Elements Of Marketing : A Strong Foundation to your Digital Marketing Career

9 min readOct 19, 2020

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how certain digital marketers are successful?

how certain blogger’s posts become very famous? or how certain people have a very huge following and demand associated with their content or product?

The simple answer we get is good Marketing. But What is good marketing ?

If you are a Digital marketer, Entrepreneur, Sales person or anyone who wants to have a successful career in Digital Marketing, You have come to the right place. Gear up, take notes and lay a strong foundation to your career

Set a Financial Goal.

First and foremost you have to set a bar to your success. A lot of eminent people including Napoleon hill in his Book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ has emphasized on the importance of goal setting.

It defines your success and you will be able deconstruct the steps on how to achieve it .

Let us breakdown the process into 5 sequential steps to set your goal

1.Determine the amount of money you would like to earn.

2.Now determine when you want to achieve this goal. Be specific, choose a particular date on which you are going to achieve this.

3.Write it down in a piece of paper and stick this in your bedroom.

4.Look at it first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up. This should ignite a fire in you and sense of direction throughout the day. Also look at it before you sleep. You are free to look at it any number of times in a day

Now the most important step of all the 5 steps, which people often miss is,

5. Each time you look at it

a)Believe that you will be able to achieve it

b)Feel the joy and happiness as if you have already achieved it

These easy steps when performed in a sequence consistently will bring about that profound change and faster results to all the efforts you put.

Fundamentals of Marketing

Marketing in rooted in human psychology.

Any media of marketing including digital media might become obsolete but marketing as such can never become obsolete.

As a matter of fact marketing is existing from thousands of years, when human interaction began.

Although every digital marketer is marketing, a successful digital marketer alone knows exactly how to market.

Even though you might be a expert in digital media, if your marketing knowledge is insufficient then so will be your effectiveness.

Marketing begins before the product is created and is continues even after the transaction has taken place.

As my mentor told me ‘Marketing is about sending the right message, to a right person , at the right time’

But marketing should never be important than the product itself. A huge blunder is low quality product sold using good marketing. This will bring your downfall faster, as the flaws of your product will also be marketed well by your customers.

Marketing is one of the most important tool in building your personal brand. But as you start building a strong brand name, customers already would have developed the trust in your products. This results in less marketing requirements and it goes on decreasing as your brand builds up.

Communication Skills

Communication is that skill which is overlooked by many digital marketing aspirants. The misconception is ‘I will be using digital media, Why communication?’ But the reality is different.

Trust is extremely important between a customer and a marketer. If there is no trust there will be no transaction and no success. This point is again discussed in the CATT marketing funnel. Only means to build trust with your customers in through effective Communication

One of the main component of communication is listening. A good listener can only be a good communicator. So listen to your customers and peers. Improvise and tailor your content keeping your customers and followers in mind.

Write in simple and understandable language, so as to build a connection and be fully understood. A best conversation is the one which is completely understood.

Know about the Global and Indian Economy

The Knowledge of the Economy will give an extra edge to digital marketer. There are a lot of factors that influence the marketplace. A direct indication of that is the economy. Having an idea as to how economies work is a great strategy to level up your game.

This Knowledge will also help you to assess situation and strategize during difficult times such as a recession or a pandemic

Indian economy is very interesting and unique. About 6.2% of the workforce are affluent with an internet connection and will be available for all your campaigns. Where as 5.8 % are the population who cannot afford all of this. But these people have basic means to live.

Then comes the remaining 88% of the workforce who are extremely poor and live in a low economic strata. Understanding this structure helps you form strategies so as provide the best service at a suitable price point using a suitable media to that particular population.

Your Target customers are around 35–50 million and are concentrated in 10 major cities of India.

Traditional vs Digital Marketing

Traditional marketing includes mass media such as TV, radio, News paper etc. This mode of marketing we all are very familiar. Some people are of the opinion that traditional marketing is loosing value but others disagree. Lets dive into both the modes of marketing and understand it for ourselves.

Traditional Marketing

Pros: 1.Large number of reach (close to 1 billion)

2.Low cost when compared to its wide reach

3.Large companies like Apple are using this mode of marketing and are successful

Cons: 1.Everyone gets to see the ad, even people foe who the ad could be irrelevant will see it.

