Facebook ads, email marketing, Instagram, phone calls...what should you use as an employee of the marketing team of your company? Amidst numerous courses flashing various tools as being the holy grail of marketing, it can be confusing, and even daunting to venture into this space. In fact, many people feel that marketing is rocket science and can only be mastered by a few. However, that is simply not the case. With the right information and guidance, you will be clear on exactly what tool to use, and how to use it. In this article, I am going to provide you information that you need to relay to your boss if you want some serious growth. I’ll explain to you how exactly can you crack the market by understanding the essence of marketing, the human psyche, and personal branding.
Market-ing?
Many people when talking about marketing think that it is all about learning Facebook, MailChimp, and other such tools. Even more, people who learn about these tools call themselves ‘Digital Marketing experts’. However, digital is just the medium of delivering marketing. It is the tactic. Without knowing the marketing part of digital marketing, a medium will only be able to support you this far. If you notice, marketing is a verb. It denotes a process that is continuous and starts even before you create a product or service. How so? Well, before you build a product, you speak to potential customers, and you understand their needs and desires so well that it automatically leads to a product that is a true match for them. For example, let us consider the top-ranking products in the makeup industry— Huda Beauty, Fenty Beauty, Charlotte Tilbury, Too Faced, Kat Von Dee— what do all these brands have in common? They have in common celebrity makeup artists and models who spent years experiencing themselves as well as talking to people about makeup products that were being used every day. They got to know their market so well that now, they do not even need to use many digital tools to make people buy their products. Why do I say that marketing is super easy? It is because it is a science, and does not require much creativity.
It’s about the 3 R’s.
Marketing is all about the 3 R’s— sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Marketing is not even about sales, but it is about literally making friends for life for your brand—those who will support you and will value you just as you will support them and provide them value. How do you do that? By keeping communication channels strong with your existing customers, hence ensuring that they stick with you. My mentor, Digital Deepak calls this “MassTrust”. That’s the skill of developing trust with a lot of people at the same time.
The psychological necessity of marketing
Marketing is all about tapping into the human psyche. Why is it that so many big companies value data so much, sometimes even more than our lives? It’s because whoever knows about how humans think can control the market. Marketing is hence a means to an end, the end being to build a powerful brand and capture a position in the minds of customers. Think about brands that play such a deep, important, and personal role in your lives, you will understand what I am saying.
Peter Drucker, the pioneer of public administration said, “the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” You have to create a river of marketing, where marketing flows even when you are not marketing. The contents of the river have to be the right perceptions and the right tools. With the right perceptions in the mind of your customer communicated with the right tools, you basically have an assembled army of brand ambassadors, who will build your brand by word of mouth. Remember, people listen to people, and not companies. Hence, word of mouth marketing is very powerful. Hence, tell your boss that your marketing strategy needs to encapsulate at its very core what does your brand want people to think about.
How to build a strong brand?
Why is Google, google? Well, it is the only one. You do have Bing, Yahoo search, and other such search engines, but you have nothing as fast and seamless as Google. It’s the only one in its niche. Hence, sit with your boss and evaluate where exactly are you competing, and who are you competing with. If you cannot be the only one, or at least one of the only two, it might be worth considering where else can you branch out, that is, if you really want to be in this for the long-term. Aim to make your brand a verb, like Google, Whatsapp, and Zoom.
At this point, you might feel that there are hundreds of brands in every niche, so does that mean that one just packs up their bags and sleep? Well, not really, because there are so many sub-niches to everything. One golden hack that I swear by is to search if a community/forum exists around your rare sub-niche on any platform. If it does, you definitely have a market and can go ahead with the sub-niche.
