10 Feb How to Grow Your Brand and Sales using Digital Marketing
Is there any entrepreneur, professional who would not like to grow their brand and ultimately increase sales for their business? I’m sure most of you may have said “Yes”.
In this blog, I am going to share some powerful insights and ways to grow your organization and personal brand and sales using digital marketing.
I will share practical and researched tips which you can immediately apply in a business of your niche. This article will be useful for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and professionals- who have already begun or intend to begin their start-up journey.
Basics of Marketing
Let us begin with some basics of marketing !
Marketing, traditionally, begins first with knowing your customer problems and needs, demographics, location, their aspirations and behavioural profiles.
It is very important to know your target audience or your buyers persona in the marketing journey.
Some of the critical parameters which one may like to know about the customer and audience could be their: age , per capita income, kind of mobile app subscriptions, what kind of programs they watch or do they like reading, attending clubs, seminars etc.
Key Questions in Marketing
You may need to ask these key questions to know about your customers and your market .
- What is the problem they are trying to solve?
- What are their aspirational needs?
- Where do they usually go or search for a solution to their problems and needs. Do they use Wikipedia, youtube or vimeo videos to search for solution?
It is only when you understand your customer and audience problems and needs that you can create a product or service as a solution.
It is not just about getting the audience or customers but also about keeping them happy, engaged and by communicating with them regularly.
The main aim of your marketing effort is about building Trust. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customers so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous” said Peter Drucker.
How to Develop and Market a Product or Service in Your Area of Expertise or Niche
It is important that you develop and market a unique or differentiated service or product aligned to your talent and passion for which there is a need in the market .
Yes alignment of your talent and passion with the market need is your niche.
For example, you can develop a Hotel Search app if you have a talent in android app software development and you are also passionate about solving tourists problems. The problem that face could be quality availability of hotels and other facilities in a new or unknown location. So only if you have talent can you design, create or deliver a great product or service that meets a need.
Similarly passion is the fuel or energy that will reflect in the way you create your product or service. Have you ever watched any of the Steve Jobs youtube video when he used to launch Iphones or ipads. Observe his passion for his products.
If you are not passionate about your product or service, then why would any stranger buy from you or become your client.
If a product or service is of no interest to you, you will lack the passion and your audience and customers would sense that and may not be interested in it.
So even if you cannot be number 1 in a category of product or service, try to be the only one in a sub-category. Example in the field of HR , I chose the sub-category of leadership development and ethical culture building.
How Marketing helps to create perception about You, Your Product or Service
You can choose to create a perception about your product or service. However that product or service has to be tested in the actual market. If there is a gap in quality of product or service with the perception created , then there will be dissatisfaction in the minds of audience or customers.
Which of the Different Ways of Marketing would you Choose- Traditional or Digital ?
Marketing has evolved with the ever-changing market especially in the recent years. It is due to a new breed of customers who are emerging globally. It is young, urban, semi-urban, middle-class, high aspirations with strong mobility and connectivity due to high internet penetration.
We all are aware of a few of the traditional ways of marketing. It has been done using T.V., newspaper ads, handbills etcc. It has also been done using loudspeakers which you may have witnessed during vaccination drives or election campaigning.
Since the advent of TV in 1970s and in India in early 80s, it has been a preferred medium for many traditional advertisers. Hope you remember all the Lux soap, Thumbs-Up, Glow and Lovely etc ads. Even ads of social importance like Swachh Bharat to promote a culture of cleanliness across India .
By research it is found that the advertisement on TV can reach close to 300 million homes. Since the cost of advertisement being very high it could be beyond the reach of normal individuals and entrepreneurs . Similar is the case with newspaper ads. Though it has a reach of upto 465 million people as per Business Standard, it is very costly to give regular advertisements. The recall value of these ads are also low as newspapers are kept aside daily as soon as it is read.
So an effective and comparatively a lower cost to make your message reach to your specific audience through direct response using integrated digital marketing framework.
But before you can expect direct response from your audience or customers, you need to follow a systematic method to attract your audience to grow your brand and sales.
Let me introduce to you a useful framework with the acronym CATT Marketing funnel which was introduced to me by Digital Deepak . He is one of the experts on Digital Marketing in India.
If you apply the CATT framework to a profitable Niche (n), it can not only grow your brand and sales but also compound your wealth multifold.
Content . Content is indeed the new advertisement. It is completely different from how traditional advertisement is used. An advertisement contains the information that brands want to convey to help sell their products and services.
Content, on the other hand, contains information customers want to use to achieve their own personal and professional objectives. Yes, you first need to educate your audience and customer about how your product and service will be useful to them.
The only way you can educate them is by creating useful contents through writing blogs, guest articles, creating explainer videos, podcasts, conducting webinars.
Attention. Even if I or you create useful contents but if no one is noticing it it will be of no use. So it is equally important to drive your audience to your content using integrated digital marketing of paid advertising on Facebook, Google Ads, Email marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website or blog and using other social media channels.
