I have been into marketing for more than four years in some or the other way, be it digital or traditional. And I made a lot of mistakes as well.

We changed a lot of strategies, but many times things haven’t fallen in place. And I started learning the hard way.

“When we are persistent in our pursuit, the universe starts showing the right ways.”

The same thing happened to me when I enrolled on Digital Deepak’s Internship Program.

Yes, I found my mistakes and why most of my attempts didn’t work.

In this article, I am going to share the same learnings I got from that video. This article will be practical for digital marketers, business owners, as well as marketers.

Before that, there’s something to ask yourself — “Am I focusing on the root cause?”

Yes — When we don’t focus on the root cause, we don’t get desired results despite all attempts.

What I realised When I saw A Kid Cleaning A Glass Jar

There is an experience which I would like to share. I saw a kid trying to clean a glass jar.

First, he used only water — But no use.

Then he took different soaps to clean — But no use.

It was so funny that I have been watching him from the beginning.

I was smiling as he was trying to clean the outer surface of the jar. But it is untidy from the inside.

The same story happens with the majority that they learn everything about digital marketing thinking it is different.

When they don’t get desired results, they look for better strategies, tools and everything.

But miss looking at the root cause that is marketing.

Yes, you got me right.

Though digital marketing is a more advanced level of marketing, you should be good at marketing.

So, we are going to discuss the fundamentals of marketing in the next section.

Fundamentals of Marketing

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Are you ready with your notes and pen?

Just kidding😜

When we talk about marketing, everybody starts getting creative. — But it is purely a science.

Marketing starts even before the product enters the market.

Are you getting confused?

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Worry not, I am with you.

The purpose of marketing is to introduce a product that meets the customers’ needs.

So, it starts with customer research.

Then you’ll be able to understand their needs.

That’s how you can introduce a great product that sells itself.

You must be thinking if a product sells by itself, what is the need for marketing?

I am coming to that point only.

The purpose of marketing is to build a strong brand — that one day you can stop your marketing activities.

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You must be thinking, is it even possible?

Yes, it is on building a powerful brand.

We will discuss this in our next section.

How to Build a Strong Brand?

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Be it a big company or an MSME, any company needs to build a strong brand presence to survive in this competitive world. If you are a small busines owner, give a read to afordable digital marketing strategies to grow your business in this competitive world.

To explain this, I will give you an example that happened in my life.

In my network marketing journey, we used the products I am endorsing, and everyone in our family got results.

Then people started buying the products without asking any questions because of social proof.

Here, in this situation, we became brand ambassadors for our products. So selling became easy.

In the long run, the branding will happen through word of mouth of the happy customers.

So, here, the takeaway is to have the success stories of your products or services.

What? I didn’t get you.

You are expecting me to tell you about the digital marketing aspect, right?

It is so simple. You have to aim to position yourself as no. 1 in your niche/ sub-niche.

After becoming №1 in your niche, you can expand horizontally.

You must be thinking good communication skills are required to capture the no. 1 position in the market.

Yes, you are right.

I am going to talk about it in the next section.

Communicating Your Brand

I can feel you.

You must be thinking, you are not good at English, and you can’t communicate your brand better.

I got you covered.

It is not about using sophisticated English and great vocabulary.

You need to communicate as if you speak with a friend.

And everything is interconnected when you know your target audience better — you can address them better.

What I Learnt:

1. Start writing with the questions — Only when you understand your target audience you can ask the right questions.
2. Make it a habit of writing at least 500 words every day — Yes, I started doing this on 10th May. (Yes, not every time I can write 500 words, but I am trying😃)
3. Watch standup comedies and sitcoms — Like The Office, Seinfield, Friends etc.
4. Think in English

If you read till here, I am happy that you are finding value in this.

Everything is making sense to me here, but I recollected one of my experiences.

In my current business, I have a great product and a great business strategy. But, for a decent amount of time, I didn’t get the results I anticipated.

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I reverse engineered to find out my mistakes.

Even though I was in a futuristic business, I was focusing on the people from a village background.

Nah Nah Nah, I am not saying I shouldn’t have focused on that category.

I just focused on them at the wrong time.

That’s when I understood that knowledge of global economics plays a crucial role in the success of any business.

So, let’s dive into Global Economics in the next section.

Role of Global Economics in Business

When you learn about global economics, you make better decisions in your business.

The growth of your business will be fast.

I always used to think that focusing on the developed nations will accelerate the growth of any business.

But I was wrong.

I got to know that the spending power of any country goes down if the average age of the country goes 50+. The reason is people start to settle in their life due to this their needs will come down.

