Failed – Once, twice? How many times have you failed in your journey of entrepreneurship or professional life to deliver desired results – be it a product launch or service?
No one can understand better than people who have started their business or launched a product and service which failed to deliver desired results and had to shut it down within months.
I too failed and it’s a brainer. I learned the hard way. Do you want to know what mistakes I made and at the same time understand the key strategies where I failed to implement them? Had I learned and executed them my business would have been running at this point in time.
So, if you are a business owner struggling to scale up? Or are you in the process of starting your business? Failed in 1st venture but want to be successful in the next one or unable to create a Marketing strategy to fuel growth in your existing business. Then just run through this article which will help you strategize your plans.
The basic difference in today’s market environment versus the Oldies era is fiercer and more competitive. We need to understand the 5 essentials that are necessary to know and intertwine them to make our business or services successful.
When I started my business it’s not that it had “0” traction. The problem that I faced was scaling the business to make it profitable. I was making losses month on month despite sales picking up and then had to take a final call to shut the business.
So, the question that I had to ask “Where did one go wrong?” is the biggest question that comes to mind first.
It will be a no-brainer if I tell you about the product. You will say it should have been a hit. A rolls food business. But the hard fact is it had to be closed.
To cut the story short it all boiled down to having a flow of customers to the restaurant.
Yes “Customers”
I failed to attract customers.
Understand that even if your product is of high quality and well serviced and is value for money, it will not sell if your audience does not know about your product and has no need for the product.
Went back to the drawing board and found where I made a mistake. Started learning the details for my next venture. Sharing the details that one must gain knowledge. Let’s dive into understanding the topics which are essential for any business to thrive and survive in the current league of competitiveness.
- “Marketing Funda” – The Fundamentals
The product and service that you are into or going to start have to be taken to people and make them aware of your product and services with its USPs in this competitive market.
So, if you ask any Tom, Dick, and Harry, right comes the answer
“Ah! simply market your product, that’s it. …”
But the question is how, when, and where? Do we know what marketing means?
If you ask people about marketing, each person has his own definition.
For some may say it’s Sales
For some, it’s Advertising, something “Big Bang” type.
For some, it’s Building Relations
For some it’s just promotion through various channels and
For some, it’s generating revenue and profit.
So, what is marketing? What do you understand about Marketing?
To me, marketing is basically an effort that deploys promotional strategies to attract potential customers in a demographic, generates leads, and builds a strong brand for a product and service. Advertising, building relations, promotions, and profit are part of marketing.
To understand this in a simple way we all will have to travel back in time to our childhood.
The temptation to buy something brings a feeling of joy for possessing the desired product. Pushing parents to buy it for you. This is what marketing is all about, that urge, that temptation inside customers to go and buy the product, leading to lead generation and conversion into sales and profits.
Marketing starts much before a product is made. It starts with understanding the customer’s needs and if the product is based on customer needs it takes less effort to sell the product as it fits the requirement of the customer.
- To me, marketing goes beyond selling. Beyond selling means retaining customers and keeping them happy.
- It’s all about top-of-mind recall
- Example: When you want to search for anything on the internet where do you search? Immediately you go to “google”, type, and look for your answers. Google comes to your mind first and not Bing or any other search engine.
- Marketing is also a game of building perception and brand.
Why am I talking so much about Marketing? Because it’s important?
- Let’s face the reality. Do you know what your customers want? Do you think your customers trust your products? When was the last time you saw a customer tweeting about your product or service? Was it a complaint or a compliment?
- The answers to all these questions lie in marketing. One must learn and master marketing. It’s about communication. Communication about a product creates a positive perception and a brand image.
- Example: Xerox became a brand. Even people going to get paper photocopied asked the shopkeeper to xerox the page.
- How you market your business determines if the enterprise will be successful or not. Marketing is a tool used to create and maintain demand, relevance, reputation, competition, and more. Without it, your business is likely to close down due to a lack of sales.
- Marketing is important because of the following reasons:
- It’s an effective way of engaging with customers
- Helps to build and maintain company reputation
- Used as a communications channel to inform customers
- Helps boosts sales
- Creates revenue options
- Helps management to take informed decisions
- The most important is “Beating your rivals”
It’s also important to understand the economics of the market that you want to operate in and the nature of the business you are in. This will help understand the wallet size that the demographic customer can shell out for the product that you are going to launch. It’s important in demography selection. Whether the demography will grow in coming years or not. The economy grows with the age of the demographic.
Evolution of Marketing
Marketing over a period of time has evolved from my era of Oldies to the current generation. This has happened due to technical advancements and people using it more aggressively.