Know your market
Sometimes, chartering unknown waters can be a beautiful journey. I once remember a few years back as a teen, when I just packed my bags with no destination in mind, out to travel solo. I ended up having one of the best travel memories that I have ever had. However, it could just as well be a disaster. In the world of marketing, this is what happens. You can go out, completely clueless, and aim for a long shot. You might even succeed, but that depends on sheer luck. If you want to be in this for a sure, long period, it is much better and even wise to know the market that you are entering. For example, I wanted high-paying clients for my freelance content. I had two markets open for me, one in India, where only big companies pay you $500-$1000 per article, and one in the US, where even bagging projects with mid-level companies can yield you a good $1000-$1500 per article. I hence chose the US as my market, researched the demographics and psychographics of the same, and shot for the moon. My mentor, Digital Deepak decided to enter India because he found that the population in India that can pay for premium services is ever-growing due to a young demographic strength, and is here to stay for many years. Hence, charter your priorities and research your target market’s economy well.
What mediums do I use?
If you’re in any generation that is not Gen Millenial, chances are that you grew up being influenced by the merry jingles of TV ads or the bold prints on the newspaper. Or you may have traveled somewhere and noticed huge billboards of ads with quirky quotes. That is an approach that you can still follow if you want to reach millions of people at the same time. Or you can directly reach the premium-paying segment by advertising online. In my experience, this differs from product to product, sometimes even within the same brand. While working for a digital media outlet situated in rural Uttar Pradesh, we had two products— one was a local newspaper written in the local Bundeli dialect, and one was a digital, long read, subscription-based English news series. For the local newspaper, we reached out via radio and communicated the brand’s USP— the paper was owned and operated by rural women themselves, of their communities. For the digital subscription, we used Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to encourage young millennials and an English-speaking urban audience to invest in rural journalism, and read true stories away from the buzz and scream of everyday news. And it worked— in the first month itself, there were 50,000 subscriptions. What is even more interesting is that our constant evaluation of the market helped us upscale the mediums that we used too. With more people in rural areas getting internet connectivity, we started reaching out via Youtube, posting video stories mostly in Hindi, and it paid off, for the channel now has about 4 lakh subscribers, mostly from rural areas. Hence, use the tools as tactics, but keep reading up and be informed about your market. Change is the only constant.
Putting it all together via a powerful funnel
At this point, you might be wondering, “okay, Nimisha— I got that we need to understand marketing first before anything else, but this alone may not save my position, and may even risk me sounding preachy to my boss. Give me an impressive funda, no!”
And I get that, however, it was important to toil and wet the soil a bit before presenting to you the seed that will both impress your boss and change the game for your company. It is the CATT marketing funnel.
No, it’s not a cat, and definitely not the MBA-cracking test. It is a super simple formula for massive marketing growth, growth hacking, company success, whatever you want to call it. All I know is that it guarantees amazing results. The CATT marketing funnel formula is,
Wealth= n^CATT.
The N stands for the Niche that you are in. The right niche is like the perfect seed. When sown into soil perfected by CATT, it is bound to grow into a beautiful, high-yielding crop. If the seed is not right, it just won’t manifest, no matter how much you try. Your wealth and success depend on this.
The C stands for Content. Create useful and meaningful content that attract people from your niche. Content can be anything. I have observed that the best content to attract people is the one that makes them laugh. If you can make your customers laugh, you have already opened them up to be receptive to you. Fortunately, I was blessed with the power of meme-making.
The A stands for Attention. In marketing vocabulary, attention means traffic. Get traffic to your content via SEO strategies, Social Media, paid ads on Youtube, Facebook, and other digital mediums, referrals, and sales.
The T stands for Trust. Trust is everything. Remember, when I told you at the beginning of this article that you need to make your customers friends for life? Well, that friendship is based on solid trust. Break it and then spend a lifetime healing that wound. One way to do that is deep marketing— by interacting with your customer in such a way that it is automated yet very personal. Your customer should feel as if you are talking to them directly, even when you are not. That is the hidden key to scaling up massively.
The other T stands for Transaction. This is the ultimate aim of marketing, that is, sales. However, because of the process followed above, the sale happens naturally— through the right content targeted at the right person and built on a solid premise of trust, the person will buy your product naturally, without you having to do much convincing. When I think of this, I realize that I have bought almost everything naturally. People do not like being sold to, they always want to believe that they made a choice. Using this funnel, you are letting them choose while subtly also making them realize why they do not have a choice because you are the best offer that they can have.
The power or “^” is because CATT multiples the effectiveness of n.
