How To Make Marketing Fierce And Worthwhile

Have you spent hours on marketing and felt like you are reaping no benefits from it? Are you someone who invested thousands in trying to market your business and yet nothing seems to be working? Well then, I have the solution to your problems. In this article, I will teach you how marketing can be done the right way.

The first step is to get to know your audience

Marketing starts with understanding the customer and their needs. Get to the bottom of the problems potential clients are facing and why they need a particular product. Finally, zero in on how your product can solve their problems.

The next step would be to create a buyer persona

You could consider the below criteria to create the persona.

• Age
• Sex
• Location
• Interests
• Language
• Spending power

You can find more information about this here.

Now create a marketing strategy.

Most people are intimidated when they think of creating a marketing strategy as they consider it to be a complex task. So let me clear this misconception.

The right strategy boils down to a few key elements

• Who is your audience?
• What are you trying to get them to do?
• How will you get them to take action?
• How will you measure marketing’s role in influencing them to take that action?

If you are looking for more information on marketing strategy, you can find it here.

Build a marketing funnel

A marketing funnel can be divided into 3 major parts.

Discovery

• The stage where the potential customer is unaware of the product and has recently been introduced to it.

Consideration

• The product has sparked their interested and they are now researching more about it.

Purchase

• The customer is convinced and is now ready to buy.

Another funnel you could take into consideration is the CATT funnel, which was taught to me by my mentor, Deepak Kanakaraju.

So what does CATT stand for?

Content

• Create useful content to attracts your target audience. Make sure your content provides value.

Attention

• Draw the attention of your audience with social media and paid ads. SEO tactics could also prove to be useful here.

Trust

• You have to build trust with your audience. Nurture your leads by email marketing and marketing automation. Only once the potential customer starts trusting you, they will decide on the purchase.

Transaction

• This here where you convert your leads into sales.

Time to determine your tactics

Tactics are a crucial part of the marketing process. It narrows down to what tactics or mediums you use to reach your target audience. By now you have already worked out where your audience is hanging out, ie: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Emails or Google. Now it is time to reach out to them. At first, it may seem like a daunting task, but the rewards are worthwhile.

Some of the most popular tactics include

• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Advertising and Pay-Per-Click
• Influencer Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization

Not, every tactic here is suitable for you and your business, so pick the right ones wisely.

The final step is measurement and analysis

Measuring the impact of your marketing activities helps you improve. Every action taken should drive a specific metric and it has to be measured in terms of achieving the specific goal. A/B testing is a good method that can be used to improve your marketing.

You can learn more about this here.

Critical skills you should improve as a marketer

There are plenty of skills marketers depends upon to be a success in their role.

Communication

• This is the holy grail of skills when it comes to marketing. Without communication, there is no marketing, in short, marketing is nothing but communicating with your audience. One should be able to clearly express their ideas and thoughts. So, if you are struggling with this, start working on this ASAP.

Writing

• Marketing has plenty of writing involved in it. Be it the creation of content, copywriting or drafting emails to your customers, clients and stakeholders, writing is the key element here.

Analytics

• Deciphering data and the ability to spot trends is a useful skill in a marketer’s arsenal.

Research

• From market research to keeping a tab on your competitors, research plays a crucial role here. Creating content also involves plenty of research and hence this would be a good skill to add to your armoury.

Which is the best method of marketing?

So far I have only spoken about Digital Marketing but failed to mention Traditional Marketing. The reach of Digital Marketing especially in India is nowhere close to traditional Marketing methods such as TV, Radio, newspapers and billboards. However, it is a good, effective and cheap method of marketing especially to reach the affluent English speaking audience of India. Comprising of nearly 6% of the country, this crowd has the buying power, and this is the crowd you would want to reach.

Traditional marketing works better when you do not have to target a specific audience. A product like toothpaste which is used by almost everyone would benefit more from Traditional Marketing than Digital Marketing. However, a gaming laptop would benefit more from Digital Marketing as the ads can reach the right targeted audience.

Despite is mass reach, Traditional Marketing has its downside.

• Expensive
• Hardly any control over the timing
• No interaction with your audience
• Poor conversion ration
• Tough to measure ROI

You can find more information about this topic here.

Why Integrated Digital Marketing stands out from the rest

Integrated Digital Marketing is one of the best and most effective methods of Marketing. Just as it sounds, Integrated Digital Marketing is the integration of multiple marketing tools and techniques to form a cohesive strategy for your business. This involves focusing on multiple channels such as SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Search Engine Marketing, Paid Advertising and Content Marketing. The trick is to not treat each of these channels individually but to look at them as a whole. Without one, the other cannot survive. You will not achieve the desired results if you focus on just one aspect. You might benefit slightly in the short run by focusing on one of these channels, but if you want to make it sustainable in the long run, they are all interdependent.

Why personal branding is the best form of marketing

If you do not have a strong personal brand you are at a disadvantage in almost every aspect, be it professional, business or your personal life. The importance of personal branding is growing day by day, especially for people who are looking to grow their business, get noticed by the press or even the ones who are thinking of taking their career to the next level.

Personal branding is nothing but marketing yourselves as a brand. Every personal brand is unique and the online and in-person authenticity of the individual plays an important role in building trust. The best part about personal branding is, opportunity tends to find you, more than the other way round. It also helps a lot in boosting your confidence, thus helping you get a lot more things done.

You can find more information on personal branding here.

I hope by now I have solved all your queries regarding marketing and how can do it better. If you think the above content has added value to your life, kindly leave a comment below.

Good luck with your marketing journey.