Are you a startup looking to grow your business ? Don’t know how to break the deadlock and move forward ?
This article will help you learn how you can with the help of proper marketing take your business to the next level. Lets go through the various ways and steps of marketing.
A] Marketing:
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” by Peter Drucker.
Marketing is based on a science not just creativity. It starts before creating a product. It starts with understanding the customer and customer needs that leads to creating a product that fits.
Dr Philip Kotler defined marketing as, “The science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market as a profit.”
In order to market to your customer, you need to know your target market is and what they need. With a deep understanding of their pain points and motivations, you can build a product or service that they won’t want to live without.
Now comes in the scientific approach to marketing wherein we can collect actual data to make certain marketing decisions. The 3 tenets of a scientific marketing approach:
- Data Comes first — Want to know whether an email campaign generates profit? Look at your data. Want to know when to post on social to maximize revenue? Look at your data. At a strategic level, your marketing plan and business plans are guided by accurate data insights into buyer personas, past performance and your macro environment
2. Customer journeys can be empirically tracked and modelled — In our digital, data-filled world, customer journeys are tracked across multiple touch points and audiences segmented to granular levels.
3. It is open to experimentation — A good marketer is also a good scientist and someone who is prepared to test and retest hypotheses to gain acute insights. The value lies in turning these insights into actionable, profitable actions.
B] Branding:
What does BRAND mean to you as a startup ?
B — Blueprint, A mater plan for your customer experience. It needs to be delivered consistently to build loyalty and trust.
R-Relationship, A Brand is a thought, feeling and relationship between and business and a customer.
A- Agreement, It is a promise of what your customer will experience from your business.
N- Nature, A Brand is an inherent nature of your business — the personality, quality, the character and style.
D- Distinctiveness, Branding makes your business stand out from the crowd. It is the unique identity of the business.
To build you Brand you need to be the market leader in a particular category. Position your product or service in a way that it is distinct from others.
It is wrong to think you cannot enter a competitive market. You can enter it and earn as well as long as you differentiate at some level and have a unique angle.
The founder of the business is the best marketer. He knows his customers and their behavior best. So though he can hire someone for execution, the startegy should be the founders.
C] Communication Skills:
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” by Albert Einstein
A startup should be able to boil down your story and value proposition into terms that any lay businessperson could understand. If it’s too complicated for you to explain, you prospects won’t make the effort, so take the time to truly understand how to boil it down. Focusing on simple, clear and compelling messaging is one of the most important early steps to get your startup ready to launch.
When communicating, write as if you would talk to a client. Simple language, short sentences always make your customer more comfortable.
For good communication skills, read a lot, write a lot, interact with your audience, watch stand up comedies and sitcoms etc.
D] Knowledge Of Global Economy:
Knowledge of global economy helps you understand the business prospects better.
For eg if the average age of a country increases the spending capacity of that country increases. Currently India is a growing economy and the next billionaires will be in India. Thus it is good for businesses to target India for Sales.
E] Traditional Marketing V/s Digital Marketing
The main difference between digital and traditional marketing is the medium through which an audience encounters a marketing message. While traditional marketing uses traditional media like magazines and newspapers, digital marketing uses digital media, such as social media or websites.
Traditional marketing is for mass audience wherein you can reach a larger crowd at a lower cost. Digital Marketing is for personalized audience wherein you can convey a specific message to a targeted audience of your choice.
F] CATT Marketing Funnel:
CATT is a sales funnel that will help you to build the mass trust of your customers with the help of Digital Marketing. The full form of CATT is Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction.
CATT marketing:
Wealth = n ^ CATT
n — niche you choose — recognize the problem area and have a product or service that will solve that problem. This diagram will explain what you need to create your niche
C — Content, Content is the core of digital marketing, when you have a great piece of content then you don’t have to struggle to spend much for marketing. It will itself bring you organic traffic depending on the quality of the content. Content can be anything whether it is a blog, YouTube Videos, Posters, landing page, and many more.
A — Attention, Attention can be created using SEO, referrals, paid ads, social media etc.
T — Trust, Building trust with the audience is crucial. This is possible by constantly giving them the valuable content and through personalized messages.
T — Transaction, Convert your leads into a customer with the help of sales techniques. For this it is very important to have a sales page, wherein customers can come and buy or sign up
G] Integrated Digital Marketing
If you look around nowadays, you’ll see far too much advertising and marketing. Brands are constantly fighting for customers ‘ attention.
When we analyze the Digital Marketing world, we see that the same has been happening: wherever you are, you’ll face a dozen ads and pieces of content.
So, if you want to drive better results and get the best strategy up and running quickly, to generate leads and sales, you need to cut through the noise of marketing.
But how can we do that? The answer is integrated Digital Marketing.
Integrated Digital Marketing is the combination of all the digital marketing methods.
This diagram explains everything that how content marketing, paid marketing SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, sell, all are connected to one another.
So, to summarize what we’re saying: integrated Digital Marketing is about creating a plan to make sure you’re using digital media and to make sure you’re using it the right way.
Those means of communications include the 3 types of digital media:
- paid media (paid advertising);
- earned media (organic search obtained with a website or a blog);
- owned media (Social Media, Email, and others).
H] Personal Branding:
Do logos talk ? Can you hear a logo ?
No. People want to talk to people not logo or a brand name. People don’t do business with companies. They do business with people they like. We have relationships based on trust and mutual connections.
Even big companies have people whose personalities serve to advance their brand’s mission. Apple had Steve Jobs, Tesla has Elon Musk, and Virgin has Richard Branson. If you’re a small business owner, then this persona is probably you.
I sell my products under the Brand name Paper Panda on various e-commerce websites like Amazon, propshop24 etc. While buying the product no one know who I am, they buy for the trust on Amazon or other company names, yet whenever there is an issue or requirement I personally call and address it, not just an e-mail but a personal phone call. It is to give confidence to the customer, that platforms might be different to buy my products, but I am responsible and I am the Brand.
How do personal brands evolve:
Learn — Learn a new skill, you understand the concepts, learns the facts and you practice the procedures.
Work — Put what you learn into work, put your new found skills to works and implement in the real world.
Blog — Write what you learnt and experiences in your work in a post.
Consult — Start consulting other people instead of working for them.
Mentor — Mentor group of people, it will help you scale your understanding to another level.
Start up — Start your own service and product based on your understanding of the market.
You can use the MassTrust Blueprint as seen below to build your personal Brand:
