A Digital Master’s Mindmap for Success

Table of Contents

1. The Law Of Marketing

• Is Marketing Science?

2. Build Up A Strong Brand

3. Why Invest Your Time And Energy Learning Marketing?

4. The Importance Of Communication Skills: MassTrust Blueprint.

5. Economics

6. Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing

7. Direct Response Marketing

8. The CATT

• Now, what is the CATT marketing funnel?

9. Importance Of Personal Brand

10. How To Build a Personal Brand

11. Integrated Digital Marketing

Conclusion

 1. The Law Of Marketing

Don’t get bored here when I say the words “law of marketing or the fundamentals of marketing“. It may sound boring but trust me, it was interesting and thought-provoking as watching a movie. I learned and understood what exactly is marketing.

 digital marketing is more about marketing than the digital part. This really makes sense to me because when we understand marketing very well then digital marketing becomes easy to practice.

Generally, marketing is understood as creativity. You come up with a convincing and creative ad copy for an already existing product or service and run those ads. That’s how we perceive marketing.

Is Marketing Science?

We think that marketing means the promotion of an already created product or service. But marketing starts before creating a product.

I am really convinced by this thought. Because it is true that we have to understand our customers and their needs deeply and then create a product and service that best fit their needs.

Marketing is about sending the right message at a right time, to the right person. That’s why it is a science. This is really eye-opening for me.

So, to sum up, marketing starts even before you create a product. It is not only to sell things but also to retain the existing customers by communicating with them so that they remain customers for life.

Furthermore, marketing means meeting one’s needs. It should give what your customers need which should help you build your brand.

You as a marketer should project your No.1 goal to build trust with your target audience. Building mass trust. 

There is no point in selling anything if your customers don’t trust you. They won’t buy your stuff. So, building trust with your target audience comes first before you try to even sell anything to them.

“Marketing aims to know and understand the customer so well that the product and service fit him and sells itself… Marketing aims to make selling superfluous.” – Peter Drucker

You need to build your trust with people so that you become a brand that is trusted by mass. After you gain the brand your product will sell itself. No need for hard sales calls or sales copy. Until then, you need to do marketing that is building trust with your audience.

Now, we should focus on creating high-quality products. If your product is of high quality then you don’t need much marketing. It will sell itself.

“Remember, marketing is a game of perception and the product is the game of reality”.

He further mentioned that advertising is not marketing. It is just a part of marketing.

Copywriting is a component of marketing. Sales is also a component of marketing.

The core is, that you just need a great high-quality product. Marketing not only helps people discover the product but also helps people to have a good perception of the product. Example: Apple

2. Build Up A Strong Brand

Building a brand that is not only recognized by others but also trusts by others is inevitable. Yes, it is unavoidable to have a strong brand to grow your business. So, you as an entrepreneur should strive to build up a strong personal brand.

“Don’t be the No.1, but be the only one”. To be the no.1 is tough. You have to compete with other big sharks. And, the big sharks eat up small fishes. But this doesn’t mean that you cannot be the only one.

You could niche down your category and be the only one in that niche. Choose a category and become a leader and dominate it. Don’t go for a brought niche. Narrow it down and capture the market there.

Deciding where to compete is half your success. And, it is living proof that people remember only the no.1 and no.2 at the max. So, try to position yourself as no.1 in the category. 

3. Why Invest Your Time And Energy Learning Marketing?

Digital marketing is all about marketing. Let’s all be clear with that first. Now, why do we have to invest our time, energy, and money to learn marketing?

The followings are the points that will clearly show you the reason why we should invest our time and energy in learning marketing today:

1. Marketing is rooted in human psychology from the beginning of the human race. It has existed since the ancient period and is still prevalent.
2. Marketing is a game of perception by human beings. It is not artificial intelligence.
3. In the business, the most valuable investment is in the marketing part because it gives you direct returns. Everything else like production, manufacturing, administration, accounting, and, HR are the expenses that do not give immediate ROI or returns.
4. Marketing cannot be outsourced entirely to a marketing agency. The founder should be a marketer first.
5. Marketing is the pillar and the backbone of any business.
6. If you how to market and sell, then you have a safe career.
7. The three major skills are traffic, marketing, and sales.
8. To understand marketing means understanding business.
9. Businesses have left many outdated old fashion practices. But marketing has never left the business and will never leave even if artificial intelligence may take over the world.

