Table of Contents
Introduction:
In this era of digital marketing, everyone focuses only on marketing’s digital aspect. Still, we forget that we must first understand marketing’s core to understand digital marketing.
My simple question is, do you have a problem in understanding marketing as a subject, especially? Are you confused about marketing with sales, advertisement, etc.?
This article is actually a quick guide to understand marketing in A digital world. Also, I am assuring you that after going through this article, you will have a pretty understanding of terms like marketing, global economics, and branding, etc. This will surely help you have a solid marketing perspective in the digital world.
So let’s learn Marketing.
What is marketing?
Marketing is how an organization communicates, connects, and engages with its target audience to convey the value and sell its products and services.
What is the scope of Marketing?
Below are the scopes of marketing
- Goods and services.
- Events and experiences.
- People organizations and Places.
- Ideas and behaviors
Learn Marketing
Marketing is important because it :
- Defines purpose
- Creates awareness
- Support product distributions
- Establish reputations and brand image
- Maintain long term relationship with clients:
Below are Marketing and other functions
- Sales
- Finance
- Operations
- Human resources
Functions of Marketing
1 Market research
- Who do you Sell?
- What are their needs?
- Where do they shop?
- How much will they pay?
- Would they buy from you?
2 Market Planning
- Complete market learning like competition, customers, and challenges
- Doing the SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) of the market.
3 Branding
4 Promotions
5 Customer support services
Marketing Mix:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
The concept of 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, is the most widely used framework that marketing managers employ in making strategic decisions within companies.
Introductions and basics of market segmentation
Brands like Apple, Motorola, and Micromax focus on market segmentation as a critical marketing strategy to increase their sales in the long run. We also learned that there are mainly four bases of segmentation:
- Geography
- Demography
- Psychography
- Behavior
Additionally, brands usually focus on segments that are:
- Lucrative
- Growth promising
- Compatible with the company’s strengths
There are various types of targeting strategies used, such as:
- Undifferentiated or Mass Marketing Strategy
- Differentiated Marketing Strategy
- Concentrated or Niche Marketing Strategy
Some segments that have been identified for a brand may not be a potential target for a brand. This is because a brand also takes into account the following factors before targeting a particular segment:
- Customers they could target
- The competition they will face
- Company image they have
The first two Ps of Marketing Mix: Product and Price. Let’s take the example of NIKE, we can learn how product features help you market a premium product to your consumer. We can also learn about the critical factors to consider when deciding your pricing strategy, namely:
- Customer’s perceived value of the product
- Competitive pricing
- Revenue generation cost
So, we just learned how Nike uses the 4Ps of the marketing mix in its strategy to promote the brand. One such way Nike does that is by hosting promotional events. Websites are an excellent tool for promoting a brand. Hence, Nike personalizes its websites. To lure its customers, the brand uses distinctive logos and advertising slogans. All these elements come together to create a strong brand.
When you think of ‘fast-food,’ you think of McDonald’s and Dominos.
Similarly, in sports, Nike and Adidas’s names come to our minds. When you think of coffee, you think of Starbucks and Cafe Coffee Day. These brands have manipulated our perception that their brand names appear first when an individual is asked to mention the ‘top of mind’ recall in their category. Through excellent use of a harmonized 4P and 7P marketing mix, these brands have positioned themselves in consumers’ minds like few others.
What is marketing Communication?
In the world of competing brands, a company must send its message to its audience.
Communication is defined as all the messages and media you deploy to communicate with the market.
A company must identify the message it wants to create around its product and choose the right communication channels to do so. This will help create a unique space in the customers’ minds for a product or brand.
The critical components of a good marketing communication plan can be summarised as:
- Identify the core marketing message.
- Identify the right channels to communicate the message.
What are the modes of Marketing Communication?
As businesses enter a market, intending to develop a brand or aim to increase sales of particular products, they must choose where and how to spend their marketing dollars.
