Are you a job seeker or going to start your own business? Then you should know what is marketing and how the marketing ideas and concepts will help you build a strong basement for attracting more customers and for getting a suitable job during any tough situation.
Ms. Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing of Hubspot asserts: “Don’t push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are” [1]
According to this quote, we understand that we have to create a product for our customer’s needs, rather than creating one to meet our requirements and trying to sell or push the same to the customers.
What is MARKETING?
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing starts before creating the product. [2]
We are always talking about Traditional Marketing and Digital Media Marketing. But, technology keeps on changing each and every moment of our lives. Now, at this moment, due to COVID-19, there are many companies that are struggling to fulfil their daily needs, failing to get the new projects, and ultimately failing to address the customer’s needs. For such companies, I would like to mention alternative types of marketing, which they could employ to attract more customers.
The following are such marketing types that I have figured out for your reference:
Importance of Personal Branding:
“To create your personal brand you need to have patience, Customer Attraction, Genuine Quality and Skills” [1]
Effective personal branding will differentiate you from the competition and will allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers.
Individual (Personal) Branding - will lead you to attract more customer or opportunities among the crowd competition
E.g. During this Covid-19 whoever has good marketing skills and good repute in their company can be sure of their job safety even though they don't have any projects or their end clients are holding their current projects.
Personal branding comes naturally through a person's unique personality like one’s ingenuity in storytelling, writing, networking, marketing, sales, reading, photography, travelling, and other similar skills.
“Focus on adding value to your customers or other people or others and once you do, people will start interacting with you" [1] – Through this, you can build your own brand easily.
Employer Branding – Through this, a company could attract more customers, candidates, improve its market share value, etc.
If you build your brand among your employees then automatically they can become your brand ambassadors. Through this, you can save money on Marketing and Hiring.
E.g. During this Covid-19, companies like JIO, AMAZON, Zoom, and Byju’s achieved more market value share, profits, customers, candidates, etc.
If you are a start-up or a middle-level company or a corporate company then you should add some strategies like giving timely feedback at the end of interviews, training and development, etc. This will help you to build your brand.
CATT - Marketing Funnel
This marketing funnel will lead you to understand your customer’s path with you. The components of this funnel are C - Content; A-Attention; T-Trust; T- Transaction; W- Wealth; and N- Niche.
Given these components, the mechanism of this funnel method employs the formula "W= n ^CATT” for creating wealth for you.
For small companies, NICHE selection is very much important to speak to a customer or client in a certain way, which they can relate to. This will give an idea about the target market and audience.
(Niches are broadly categorized into Health, Wealth, Relationships and Arts. Within Wealth you will have Career, Business, and Investing. Within Arts, you will have Entertainment and Hobbies.
Health and Relationships will have several categories beneath it. But HWRA - Health, Wealth, Relationships, and Arts are the major ones).
The integrated version of Digital Marketing Framework
Nowadays, there is a heavy competition going on in each and every field, especially Digital Marketing. But, once you prove your loyalty to customers by delivering quality-work and by completing the work on time, it will definitely increase your brand value. Through this, you can grow higher and higher.
I would say “Most businesses are running through repeated customers"[1]
Conclusion:
On the first day of my MBA class at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, the first task they assigned me was to sell a “One Pound Pizza “outside the university premises. I just got excited and did not know how to sell it. At the end of the day, I had sold only 1 Pizza. That night I analyzed myself through the following questions:
- Did I sell the right product for the people?
- Did I sell the product for the right people?
- Did I sell the product in the right place?
- The product is worth the price or not?
- If it's worthy, why people hesitate to buy it?
- Did I market the product in the right manner?
- Did I have a language barrier to contact and sell the product?
The next day too my professors assigned me the same task. Through the answers that I inferred for the earlier day’s questions, I gained the confidence to sell the product and I sold around 5 Pizzas within 2 hours. Thus, building inner confidence is a very important factor when it comes to marketing. Further, teaching others and applying our learnings in the process of marketing would help us remember the lessons while also inspiring others by creating value for ourselves. Thus, we will automatically gain more brand value and clients, and eventually become more successful.
HELP EACH OTHER; GROW TOGETHER * "Practice makes the man perfect” *
Reference:
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-quotes?%3F__hstc=185665590.c4a577029c49e44b73bd3bee6fa38565.1585699200154.1585699200155.1585699200156.1&%3F__hstc=259582869.99a265337744294b740e0787aea508c4.1581292800597.1581292800598.1581292800599.1&hssc=185665590.1.1585699200157&__hsfp=3071927421
- https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/marketing-principles-v2.0/s04-what-is-marketing.html
Image courtesy:
- www.digitaldeepak.com
About the Author
Rajamanickam G is the Founder of Network Rajj IT Services. He is an alumnus of Cardiff Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom.