Why is digital marketing 2021's most sought-out skill ?

Are you planning to set-up a startup or an established business owner in the process of digital translation? Planning to kick-starting your career, trying your hands-out as a freelancer or desperate to land a remote working opportunity in 2021?

A one-stop solution that's about to cast "LUMOS" in your dark path, lies in mastering the crux of this 9-Letter magic work - "MARKETING"! A marketer is the 'Bob The Builder' of any organisation, who lays down strategies for long-term profits and device marketing campaigns for immediate returns. 

People reach out to a marketer during the startup phase and are also the same ones that are approached at the eleventh hour when the company's sales rapidly falls. That's when a CEO should have decent knowledge of the sub-niches in the field of digital marketing to tap an expert with the right skills to set your brand back on track.

There is nothing worse than a company's website not appearing on the first page of a search result, it's a human tendency to click on the first listing. 

On the other hand, there might be those having a rocky relationship with boosted listings appearing on the top, who would click on the second or third organic listing rather the first boosted listing. 

These are the 10 most common myths and misconceptions that product owners and young marketing enthusiasts,  fall into a trap to:

1. Marketing is meant for creative folks! : Marketing is not entirely dependant on a person's creativity, marketing is based on science and market principles that require analytical thinking and application of strategies at the right place, for it to reflect on the sales
2. The last thing that a company needs is marketing: Marketing is the foundation for any business, right from creating a product, finding the targeted customers, devising a campaign, recording the customer's response and developing a high-in-demand product
3. Marketing can be done at any point of time irrespective of the product: That's not true... Without a prior plan and market research, you wouldn't know when to launch your product in the market. There's absolutely no use in launching a woollen apparel collection before the start of summer.
4. Marketing and customer experience are two different terminologies -  Marketing isn't about selling products alone, but it's more about building brand familiarity, trust and customer relationship
5. Investment in marketing is a never-ending black hole - Marketing ceases when you become the one and only brand that people can think of in that niche        
6. Marketers can sell, 'all that glitters as gold' - In reality, the quality of the product or service being offered speaks louder than any fake claims hidden under a game of perceptions that are often called marketing tactics
7. Paid advertising and fancy posters are the key to attract new customers - Customer reviews and their feedbacks on social media is highly valued. Word of mouth marketing is one of 2021's trending strategies where your loyal customers become your brand ambassadors
8. It's enough to canvas your potential leads right before the product launch: Establishing a brand and creating a brand value by being in touch with your prospects by sharing value-based content, irrespective of a product launch is highly important
9. All we need is a marketing manager and we are good to go - Marketing involves advertising, copywriting, sales, content marketing, SEO, market research, social media campaigning and many more. Each component of marketing holds a special meaning and has a purpose in getting a product sold in the market
10. Let's bring in celebrities to promote and add a glam to our product -Marketing is the map that guides people to the destination, but let's understand that it's the beauty of the destination alone that drives the visitors to that place multiple times! If your product offers things that you had promised in your campaign you are sure to have happy customers, but if you go ahead to surprise them by exceeding their expectations with add-on services you've hit the jackpot.       

When the world was couped-up in isolation, virtual meetups became the only way possible to have a face-to-face conversation with the client. When meetups had become virtual so have the businesses with their online presence.

Irrespective of your business catering to the locals - your services, reviews and offers that you have listed on your website and your website's SERP speaks volumes by providing the necessary visibility among a wide range of virtual audience who might have been searching elsewhere for a similar service that you offer.

Your online presence and social media activity might be your way to expand the audience reach and to stay-in-touch with your existing customers. This year has converted traditional marketers to jump into digital marketing.

