A Brand New Perception Of Marketing
When did the last time you purchased clothes from a shopping mall? or, when did the last time you have gone to have pizza outside? or wait, when did the last time you had been to the theatre to watch a movie?
Introduction
The existence of marketing is way back in the early 18th Century. It started as production centric to product centric and later customer focused. The customer oriented selling and advertising prevailed for a longer duration. As the world started to move toward online and internet based business, the concept of marketing again started to change its shape. Let us have a glance on the changing role of marketing and what are the challenges that can be faced in this digital era for millennials.
The misconception regarding marketing is that it is more of a selling and advertising of product or services. But marketing comes into picture way before any product is launch in the market. Have you heard of pre-marketing research? A research carried out by the marketing professionals to identify the need of something in different segments of market. They target a particular niche (sub-segment) and then with time create the good image or brand of the particular product in the mind of customer.
Success of marketing is based on the principle that the right message should be delivered to the right person at the right time. With the world becoming more digitalized, lots of information are spreading at the relative faster speed. So, the major challenge is that a marketer should come up with the most attractive message to the right audience. In addition, the information should be reached without any delay.
In marketing we need to focus on the needs of the customer, but it is actually the product and its quality that determine how long you can sustain your customer and consumers. Marketing is a process of making a person one-time purchaser to the client for that product. A high quality product doesn’t require additional advertisement cost. For them, customers work as their advertising agency through word of mouth. For eg: Today people hardly care about the advertising of few brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Nike, Puma etc. and buy the products without any consideration because they are already convinced with the quality of products as they had used them earlier.
Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
It can be observed that electronic gadgets such as phone, laptop etc. has become the essential part of our lifestyle these days. We can say that there is a shifting from the traditional approach to digital approach of marketing. Though the principle of marketing remains same i.e. satisfying the need of customer, there is much difference between the traditional and digital mode of marketing. While the former is more relied on the traditional channel such as newspaper, radio, billboards, banners etc. for expanding its reach to the customers, the later one focused more on websites and social media platforms.
We can not say one is superior to others but each one has its own importance in different market situations. When the market is large then digital marketing helps in mass reach. On the other hand, if the product is highly customer focused and size of market is small, we go for traditional method. Let us discuss pros and cons of both.
Pros of Traditional Marketing:
The most important pros of traditional marketing is the long lasting impact in the mind of customer. The reason behind it is traditional marketing mediums are mostly tangible or permanent and offer face to face interaction with the customer. They feel more trusted and convinced and with the blende of human touch.
Cons of Traditional marketing:
Though the traditional marketing stays in our memory for long but it has few drawbacks. The most important drawback of traditional marketing is the cost involved in it is very high. The pamphlets, posters, billboards and print in newspaper costs a lot to the company. Other drawbacks are communication happens here is one-way and thus there is lack of engagement of customers and this results into weak customer base.
Pros of Digital Marketing:
The biggest advantage that the digital marketing has is the mass reach to the customers at a very low cost. In addition, due to involvement of artificial intelligent, customer engagement is really high in digital marketing. It is dynamic.
Cons of Digital Marketing:
As lots of information flows through internet everyday, customer are often confused and they don’t have last long impact in the mind of customer.
CATT Marketing Funnel
CATT model of marketing actually defines the process through which you reach out to your niche and actually convert them into wealth. Let us understand it through a formula.
Wealth = n^CATT
Where,
n = niche that you have selected for your product.
C = A quality content that attract customer to go through it. When you write something which actually goes to the mind of the customer.
A = When you give quality content, customer starts giving attention and try to know more about the product.
T = After having thorough research about the product, customer actually gain trust on the product.
T = When the trust is built, customer buy the products and hence the transaction is made.
The important thing here to notice is we don’t have to run after the customer for any transaction but we need to create a good image of product in the mind of consumer that they itself come to purchase the product.
Integrated Digital Marketing
First we understand what is integrated marketing? It is the concept that came in early 20th century where marketer looked at the holistic approach of marketing. In layman language we can say, instead of taking one ingredient at a time, take all the ingredient together to make delicious foods.
Similarly, in integrated digital marketing, we need to assemble all the components and tools of digital marketing under one roof and establish a relation between all of them.
Personal Branding: Mass Trust Blueprint.
This term can be referred as creating a distinctive image of yourself in the mind of customer that they frequently buy products from you. It is the highest level of customer engagement where product generic name is replaced by the brand name. Eg. Xerox is a company but we use it interchangeably with photocopying. Similarly, We don’t say that let’s search on a search engine, we say lets google it.
Lets focus on the blueprint to create a personal brand-
Learn- We first need to acquire lot of knowledge.
Work- We need to have implement those knowledge.
Blog- We need to share what we have learnt from the knowledge.
Consult- We need to consult and improve on the gaps and drawbacks.
Mentor- Finally we can become a guide or mentor to someone by acquiring the expertise in a particular field.
Conclusion:
So, We can say that marketing has flown through different phases and currently in the digital era. The right marketing strategy is the perfect combination of digital and traditional marketing. We know that market is really dynamic. So, it is the duty of the marketer and the organization to deliver its best and in the best time. This is the only way they can build a brand. With the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are able to do lots of research and analyze reports in a short span of time. We have to be prepare for the future generation of marketing. No wonder the day will come when someone knock the door and once you open the door, you see robot as your LIC agent or a Pizza delivery guy.
