashioned. Traditional marketing still plays an important role in people’s lives with the ever growing need to step out of the digital world.

In the same way, digital marketing is just as important as traditional if not even more so. Digital marketing uses every touch point of your daily use of the internet to reach out to you.

Traditional marketing is impactful, memorable but hard to measure, expensive and there is no direct interaction.

Digital marketing is engaging, measurable, highly targeted but less permanent, potentially annoying and constantly evolving.

One of the examples of digital marketing you can see is of Mercedes-benz which is one of the top producing luxury vehicles and commercial vehicles. The company might have plenty of money, but it also leverages free digital marketing platforms like Instagram.

It has 32.8 million followers and an awesome engagement level.

In traditional marketing you may have seen the marketing campaigns of McDonald’s called “Pakka Indian”.

McDonald’s had launched a new flavor of masala grill burger and captioned it as “Pakka Indian.” To market this new variant to the target audience, a OOH (Out of Home) marketing campaign was used including different OOH media formats, like billboards, wall wraps, bus shelters, etc. Through this campaign, the brand was able to execute a message of “Masaledar” through different innovations at targeted audience center points.

So it truly depends on you where you want to spend money for marketing your products or services because both the types of marketing are good at their place.

Now that you know the fundamentals and types of marketing medium let us know how to convert a stranger into a customer by understanding CATT funnels.

Understanding CATT funnel

Before getting into the CATT funnel first let us know what basically a funnel is?

A funnel is the process of converting prospects into your customers.

It is a visual representation of the steps a visitor takes from first finding out about you until they convert. The marketing funnel is of four steps:

Content: You create useful content which provides valuable information that attracts people from your niche. Content can be in the form of Videos, Blogs, Webinars etc. You basically educate people by providing free valuable information. Attention: Prospect will see your blog, ads, videos, social media post or hear about you through referrals. Trust: Prospect will trust you as they see your content on a regular basis and also through nurturing him/her via email marketing, retargeting ads etc. They will think you can solve their problem. Transaction: Prospect will convert into customer by buying your product or service which will solve their problems.

One thing I forgot to mention is that you should first select a niche before proceeding with creating a CATT funnel. Because being in a specific niche will make people consider you as an expert in that field.

Now I am considering that you’ll choose digital marketing for your business as you’re just entering into marketing as a newbie. It is budget friendly as compared to traditional marketing.

You may run just a Facebook ads campaign or Google ads or just do SEO to generate leads and sales but doing it alone will not be that much effective in a long term approach.

So it is important to execute digital marketing in an integrated way rather than running different marketing campaigns alone. So here comes the topic called Integrated digital marketing.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Integrated digital marketing is, as it sounds, the integration of multiple marketing strategies to form a united online approach for your business.

The idea behind integrated digital marketing is that, while each individual strategy doesn’t have a huge impact on its own, when used in conjunction, you can create a more influential online presence.

It also saves a lot of time since you’re integrating different platforms at one place your time to make different campaigns reduces.

Now we should know why personal branding is as important as marketing.

Personal Branding

Personal branding refers to the process of establishing your public persona for your target audience. It involves communicating your values, beliefs, goals, and purpose.

Personal branding is important because it helps you to stand out from the crowd.

Also it leads to many opportunities such as getting your dream job, getting clients for your service, speaking assignments, paid promotions etc.

People will trust you more because of your personal brand.

If you want to be an entrepreneur or want to get a job, having a personal brand is very important.

Personal branding will help your audience to know what you do, what kind of person you are.

So to grow your personal brand you’ll need to create content to influence your audience.

What content should I create? This will be the question which will come to your mind.

So here I am sharing with you the blueprint called MassTrust for personal branding.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to create a strong personal brand.

Start learning new skills and practice it. Work for someone because with this you’ll implement things in the real world which you’ve learned. Write a blog of what you’ve learned and experienced through your work. By writing a blog you’ll start creating a personal brand. Now that you have experience and a brand, start consulting people in their business. Mentor people who want to be like you. By mentoring your understanding level will reach a whole new level. Start your own product or service based business with the experience and skills you have of the market.

In this way you can create a better personal brand.

So I hope you got a better understanding of marketing fundamentals, It’s main types, Which type of marketing would be better for you, CATT funnel, Integrated digital marketing and Personal branding.

So let me know in the comments how you’ll take action towards becoming a successful entrepreneur? Which niche you’ll choose for branding and which marketing channel do you prefer?

The above article is part of the Digital Deepak internship program.