4. The Importance Of Communication Skills: MassTrust Blueprint.

Marketing is a form of communication. good marketing means good communication skills.

We should be able to communicate well to reach our target audience.

Am I able to transfer my thought clearly and effectively to my customers? This is the question you need to constantly ask yourself. Because, if you fail to make your customers understand well of your thoughts then you’ve failed to build trust with them and they will not buy from you.

 Hence, possessing good communication skills is very much unavoidable for your success in marketing.

Reading, writing, listening, and most importantly speaking are the basic communication skills in order to communicate effectively.

In all the business tools you can see the marketing message's appearances. Also, marketing consists of presenting products and services and convincing people to buy. You can communicate verbally and written. But, it should be effective in order to succeed in convincing people to buy.

So, we need to be good at both writing and verbal communication. In order to improve your communication skills, you need to write more and more. Writing improves your communication skills. The more you write, the more you improve your communication skills. So, Write enough.

Read enough. reading helps you improve your vocabulary and pushes you to improve your communication skills.

Think in English. When you think in English you will jot it down in English well.

These are some ways to improve your communication skills because it’s very important for marketing.

5. Economics

 The importance of economics is vast in marketing. I will not go deep into it. Because I haven’t gone deep into economics yet. There are some books suggested on Economics. They are:-

1. Currency Wars by James Rickards
2. Economics 101 by Alfred Mill
3. Capital by Thomas Piketty

There is some point on economics I noted down which caught my attention. They are:-

1. Global economics is important for all entrepreneurs. Every one of them should learn and educate themselves on global economics.
2. Because your business decisions should be based on current economics.
3. Rather than paying attention to the developed economy, we must focus more on the developing economy.
4. For we Indians, we need to focus on the Indian economy.
5. When recessions hit the economy, it creates strong companies and drives the weak companies out of the market. This is not good.

So, your target audience right now who has the buying power is 23 million households. And this will go up to 30-35 million people by 2025. These are the figures in India.

Because, the group India 1 has all the modern facilities like credit cards, laptop/desktop, they have cars and, make more than 5 lakhs per year. They shop online and consume content online. They live online as well.

A little about India 2 and India 3. India 2 are the people whose annual incomes are 2 – 3 lakhs. They work mostly in delivery, retail shops, etc. It consists of 22 million households in India.

India 3- It has the most populous group. It has got 235 million people. They are mainly illiterate and they live on a day-to-day wage from hard labor like working in construction as masons, rickshaw pullers, and other hard labor workers.

This categorization is just for the means of statistics and does not mean to hurt any people’s sentiments.

6. Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing

Products or services which are promoted through traditional marketing mediums like TV, Radio, News Paper, and other print media are called traditional marketing.

 if a product is generic with very wide targeting then TV ads can reach millions of people at a low cost. Almost every house in India has a TV that would be around 197 million homes out of 298 million homes. TV ads are good for generic products to promote brand awareness.

Radio also has reached almost 60% of the total population of India.

But, digital marketing is by far the best medium to reach 100 million affluent English-speaking population in India. Digital marketing ads can be measured, tracked, and can give you immediate returns.

Whereas, traditional marketing is most effective for brand awareness and cannot be measured, tracked, and analyzed ads.

On the other hand, newspapers have been reaching out to 465 million people in India every day. Newspaper ads could be effective for lead generations if the ads ask to call a number.

Well, it’s good for spreading awareness of Govt. schemes and related ads. It’s just my thought.

Now, digital marketing is the best because you can run any ads with any call to action. Be it direct purchase, be it brand awareness, be it website visits, or call a number, and conversion ad, you name it. It’s all covered.

7. Direct Response Marketing

If we require to run an ad that could be tracked, measured, and analyzed, any form of traditional marketing like tv, radio, newspapers, and hoardings will not help at all.

For that, we need digital marketing or a direct response marketing system. Many big companies that run the brand awareness ad campaigns through traditional mediums could not measure the results because it’s not measurable.

 “Direct response is a type of marketing designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action.” 

This means that any ad that gives you immediate desired results is called direct response marketing. One of the advantages of direct marketing is that I would be able to track if my ad is working or not.

A newspaper ad with a phone no. to call is an example of direct response marketing. Any ads with a phone no. to call is a direct response.

