ALL ONE SHOULD KNOW BEFORE ENTERING THE FIELD OF DIGITAL MARKETING!

12 min readApr 18, 2021

Stepping into the field of digital marketing? Oh, you are a beginner with zero knowledge of digital marketing? You must have a lot of questions in your mind. Don’t worry you are in the right place to understand digital marketing. Invest your valuable 12–15min in reading this to get a detailed explanation on marketing and digital marketing.

Now, the very first question is “What is digital marketing?”

Digital marketing is more about marketing than digital. Digital is just the source of marketing. The techniques and the ways of marketing keep changing, but the only thing that remains constant is marketing. So one should know the laws and the fundamentals of marketing. Many people keep focusing on the digital part only, but that's not how the thing works in this field. So let us understand marketing from the core. Now let us jump into the main topics.

LAW OF MARKETING

Marketing is based on science, not on creativity. I am sure that you think marketing starts after creating a product to sell it. But let me tell you, you are wrong! Marketing starts way before creating the product. SHOCKED? Keep reading and I promise your concept of marketing and digital marketing is going to change at the end of this article.

Marketing starts before creating the product. It starts with understanding the customer and customer’s needs that lead to creating a product that fits. You should know what customers want from you. And make sure your product is visible to others, people should know about your product or service, only then they will purchase the product, right? Marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself…. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous” — Peter Drucker

Marketing is not just about selling. Suppose, you sold one product to a customer once, but after that, the customer never purchased from you, so you have to make sure you keep an existing customer happy. And to keep your customers happy you should communicate with your customers so that they remain customers for life. Communication is the key to happy and permanent customers.

Trust is very important, you should build trust among your customers, and for that, you should create a great product or service. Digital Deepak came up with a very unique term for this called “MASS TRUST”.

I am sure if you have been searching about digital marketing, you know who Digital Deepak is, and if you don't know, then you must know, you are missing out a lot. He is THE BEST digital mentor in India. Deepak Kanakaraju.

Marketing is a means to an end. The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and capture a position in the minds of the consumers. Marketing is a game of perceptions. Product is rooted in reality! Never let marketing become more important than the product. A great product sells itself. A great product will convert your won customers into brand ambassadors! If you don't focus on creating a great product, marketing cannot help you. Maybe for the first time, seeing your mind-blowing marketing people purchased your product, but if the product will not be that great then they won't purchase from you again rather they will tell others also not to purchase from you. So you should focus more on creating a good product than marketing.

“WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING IS THE BEST CHANNEL OF MARKETING EVER.”

Components Of Marketing :

Advertising is one of the most important components of marketing.
Copywriting is one of the components of marketing.
Sales is also a component of marketing.

For example, the world’s biggest shoemaker, Nike, is a marketing company. So, you need a good product, but marketing not just helps people discover the product but also have a good perception of the product, as I already mentioned before marketing is a game of perceptions, product is rooted in reality!

So these are the laws one should know about marketing. In conclusion, you need to have a great product, and great skill of marketing as well, then only you can build your own identity.

Now, let's talk about Branding:

BUILDING A STRONG BRAND

You do not need to be the no.1, Be the Only One! Choose a category and become a leader in that category. It is not as simple as it sounds, neither very difficult. You just need to choose a category very wisely, you should know your skills, choose a field in which you can compete well. Deciding where to compete is half your success! For example, Zoom, Xerox, and Google are brand names that have become verbs now. They have become the leaders in a particular category.

Knowing your skill is not enough, you have to enhance your skill, have a unique angle, find a competitive niche, and learn marketing. This is not something that will be happening overnight, it will take time. Invest your time and energy in this, it will all be worth the time and energy.

If you cannot become a leader in a particular category, be a leader in the sub-category. For example, Digital Deepak is the number one Digital marketer in India. Here, the category is digital marketing, and the sub-category is India. He has become a leader in digital marketing in India.

ENTER A COMPETITIVE MARKET — BUT HAVE A UNIQUE ANGLE!

WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST TIME AND ENERGY IN LEARNING MARKETING?

As I already told you before, marketing is rooted in human psychology. Marketing as a topic has existed since the dawn of civilization — since the first market squares appeared in the first villages. Marketing is the most valuable investment in a business because it gives direct returns. Everything else like Production, Manufacturing, HR, Accounting, Administration is an expense that does not give immediate ROI.

(ROI is Return of Investment — marketing ROI is the practice of attributing profit and revenue growth to the impact of marketing initiatives. Typically, ROI is to justify marketing speed and budget allocation for ongoing and future campaigns and initiatives.)

Marketing cannot be outsourced completely to a marketing agency. The founder should be a marketer. Without any knowledge of marketing, one cannot open an agency. If you know how to market and sell, you have a safe career.

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Good marketing is all about good communication. Good communication does not mean sophisticated English, vocabulary, or grammar. You should be able to transfer your thoughts, you should be able to connect to your audience. I guess you have noticed, I am using very easy English in this article so that everyone can understand. My aim is to transfer my knowledge to you all. I have chosen the English language to write this article because I wanted to reach out to a large audience. In India there are so many languages, not everyone understands every language, so to connect with a large audience, always prefer using the English language. Now many people are out there who are not very good at English, that is not a very big deal. Let me give you some tips to improve your English :

Write as you talk. For example, I am writing this article as I am talking to you all, right?
Join a conversation in people’s minds. Understand your target audience very well.
Write a lot. The more you write, the better you can write and speak. Writing slows down your thought process and gives you clarity. Trust me, this works like a magic.
Watch English stand-up comedy shows and web series like Friends, The Office, Big Bang Theory, and many more are out there.
Think in English.

