The luxury of multiple choices can feel extremely daunting in the absence of clarity, don’t you think? That is exactly what happens when you enter a field like Marketing that is filled with multiple uncertainties. If you’ve ever learned marketing from multiple unreliable sources, I’m sure that you have faced this fear about making a marketing decision because there seem to be multiple choices neither of which you know how to trust.
To establish exactly that firm foundation, in this article, we will talk about the most basic aspects of Marketing. We will start by talking about where Marketing enters in a Product life cycle, traditional vs. digital marketing, the CATT Marketing Funnel and the different lessons we can draw out of this funnel. This article can be really helpful for anyone who is a beginner in studying Marketing.
Before we start, here’s an answer to the following question…
Isn’t Marketing really Confusing?
Marketing as a field has great potential. It is through Marketing that we see the execution of the craziest, most creative ideas. And that is possibly why Marketing seems to be a subjective science. That can be scary, and it has been for many like me. Developing talent in something subjective can take ages of study regarding the multiple perspectives and a great amount of trust in the money you’re investing.
For example, art is subjective to a layman’s eye. It deals with perspectives and how you feel about it. So, people buy a Picasso or so based on the artist’s popularity. Now, if you were asked to paint like Picasso and profit from it as much as he does…you would panic, just as I would. It would feel like you can never reach the standard or that you would have to be 83 years old when you sell your first painting, because it’ll definitely take at least that long. Right? Marketing would feel just like that when you lack clarity about it.
Fundamentals of Marketing:
Marketing is a Science. You and I, we are 2 people, in a world of billions of people making millions of products. When we have a product we think can benefit a person X, the job that Marketing does is that it communicates about your product to X and tells them why they should choose it. Based on whether X is your neighbor, in your district, in your state, in your country, or across the world, you will choose different ways of marketing from Traditional to Digital.
Where would Marketing begin?
When you wonder where Marketing fits into a product development cycle, most people might think that it starts once the product is made. But, it really isn’t sensible to think that once a product is made based on what you think it should be, you can hire a marketing department and say, go and find me customers who need this product. It is not that there won’t be customers who need this product. What is happening here is that you’re shooting in the dark. Of course, Marketing will be tricky. Because Marketing started late. So, when should Marketing really begin?
Marketing is a process that begins before the product is created.
Remember the following:
- Marketing is a Science.
- Marketing is about the right communication, to the right person, at the right point of time.
If you truly understand the second point, you would understand why Marketing should start before the product is created. Communication is a 2-way street. Marketing is not about shouting from rooftops about your product (that you thought would be useful based on your personal experiences). Marketing is as much listening as it is talking, if not more. More often than not, Marketing has a lot more to do with listening to enable yourself to talk just the right amount of words at the correct time.
So, you start by listening, by understanding the needs of your users and how you can fit into their lives instead of expecting them to fit your product.
When you do this, Marketing starts to become a science instead of a shot in the dark.
You know the kind of people that can benefit from what you do. That is:
- You know their economic sphere — so you have an understanding of a fair price range.
- You know where they come from — so you know the boundaries within which you market and some defining geographic characteristics.
- You know their age range — You know how they speak, what matters more to that set of generation, etc. so you can meet them on their ground.
The above and some of the other basic details are what form the Demographics of your customers.
“The aim of Marketing is to know the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself. The aim of Marketing is to make selling superfluous.” — Peter Drucker
Once it starts here, Marketing is what remains as a consistent process that builds trust in a one-time customer to turn them into a loyal one.
What Marketing essentially does is this — It takes the perceptions, the best of them, to create a strong product that is rooted in reality. Marketing, at the end of the day, is still something that will revolve around the product. So, if there is no worthy product, no amount of Marketing can help you.
Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing:
Digital and Traditional Marketing are two types of Marketing that are separated by time and geography. Here’s how:
- When we go way back into time when there were no long-distance communication methods invented yet, Marketing could be considered to be done through word-of-mouth, writing a message on papers and passing them around, etc.