Even if we see the US became a developed nation as the average age of the country increased.

So it is better to focus on developing nations when starting a new business.

Also, if you take the scenario of our country, we are one of the youngest nations with an average age of 27 years.

It takes at least 20 years for India to reach an average age of 37 years because of its vast population.

It makes India a good option to start your business.

You must be wondering why I haven’t got the results I anticipated though I focused on India only.

Yes, I am coming to that point.

Let’s focus on understanding Indian economics.

Source: Sajith Pai

You are lucky if you are just getting started with your side hustle.

I wish I had known about this at the beginning of my career.

Because only then I could have focused on the right market and save a lot of time, money and energy.

Let us get into understanding Indian Economics

In simple terms, out of 3 categories, India1 has people with more buying power.

So, when we start our new venture, we have to focus on the India1 market for better profits.

Using the profits from here, we can focus on the India2 market than on India3 for a smooth journey and better returns.

You can also offer better services to them.

But I have focused on India3 at the beginning that made my journey a bit tough.

You must be overwhelming after knowing all this information and jump into your digital marketing journey.

But, don’t you think before doing something new, you should understand where we should direct our energy?

For that, we need to understand the pros and cons of the different options we have.

So let’s understand more about traditional marketing and digital marketing in the next section.

Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing — Which is the Best?

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Just because digital marketing is the most evolved compared to traditional marketing, it can never replace traditional ways.

It is similar to the benefits of a blade and an axe.

They have their purposes.

For example, if your product is generic and has a broad market, TV ads reach more people at a low cost.

Let’s say your product is a pen. How will it be if you run Facebook Campaigns for a pen?

Yes, it sounds funny.

In this situation, TV ads are best.

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Pros of Traditional Marketing

1. Cost-effective due to more reach
2. TV can extend from 800 million to 1 billion people.
3. Radio can reach 65% of the Indians. (Source: Financial Express)
4. The newspaper has a reach of 425 million people as of 27th April 2019. (Source: Business Standard)
5. It is effective for low-cost generic products.

Cons of Traditional Marketing

1. Personalised communication is not possible.
2. We can’t have feedback.
3. Sales are not natural.

If your product is for a specific audience, then digital marketing is best.

It is also the best medium for reaching English speaking audience with high spending power.

Pros of Digital Marketing

1. Deep targeting is possible.
2. We can personalise the ads based on the target audience.
3. We can take feedback and optimise our strategy. (Deep Marketing)
4. When everything is optimised, sales are natural.

Cons of Digital Marketing

1. We can target a global audience means we need to compete with many players.
2. If there is any negative feedback on your brand and failure to respond effectively, it affects your brand reputation.

Are you wondering how we can do all of these with the help of digital marketing?

I got you covered.

It is with the help of funnels.

In the next section, we are going to focus on the CATTR marketing funnel.

CATTR Marketing Funnel & Framework

n ^ CATTR Framework

Wealth = n^CATTR

Whereas,

• [n]: Niche
• [C]: Content
• [A]: Attention
• [T]: Trust
• [T]: Transaction
• [R]: Reputation

I can sense you — You must be thinking, technical aspects have started.

But I will keep it ASAP (As Simple As Possible😜).

Even if you have a giant ship, a small hole at the bottom is enough to sink it. In the same way, even if you have everything set up perfectly if you don’t select the right niche, all of your efforts may not yield the results you anticipate.

Things to consider while selecting your niche:

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1. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. You will end up being nothing. Because people only prefer a specialist over a generalist.
2. Enter a competitive market with a unique perspective (It becomes your USP) — Amateurs think entering a non-competitive market is better. But you would struggle to create the demand for your business.

Everything in the CATTR framework is interlinked when done right.

Let’s dive deep into every aspect.

 

Content is the heart of your digital marketing efforts. It can make or break you depending on the quality.

Add value to your audience. Only then you can attract people from your niche.

Experiment with different content types to find what works best for you.

Example: Blog posts, videos, Live, Lead Magnets, Webinars etc. Also, try different content options given on the social media channels you are on.

Even great content is of no use if you are not drawing the attention of your audience.

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Are you thinking about what is attention and how to draw attention?

It is not disturbing like that needy cat.😜 — But getting traffic.

Focus on SEO, Social Media, Referrals and Paid Ads to drive the traffic to your content.

The first two steps are to build trust with the audience. It gives the reason for engaging with us.

What do you think is required to build trust?

It is by staying on their mind constantly.

You can do this with tripwires, marketing automation and retargeting.

Everything we do is bring them to the transaction stage.

When you do everything right in all of these aspects, sales happen naturally.

