Un-Marketing 101: How to not market your product and how to boost your Personal Brand.
UnMarketing happens when you stop marketing and start engaging. — unmarketing.com
You must be thinking, what does that mean?
Does it mean you market your brand without caring about marketing?
Why has everyone created such a fuss around the term marketing?
It’s not that complicated, is it?
In this article, we find out the common mistakes every marketer makes or principles they tend to forget, leading to marketing fails.
Don’t just focus on art, understand the science of it all.
A common misconception that takes the marketing community by storm is that marketing is based solely on creativity. However, that is not true. You see, when you are marketing your product to a world consisting of millions of potential customers, you have to keep in mind the analysis, the market research, and the data that helps you determine your target audience. Adding creativity to your marketing strategies might grab the attention of the audience but that doesn’t convert them into customers.
Along with a little creativity, using science can determine who your target audience are, how to find them, and how to keep them engaged.
Check out this article to understand more about how science comes into play while marketing a product.
Don’t sell once, learn to retain.
Marketing is not just about selling. It’s about building a relationship with your customers, keeping them happy so that they can remain a customer for life. A happy customer is your very own Brand Ambassador. Listening to your consumer is key. Feedbacks and follow-ups build trust between a brand & its customers.
Retaining a customer also depends on the product you’re marketing. A great product will sell itself. For a product to be great, you first need to understand your audience; who they are, their likes, and their responsiveness to other marketing strategies.
You sell a product you believe in, to people you understand and they will be your loyal customers for life.
Don’t just post about it, think about it.
Have you ever wondered why your posts aren’t getting enough likes, retweets, or comments? We have all been there. Whether it be posting a tweet or an insta story, it should be about starting a conversation. A conversation delivered to the right people, at the right time.
Combine logic & data with your strategy to capture a position in the minds of the people and engage your target audience into a discussion to make your brand connect with them.
Don’t mix it up, niche it down.
Choosing a niche is a very important step in a marketer’s journey. One can’t do everything and be perfect at it. It’s easy to get frustrated.
To build a brand, you have to start with a niche, help your customer reach their target revenue, and eventually charge your clients as an expert.
Having a niche helps you stand out amongst a pool of random marketers and makes it easier to describe what you’re good at.
Here is an article by Forbes to find your perfect niche market.
Don’t be cool, stick to the basics.
While some out there forget to stick to the basics, others put their values in building up with the principles followed by every marketer out there.
The fundamentals of marketing everyone should stick to -
- Product. What are you selling? Beds? Ice Cream? A lifestyle? Knowing your product, just like knowing your customers is crucial. A good product will sell itself, but a marketer with a good understanding of the product will sell a brand.
- Price. Pricing your product depends on several factors. Competition Analysis and Market Research will help you price your product at the cost customers are willing to pay.
- Promotion. Tv ads, Twitter, Radio, Newspaper, Instagram, Snapchat. A marketer can promote anywhere and everywhere but it takes a good marketer to understand which channel is right for their product.
- Place. Selling a product online? In a store? On a website? Letting the customers know where they can buy your product is a significant aspect of marketing.
Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing
Many ways, many channels to choose from. Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing at its core is about Marketing. So what is the difference?
- Traditional Marketing is a 1 to many kind of communication. An advertisement on TV does not allow for customers to communicate back. The use of Social Media and the Internet because of digital marketing turned this into many to many kind of communication. A customer could talk to the brand. One customer can talk to many customers!
- Traditional Marketing follows the 4 P’s we spoke about earlier, while Digital Marketing includes the 4Ps, Research, Accurate statistics, and participation by all; which leads to more target-based marketing.
- Traditional Marketing makes a brand look for customers but Digital Marketing helps the customer look for the brand with just one google search.
- Digital Marketing allows for customers to take action instantly i.e to buy a product or a service immediately on the internet.
- The most simple difference of it all, Traditional marketing is costly while digital marketing is not.
Building your own Brand.