“Progress is impossible without change and those. who cannot change their minds cannot change. anything.” –George Bernard Shaw
A pictorial view of the evolution of Marketing over a period of generations.
Things are changing in our world. Whether you notice the changes or not, customer needs, customer perception, competition, technology, and even design trends are all continually changing with time.
The evolution of marketing has happened over a period of time from traditional methods to electronic modes called digital marketing. A brief peak view on marketing evolution with changing times.
- 80’s Customers will pay attention to your ads.
- 90’s website creations and customers would visit the sites
- 00’s The Facebook era of likes and befriending on social media
- 10’s Customer follows using their details
- 20’s customers want to hang out with brands and the virtual world.
With changing times people have adapted to these changes in their life. So, if we look at the above picture of evolution, we can easily classify marketing into 2 categories: Traditional and Digital.
Traditional and digital marketing are very different from one another. Although they both Traditional marketing encompasses the marketing methods that can be used without the internet. These are the methods that have been around for decades and are typically used less often now. However, they’re not without their strengths.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing has been evolving for ages, while digital just got in a few years ago. Both are good in their way, as they both have pros and cons. Therefore, choosing between both is entirely dependent on the people and the businesses that want to use it.
- Use of radio, Billboards, newspapers, flyers, magazines, broachers, word of mouth, and nukkad play in communities.
- Companies will use these channels to reach out to their demographic audience.
- These are called traditional ways of marketing and it still holds good in today’s digital marketing era.
- These techniques are still used by organizations to generate leads, arouse curiosity, attract people towards building their dreams, and for mass reach-out programs.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the act of promoting products and services through digital channels, such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Any form of marketing that involves electronic devices is considered digital marketing.
It can be done online and offline; in fact, both kinds are important for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.
Digital marketing has evolved quickly because of trends and new technology. These strategies include those that require the use of the internet or smartphones. They haven’t been around as long as traditional methods, but they certainly pack a punch.
These are very popular today because of consumers’ frequent usage of the internet and mobile devices. According to Data Reported, there are 4.95 billion active internet users in the world and 4.62 billion active social media users. With numbers that high, marketing online and through social media makes a lot of sense.
Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing
Traditional marketing vs. digital marketing is always one of the most spoken topics. Traditional marketing is defined as marketing that does not need the internet for advertisement purposes. This method has been evolving for a very long time, for decades. However, due to technological advancements, its usage is very limited.
The main difference between digital and traditional marketing is the medium through which an audience encounters a marketing message. While traditional marketing uses traditional media like magazines and newspapers, digital marketing uses digital media, such as social media or websites. Digital marketing is more cost-effective as compared to traditional marketing.
For many businesses, traditional marketing strategies work better depending on the type of company they own. Their target audience would prefer the traditional one when it comes to traditional marketing vs. digital marketing.
Traditional marketing is a very effective type of marketing if one wants to reach the older population. Many reports and surveys prove that people over 50s watch TV and read newspapers twice the time compared to people in their 20s and 30s.
It is a very useful type of marketing if one wants to establish or develop a business or a firm with the assistance of a larger local audience. Small businesses grow better using flyers and billboards all across the street. It is because it can attain the attention of a local audience who reside in the city.
- One huge advantage of traditional advertisements is that they get played repeatedly. But in digital marketing, people can skip them easily.
- Digital marketing is generally more cost-effective and can be more targeted, while traditional marketing can be more effective at reaching a larger audience. It’s important to consider your budget and target market when deciding which type of marketing to use.
- There is a plethora of benefits of digital marketing over traditional marketing.
Given below are some of them:
- It is simple to track audience involvement and collect their data for future use. It will enhance the algorithm of the company’s website. You can easily obtain the information when someone uses your site, follows you on social media, or messages you regarding queries.
- Businesses can advertise their services for free on many platforms. It is possible to send and receive emails without involving any cost. But traditional strategies, will involve a lot of money to print and send individual postcards.
- Because digital marketing has a wider scope, it will help businesses acquire a global audience’s attention.
- Some data points:
- Nearly 4 billion people worldwide go online to shop, learn, entertain themselves and even work.
- If you want to reach those people, digital marketing is a must.
- According to Google, 88%of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a related store in the next week.
- You’ll miss out on that traffic if you’re not online.
- Digital marketing also provides access to more data and analytics about your customers, how they navigate the buying cycle, and what they want
Ultimately, the best type of marketing is the type that best suits your business and your goals.