Our job is to convert our leads to customers when it is the right time by using the natural sales method.

And there is one more aspect you need to focus on for long term success it is reputation.

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You may confuse trust with reputation. But it is entirely different and gives reasons to the client to avoid asking the above question.

Let us understand the difference between them

Trust is a projection towards the future. It is a feeling of confidence and security, making your audience feel that you are dependable regarding their goals and aspirations.

But reputation is associated with your past. It is the others’ perception of you, your attributes, brand and character. It evolves based on the quality of the work you deliver, the deeds you do and the customer delight.

Having a solid reputation helps in building trust effortlessly.

There is a catch. — Every digital marketer has the same goal to drive results.

But amateur do one big mistake. — try different methods for a common goal to get sales.

Do you think it is the right approach?

Can we expect everyone in a team with the same qualities?

Yes, we can’t expect.

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

In the same way, every method is effective for a specific outcome.

We need to understand which method is effective for which objective and focus on that result.

And plan our strategy in such a way that every method compliment each other.

We can accomplish it by using Integrated Digital Marketing.

What is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Before we understand Integrated Digital Marketing, we must understand different digital marketing methods.

Here are the different methods in digital marketing:

1. Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
2. Search Engine Optimisation (Organic Traffic)
3. Email Marketing
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Digital Display Marketing
6. Content Marketing

Let’s understand each method better.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing aka. PPC Ads is one of the most effective methods because it helps marketers connect with prospects who are already looking for them.

When people are looking for any product, they see your ad based on the keywords they use. And you incur charges only when they click on the ad. So PPC ads are cost-effective.

But the catch is, if the competition for a keyword is high, the charges will be more for a click — sometimes as high as 30–40$.

It makes PPC ads costly, and if you are a startup and if the margin is less than that, you can’t use them.

Key Takeaways:

CPC increases as the purchase intent increases — Making it costly if sales in the primary objective.

CPC of informational keywords is less compared to those with purchase intent — Makes it effective to drive traffic to info-content.

So, digital marketers started focusing more on SEO method to drive traffic.

Search Engine Optimisation

So people started investing their energy in SEO as it gives long term results. If you can rank on the first page, people tend to click on your result only.

But whenever search engines’ algorithm updates, the search traffic declines. So, we can’t rely only on SEO for sales.

It is when marketers invested their energies in email marketing.

Email Marketing

Here, the focus is on adding leads and their audience to the email subscriber list.

While doing content marketing, marketers also focus on sending marketing emails to subscribers.

But, tell me, what will you do if you get more marketing mail?

Yes, you wound unsubscribe definitely.

Because of this, email marketing also became obsolete.

Social Media Marketing

Here is a famous quote we all know,

“When one door (opportunity) closes, another one opens.”

But the marketers’ funda is, “If one door closes, build a new door.”

With this attitude, when email marketing is not working, marketers started going to social media as more people will be hanging out there.

Here is a catch, why do you use social media?

Yes, to connect with people.

But how do you feel if you see marketing ads?

Yes, they will be a big turn off for you.

So, even if you see ads, you’ll skip most of the ads.

So ads will start declining, but the cost per lead also increases.

Just like stubborn Vikram Aditya, digital marketers start looking for other options.

Then they came across Digital Display Marketing.

Digital Display Marketing

Imagine when you are browsing for something, you come across ads in the middle.

Isn’t it annoying?

What would you do in such cases?

Yes, you’ll install adblockers with a click.

That’s the problem with digital display marketing.

Things are good in the beginning but started taking a toll with time.

So, This method is not the best option for marketers.

There must be a better way than this — Content Marketing.

Content Marketing

It is an inbound marketing mechanism to attract visitors, audience and leads by providing quality content.

Here, your content becomes the face of your marketing activities.

But the catch is if you don’t use other digital marketing methods effectively, content marketing won’t work.

You can understand the situation better by watching this video.

What’s your takeaway from this video?

Yes, when players carried the bricks individually, it’s very tiresome and requires more efforts.

And when everyone shifted the bricks as a team, it became very easy for them.

As a marketer, our task is also the same. — We need to keep our efforts as simple and effective as possible.

We can achieve the exact thing in our digital marketing efforts with the use of Integrated Digital Marketing.

Let’s dive into the next section to know more about it.

The Integrated Digital Marketing Process

Here is the Integrated Digital Marketing Workflow — Content Marketing 2.0

Let’s understand each component and its strengths better.

Content: Anything can be built or collapsed under the leadership. We all know content is the king. So, one should focus on creating quality and relevant content to establish authority, build trust and followers. — Focus only on quality and relevant content to add value to your tribe

Email: It is the best communication tool now and forever as people won’t stop looking at emails. It works best when used by taking your audiences’ permission. It is like meeting them in their home, helpful for the follow-up and notify them about new content. — Best use to communicate with the tribe and build trust.