Here are 5 reasons for you to choose the digital medium for marketing your products and services:

1. Personalised Ad campaigns with varying concepts to multiple target groups is possible through social media.
2. You can measure the impact that your Ads or blog pages have created from the inbuilt analytics that these platforms come with like Facebook Pixels and Google Analytics.
3. Comparing the performance of two different campaigns is possible through A/B testing, a digital Advertisements can be tweaked at the moment. This helps us to identify the right campaign to promote and invest money into.
4. Digital marketing has helped to reach the masses beyond our local customers and made it possible to personalise bulk mails through amazing tools like  MailChimp.
5. Marketing automation is another add-on that helps us to schedule daily or weekly value-based content to your mailing list, irrespective of our available and all it needs is a single trigger. This technique works like magic in building a deep communication with our interest groups, called as deep marketing

Confused about where to start from and how to convert an interest group into loyal customers? Looking for a marketing funnel to rope in customers?

  CATT Marketing Funnel

Checkout this CATT (Content, Attention, Trust, Transaction) marketing funnel designed by Pixel Track to lay down the stages, your interest groups must travel through for them to become your customers:

1. Niche - the revenue and the reach the blog depends on the choice of the niche. Choosing a high-on-demand niche with a broader market will have better reach and greater returns in terms of wealth. It's an add-on if you are an expert in the niche. Nevertheless, all you need is passion for you to create useful content in that niche

Niche Selection Chart

1. Content - blog posts with value-based content having useful information acts as a lead magnets
2. Attention - a page with useful information with no audience traffic, doesn't serve the purpose. It's equally important to drive the interest group towards your page using SEO, backlinks, social media and paid Ads
3. Trust - building trust through the art of deep marketing and marketing automation by which you can communicate with your customers regularly using personalised scheduled messages
4. Transaction - once you have attracted the targeted groups and created a good impression about your brand, the sales will naturally happen. These natural sales converts targeted groups into your customers. You don't have to force your product upon people by cold calling those who aren't even interested in it

While initiating sales with the targets falling into any one of above customer stages in the CATT Marketing funnel, you can follow the Integrated Digital Marketing Cycle - designed by Digital Deepak to initiate sales at that stage

                                    Integrated Digital Marketing Cycle

• Create and publish free, informative content (E-Mail, blog posts, social media posts, posters, explainer videos) online that your target audience is in need of and your content should answer the questions that the customers have in mind 
• Create tags and keywords for your content after a keyword research on how your audience might possibly search for your content online. These keywords are the key or map for the online audience to land or find your page
• Paid Advertising through social media platforms boosts the reach of your content within a limited period of time and accelerates the sales
• Social media posts increase brand visibility and help people watch your brand's activity up-close which in turn creates an interest in your products and services
• Email marketing is the best way of keeping in touch with your existing customers and also a medium of sharing your scheduled weekly content acting as a lead magnet to those on your mailing list, without being dependent on a social media platform

If you think that marketing your product and service alone is needed then you've got it wrong... You also need to promote the person behind it

With a hundred brands in the market under the same niche and a thousand others who are qualified with the same degree of filling up a single position... the competition is always high! How are we going to set us apart to create a visibility such that your personal brand holds more value than the brand itself? 

The best always beats the least if they master the art of PERSONAL BRANDING

If you're clueless as how to build your personal brand from scratch you can take the hint from this Mass Trust Blueprint

Mass Trust Blueprint

1. Be a passionate learner - you learn something new every day and it's important to put your learnings into practice
2. Get your hands dirty - never hesitate to implement your new learnings at your place of work. You learn more while you work in different projects
3. Share your learnings with the online community - when you try solving others' issues you learn how not to fail and then list your learning as a blog or a reference for others to follow
4. Consult - once your comfort in solving use-cases, practice it with startups and slowly expand your clients from the blogging community to start-up owners
5. Mentor - it's an expansion of consulting, an opportunity for you to help out and inspire people in understanding marketing the way that you fell in love with it
6. Start your own startup - once you have an experience of dealing with people at different levels and solving marketing-based business use-cases... You are now ready to become a product or service owner with market understanding and the experience gained in the field

This guide is enough to get you started in the process of marketing and all you gotta do is - invest your time and brainstorm to find a niche that you are interested in, to practice digital marketing!