- As we evolved further, mechanisms that enabled long distance communication — that spread messages to further geographical distances, like radio and television came into existence. This is where Marketing messages were dispersed to larger populations with relatively more ease, what we now know as Traditional Marketing — through Newspapers, TVs, radio, etc.
- As technological advances made great leaps and bounds, the need for communication with no geographical limits and products that can reach easily from one part of the country to another increased. With that came Digital Marketing that connected the ones that entered and were connected within a virtual sphere of the internet.
By time: Traditional Marketing came into existence before Digital Marketing as at one point in history, Traditional Marketing was the most efficient form of Marketing possible.
By Geography: Traditional Marketing is limited at the maximum within a country. And Digital Marketing is useless to reach a village that is near your city.
In addition to the above major differences, traditional marketing doesn’t allow for customizing messages and many other tech specifications (analytics after a campaign, dynamic designs, A/B testing, etc.) like digital marketing does.
Based on the kind of population you want to reach, making the choice between traditional marketing methods and digital marketing methods shouldn’t be difficult.
CATT Marketing Funnel:
The most common funnel that one would come across in their life is the conversion funnel or the AIDA funnel which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. This funnel talks about the kind of activity businesses or marketing should make the customer go through. And that lacks clarity for it doesn’t tell how. (It’s like when someone is angry and you say, “Just Chill”. I also know that I have to chill. How? Tell me how. Please cue @niharika_nm ’s Instagram reel on this subject for a good laugh. )
So, CATT Marketing funnel is what helps in erasing the ambiguity from this process.
The formula that we hollow here is:
Wealth = n^CATT
Where n → Niche: The particular branch/sub-branch of a field you choose
[C] → Content: Useful information that can pull your audience
[A] → Attention: The traffic driven towards your content
[T] → Trust: Formed through personalized communication
[T] → Transaction: Converting leads into customers
This is a cyclic process starting and ending at Niche that is to be followed in the Marketing process.
- Niche:
Niche would be that particular specialty in which you can work to become better than most others in the industry. For example, within Marketing — Digital Marketing can be your niche. Within digital marketing, Content marketing can be your niche, or running paid ads can be your niche. Within the clothing industry, making sustainable clothing for plus-size people only is a niche.
Choosing the right niche for you is half the success. You can choose to find an already existing niche or establish a brand that is entirely your own.
When you make a niche that is entirely your own, you can be the only one and everyone will approach you for those needs if you provide a product of quality. While most of the people think that making a name in an already existing niche like SEO marketing or so might be difficult…it can also be helpful as it helps you ride on an already rising wave. However, in order to be able to ride that rising wave, you will need to be able to provide as much as the current competition does and something more and unique in addition to it.
- Content:
You must have heard that content is the king. It means to say that the right information conveyed will be extremely efficient always. Just because you love your product, you can’t keep talking endlessly. Being precise and addressing your customer’s pain point in a proper way can be greatly helpful.
Content need not be artistically phrased. But its main job is to convey the message efficiently.
You can frame content in a variety of ways such as blog posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars, etc.
If you would like to know how to write easily and well, and particularly in the newsletter format, find a great guide that will be helpful: Here
- Attention:
Once the message you want to convey is prepared, conveying it is a process that doesn’t stop at just publishing your post.
This information should grab the attention of the right people. What you can do to make it happen is by using the methods and platforms of SEO, social media, running paid ads, and referrals, etc.
- Trust:
When you give them a great message that they’re looking for once, the users will vaguely remember your brand/ product/ service. Through marketing automation, deep marketing techniques, etc. you can personalize your communication to them, provide quality content, establish yourself as a leader in your field. Once you become memorable enough, the user comes to a place where they lay their trust in you. Trust is a rare commodity and one earned through great difficulty.
- Transaction:
Once you earn the user’s trust, you can then convert your lead into a customer by selling a product of much higher intrinsic value to them.
However, once you reach this transaction stage, the process shouldn’t stop. It’s a cycle that comes back to niche. This means that you have to always keep honing your craft, be consistent with learning to stay on top of the game always. And once you learn more about your niche, the cycle keeps going through. The more revolutions you make of the cycle, the more your trust and transaction values can go up with consistency.
