Have you got your fundamentals of marketing right before selling something ?

MARKETING STRATEGIES

In today’s world marketing is an essential part of life. From the moment we wake up from our bed till we go to bed for sleep at night, everything we consume is sold by some marketeer. Can you choose which toothpaste to use or what makeup to apply, if it had not been sold by someone ? Hadn’t the salesman at the cloth Centre counter helped you in deciding which shirt or trouser is looking better on your body. The food we intake, the RO system we use for clean water, the vehicle we use to go to office or work, aren’t all influenced by some advertisement ? So let’s see what constitutes the concept of marketing, its origin, growth and evolution to modern day marketing era.

This article is useful for those who want to make his thoughts clear about marketing before selling something.

With the rise of homo sapiens from our primitives species, humans with the time begin to settle at one place by engaging in the then new found activity called agriculture. When they were nomads they hunted and gathered only required for one meal for them at a time. But when they settled they started producing more than required for self. They needed to sell this extra production and so they started marketing their products. I think this must have been the origin of marketing.

With industrial revolution happening in Europe in 18th and 19th century, we could produce large quantities of gods in small time and less energy. This lead to increase in exports of Europe to the world and imports of raw materials from all over the world to Europe. This changed the status of marketing from local to global level to a large extent. And today we see the world as a single village. With the emergence of America as a superpower and Asian giants like China, Japan, South Korea and India as production hubs, the world has seen so many changes. Word of mouth was the best form of advertising at first. Then with the rise of newspapers, small commercial advertisement started to appear in the newspaper and with the rise of radio, audio commercials were telecasted on radio channels. When television came, it changed the face of advertising to a new level like in paper you could only read and with radio you could only hear but on television you could visualize the commercial and it was vastly effective. During the last decade there is a complete transformation in marketing due to the spread of digital media.

This decade saw people started using internet more and more and new social media apps became popular like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Telegram and Twitter etc.. People’s presence on social media has increased manifold. With this the focus for marketing has moved on to digital side than the traditional side. With digital media now you can reach directly to the customer through social media news or advertisements.

Let’s understand the term Marketing. In simple words, it is the process of connecting right product with the right consumer.

“our jobs as marketeers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them to do so”.

— Bryan Eisenberg. Speaker and online marketing Pioneer.

The process of marketing can be described briefly as following steps :-

1. Understanding the marketplace and understanding customer needs and wants.

2. Designing a customer — driven marketing strategy

3. Constructing an integrated marketing plan that delivers superior value

4. Build profitable relationships

5. Capturing value from customers.

As author and marketing consultant Simon Sinek says

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.

So basically marketing is all about passion.

In the world of social/digital media marketing, ‘Content is the king’. You want to sell something on social media, you need to develop a quality content which will appeal to the customers.

I have been working in the marketing field from last 24 years. Now I will tell you marketing as I have experienced and understood it. The word marketing consists of two distinct parts. One part is ‘The Product’ and the other is ‘The Consumer’. Let’s understand the first part i.e., The Product. When you go in the field or stand behind the counter to sell something, it is essential to understand the product very well. If you can study the product and understand its importance, its structure, its characteristics and its use it becomes more easy to sell. You must know the process of production of the product, its raw material, its quality and most importantly the vision of the maker of the product. Now coming to the second part i.e., The Consumer. The customer or the one who is purchasing is not always the one who is consuming. First you must understand who is the consumer of your product and then who is purchasing it. If the consumer himself is the purchaser, you can sell it according to his needs and if he is purchasing it for someone else, there are more factors involved in it like relation of the purchaser and consumer, his motive to purchase the product, his attachment with the one who is consuming etc. The salesman must know the psychology of the purchaser.

Marketing can be of two types:-

1. Business to Business marketing popularly called as B2B marketing where one business sells its products to another business

2. Business to Consumers marketing popularly called as B2C marketing where a business sells its products to the Consumers.

Let’s explore some of the different types of marketing strategies.

1. Paid advertising in print and television media and also in internet marketing with methods such as pay per click.

2. Cause marketing where marketing is done related to a social cause.

3. Relationship marketing is basically focused on building relations with the customer and improving loyalty of the customer.

4. Undercover marketing focuses on marketing the product while customers remain unaware of the marketing strategy and is also known as Stealth Marketing.

5. Word of Mouth totally relies on what impression you leave on people. When you give quality services to customers it is likely that they would promote you.

6. Internet marketing also known as cloud marketing.

7. Transactional marketing where retailers encourage customers to buy with shopping coupons, discounts and huge events.

8. Diversified Marketing which caters diverse audience by customizing and integrating different marketing strategies.

Now a days, people are using niche marketing strategy to market their products. Niche marketing is a targeted marketing plan that focuses on one particular section of the market that has high potential to connect with the product or service. Now people are creating wealth by using niche marketing with a marketing funnel.

Wealth = n ^ CATT

Where ^ denotes power.

Where niche is applied with CATT.

Here C stands for content. Create powerful content to be used in webinars, blogs, emails podcasts to enable generate leads.

A stands for attention. Calling for attention through social media to pull traffic.

T stands for trust by personalizing emails.

T stands for transaction where lead is converted to customer.

Integrated Marketing : Integrated Marketing is an approach to creating a unified and seamless experience for consumers to interact with the brand/enterprise; it attempts to meld all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, and social media, through their respective mix of …

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Content marketing.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Affiliate marketing.
• Email marketing.

Personal Branding : Personal Branding is the key to success in today’s competitive world. It creates opportunity for you to shift from Red Ocean Strategy to Blue Ocean Strategy.

Before you go for Marketing your product do have your fundamentals of Marketing right. Choose your Niche and go for it. The world is yours.

Marketing is the essential part our lives. We promote ourselves in the competitive job market, We sell our products or convivence a idea to a friend or a family member. So better prepare yourself for this.

I have written this article for as assignment for Digital Dipak Internship Program. And I thank Deepak Kanakraju sir and team digitaldeepak. Thanks for designing this wonderful program. It is the need of the hour for our country to develop digital skills of the people and you are the leader for that.

Thanks for reading my article. I really appreciate your efforts for improvement. Thank you so much for staying with me till the end. If you like this article do encourage me by liking it and please leave a comment on it.

BALAJI SHELKE.