8. The CATT

The CATT is a marketing funnel that we need to learn and replicate. This is an effective way to build audiences and followers who trust you.

Now, what is the CATT marketing funnel?

First, the abbreviation of CATT is Content Attraction Trust and Transaction.

Content: This is the first step to start with. Create quality content that attracts people. You need to create high-quality content to attract people to your niche. By high-quality content, I meant to say that your audiences should be able to take action after reading or consuming your content.

Content could be in the form of a blog, video, live webinar, etc.

Attention: Once you have created the content, you have to drive people’s attention to your content with traffic by using social media, SEO, and paid ads.

Trust: Build trust with your target audience through marketing automation and retargeting and more.

Transaction: After building trust, you cannot leave there. You have to convert the leads into sales naturally as you have built trust with your hungry target audience. Sales come naturally once you have built trust with your audience. You don’t have to do hard cold calling, door-to-door sales, and push hard to make sales. Selling will become easy as you grow your trusted audiences. Your product or service will start to sell itself once you start growing your trusted followers and audiences.

9. Importance Of Personal Brand

Why personal branding is important?

how Personal Branding is of utmost very importance?  people would like to hear from people not from a brand.

 world-famous personal brands like Elon Musk have much bigger followers than Tesla and SpaceX which are his own companies.

 a personal brand cannot be invested or sold to anyone. That means, nobody can take or steal you away from you.

The upside of Personal brand. With the influence of a personal brand, he or she could give a quick rise to many other new brands. It’s like you as a personal brand becomes the ambassador for many other companies you run.

10. How To Build a Personal Brand

Building a personal brand does not happen overnight. It takes a process to be able to position yourself as a brand. Once you have built your personal brand, business becomes easy to scale up because you have a mass trust.

So, let’s learn about the evolution of a personal brand.

1. Learn: The first steps to building a personal brand is through learning. Start off with learning a new skill. Be clear and understand deep with the concept, procedures, facts, and figures of the skill you learn. And then, practice the procedures by remembering the facts.
2. Work: Now, you need to let your newfound skill be put to work. And, implement what you have been practicing. Because when you implement it in the real world, you start to understand better how things work.
3. Blog: Expressing your thoughts, knowledge, and experience through writing will definitely help you build your personal brand. Writing blog posts gives you that authority over your niche and helps you get attraction and attention from your audience. They will start to look up to you as an influencer. Writing gives you a better understanding.
4. Consult: Now, as you are already in the process of building your personal brand through your works and experiences, you can now start consulting people. Do some freelancing projects giving consultation to businesses instead of working for them. You can charge money for giving advice to them.
5. Mentor: Start teaching people who want to become like you. Impart knowledge and experience to the people by mentoring them and helping them all the way to their success. It will help you understand and scale up to a whole new level.
6. Startup: After all, the above process of building your personal brand, you can start your own product and service company or business. Now that you have built your personal brand

So, building a personal brand is a must if you want to be successful in your business. Here is the blueprint which calls a MassTrust blueprint.

11. Integrated Digital Marketing

The above image is the blueprint of integrated digital marketing. This may be in the last no. of this blog post but you cannot ignore this as it is an effective way to get the best result in your business.

Most people try only one form of digital marketing medium. They do not use the power of all of them.

Integrated digital marketing means putting the powers of all the digital marketing mediums together to promote your product and service or any content.

For example, you create a blog post and then promote it with paid traffic. Then, you ask them to subscribe to your email lists. Now, whenever you publish new content you can send out the content to your email list.

First, you need to attract the attention of the website visitors by giving out something for free in exchange for their email id. Then gradually build up trust and convert them into sales later.

In this method, we try to put every digital marketing medium like Social media marketing, SEO, Paid traffic, organic traffic, and email marketing into work and harvest the power of all of them in the promotion of your content, product, or service.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, marketing comes before digital. So, we should learn and understand the science of marketing and add digital to it. Then, the digital part will become easy.

• Marketing always starts before creating the product. It has to wait for the potential market.
• Marketing is not about selling. It is also keeping your customers happy so that they can remain your customer for life.
• Marketing is experimentation. It is science-based, not creative.
• A great product converts your customers to brand ambassadors. Word of mouth is the best marketing channel.
• Marketing is a just game of developing trust.
• Personal branding help to grow your enterprise, and it can give rise to many brands.