Social Media: It’s like a place where people hang out to stay connected and know about new things. Sometimes people might be interested in making transaction, but social media is the best place to collect feedback and take reviews. — Best use for audience research and interacting with your tribe

Search: To leverage the power of search engines, we need to optimise our content for SEO. Then it helps potential customers find you through search. And the rest is in the strategy. — You have to do on-page effectively that off-page will be taken care of by itself.

Ads: Paid ads are very effective in speeding up the entire process. They help you in getting results fast. — Present actionable steps addressing your audiences’ pain points to get them into your email list.

Your game starts once they are on your mail list.

Now, you know the strengths of each component — You need to focus on making optimal use of those strengths.

Let’s go to the flow of Integrated Digital Marketing.

• You need to produce relevant and quality content and optimise it for SEO — This is On-Page SEO.
• Content will be visible to your audience when they search — Due to on-page SEO.
• If they like your content, they’ll share it with their friends on social media. — This is also called organic off-page SEO
• It will give signals to the search about the quality and relevancy of your content.
• If you pay close attention, you have done on-page and off-page SEO correctly — Evident from the audience behaviour because of quality and relevant content.
• The problem most digital marketers’ face is trying to go to sales outside their property. — We address this problem by adding your audience to your email list and nurture them to the final stage. — The sales happen.
• As a by-product of all these steps, you have your community now.
• You can stay in touch with your tribe. — It will help you in selling your future products even before the launch effortlessly.

An Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy works in this way, and it is how you implement the CATTR framework.

It is more like a system — You can build once, and you can achieve a lot with minimal efforts.

Hold on! Have you noticed it?

Don’t you get what I am asking?

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If you pay close attention, a hidden hero is working relentlessly to make everything happen.

Can you make a guess?

Did you say content?

No.

It is personal branding.

Yes, I haven’t mentioned personal branding, but it has the lion share of the results if you pay close attention.

Let’s dive deep into understanding personal branding.

Personal Branding: Mass Trust BluePrint

Just imagine, Apple Inc came forward and interacting with you.

Do you get connected much?

No, you won’t.

That’s the importance of personal branding.

Personal branding supports and lifts the company till the company becomes a brand.

I can sense you. You must be feeling, “how can I evolve my brand?”

You can build your brand with the help of Mass Trust BluePrint.

The flow is as follows:

1. Learn — a new skill of your choice. There are plenty of courses available on the internet and practice.
2. Work — Find a job where you can take your new skill from practice to implementation. You can also work as a freelancer.
3. Blog — Start a blog to share your learnings. When you write, you get more clarity over what you learn. It becomes the foundation of your branding.
4. Consult — You got practical skills, experience from the work, and personal branding through your blog. Now is the time to help businesses grow with your inputs instead of working for them.
5. Mentor — others who want to become like you. Your level of understanding and clarity over concept also increases when you mentor others.
6. Startup — You have helped brands achieve their goals, also mentored others. You also understood the market pulse and what they need. So, you can start your product or service, adding value to more lives in your style.

Here we come to the end of #MassTrustBluePrint.

Between, can you imagine Thor without his hammer?

No. Without his hammer, Thor can’t get success.

He is more powerful only with his hammer.

That is the importance of the right niche. That is the reason I am emphasising niche selection at the end.

Niche Selection

As we know, a picture is better than 1000 words. So, let’s understand the niche selection process from the below image.

From the above pie chart in choosing a niche,

1. If you have passion and talent but no market, then you struggle to make money.
2. If you have passion and market but no talent, then you can’t add value.
3. If you have talent and a market but no passion for it, then you’ll get bored with time. And people with passion take over you.

So, while choosing a niche, it should pass all of these filters. — You should be passionate about this — Have talent — It should have a market.

Read this blog post, to learn more about niche selection.

It will help you for everlasting success.

Final Thoughts:

Digital Marketing is an advanced marketing strategy to amplify the message. It is a cakewalk when you understand the laws of marketing.

Irrespective of digital advancement, digital marketing cannot replace traditional marketing. So, the success lies in the wisdom to distinguish the strategy to use depending on the requirement.

Ultimately selecting the right niche is half the work done for the success of your journey.

The remaining half is personal branding and optimal use of Integrated Digital Marketing.

Feedback is the food for a writer. So I would love to know your thoughts on this.

Recommended articles for further reading:

Integrated Digital Marketing
The Secret to Successful Content Marketing