Whether you use them in a digital or a traditional environment to communicate with its customers. These are:
1. Advertising
2. Public relations and publicity
3. Sales promotion
4. Direct marketing
5. Personal selling
The critical steps in developing an effective marketing communication strategy. This consists of five steps that can be summarised as:
- Determining your target audience
- Defining the objectives of your communication
- Developing your message
- Defining your marketing communication budget
- Selecting the media channels and identifying the correct communications mix
What is Brand?
Brands are all around us, in every aspect of our lives. Many organizations have tried to define the term “brand” in its most distinct manner throughout the last decades.
One of them is the American Marketing Association, which represents a brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol or design, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller, or group of sellers, and differentiate them from those of competition.
We need to learn how brands drive the choices of consumers. By winning consumers’ trust in its products, a brand provides security to customers to help them stay ahead of the competition in the long-run.
The first step for a company is to influence consumers’ minds. That is how consumers start associating themselves with a brand. You think of toothpaste, and Colgate comes to your mind. You talk about coffee, and Nescafe pops up in our minds. This is the power of branding.
How to build a brand?
A memorable brand can reinforce a company’s edge over its competitors and encourage customer loyalty. To achieve this, marketing managers can influence two layers: brand awareness and brand image.
Using the 4Ps of the marketing mix in the most efficient manner can help the brand create this very image and awareness.
Understanding Competition and Environment
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, the mobile and smart-phone world was shocked. BlackBerry, Nokia, Motorola, Palm – all of them had dominated the mobile phone market for years, and yet, a new competitor entered the field and disrupted the entire industry.
Four years later, when Steve Jobs came on stage at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco on the 27th January 2010, the world – including Samsung, Microsoft, Dell, and many more computer and pad manufacturers – was not ready for the iPad. And yet, Apple entered into the market with a new product and a simple yet powerful marketing message: “Come see our latest creation.”
Within only ten months, Apple gained a market share of 75% globally and created a unique positioning in the market.
These are only two examples of a company’s competitive move that disrupted an industry and caused significant competitors’ losses. As a marketer, it is essential for you to understand your competition and the environment around you, to create a robust business.
CATT Marketing Funnel:
To understand the CATT marketing funnel, we need to understand this formula.
Wealth=n^CATT where
n=Niche the subject you choose to enhance your digital marketing journey.
C=Content, which we have to create like blog video post etc., on the niche we have selected for our audience.
A=Attention or traffic to your content using SEO, Social media, Paid ads, and referrals.
T=Trust, which we need to build with our customer using our marketing tools like retargeting, marketing automation, etc
T=Transactions, which means building trust now we need to convert our leads into customers.
For selecting a niche, you must have three things:
- Talent
- Passion
- Market
Combining these three will give you an excellent niche to work.
CATT will help you to excel in your goals. It’s just that you need to follow the principles with full integrity.
Traditional marketing vs. Digital Marketing:
Whether we want to go with Traditional or digital marketing depends upon what type of product we want to market.
If it’s a small FMCG useful like soap toothpaste, then marketing it on traditional media as TV or newspaper will do like these products is simple, and customers don’t take time to buy them.
On the other hand, Digital marketing is the best medium to reach the affluent English speaking population in India with spending power.
The reach of traditional marketing is way too big than digital, but you cannot do personalize or do deep marketing with the classic or traditional.
Integrated Digital marketing:
If you want to succeed in Digital marketing, use every aspect simultaneously. Nothing should be used standalone; for example, when you try to market any product or services digitally, use every tool like email, social media, search ad, SEO, etc.
You cannot succeed just by using email or SEO or search ads etc., and we have to use a holistic approach to win this game.
Conclusion:
So, friend, I am completely sure now that you have a complete idea of what marketing in a digital world means. I want to give credit to my mentor Digital Deepak for inspiring me to write this article.
If you want to go through my other article, please go through my below links.
Best Laptops Under 40000 in India in 2021 – Best consumer product review (bestconsumergoods.com)
Hisense Tornado TV complete review – Best consumer product review (bestconsumergoods.com)
