Whythe World Would EndWithout Marketing

Do you want to know why?

Then let me share my thoughts on this important topic.

Let start with the Fundamentals of Marketing.

Do you have any idea what is Marketing?

Many people think that marketing is advertising a product and it is concerned only with selling a product.

That’s not true. In fact, I was surprised when I came to know that Marketing is based on science and not creativity. Sounds strange?

Yes, you heard it right. Marketing is based on science. In fact, marketing starts even before the product is manufactured.

Marketing is to identify and meet the needs of the consumers. As a marketer, you need to try to identify the needs of the customers and then fulfill them.

If you can do that in a better way, then you are a good marketer.

I will shed some light on “Needs”. Suppose a company is fulfilling your met needs and unmet needs.

Now when you are getting into a new product or service category then you are trying to fulfill the unmet needs.

There are several product and service categories where products and services are already existing in the market and it means that you are going to fulfill the needs which are already met by various companies.

So most companies go for identifying and fulfilling the met needs. Only a few companies go for identifying and fulfilling the unmet needs.

That is the difference between a good and a great company.

A good company will always try to fulfill met needs but a great company will try to fulfill both met needs as well as unmet needs.

For example, A few years back most of the e-commerce companies were delivering the product with the standard delivery method of 5 working days where delivery was charged.

The product used to reach them within 5 working days to the customer's door.

But, Amazon came with a new idea of Prime delivery which changed the entire game of Logistics and transport.

And then started the method of next day free delivery with Prime.

This is a mark of a great company fulfilling the unmet needs of the customer.

So marketing needs to be done based on customers' needs.

Once that is done, there is no need to do marketing and it will sell itself.

And a very important point that I would like to add is, the right message needs to be conveyed to the right person at the right time.

Imagine you are feeding a bundle of green grass to a Lion, Will it pounce? Never.

That is what we need to understand about marketing and why it is based on Science and not creativity.

I learned that marketing is not just about selling a product.

It exists before the product is created while selling the product and even after the product is purchased so that you can be in touch with the existing customers in the future and encourage them to purchase more products.

Do you know?

Trust is a very important factor in the marketing field and for this, we need to build a marketing funnel.

Nowadays, people don’t trust easily on anyone even if they sell good quality products and services.

Only the close ones like your family and friends will trust you easily because they know you very well.

But what about the people who never met you.

So, we need to build trust in the mind of the people who are unknown to us in the field of marketing.

There is a wonderful word for this which I heard and it is called #MassTrust.

The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and leave an everlasting impression in the minds of the people.

For example, when we think about Photocopy, the first picture that comes to our mind is “Xerox” and many people don’t know that it is an American company that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries.

Xerox has become a brand, a name, and a word of mouth even with the people who are illiterates.

And people feel comfortable saying Xerox rather than a photocopy.

This is the power of a brand without Marketing.

There is a famous quote which said:

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is” — Scott Cook

Do you know that marketing is also dangerous if you use it in an unethical way?

Yes, you heard it right.

Many people use marketing skills to promote a low-quality product which is unhealthy for society.

Therefore, we need to focus on quality.

Once you focus on quality, there is no need to do marketing when the customer experience is great.

Customers will market your product and service through word of mouth.

The moral of the story is never to let marketing become more important than the product because at the end of the day the company will be known by its products and services and not the marketing.

Marketing is only a means to an end.

There are three components of marketing: Advertising, sales, and copywriting.

Marketing not only helps people to know about a new product but also helps to create an image in their minds.

Now Let’s talk about the next topic which is,

Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

We cannot deny that the world is heading towards the digital era and almost everything is accomplished using the help of digital platforms and Digital Marketing is a part of it.

But this doesn’t mean that Traditional marketing is a bygone era.

I learned that if a product is generic and has a very huge targeting audience then TV ads can reach millions of people at a low cost.

For example, Amul is a very big brand that uses Hoardings and TV ads to reach potential customers.

Millions of people have access to TV and based on numbers Digital Marketing has a low reach when compared to TV ads.

This can benefit using Traditional marketing.

Other sources of Traditional Marketing where it can reach a wider audience is Radio and Newspaper.

Unlike Digital Marketing, There is some disadvantage of Traditional Marketing, where we cannot personalize the communication, cannot do Deep Marketing and natural sales.

Also, I learned that Digital Marketing is the best medium to reach the affluent English-speaking population in India with spending power.

So this is what I learned about Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing.

Our next important topic is:

CATT Marketing Funnel and Framework

When I was first introduced to this concept I thought this is something very complex in understanding but trust me I found it very interesting when it was explained in a very simple way.

Let’s start.

Wealth=n^CATT

Where [n] is Niche. I learned that success and wealth depend on the Niche that we choose.

Always choose a Niche based on the needs of the customer so that we can solve their problems with our products and services.

Also, we need to choose a Niche in such a way that you can become an expert in one particular field and become number one rather than looking for multiple Niches.

