WHAT TO DO BEFORE START DIGITAL MARKETING CAREER

What should we know before starting a digital marketing course?

Digital marketing is very vast in scope, like an ocean enriched with immense opportunities of earning money and respect. Not only it will help you to get a job, but also you can earn money by doing freelancing and affiliate marketing.

Many reputed institutes teach digital marketing courses, if I am not wrong most of them will teach you only about the digital marketing tools like Google Ads, Google Analytics, Search Console, etc. They claim that an MBA degree is not necessary for a digital marketer. I completely agree with them, though to apply digital marketing skills effectively and grow yourself in this industry, deep and insightful knowledge of core marketing concepts is vital.

The entry-level as a digital marketer is not as tough as the Doctors or Engineers level, because all digital marketing tools are easily available on the internet, most of them can access free of cost and get data insight to spend even INR 500. All you need is the willpower to learn and project them in real life.

Before starting learning about digital marketing, first prepare to knowing the ground rules -

This blog will help you to understand the mentioned below topics

• What Is Marketing?
• Difference Between Digital Marketing And Traditional Marketing
• Core Concepts Of Marketing
• Needs, Wants, Demand
• STP
• 4P’s
• Competition Analysis
• AIDAR Model
• Find Your Niche
• Personal Branding

What Is Marketing?

Is marketing selling products only? If yes then, why do companies have two different departments “Sales” and “Marketing”? If no then what is marketing?

“Marketing is an art and science to choosing a target market, getting, keeping, growing customers through creating, delivering, communicating superior customer value.”

The above definition won’t be effective if you don’t know “target market” and “customer values”. So let me tell you about them-

Suppose you want to sell tablets specially designed for early learning. Now think to whom you can sell the same, can you sell to a person who doesn’t have kids? Probably, no right. You want to sell who have kids. Who can afford your tablet cost, age between 25–40 years, etc.

The entire population is not your audience, you need to segment your audience as per the features of your product and can target one most effective segment which will be your “Target Market”.

Customer Value is a perception of what product or service worth to a customer versus the possible alternatives. Whether he or she got benefits over what he or she paid.

The aim of marketing is not knowing your product to sell, the aim is to know the customers competently so that the product fits them and sells itself.

I would request to read once again the above-mentioned marketing definition, now I am sure you got my point exactly.

Difference Between Traditional Marketing And Digital Marketing-

Digital marketing was already in trend however, nowadays due to pandemic its demand increased like anything. Most of the companies have shifted their complete marketing campaigns digitally, but it does not mean that traditional marketing is not important.

The person who has profound knowledge of marketing can do digital and traditional marketing both with ease, both are marketing only, what distinguishes both is platform and facility to measure results.

In digital marketing available platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Ads, SEO, etc, and can easily download the reports from these platforms and evaluate your campaigns as per required parameters.

In traditional marketing, Radio, Tv, Banners, Newspapers, etc are platforms and it fails to track the results of campaigns.

One more measure difference is digital marketing is cost-effective than traditional marketing. This is also a measure reason that people are shifting to digital marketing.

If I talk about similarities, both platforms use the same fundamental marketing concepts and goals.

Core Concepts Of Marketing-

First, understand that there are phases where we do marketing first product development phase and the product launch phase. In the product development phase marketing part is more of research, and analysis of the market, Industry, competitors, and consumers. The product launch part is finding a best segment of the market, analyzing 4P’s branding, running a campaign with best-suited channel.

Below mentioned few concepts are must to know before start your digital marketing career

Need, Wants and Demand

We often heard from people that marketing is selling combs to bald people. Do you agree?

I am not. I agree that selling combs to a bald man is good selling skills but not marketing skills.

Related to the above example, people say that good marketers create needs and sell products to people, however, no one can create needs, needs preexists. I agree that sometimes people are not fully conscious of their needs or are unable to articulate the same.

Needs are air, water, food, clothes, shelter, etc, however, when it becomes “wants” when it’s directed by specific objects like human beings need food, they don’t just eat anything. They eat as per their culture, their society. In the U.P. people prefer to eat Roti, Daal, Rice, Curry, etc however in the south part of India they prefer to eat Sambar, Rice, Curd, etc.

The wants become demand when it is backed up with the ability to pay. Many people want a BMW car, however few of them are able to pay.

As wants to be shaped by the social factor, marketers influence wants along with the other social factor. For example, marketers will tell people that BMW has awesome features of safety, it’s a symbol of social status, etc.

STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning)

The market is broad, large, and diverse, to connect with all customers by a single message at one time is possible yet to satisfy their needs and wants with the same message is kind of impossible. This is the main reason to segment the market. Marketers divide the market into groups of people or segments with distinct needs and wants then identify market segments that can serve effectively.

The market can segment on behalf of Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic, and Behavior of the customer.

The companies are adopting target marketing to enter the market because they are focusing on those consumers who have the greatest chance of satisfaction.