GLOBAL ECONOMICS AND MARKETING

BASIS OF GLOBAL ECONOMICS

It is very important that every entrepreneur should learn about global economics. You should make decisions in your business based on economics. A country’s economy goes up as the average age of the country goes up. In the next section, I will show you where the wealth of India is concentrated.

Recession creates strong companies and drives out the weak companies out of the market. (A recession is a period of time when the business and industry of a country is not successful)
Debt creates money. For example, if you take a loan of 10 lakhs from a bank and deposit it in another bank, they can loan money again.
MORE DEBT = MORE CASH (INFLATION)
When people start repaying the debt, the money supply shrinks. (And Central Bank reduces interest rates to encourage debt)

WHERE IS INDIA’S WEALTH CONCENTRATED?

23 million households in India 1.
110 million people (with 5 people per household)
India has around ~ 10–15 million (1–1.5 crore) amazon prime subscribers.
India has around ~ 20–25 million online shoppers.
Your target customers with buying power will be around 30–35 million until 2025.
Target customers: Have credit card, laptop, have a car, make more than 5 lakhs per year in income.
All your target customers are concentrated in the top 10 cities of India.
Target customers speak English.

(Got this information from Digital Deepak, Thank you sir for sharing this.)

TRADITIONAL VS. DIGITAL MARKETING

There is always been confusion, which is better digital marketing or traditional marketing, what should one choose?

Before choosing digital marketing or traditional marketing, you should know the difference between them. You should know, how both ways work.

If a product is generic with a very wide targeting audience — TV ads can reach millions at a low cost.
India has TVs in 197 million houses out of 298 million homes.
Digital marketing is nowhere close to TV based on numbers alone.
Digital marketing is the best medium to reach the affluent English-speaking population in India.
Radio has a reach of 65% of the Indian population.
The newspaper has a reach of 465 million people.

DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING

Direct Response Marketing is a type of marketing disguised to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action. — MarketingEvolution.com

Most people who run ads do not know if the ad is working or not. Marketing executives in big companies run campaigns that do not give specific and measurable results.

If you are starting your agency you need to track your sales. You can run ads which results in direct response, you can ask your audience to fill a form, this way you will get a response and you will be able to track your audience and sale. You will know whether your ads are working or not, it will be measurable.

Few examples of Direct Response Marketing are:

An ad in the newspaper with a phone number to call and order.
A late-night infomercial.
An ad leading to a landing page with a lead form.
A sales page with a product with a link to purchase the product.

THE CATT MARKETING FUNNEL

The most important topic! The CATT funnel! I hope now you have got some knowledge about marketing. Now let us talk about digital marketing and how you can earn from digital marketing. The CATT is like a mantra, you should know the formula, understand it deeply and apply it. The formula is:

WEALTH = n^CATT

[n] = Niche: Your success and wealth depend on the niche you choose. So you have to be very careful while choosing your niche. Choose a niche according to your skill and passion.
[C] = Content: Create useful content that attracts people from your niche. Know your audience, what they want. And start creating blog posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars, etc.
[A] = Attention: Drive traffic ( attention) to your content using SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads & Referrals.
[T] = Trust: Build trust with your audience with marketing, automation, and retargeting. Your audience will purchase your product or service only when they will trust you.
[T] = Transaction: Convert your leads into customers with the natural sales method.

This funnel works like a mantra for digital marketers, apply this formula and start creating and selling your product.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT NICHE?

To choose the right niche you must have a combination of talent, passion, and market. Choosing something you are passionate about, but don’t have a talent in that field is not going to work. Similarly, if you have talent and passion for something but that particular niche is not in the market, you cannot make money from that because nobody is going to buy that. You must be wondering that what if you have talent in some field and that field is in demand but you are not passionate about that particular niche. Maybe you can make some money in the beginning but you will get tired soon and this is not going to work in long run. So you must have all three talent, passion, and market, then only you can earn.

INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING

Most people try to focus on only one way of digital marketing like they create content and expect people to buy, or they just promote their product on social media and expect people to buy their product, or via e-mail marketing or SEO then they keep complaining that they are not able to make a sale. In real-time, this is not how marketing works. You should create content, drive attention, send e-mail to your target audience, build trust and then make transactions with them. The CATT funnel shows how an individual goes through different stages, Integrated digital marketing shows how to execute the CATT funnel. If you follow these two frameworks, you are definitely going to earn money.

POWER OF PERSONAL BRANDING

The best known will always be the best!
People want to hear from people not from brands. It is a fact! We all want reviews of a product from a user before buying a product.
Personal Branding has some upside and downside as well.
Downside: A personal brand cannot be invested in and cannot be sold.
Upside: A personal brand can give a rise to many brands from his/her influence.

EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL BRAND

LEARN: Learn a new skill through concepts, facts, and procedures. Understand the concepts. Remember the facts and practice the procedure. Don't jump into practicing first, understand each and everything then start applying.
WORK: Put your newfound skills to work. After practicing, start implementing. Implementing it in the real world will give you a better understanding. ( work= job/ freelancing/ own projects)
BLOG: Write about what you have learned and experienced through your work. Writing helps in understanding better. You will also start building your personal brand.

CONSULT: Now that you have your personal brand through your working and blogging and you know the fundamentals, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them.
MENTOR: Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring will help you scale your own understanding to a whole new level. Teaching others increases your own knowledge too.
STARTUP: Start your own product or service business with the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem, and your own skills.