A very important statement that I came across is

“If you try to be everything to everyone, then you will be a nobody to everyone”

Let me elaborate this statement with an example of our World Famous Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.

He is known to be one of the greatest batsmen in cricketing history.

He found his Niche as a very good Batsmen at a very young age and focused on polishing the skills for his entire career and earned a lot of respect as well as wealth by making the nation proud with his masterclass performance.

Imagine, if he was a bowler, batsmen, and a wicketkeeper then he wouldn’t have been so successful and we would not remember him as a great batsman.

I hope this example has shed some light on the above statement.

The next one is [C]Content,

Now content is considered to be the King as it is very well said by Bill Gates in his essay that he wrote in 1996 “Content is King”.

If your content is of high quality then people will automatically attract to it.

The content must be useful and help the people from your Niche.

You can create content by using different sources like videos, blog posts, Live webinars, etc.

By now I’m confident that you have learned many interesting things about Marketing.

I hope this journey of learning about Marketing is smooth and exciting.

Let’s continue….

The next comes is Attention,

Now to drive attention, you need to keep your content easy to understand, helpful, timeless, high quality so that it will hold the audience for a long time.

From the latest research and articles, the attention span of human beings is decreasing.

The reason is many people have created short videos and second is if they don’t find the content interesting they will jump to some other content that interests them.

Until now, I’m happy that you have read my article to this point, which means that I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible with easy understanding by giving certain examples.

There are many online tools to drive the attention (traffic)to your content like SEO, social media, paid ads, and referrals.

Moving ahead, the next comes is Trust.

As I already mentioned that we need to build trust with our audience and this can happen when we send communication via email which is personalized using the idea of Deep marketing.

Once you build trust everything goes smooth and people will approach you.

There are tools like trip wires, marketing automation, and retargeting which can be used here.

The last and the most important part is Transaction.

It is nothing but to convert your leads into customers with a natural sales method.

Natural sales are nothing but when you target a particular customer who is already interested in your products and services and there is no need to push him/her to purchase your product.

When you attract them with your content and building trust, then the sales will happen spontaneously.

This is not the end, we need to go ahead and connect with them and have a sales webinar, sales call, a video sales letter.

Without sales, the transaction is not possible.

These are the factors that will help us to create wealth.

Below is the framework for the CATT marketing funnel.

Here it is mentioned as n to the power of CATT which means when we choose our Niche, it will multiple with the combined effect of all the four factors which will help in creating the wealth.

We can go ahead and use this wealth in another Niche to achieve more profits.

Isn’t it interesting?

Yes, it is.

Now let’s look at the next topic which is

Integrated Digital marketing

Below is the framework for Integrated digital marketing.

You may be thinking about why all these aspects are integrated into a single frame and connected to each other.

Many people think that we can make sales by doing either content marketing or SEO or social media or email marketing.

But they do not get results by doing it separately and complain that no one is buying their products.

When you use all these aspects of Digital Marketing as a whole and integrate them, it works like a machine.

So what I learned is first we need to run a paid advertising campaign for our content instead of directly advertising the product on social media or any other platform like Facebook ads or Google ads.

We need to advertise the free content and get people into the email list and try to grab their attention.

You can share the content via a blog or a YouTube channel.

Once the attention is grabbed, people will visit our blog and then subscribe to the newsletter.

Whenever new content is published we send it to a set of email lists and people will come back to our content.

Further, the content is listed on the search engines.

People will come to the site by search using the search engines where it will start ranking our website search on the search page.

A signal is sent to the search engine that we have all the content ready and the search engines send the traffic back.

Next, we can share the content on social media where the new people will read it and come to our website.

When they like the content they will further share it with other people on social media.

Therefore, paid advertising will boost the momentum for content marketing, SEO, social media, and email marketing, and eventually, people will build trust with us.

So to sum up, we have content at the center and we drive attention to it using Paid advertising, SEO, and social media.

Next, you build trust using email marketing.

Once the trust is built we go ahead and do a transaction with the customer which is sales and conversion.

This is how we use the CATT Marketing funnel in real-time which is linear.

Therefore, we execute the CATT funnel using Integrated digital marketing.

Now the last topic that we will cover is,

The Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint

The first question that comes to our mind is why personal branding is important.

Yes, it is very important.

I noticed that when you have a skill and if it is not known to the people then it goes in vain.

Therefore, people should know about your skills when they hear you so that you can build your personal brand and not from the company that you run.

You need to personally connect with people and that is how you will be best known.

If you are best known you will beat the best.

To connect with people you need to need to communicate with them personally via emails and other platforms and not by your brand.

This way they will feel that they are interacting with a human being and not a robot.

People love hearing your story and will feel connected with your emotional end.

How you have grown with the passage of time by enhancing your skills and building your company.

Here I would like to give an example of the Founder of one of the top companies in the world Amazon.

