Digital Marketing: Laying the Groundwork

Digital Marketing is a hot topic these days. People are talking about it, some are learning it, and those who started it early are already flourishing! If you’ve looked up ‘productive things to do during the lockdown’ this summer, chances are you’ve come across this as a promising way to while away your time.

Many want to begin their journey in this field, but their foundation seems to be shaky. Some courses out there presume introductory knowledge and get straight into Digital Marketing & the different aspects of it. To try and be a Digital Marketer without understanding basic Marketing, Economics, and Business Communication is not the ideal way to go about it.

In this article, we cover the fundamentals of general and digital marketing as concisely as possible. If you’ve recently gotten started and find it all too overwhelming, you can learn a couple of valuable things here.

What is Digital Marketing?

Simply put, it is an umbrella term that includes all marketing efforts done through the digital mediums available today. Some of the broad topics are Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, and Paid Advertising.

With the rise in technology, it was inevitable that modern-day marketing would include time & money being spent on various digital channels. We can observe rapid changes in how humans live as a society and communicate with each other. And one of the major components of marketing is Communication.
If a company wants to remain active & competitive in today’s world, they too must evolve! Traditional marketing is nowhere close to being obsolete as of now. Yet, not having a digital presence will ensure you losing out on markets and opportunities beyond the conventional reach.

Now let’s dive into some basic concepts for kickstarting the digital marketing journey!

The Money Mindset

Any business's end goal is to make an impact, make a good profit, and grow bigger. But it all seems difficult, right? 1 Crore in revenue may seem like a daunting number if you’re starting from scratch. Still, a simple approach of breaking down the big number into simpler components will make you realize it is very attainable! By that, we mean:

Say you are a content creator, and you have a product worth Rs.100. You need to sell it to 1,00,000 people to make 1 Crore in revenue. 100x1,00,000=1,00,00,000.
Similarly, imagine you’ve put together a value product/service, and it’s priced at Rs.1,000; in this case, you only need to sell it to 10,000 people to make the same amount. And it goes on like this.

The lower the value, the lesser the price, the more the buyers needed.

The higher the value, the more the price, the lesser the buyers needed.

Marketing Fundamentals

What is Marketing? Marketing is a very broad term including various sub-divisions. To be able to cover all of Marketing in one single definition isn’t very doable, but we’ll look at two great definitions:

“ Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want by creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.” Philip Kotler — Marketing Author.

“Marketing is products that don’t come back and consumers that do.” Steve Dawson — President, Walkers Shortbread Inc.

Is Marketing an art, or is it a science? Many parts of Marketing comprise creative arts like Product Design, Copywriting, and Advertising, so Marketing was considered an art. And it is if you are looking at it from that narrow point of view. But all in all, we can consider Marketing a science with art elements. It incorporates psychology, economics, social sciences, etc., to carry out a set of processes. Some of these are Market Research, Branding, Pricing, STP, Communication, Advertising, PR, and Selling.

Marketing begins before the product is created. All groundbreaking products came from looking at the market, spotting an unsatisfied need, and packaging the solution into a product/service. Indian startups like Zomato and Ola are doing so well because they provide huge value to people. These two services have made a significant impact on the world of fooding and transport, respectively. People always choose products/services that provide them convenience. And thus, fulfilling a need is the only way to grow big.

We should never let Marketing & Branding become more important than the product itself, though. A good product would be one that sells itself and makes customers into brand ambassadors. If someone can sell a product not up to its claimed value with a good marketing strategy, he or she may get away a few times, but the market will soon catch on and strike that brand away. We don’t want that happening. And so, playing with the customer’s trust is not a smart thing to do.

Once we have our product, the next step is to get it out there. For this, we have advertising, sales promotion, copywriting, and more. This stage is all about effective communication. Effective communication is one that converts. And to do that, a few other things need to be in place, which we cover separately in the next section below.

After the product has been sold, it doesn’t end there. A great marketing campaign is one that can keep its customers even after it’s over. A business can do a couple of things to retain customers like fast customer service, loyalty programs, special discounts, etc.

Hence, marketing is a continuous process. We start one cycle with research and end with selling, and then we start all over again. You begin the research the next time by listening to the feedback the market has given on your pre-existing product/service, and then you improve the current one into a better product.

Communication is key!

We must not underestimate the power of communication. Effective communication is a major part of Marketing. As we have established above, true marketing always begins with research, way before product creation. But what comes after product creation? Letting people know you have what they’ve been looking for! You could have the best product or service in the market, but nobody would know that out of nowhere.

Effective communication is personal, it’s concise, and it gets the attention of the right people. Getting the attention of your ideal customer is easy when you know their pain points and struggles, where they are vs. where they want to be. Hence, the best communication strategies are deep and personal ones. It smoothly builds trust with your targeted segment over a period of time.

You aren’t gonna reach everybody (and you don’t want to do that either). Say you’re going for the well-earning people in the Indian market, then your customer segment will be a small fraction of the people that own a laptop, mobile, credit card, understand English, have wifi, etc. Within these people is your customer base; you need to be able to draw them out and write to them and only them. Here’s a great and in-depth article on how to build your customer persona: https://rb.gy/aphmkd.