When we look at the digital market there are a few essential components that need to be carefully and handled with care to ensure that the communication that I earlier talked about is clear and crisp i.e., Whatever one wants to communicate to its customers or audience segment is simple and effective to attract attention and enthuse temptation. In abbreviation one can define them as “CATT” Marketing Funnel
C = Content: We all spend sufficient time on the internet searching for something of our interest. The average time spent by India is more than 7 hours in a day.
Country Wise daily Internet Usage
- With so much time spent on the internet Content becomes the king in creating awareness and generating quality leads and which sustains healthy sales growth.
- Why is it important?
- Creating great content attracts customers to your niche, blogs, posts, and videos leading to building trust and transactions.
- It becomes all the more important to keep in mind the time spent by customers on the internet for the reasons that it helps in awareness, builds brand authority, ranks in google, and drives traffic through backlinks and keywords.
A=Attention: The fallout to attention is drawing customers to your niche.
- Why is it important? Does an ad about a particular product catch your attention?
- Driving traffic to your content using SEO, social media, podcasts, and referrals. It’s an enablement technique to help customers hooked to your product and helps them engage and take a decision about their purchases.
- Example: when you see Amitabh Bacchan promoting a product on a digital platform. What happens is you get attracted rather than hooked to the product ad and watch carefully and also get engaged by looking out for more information about the product.
T=Trust: You understand this word. You delegate work to people in your office as you trust them that they will do it diligently and honestly. You trust your family more than anyone else. Why should a customer trust your product or service when he does not know you or your product or service? It’s important.
- Why is it important? This is important for the fact that Brand trust increases marketing receptiveness. Brand trust creates loyalty. Brand loyalty builds client and customer advocacy. Brand loyalty, advocacy, and goodwill can help a business weather any storm
- Example: An ad by Amitabh Bacchan for holidaying in Kutch, Gujarat has helped tourism, especially in the Kutch region which is a desert. He has built that trust for people to visit to have a serene vacation.
T=Transaction:
- Why is it important? Finally, the end result. Bringing in traffic through great content, drawing the attention of customers, arousing inquisitiveness inside the customer, and building trust conversion into the purchase of goods and services in increasing sales and profits.
Digital marketing is not left to the above aspects but has many other sub-functions that we need to know as well and also wind them together to achieve the desired results for our business. Winding them together I call it “Integrated Digital Marketing”.
“The Integrated Digital Marketing”
When we talk of integrated marketing one must understand that it encompasses the idea of creating a unique form of expression that’s easy to identify in all of the channels your customer uses. It’s like using a single language to speak in different situations. That means it’s a strategy that blends all your marketing tactics
- Examples of Integrated Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Email Marketing.
- Marketing Automation.
- Digital Advertising.
- Content Marketing.
- Paid ads
Campaign Examples of Integrated Marketing · Old Spice: Smell Like a Man; Think Small by Volkswagen; Apple – “Get a Mac”.
How does it benefit customers and clients?
- Increased Leads – Targeting your target audience across both PR and digital channels does more than cut costs and increase your brand’s visibility. In fact, it can also lead to more conversions. An integrated approach can help your brand reach more consumers, which means more leads, and, in the end, more conversions.
- How does it work?
- An integrated online marketing plan brings all of your marketing strategies together into one cohesive experience. It ensures that all forms of communication and messages are carefully linked together.
- The core remains the “Content” and in and around are all other functionalities which help Content reach customers to generate leads and transactions.
Now let’s understand why and how a customer will trust you.
If you are an organization or an individual for both it’s important to build trust to have a resilient business and help in sustaining the business. The important part here is to build your brand which is personal and unique to yourself.
“Apple” is a brand that you identify yourself with. What I mean to say is that you need to create your niche by creating your brand in the product and services that you are offering to your customers and that’s called “Personal Branding” where people recognize you and associate themselves with you.
Another example is the Mercedes Benz. Its brand identity specifies the class to which it belongs.
Personal Branding: Creating your Own Identity / Brand
We all are different and we each have our own style as an individual. It’s important to create your brand as Personal branding can help you control the narrative about yourself and introduce yourself in the best light possible. It’s also a way to stand out from the competition. In a world where everyone has a website and an online presence, personal branding can help you make yours stand out from the rest.
- Why Personal Branding?
- Personal branding is the process of designing a strategy to influence the public perception of an individual. It involves creating an identity that sets people apart from their competitors, making them more recognizable and relatable to their audience.
- To put it simply, it is the process of building a brand for a person. A personal brand should accurately represent who the person is, what they stand for, and what they want to be known for. It must be as authentic as it can. Finally, and most notably, it should convey the right message and be consistent over a long period.