Effective target Market requires that marketers:-

1. As per consumer’s distinct needs and wants identifying and profile the market (Segmentation)
2. Select the best segment (s) of the consumers to enter (Targeting)
3. Establish and communicate the distinctive benefits of the product or service with the consumers for each target market (Positioning)

For example — Lifebuoy is one of the very famous soap in rural India though other products like Lifebuoy body wash, Lifebuoy hand wash, and Lifebuoy hand sanitizer are also available. Lifebuoy targets Different different segments of the market for each product.

Lifebuoy soap is very famous in rural areas of India, because of its availability, price range, and advertisements. Almost everyone can recognize lifebuoy packaging and tagline. So dividing the market into similar profile consumers is segmentation, recognizing the best segment(s) as per consumer needs and wants (Rural India in the above Lifebuoy case) is the target market. Establishing and communicating the distinctive benefits of the product or service with the consumers (remembering tagline and packaging etc in the above example) is positioning.

4P’s Of Marketing-

Product, Price, Place, and Promotion are 4 tactics or sets of actions of the marketing mix. These help businesses promote their brand and product.

1. Product — Products should be satisfying customer’s needs and wants.
2. Price — As per the customer expectation they should charge, neither too high nor too low.
3. Place — Product should be easily available to the right customer.
4. Promotion — Promotion helps people to understand product USP and how it will help to satisfy their needs.

Nowadays 2 more P’s People and Process have been added in the service sector.

Competition Analysis-

As the name is itself explaining that in competition analysis means analyzing your existing competitor in the market.

SWOT analysis, Porter’s 5 Force, Perceptual Mapping are available to analyze the same and pick the best as per your product or service nature.

SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) analysis is advisable for every type of product or service as it helps you to find the USP of your product and give you a clear idea about the market.

Porter’s 5 force framework helps to analyze the factors that influence a company’s profitability. Factors are “Competitions”, “New Market Entrants”, “Suppliers Power”, “Customers Power”, and “Substitute Products” and best to analyze on the industry level.

Five forces analysis helps organizations to

1. understand the factors affecting profitability in a specific industry
2. whether to enter a specific industry
3. whether to increase capacity in a specific industry
4. developing competitive strategies

CATT Marketing Funnel -

CATT Funnel is a vital strategy of marketing and helps to increase sales with customer satisfaction, repeat sales, and brand value.

The simple formula is

Wealth = n^CATT (formula taken digital deepak internship program)

Where n= Niche

C= Content

A= Attention

T= Trust

T= Transaction

As per the above formula, n is a game-changer factor. It indicates that you need to be very careful while selecting your niche. You can combine your two are three passions and create a unique niche.

For example, we are good at cricket and also know blogging, you can write about cricket.

Basically, select your niche in which you are Talented, Passionate and the Market has the opportunity to grow.

We often heard that “Content is King”. Great content leaves an enormous impression on customer’s minds and helps to grab attention.

After creating great pieces of Content, it’s important to grab customers’ attention, and can do via Social Media Marketing, Paid Marketing, SEO and Email Marketing, etc.

Trust is the base of your marketing, if your campaign is not capable of building people’s trust, it means your all effort is waste so always maintain a relationship with your customer via tripwires, marketing automation, and remarketing.

With help of the nature sale method, leads can convert into the transaction.

Integrated Digital Marketing -

Integrated digital marketing is the art to use most of the digital tools together to multiply the result of each tool and get effective results at the lowest cost.

If you dig deep into the digital marketing campaign, “Landing Page” is common in every hence optimum landing page is the foundation. The landing page should be relevant and must satisfy the customer's query. Good landing page attributes are relevancy, transparency, easy to navigate, and most effective original. Also, SEO friendly landing page will help in ranking organically.

The below-mentioned image will help you to understand integrated digital marketing.

The above image shows that content is an engine and help to other campaigns are interconnected body parts and give an immense contribution towards growth on the success path.

Find Your Niche:-

As we all know until you don’t do digital marketing practically you won’t be able to grow in this field, it is a result-oriented field where if you are not capable of getting measurable results you won’t be a demanding digital marketer.

Your Niche is a combination of Your Passion + Your Talent + Market Opportunity.

First, find which topics you were liking as a kid and what have you need searching in the last 3–5 years, these two questions will help you to find your passion.

Talent is what you get paid for, so ask your family members, colleagues, your mentor which are five topics in which you are talented.

To find the marketing opportunities, do keywords research in Google Ads, Quora, Reddit, Google Trends, etc you will be able to find is you how many times your keywords getting search what are another topics related to your people are interested as well as how your competitor is using them.

Personal Branding-

Once you find your niche, now it is time to tell others that you are a master in your field otherwise all effort you have done till now will be wasted. Definitely you want optimum output, so do personal branding, keep your audience busy with insightful knowledge. Your talent will recognize and will get the best rewards.

Personal branding is not just an online presence it's how much you involve with people and solving their problems.

Communication embrace digital marketer, good communication help to grow your career because you need to interact every day with people. Communication is not just speaking English, it is an art to convey your message to others effectively.

For all who want to learn digital marketing, please be assure digital marketing is an evolving field with immense carrier opportunities. Just you need to brace yourself with the knowledge of marketing in deep and understanding of data. once you are ready with this then start learning and doing digital marketing you get different excitement because your concepts will be cristal clear.