Once you have your ideal customer down, you need to be where they are. If you are a skincare brand, and your ideal customer is a young woman in her 20s-30s, then social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook will be a good option. After this, you need to talk to these people in their language. In this case, adopting a confident, promising, and positive tone for communication will be a good choice.

As we can see, effective communication is beyond just good language. It’s about knowing when, where & what to speak, and to whom.

Digital Vs. Traditional Marketing

Both digital and traditional marketing involves the same set of processes, but what changes is the channel of marketing communication. And subsequently, through the channels, the cost and reach also change.
To give an idea:
Television viewers — 1.67~ Billion
Print Media consumers — 2.5~ Billion
Internet users — 3.4~ Billion

The numbers within India:
Television — 167~ Million
Print Media — 425~ Million
Internet — 700~ Million

Until the internet came around in the 90s, Traditional Marketing was the only way to do Marketing. Traditional Marketing channels include TV, Radio, Mail, Billboards, Newspapers, Flyers, Magazines, PR Events, etc.

There are some cases where one will work better than the other. It largely depends on your target audience and where they spend time. If your target market lies among older people, going completely digital will not be a smart move. But in most cases, it's a combination strategy that works best.

Traditional Marketing has existed for so long because it works, and it will continue to. For generic products with a wide appeal like FMCG goods, traditional marketing is generally preferred. These products do not require funnel creation or lead generation. What you want for these products is brand & product awareness, which can be achieved through promotion and advertising. Display advertising, which falls under Digital Marketing, is also now being largely incorporated for these types of products.

Digital Marketing has become a strong option these days. You can reach a very particular audience spread across different areas or the same area while keeping costs low. You can get really specific and pinpoint what you’re looking for. You also have the power to collect information about your buyers immediately and create better marketing campaigns simultaneously. Digital Marketing is more flexible and cost-effective in this aspect.

Let’s take it you’re a small local bakery shop owner. In this case, flyers, posters, and promotional events may be better for you to gain the attention of the people in your locality. Word-of-mouth marketing, in particular, works amazing for local shop owners. Of course, the most promising way to go about it would be to mix both digital and traditional channels. You could list your store on Google My Business so people could look you up on Search Engines and then find your store through Google maps. You could also partner up with food search apps like Swiggy and Zomato for a wider reach. On special dates, like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, you could advertise on these platforms about your discounts & offerings and gain many new customers.

Unless your target market is unlikely to be a comfortable internet user, leaving out Digital Marketing is costing you opportunities you do yet grasp.

The CATT Marketing Funnel

A Marketing Funnel is a theoretical depiction of a customer's journey from the moment they first come in contact with the brand all the way to making a purchase. It’s called a funnel for the obvious reason that you have more people in the beginning, and then it keeps decreasing all the way to the bottom, making the shape of a funnel. A common marketing funnel looks like the one above.

This is a more dedicated funnel towards digital marketing, as given by Mr. Deepak Kanakraju. It marks five essential steps to be followed for success in the online world. We’ll look at each of them now:

i) Niche — Where are you going to operate? A niche is a specialized portion of the market for a particular product or service.

People always like to go for the best product they can afford, so your target should always be to become a niche leader. Trying to do everything and mastering nothing may not work in today’s crowded environment. To stand out, you must be focused on a niche. You can surely branch out or in, as you like in the future, but starting with one thing has proven to work for many.

An ideal niche for you is something you are good at or can become good at something you’re passionate about, and something with a market. Each of these three is important for success. If you’re talented and passionate about something, but it has no market appeal, it's not gonna do anything for you. Similarly, if you are talented at something, and it has a market for you to dive in, but you are not passionate about it, what will happen in this scenario is, you might lose interest over time. It’s hard to sustain in a field you have no interest in, so always go after something that fuels you.

ii) Content — After you’ve chosen your niche, you must start creating content. The content should be useful to people; otherwise, they are not going to engage with it. People's attention span is at an all-time low, so if they don’t like what they see, they will click away within seconds. We only have that much time to capture them.

There are many good research tools for helping you brainstorm content ideas like Google Keyword Planner and AnswerThePublic. Some tools are paid, some are free. For starters, here’s an article with 10 completely free content & keyword research tools.

iii) Attention — Next step is to drive traffic to your content. We have a few options to choose from for traffic generation. We can work towards gaining
● organic traffic through SEO,
● paid traffic through SEM,
● traffic through Display Advertising like Google Ads & Facebook Ads,
● referrals.
All of these work for gaining traffic. Working on your SEO for organic traffic is a great option for beginners with limited resources. Paid ads work pretty well in growing attention to your business fast, and so, allocating some budget for it will prove beneficial.

iv) Trust — Trust is gained naturally over time when you consistently provide valuable content to your audience. We should always aim to provide 3x more value than we ask for. By following this, one ensures not being seen as an entity that is always trying to sell, and people will trust you more. Moreover, people usually trust the words of fellow customers more than that of the brand, and so having reviews, ratings, and testimonials help a lot.