Trust. Trust is built over time with consistent good quality content and engagement with your audience and client. It is built by regularly sending useful contents and links using email marketing automation tools like Zapier, clickfunnels, aweber etc. Encourage them to watch your videos, subscribe to your newsletter, blog or any free webinars. It is only when your audience sees you and experiences you through different channels, will they start engaging with you and finally buy from you when they are ready .
Transaction. A prospective audience or customers are more likely to buy from you if they have previously experienced your contents and engagements. Therefore an effective sales landing page on your website could help to make the sales happen smoothly. The sale will happen naturally if the previous CAT has been consistently and systematically followed.
However you may still need to hold webinars, virtual seminars, guest sessions to make that sales happen smoothly. You as the brand ambassador of your product or service need to just gently persuade if the trust building has already happened.
Use Integrated Digital Marketing to Make Natural Sales for Your Product or Service
Many times we have found that people use any one or few of the digital marketing channels for promoting themselves and their business. They think that sales will happen if they use any of these Social media channel like Facebook,Instagram,LinkedIn etc or by giving ads on Google or Facebook, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or by sending emails or retargeting. The CATT framework can be delivered effectively only by using all of the above channels.
This is why we encourage to use the Integrated Digital Marketing (IDM) framework. You can thus use the IDM framework for to effectively grow your brand and the brand of your organization.
How to become the brand ambassador of your Product or Service
In the earlier paragraphs, I had mentioned about Steve Jobs. He was the brand ambassador of Apple products. People associated the passion, perfection, engineering genius and marketing of Steve Jobs with the Apple products. So is the case with Ratan Tata who increased the global recognition and reputation for the Tata group.
So you and I have to be a living example of the product and service we stand for to grow your brand and sales. The genuiness, honesty and value of our product and service can only be experienced through our personal example. This is where building a personal brand matters a lot for helping sales happen naturally especially if you are an entrepreneur.
I found that when I focussed only on building my service and company Change Catalysts, I focussed very less on promoting or building my personal brand. I wrote and represented on behalf of my company .
This is when I started taking baby steps in the journey of building personal brand by writing guest articles in People Matters, Linkedin, on the Change Catalysts blog, and other website like Thrive Global promoted by Arianna Huffington.
Need for Personal Branding to be the Brand Ambassador
It is said that the best known person, product or service will always the beat the best if it is not comparatively better known. Personal branding helps to build mass trust with your customers and become the brand ambassador.
So if anyone who has less experience or is aspiring to start-up in a niche can begin the personal branding journey by using the following Mass Trust Blueprint steps:
- Learn a skill in your niche area well. It is said that focussed 10,000 hrs of repeatedly doing a task and activity can make one skilled. So it is important to learn researched concepts, facts related to your niche area. You need not know everything but well informed to take action in a practical way to build skills.
- Work. It is important to apply and take action with learnt concepts and facts in real life and workplace. So just knowing the concepts of technical charts like candlestick patterns, momentum indicators etc alone won’t help you become a share trader in the stock market. You need to practically apply and use it while buying and selling shares in live trading sessions to build your stock trading skills if that is your niche.
- Create Content. Just acquiring experience at work and in your niche area is not good enough. The people need to know your experience and how useful you could be for them for their needs.
They will come to know about it when you write blog articles , create video blogs particularly if you are in beauty, design, architecture niches and even for other niches.
You may also create podcasts (your audio recordings put on podcast channels like Spotify,Podbean, Apple podcasts, etc)to spread your knowledge.
I had started sharing my experience on Organizational and Leadership consulting and corporate engagement experience on Linkedin blogs, my company website and other webpages since 2015 though not consistently. I am still learning to create more useful Vlogs and podcasts for my audience.
- Consult . Once you have gained experience at work and built a personal brand in your niche area, you can help your target customers ,clients by consulting. Initially you could do for free but after some consulting experience, you may charge.
- Coach and Mentor. You may choose to mentor others who want to learn from your experience at an individual level. You may coach to help then discover and apply the learnings which they already know or you can mentor them using your personal experiences.
- Start-Up. If you have an entrepreneurial zeal, you may continue to use work and consulting experience to build your own business. By this time, many of your target customers and clients would already know you and will be willing to become your customer and clients of your product or service.
Summary- New Age Digital Marketing to grow your Brand and Sales
Yes marketing begins only with knowing your customers and audience problems, needs and their profile well.
You can only market a product and service for which there is a mass need and you have the relevant talent and passion.
It is marketing which helps to create a perception about you, your product and service. The change in customers profile and mobility has increased the adoption of digital marketing versus traditional marketing.
You can only sell in this google and digital world only you and your organization is known. That is where branding and becoming the brand ambassador comes to help.
So you can build a personal brand in a niche for yourself and your organization using the CATT-Content ,Attention, Trust, Transaction framework which can be implemented using integrated digital marketing of sharing your content using paid advertising on facebook and google, email marketing, social media and doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)of your website.
If you are new on your start-up entrepreneurial or personal branding journey, you may use the Mass Trust Blueprint to grow your brand and sales.
So which of these ideas, tips are you going to use in your marketing after reading this article?
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