2. Lack of marketing customizations

3. If an ad would hurt any section of the society, then a huge drop in sales would occur example: Tanishq had to suffer huge loss and withdraw its ad due to hurting religious sentiments

4.Deep marketing, natural sales not possible

Digital Marketing

Pros: 1.Targeting audience — based on gender, profession, location etic

2.Many modes such as Facebook, google, email etc.

3. Change the ad anytime you want based on performance.

4.It usually in seen by affluent people who are more likely to take action as opposed to traditional marketing.

Cons: 1. Has a less reach (close to 100million)

2.May not be effective as traditional marketing if your product is generic

3. Higher cost to conversion than traditional marketing

Seeing the above comparison both traditional and digital marketing is relevant. Based on our product we can take a decision on the effectiveness of both.

How To Choose the Right Niche?

We all have a hard time is choosing our niche. We tend to get caught up because we have too many choices and factors. A template which I received from my Digital mentor is that your niche should be intersection of your :

Talent
Passion
Market value of your content

I personally have a slightly modified approach to niche selection. This was designed keeping in mind the above template and the famous concept of “IKIGAI”

IKIGAI is your purpose which makes you jump out of your bed in the morning, It is that purpose which gives you total sense of joy and fulfillment . This purpose induces you into a state of flow when you are living this .

Based on this your niche should be your purpose instead of current trends or what others are doing.

This niche should begin with your passion i.e. something you are good at and something you love to do. It should be expanded to something you will be paid for(based on marketplace) and adding aspects which will benefit the world will make it magnificent.

When you choose such a niche , motivation is no longer needed, struggle is not needed and the hard work you will have to put will not seem hard because you just enjoy it. You will surprised and amazed at yourself as far as productivity is concerned.

Some people know their purpose off the bat some take time but , be open as everything you do will tell you how close you are to your ikigai.

CATT Marketing Funnel

The CATT marketing funnel was developed by digital Deepak in order to educate his students regarding the role of each of the factors in wealth generation. The amount of wealth is equal to to your niche to the power of CATT — Content, Attention, Trust and Transaction

The formula is Wealth = niche^CATT

Niche — Now that you have an fair idea how to select your niche which is in alignment with your purpose, Enhancing it using this funnel is the next step.

Content — Create Quality content for your audience. Be authentic and creative to attract people. Blog posts, videos, webinars, masterclass, eBook etc.

Attention — Drive attention (traffic)to your content using SEO, social media, paid ads and referrals

Trust — Build trust by knowing your audience, trip wires, marketing automation and retargeting.

Transaction — Converting your leads into customers with the natural sales methods.

Integrated Digital Marketing

Integrated digital marketing is a methodology where all the different components of digital marketing are used in a single system to improve the overall performance of each method as opposed to using them separately. The template for the integrated digital marketing system is given here

The implementation begins with having your blog or content website and using various approaches you increase the traffic to your website .

Email marketing, SEO and Social media will increase your website traffic and the vice versa where people from your website visiting your social media profile.

Paid advertising such as Facebook ads and google ads will build your email list and your website traffic.

The sales and the conversions will take place through your website and email .

Thus all the segments contribute to your overall sales and multiply your results.

Personal Brand and its evolution

‘The best known beats the best’.

This was said by my mentor when he was telling me about personal branding.

Personal branding is marketing yourself in order to be seen by your customers. If your are known only then will an individual approach you for that service. Your communication will be a person to person incase of a personal brand.

Once you have your personal brand developed, then you become the brand ambassador for the all the companies you run. Your need to market will reduce as your brand itself will market of you

Evolution of a personal brand

Learn — educating yourself and practicing is the first and foremost things you need to do

Work — Implementing whatever you have learnt and practiced to have experience

Blog — writing about your work experience so that people will know about your work

Consult — Once people know about your work , Then can consult you one on one to be trained in what you do

Mentor — You can mentor a group of people and help them learn the skills you have acquired

Startup — Once your mentoring circle is big enough you can start a company which provides the above services to larger audience

The above blueprint is called the MASS TRUST BLUEPRINT given to me by my mentor digital Deepak

Final thoughts

Your digital marketing journey should be a self realizing journey. It should be filled with discipline of constant learning and experimentation.

‘Sharpen the Saw’ — Coined by Steven covey in his book 7 habits of highly effective people says that you need to sharpen the saw(your skills and intelligence) in order to cut a tree trunk(succeed in digital marketing)

Hoping that this post was of great value to you, it would be great if you leave a comment on key takeaways from this post and share it with your fellow digital marketers if you feel it will benefit them.

Thank you !