Trust building is essentially the process of converting the once cold audience into warm, sales-ready leads. It is better to have a small pool of followers who trust you than many followers who don’t connect with you and your brand. The conversion rate will be much better when you have successfully established yourself as an authentic brand in the eyes of your target base over time.

v) Transaction — The final stage should be so superfluous that it feels like the product is selling itself. So far, we have chosen our niche, put out useful content, drove traffic to it, and built trust. The next step is selling. We can judge by our leads' behavior, who is most likely to buy, and it is best to focus our sales energy on just them.

Once we have made the transaction, it doesn't end there; we must provide fast support for whatever they may need from us post-selling. Otherwise, we risk being seen as a business that does not care about its customers. If you want people to talk positively about your brand, you must ensure they have a great experience throughout!

Integrated Digital Marketing

We need an integrated system for smooth functioning. Trying to achieve the big numbers through the different aspects of Digital Marketing separately will be hard, so creating a system that works together in harmony from lead generation to content marketing to sales is what we’re looking for. This article gives the concept in detail.

Content Marketing — Content Marketing is a subgenre of Digital Marketing that revolves around creating content(blogs, videos, posts) and distributing it to gain the attention of your prospective buyers. We do not sell anything directly but garner lots of interest this way towards our brand and product. It’s a great way to pull and keep the attention of your people. As we talked about before, creating meaningful content regularly will help you build trust with them as well.

Content Marketing is necessary because people will never be okay with buying products from a foreign entity. When a person comes across a brand, they do not know what it offers, what it stands for, and how it can help them, or if it’s trustworthy. But when a person buys something from a brand, chances are they have come to know these things and trust the brand. Content Marketing is the way to bridge the gap between the first stage and the end-stage.

It is at the center of our Integrated Marketing framework.

Email Marketing — It is a trendy and effective tool for e-commerce these days. Although Email Marketing has existed for a while now, in the past, it was more about email blasts to all the people who may have attentively or inattentively subscribed to them. Present-day marketers have upped the email marketing game. People use Email Marketing systematically now for promoting new content, advertising products, building conversations, and selling. Some even do full-fledged email courses and thus making it a product in itself.

There are email marketing softwares that let you filter through your subscriber's list and sort them accordingly. This way, you can use automated email sequences for different segments of your list. Someone new to your list can receive a welcome series, while someone who has been engaging with your emails can receive a sales sequence for your product. But all in all, Email Marketing deserves your attention.

Paid Advertising — This is an advertising model mainly used for traffic generation. Paid Advertising has several models to tap into: Search Ads, or SEM(Search Engine Marketing), Display Ads, Social Media Ads, and Retargeting Ads.

Unlike real-life ads, which are shown to everybody, most online paid ad formats are shown to people based on specific conditions. For example, the search ads are only shown specifically to the people who search for the term you have bidded upon. Example- you are a wedding caterer, and you have bidded upon the term ‘wedding catering in Delhi’; whenever someone searches that term, your ad will show up. Thereby ensuring the people who click your ads are actually interested in your services and not random people. Similarly, Social Media Ads and Retargeting Ads are based on behavior and mostly bring-in interested prospects. Display ads are a little different in this aspect, except Google Display Ads.

SEO — Search Engine Optimization is essentially optimizing your website for increased visibility on the Search Engine Results Page. SEO can be basic as well as advance. We are basically looking to improve the quality of our website and its contents.

Satisfactory search engine friendly content will help with your SEO. And performing SEO will help drive organic traffic to your content. So these two Digital Marketing modules go very well together.

Social Media — Social Media is where people ‘hang out’ these days, and so it is only natural for marketers to follow them there. But the way to do that is by not being obvious, just like Content Marketing. Social Media can be a very promising way of gaining brand awareness and following. And eventually, for driving traffic, gaining subscribers, and selling as well.

There are three things to keep in mind with social media: i) be clear about your goals, audience, and chosen platform; ii) create a content framework and stay within it; iii) create shareable content for better traction.

Personal Branding

What’s personal branding? It is the act of marketing yourself as a brand.

Personal Branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.

People connect more with people than they do with a faceless brand, which is why personal branding is so genius. With personal brands, you are the face of the brand. Some examples of Personal Brands are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Gary Vaynerchuk, Simon Sinek, and Neil Patel.

A strong personal brand can give rise to multiple brands. Take Elon Musk, for example, who is better known than both his companies, Tesla & SpaceX. Personal brands act as the ambassador and influencer for their own companies.

To build a personal brand, you must have a clear story about who you are and who you cater to. Your personal brand should be appealing yet authentic. For example, say you’re an avid reader and an introvert, you can choose to build your personal brand incorporating these elements. When you do this, you gain like-minded individuals as followers who are much more likely to connect with your content and buy from your brand. Say you recently read some great books during the lockdown at home. You share it online as an affiliate product with your audience. It is much more likely for them to take action on your recommendations in this case because they essentially follow you for it.

Thus, spending time on creating a good personal brand is every bit worth it.

With this, we have reached the end of our article. Hopefully, it succeeded in making you familiar with Digital Marketing foundations.