Integrated Digital Marketing:
The different ways in which digital marketing happens — that is through digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. (or) the different content formats like blog posts, videos, social media posts, pictures, etc. (or) through traffic-generating methods like content that gets organic traffic and content boosted by paid ads — are multiple roads that you can take.
Everyone who wants to learn Marketing usually understands these multiple concepts separately and tries their hand a little bit at one thing, a lot more at another, and eventually, they are bound to feel slightly lost, more often than not.
However, if all these marketing methods can be integrated for one method to feed into the other and vice-versa, a streamline of traffic and information can be established that brings a method into this madness everyone else will think you have handled.
With Content at the center, Email Marketing and Content Marketing have different forms of content. This content drives traffic and the users attention through different forms such as paid advertising, SEO, and social media platforms.
As you can see, it is all the different forms of content that converge into sales rather than directly asking the customer to buy your product.
First the useful content that is brought about is put forth to gain attention, and develop trust. Once that is established only, all the channels will converge to drive sales. If we observe, this is nothing but the CATT Marketing Funnel in play but is regards to the different marketing methods used.
Personal Branding — Is it even necessary?
It is not enough to just do the best in what you do, you should be able to establish a personal brand. “The best known will always beat the best”. So, establishing a personal brand is extremely important when you’re trying to zone in on developing yourself in some niche.
Unlike the generic brands available in the market, no one may be able to invest in a personal brand and buy its shares. But developing a personal brand means being able to start multiple ventures that will originate with an intrinsic trust value from the users who you have already gathered. If Elon Musk were to start a whole new company tomorrow in something completely unrelated to his current work, for example, like a fashion line, or a bakery, you would automatically assume that something cool will come out of it and be eager to try it out at the earliest moment possible, right? That’s the magic of a personal brand. It can make you a valuable brand ambassador for any company that comes out of the personal bran you have established for yourself.
MassTrust Blueprint:
- Learn: To be able to establish a personal brand that can generate mass trust and following, you should start off by learning and improving your knowledge to the best of your capabilities. This learning should be done through understanding concepts, knowing facts, and practicing various procedures.
- Work: Once you learn, the skills you’ve practiced should be put to action. Implementing the skills you’ve learned is extremely important and also may be the step with the most inertia for a lot of people. But it is the only way to move forward.
- Blog: Write extensively about your experience learning and working through your niche. This data helps not only your audience understand your experience in the subject but can help in increasing your clarity over what has happened so far. Simultaneously, this establishes your expertise in the subject and opens new avenues for you to be able to consult.
- Consult: Based on your experience and clarity over the subject you are dealing with, you can consult with clients one on one to help them solve their problems in your field.
- Mentor: Having established your expertise in your niche and having seen many scenarios of problems, you can now get started with providing instruction to multiple people at once who could eventually be the people that you assist in more intense ways through further consultation too.
- Start-up: Once you have gained the ultimate expertise in your niche, it is time for your personal brand to diverge into a start-up and bring you back a lot more.
Maintaining the cycle and keeping consistency in this process is important. Once you open a startup, and through all stages before it also, learning is something that should always happen.
Conclusion:
Marketing is not a confusing chaos but a science that can be perfected. It still has an element of uncertainty to it. But it is not something to be feared. It is something to be learned and understood still at the end of the day. We never know how the result for a particular marketing effort would turn out. This is like most other areas of life. But in Marketing, with certain methods, logic, and clarity in place, we can always have an idea of the direction it can take and having that sense of direction with the aforementioned logic and clarity will surely carry you forward.
Hence forth, whenever you do read about Marketing, try to form these patterns. Try to understand which part of the CATT funnel a particular process or information may fall into. Be aware of where you are in the process of creating Mass Trust. Be organized with what you learn and Marketing will feel like the most interesting game there ever was.
If you liked reading what I have written and the way I explain or have any constructive feedback, please do leave a comment! I’m looking forward to it.