From the picture, you can imagine how Jeff Bezos has become a personal brand and have huge followers on Twitter than the brands that he created in his company.

His journey started from a small office by selling books online to a huge business empire with 1000’s products sold online.

Today he is among the richest people in the world but still tries to connect with the customers personally by listening to their calls recorded from the call center and sometimes goes to deliver the product himself during the festive season to feel the customer experience and how it can be improved.

When he visited India, he chatted with the shop owners which are called “Dukanwala” in our local language, and tried to know their experience.

He has built a personal brand by deeply connecting with the people.

The downside of the personal brand is it cannot be sold.

Because the personal brand is more of a human touch than a logo.

How anyone can buy Jeff Bezos as he is a Human being.

The upside of the personal brand is, it can give rise to many brands from his influence like how Jeff Bezos created many brands like Kindle, Prime, Echo and now he is working as the head of the space project Blue origin.

From the above example, I learned that a personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassador for the companies they run.

A personal brand must be reachable to the people so that it can have visibility, which will make the company big that is operated by them and even sell them in the future.

So people will come to know about a person who has created many brands and made them well known with the power of his/her personal brand.

Initially, the personal brand is big but at the later stage when the brand becomes big, people will recognize them with its founder.

So this is about personal branding.

Let’s learn about the Evolution of a Personal Brand

Curious?

Then let’s start.

The first step in the evolution of a personal brand is,

Learn: Yes, you need to learn. Learn what? you need to learn a new skill through concepts, facts, and procedures.

Let me make it simple to understand with an example of learning a Piano.

First, you need to know about its concept and how it works.

You need to know the facts and then follow the procedure to master the skills.

What exactly do you need to do?

You need to know how many keys are there in that Piano and then count the black keys and the white keys.

Next, which keys are bass and which are treble so that you will come to know how it will sound when it is played in a particular tune and when to play the bass and when not to play so that a particular tune sounds good to the listener.

Next, you need to know which key will sound Sa, which key will sound Re, and so on.

So that you can practice it and play once you master it.

The fact is, there are only 7 notes in Music and there is a procedure to learn it.

Later, you can make a new tune with how well you understand it.

Work: Once you learn the skill you need to apply it in the profession that you choose so that you leave a lasting impression and create a personal brand.

Like, when you know how to play the piano, you can become a part of the Orchestra to record a particular song for a film.

You become a brand with your excellent skills of playing the Piano.

Mozart is the best example who is known for his tunes that he created on the Piano and became a personal brand.

People get inspired by his tunes and feel a sense of willingness to learn piano and try to become like him.

If you learn a skill and forget about it, then you will not be able to create a personal brand.

Therefore, after learning a skill you need to work by doing a job, or a freelancer, or have your own project.

Blog: Once you have worked, write about how was your experience and how it has evolved you as a person.

Once you start writing you understand it much better and build your personal brand.

Let us go back to the example of the piano.

You can write about your learning experience of the Piano, how you struggled in the beginning and how you mastered it.

You can share the secrets of what are the best ways to learn it effectively and the technics that you have built so that it becomes easy for people who are keen to take piano lessons.

After reading your blogs, they can apply the technics and get benefits.

Consult: When you build a personal brand through blogging you can connect with people for consulting them or they will reach you through your blogs for your advice.

You can consult those people to help them grow their business instead of working for them.

Consulting other people is also a part of freelancing.

Therefore, when you keep writing you will be able to understand things in a better way, organize them and get the authority to help people through your knowledge.

People will pay you for getting a piece of advice on a particular subject which you know very well.

Mentor: The next important part is mentoring others.

When you learn something and become an expert in that skill, you will be able to practice it on your own and then reach a point where you can teach it to others.

In the case of learning a piano, when you become an expert by playing it regularly then you can start your own piano classes by teaching the kids or someone who is interesting in learning musical instruments.

You can also consult a music band on how to make their shows successful.

If you learn a skill and directly try to teach others you will not go a long way.

Therefore, it is very important to learn it, work on it, write blogs about your experience, consult people and teach them how to do it.

Startup: Last but not least is to put all your experience into a capsule and build a business to create wealth.

Start your own business once you research the market, what are the problems faced by the people and provide them with products and services accordingly.

Frankly speaking, I’ve learned a lot in this journey of Fundamental of Marketing with many interesting parts.

Below is the blueprint of the Masstrust:

This is a circle of Masstrust where you learn a skill, work on it, write about it, consult the people about it, teach and then start your own business.

This is a cycle that goes on. After building a startup you never stop learning and the cycle continues.

If you stop learning you will never grow. This is the model to build a personal brand.

There is a saying that you will keep earning when you keep learning.

Conclusion: Finally, we have come to the conclusion that Marketing is a very important part of any business.

Whether it is CATT Marketing funnel, Integrated Digital Marketing, Personal branding, or the Masstrust model, as a whole it will make things work for you.

How great may be the products and services, if the marketing is not effective, it will cease.