Now that we know the difference between the two types of marketing, let’s understand how you can build your Personal Brand.
What is a Personal Brand? It’s quite simple. You market yourself. You show the world how valuable you are by positioning yourself.
Take for example Elon Musk. He’s made himself into a brand. He has developed trust with his customers and his quirky, unique sense of thinking has made him one of the most influential people on this planet. He tweets about something and his audience believe it.
So how do you make yourself into a Brand?
Building a brand needs discipline. So, you can start with following a funnel I learned from a training program by one other Brand in itself, Digital Deepak.
It’s called the CATT funnel.
Wealth = n^CATT
[n] Niche
Without knowing your niche, you have no focus, you have no brand. So the first focus of starting with your Personal Brand is knowing your niche. Find out your target audience and stick to your niche. Once you have saturated your niche, you can go ahead and broaden it to generate more revenue.
[c] Content
Blogs, Live webinars, videos, posts; Content is all around us but it’s scattered. Once you choose your niche, make it your thing. Use your content to attract people interested in your niche. Find a medium and start creating content.
Don’t forget to be consistent.
[a] Attention
However good your content might be, it’s worth nada if you have no traffic. Promote your content using SEO, social media, Paid Ads, and Referrals. Generate leads to drive attention to your content.
[t] Trust
Gain the trust of your audience through Market Automation or retargeting. Deep Marketing is another method you can use to build trust. It essentially means sending out personalized e-mails and giving your e-mails an emotion. People tend to ignore e-mails if they are too formal.
Send out those personalized e-mails.
[t] Transaction
Convert your leads into customers through natural sales method. Natural Sales Method means you don’t always have to cold call or go out of your way to convert your leads into customers. Don’t push your customers, make them want to come to you.
Using this funnel will make your natural sales method easy for you!
Try it out and see for yourself.
Integrated Digital Marketing to implement the CATT funnel
Don’t be part of the chaos of advertising, set yourself apart with the use of integrated digital marketing.
It means creating a strategy that blends all your marketing tactics. Have a well-defined & structured marketing plan.
Use SEO & Social Media to attract an audience to your content.
Use your Content to attract the audience to your e-mail list.
Use Paid Ads to attract an audience to your e-mail list and your content.
And finally, Sell & Convert.
It can all be connected and be used to your own benefit on your journey to transforming yourself as a Brand.
Don’t forget the first step though, find your niche and believe in yourself!
Masstrust: The Evolution of a Personal Brand
Masstrust means building trust in a lot of people. Your Brand will only succeed when there is trust in you.
Follow these steps to ensure you become a Brand.
Learn
The world advances every second, there are new technologies that come out requiring people with new skills. Learning new skills, facts, and concepts every day and practicing them is very important.
Work
Turn your practice into implementation through your work. Be it a Job or as a Freelancer. Implementing it in the real world will make you more comfortable with the concepts.
Blog
Writing gives you clarity. Blogging is the start of building your Brand. Blog about your work and your experiences. It shows people that you know what you’re talking about and makes your audience take you seriously.
Consult
After working for all those businesses, and creating your personal brand through your blog; the next step would be to consult the businesses instead of working for them. People will pay you for your inputs and will value your advice as they will know that you deserve it, because of your blog.
Mentor
On your journey to developing yourself as a brand, being a mentor will come as a significant part. Your audience will want to learn from you. Think of this as consulting 100 people at the same time. Mentoring will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level. This will only happen when you go through with the evolution.
Start-Up
You can start your own product or services through the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problems, and your skills. Your audience will follow you because by now, you would have become a Brand.
The ultimate aim of it all.
Marketing is a means to an end. The aim of marketing is to make selling easy.
This article can just be a start of an understanding of a much deeper topic that is Marketing and Personal Brand.
Connect the dots, learn more, read more, and practice as much as you can to go up the ladder of success. Be a Brand.
Leave a comment if you liked what you read and feel free to share your insights on how to boost your Personal Brand.