- A personal brand is “the unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are.” It is how you present yourself to the world.
How important is it?
- Allows you to have a distinct advantage over others
- Builds trust and credibility
- Generates professional opportunities
- Helps you attract customers and clients
- Helps you reach your goals
- Building Personal Brand, The Right Way
Step #1: Define your main goals
You must first decide exactly what you want from a personal brand. What do you hope to accomplish? What are your objectives? Once you have a good understanding of what you want, you can start working on building a personal brand that will help you reach those objectives.
Step #2: Do substantial research
Now that you know what you want, it’s time to conduct some research. This step is important because it will help you understand what already exists in the market and what you need to do to stand out.
Target audience:
Strong personal brands excel at delivering what a particular audience desires. Before you start your strategy, make sure to define what are your primary target audiences. The chosen target audiences need to be aligned with the main goals you want to achieve via this personal branding strategy.
For example, if you are a musician, your primary target audience will be your listeners and people who like your style of music. On the other hand, if you are a climate change expert, your target audience could be people who want to learn about climate change, potential employers, or other industry experts you might want to work with.
Take some time to define your main target audiences and think about their needs. This will help you communicate in a way that resonates with them.
Competitors
As for any marketing strategy, it’s imperative to identify who your competitors are to then be able to better position yourself in the market.
Here are the two main steps you should follow:
1) Identify who your competitors are by listing all the people or groups of people that compete with you or have the same goals as you
2) Identify what they do and how: are there big players in your market? What do they have to offer? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
There are many things you may learn from your competitors. Analyzing yourself and your competition will give you a good understanding of what you need to do to stand out.
You as a person:
Your brand image exists both online and offline. It is recommended to examine the results of a Google search for your name. It’s not always a negative thing if nothing comes up. You have the potential to impact what people see when they search for your reputation online.
Another good idea is to ask your relatives how they perceive you and what makes you unique in their eyes.
Lastly, analyze yourself based on your own perspective. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your capabilities? What aspects of your personality or expertise do you want to highlight? How would you like others to perceive you?
Step #3: Create your unique personal branding strategy
As a result of your work so far, you’re ready to develop a personal branding plan. This will be your roadmap for building and managing your brand.
Even if a personal brand differs from a corporate/organizational brand, the process of building it is very similar. Here are the main elements that should be included in the strategy:
Brand essence: what is your purpose, vision, mission, and values?
Brand positioning or value proposition: What is your brand positioning statement? What makes you different from everyone else in your field? Which services can you provide that no one else does?
Brand identity: name, personal story, personality, visual identity, communication style
Communication strategy: audience, main media channels, messaging, content strategy.
- How does your personal brand impact your Business
- Helps me stand out from the competition
- Provides ways to interact with customers
- Builds trust, Leading to opportunity
Coming back to my story of failures and closing of restaurant operations. Though I did marketing, the problem was there was no strategy for implementing it. All were done in bits and pieces resulting in poor conversions and almost “ZERO” leads. We survived largely on positive word of mouth. The marketing part, especially the digital marketing was completely haphazard and we hopped from one activity to another without giving the first one to settle down, unable to build a funnel.
So much of Gyan just to make you aware that if properly planned and executed the chances of failure are minimal, but if it’s not planned and executed the way I did the chances for failure are 100%
Conclusion:
For any product or service that you have started or going to start you need to have a proper understanding of marketing trends and how they can be used to your benefit to build your brand and trust amongst the targeted audience. Putting a proper marketing strategy in place for a better outcomes is essential in making the venture successful and sustainable. I have tried to share details about marketing and how it can help you in delivering a great product or service to your audience. As an overview of the market, it is advisable to create your niche understand the customer requirements, and work on promoting your niche through both traditional and digital marketing using digital platforms depending upon the product or service you have or are going to launch.
Digital marketing becomes more important, as in the digitized world there are 5.48 billion customers using mobile phones, and approx. 5.07 billion people around the world use the internet today – equivalent to 63.5 percent of the world’s total population. In India, there are around 82.4 Crores of Internet users as per data shared in the Indian Parliament. The time spent by Indian customers on the internet is greater than 7 hours per day. The huge potential and opportunity to target and build your funnel, trust, and start transacting with them.
As a call to action, you can start writing down your thoughts on how you would like to approach the market for your product and services. Start with bullets and then drill deep into details. This will help you prepare your road map to launch your product or service.
And do not forget to share your views/comments. I end the knowledge sheet with a Quote
“Happy Customers = Happy Self= Happy Business”