And how do you choose the right seed, that is, the niche?
You need Talent+Market+Passion.
Tooling it all
Now, you have this powerful framework to assemble your marketing strategy and put things into action. Suppose you decide that you want your content to reach people by an SEO strategy. But is that sufficient? Or you decide to go for paid ads. But how long can you keep running paid ads? Or you decide to do outreach on social media. But that is not a very practical approach to grow. A nice growth strategy will integrate all these means into a wholesome whole. And for that, you need the ‘balanced diet’ of digital marketing, that is, the Integrated Digital Marketing framework.
With this framework, you are creating a balanced diet than just gorging on one nutrient, where all nutrients complement each other by playing to their own strengths. For example, Digital Deepak runs paid ads to his content, not his product. This leads them to sign up for his mailing list, where he keeps on feeding them value with even more free content. He also uses SEO to list and rank his content high on Google, using which again people sign up for his content. He also uses social media to amplify the reach of his content, where people can share it. In one early-stage media house that I worked for, they used SEO, paid ads, and social media just for one thing— to lead people to their content and getting them to take action by subscribing to their newsletter. Within less than a year, the website has had about 100 million impressions! Hence, incorporate this funnel in your marketing tactic strategy.
The final milestone to seal the deal—personal branding!
I told you somewhere in the middle of this article that people listen to people, and not brands. What if YOU could be the brand? Let’s go back to two of the top makeup brands that I told you about right at the start (I am a big makeup junkie so be prepared for a LOT of industry reference). Huda Kattan, the founder of Huda Beauty, and Rihanna, the founder of Fenty Beauty have much more followers than their ‘brands’ themselves. However, if we examine closely using our newly-harnessed marketing lens, Huda and Rihanna are brands in themselves. When people buy their makeup products, they do so because they model and associate with Huda and Rihanna, and not just their products. Even mainstream makeup brands have realized this and are trying to use this power of personal branding. For example, another well-known brand named Makeup Revolution tied up with popular Youtubers Tammi Clarke and Sophie to introduce eyeshadow palettes. Now people bought them not because they have an affinity for Makeup Revolution, but they identify and associate with the brand that is Tammi Clarke.
If you are the best known in your field, your success is guaranteed. Hence, the key is to build a brand that is personal and deep. You really need to connect with people, either through written content or through podcasts and videos. One key to personal branding is building communities around your niche and being the leader of the conversations that happen in that community— people will have to look up to you. And once you are an influencer of this community, you can create umpteen brands and will always have a market. Instead of investing money in sponsored posts by celebrities, you can use the power of your own brand to become your own influencer and brand ambassador. How cool is that!
The MassTrust Blueprint for Personal Branding Success
You can use the following blueprint to become a pro from a nobody and gain the trust of a mass of people together and effectively.
Firstly, start your journey by learning new skills through understanding concepts, remembering facts, and practicing procedures. Then, put these newly harnessed skills to use. Be in full-on implementation beast mode! Doing it will give you the experience to understand what you are doing even better. Start writing about it and building your community. Remember, marketing starts even before a product is launched. But this is not just for them, but for your own clarity. After a certain period, you can even start consulting other businesses than being the executioner. Ultimately, you can mentor people who are inspired by you and want to become like you. When you have to mentor people who look up to you, you will put in 200% effort to get in-depth clarity. This will help you to launch your startup, and creating solutions to problems that you have understood by connecting with the market.
Now you might be wondering that what use is this to you if you already work in an existing company. Well, here is the important part: this process is not linear, and does not have an end. It is a continuous cycle, and all startups should periodically go through these stages to stay relevant to the market and understand the consumer and their own brand. As I said, change is the only constant. So, sit with your boss and mull over the fact that it would be worth going through a constructive review.
Go for it!
So that is it, friend. Through this article, my aim has been to lay a solid foundation for the laws of marketing, and take you step-by-step in how you can very constructively plan a growth strategy for the company you work at, also impressing your boss at the same time and perhaps bagging that raise. Or even better, you may be inspired to start your own brand! Let me know what you intend to do now in your comments, and do email me the after scenes of your interaction with your boss. Good luck!
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