“Marketing as garden-fresh as a whiff of Petrichor”

8 min readJul 6, 2021

“Marketing as garden-fresh as a whiff of Petrichor”

This article is an overview and will shed light on various critical aspects of the vast topic “Marketing”

The term is used very commonly and sadly, generally misinterpreted…

Let us begin this article by thinking of a simple mundane scenario…

We are standing at the reception of a 20 storied apartment building and need to go to the 18th floor. We are visitors to this building for the 1st time. This apartment is located in a picturesque locale and is surrounded by a garden, natural greenery and hills.

The 1st impulse would be to hit the elevator button. In doing so we reach our destination fast, it’s convenient but we miss the view from each floor.

Now think that we take the stairs and go upwards gradually taking the time to appreciate the scenery from each floor. We can also appreciate the simple creativity which many individuals carry out at their main entrance.

Definitely efforts will be there in the 2nd case but we would surely feel energized as we would have forgotten the 18 story climb by appreciating the natural beauty around.

We would surely feel a sense of accomplishment. This simple exercise would fill us with positivity which would further lead to a positive chain of events and this would happen as our mindset gets positive.

Marketing is similar…

We can always copy successful marketing campaigns/ design impulsive on-the-run adverts and so on but these would fetch us short-lived successes or totally fall flat

Else to extract a ‘garden-fresh’ petrichor like edge for our Marketing, we can initiate & do the following:

· Zero in on the correct market segment

· Study the market segment

· Work out options regarding various product offerings and the best fit

· The timings regarding the launch of the product to the customer

· Value additions compared to existing similar products and so on…

Now that we know we want to do marketing the right way let us understand

- The fundamentals of marketing

- Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing.

- CATT Marketing Funnel

- Integrated Digital Marketing

- Personal Branding: Mass Trust Blueprint

Diving deeper:

The fundamentals of Marketing:

· The Law of Marketing

· Building a strong brand

· Communication skills

The Law of Marketing:

Building a strong brand:

· Enter a competitive segment but possess crucial USPs

· Do not be No 1; Be the only 1 in your chosen category

· If it is not possible to be the №1 in your category, wisely choose a related sub category

Good Communication skills:

· Good marketing is all about effective communication

· There is no language/grammar/vocabulary barrier here

· It is simple & clear communication which the targeted segment can clearly & easily understand

Digital Marketing v/s Traditional Marketing:

Both are extremely powerful tools and should be used after thoroughly understanding the product to be marketed and the segment to be targeted

· The reach of TV/newspaper/radio i.e. Traditional Marketing is extensive and Digital media cannot match up to them so soon as of now. Thus we can refer to Traditional Marketing as ‘Goliath’ and Digital Marketing as ‘David’ in the current scenario.

· Digital Marketing along with Traditional Marketing can be used for those targeted segments where you can match customer profile with both types of marketing reach

o E.g.: You are launching a laptop with updated technology & features, you can surely use Digital Marketing but will you neglect Traditional Marketing? The answer is NO as you need Traditional Marketing to increase the brand visibility also at public places namely airports/ premium hotels/restaurants etc. in addition to advertisement.

o On the other hand, you are launching a pan masala; why would you think of an additional Digital Marketing for that? Would the ‘bang for your buck’ be justified?

· Another method of marketing which can be used in traditional as well as digital marketing is ‘Direct Response Marketing’. This is designed to elicit an immediate response by encouraging prospects to take an immediate action

o E.g.: You have launched a diet supplement and are marketing it in gymnasiums/health clubs/ Joggers Park etc. You can measure the quantity of units sold per location per day per sales person

o On the other hand, in digital marketing , when you click on google forms, it is a response which is being extracted from the prospect- positive or negative

After we have studied and decided the type of marketing for our product, the next in turn is the crucial content development.

Content is developed for what? To grab attention so that marketing is successful and leads to a profitable closure in sales.

Thus we need to know about the successful marketing funnel i.e. CATT which will help us to drive our content to the correct targeted segment for the desired attention resulting in trust & transaction

The CATT Marketing Funnel:

· CATT stands for Content, Attention, Trust, and Transaction. This funnel describes how our products or services are working in the Digital world.

· This depends on how well we have selected our niche

· Niche and CATT are connected by the following formula

o Wealth = nˆ CATT

o Here n = niche

· The diagram below represents all these steps

· It also reinforces an important point that all these steps are interrelated and should be continuous

Eg:

o After transaction i.e. after successful sales, we can always decide to widen or narrow our niche to make the entire exercise much more fruitful.

o Our niche might not be perfect at the first shot

· Choosing the right niche is challenging but the following diagram gives us an idea how to go about it

· Niche is the common overlap between your talent/passion and market

· If all 3 are positive then you are all set for success

· Even if a single point is lacking which can be rectified then it should be done at the earliest

o Eg: If talent is the lacuna, then we should make efforts to rectify the lacuna after identifying it

**Niche is the common overlap area of all the 3 circles**

Integrated Digital Marketing:

After you have researched your Niche and have successfully developed your Content, for the remaining i.e. Attention, Trust & Transaction you need an execution framework. Thus enters Integrated Digital Marketing. This is not just email marketing or SEO or social media but a logical amalgamation of various ways wherein you can increase the reach of your content as shown below.

This creates a ‘wave after wave’ and goes a long way in generating Attention which finally culminate into Trust & Transaction.

Digital Marketing will not be effective in either /or strategy but an integrated approach will be much more fruitful since this would improve visibility and thus trust.

Personal Branding: Mass Trust Blueprint:

Making of your Personal Brand:

If you are good at something, people need to KNOW that. You should build yourself i.e. create your own digital persona. This is called Personal Branding and is crucial since:

· The people who are better known will always beat the people who are good but not that well known

· People want to hear from people and not brands

Few things which we need to keep in mind regarding Personal Branding is that

· A Personal Brand can give rise to many brands- since people associate with you, they will trust what you say Eg: Ratan Tata, Richard Branson, Michelle Obama are ideal personal branding examples

· A Personal Brand represents his or her own companies/services and thus becomes a Brand Ambassador for those companies/services

· A downside to Personal Brand building is that since it is your identity, the same cannot be sold

Evolution of your Personal Brand:

After you have created your Personal Branding, It is very crucial that you EVOLVE. Evolving is a continuous process and does not allow you to gather rust and waste away.

Evolving involves the following:

· Learn — Learn a new skill/s, understand the concept, remember the facts and practice the procedures

· Work- Put your new found skill/s to work, go from practice to implementation s that will give you a better grip on the skills

· Blog — Write what you have learnt & experienced through your work as writing will give you better understanding & clarity and will also help in building your personal brand

· Consult — Utilize your personal branding & work experience to consult rather than to work for others

· Mentor — Mentoring or Coaching will help you in constant learning & upgrading and scale it to a new level.

· Startup — Have your own product/ service business with the understanding which you have developed through your work experience, regarding the market, the existing issues & your own skills.

When you have built your Personal Brand and also evolved as a Personal Brand then you will be dealing with the trust of many people — thus we come to the concept of MassTrust

The MassTrust Blueprint can be effectively utilized to build & evolve your Personal Branding.

It is a continuous process i.e. the process does not culminate in a ‘Startup’ but is in a flow i.e. you continue to learn/work/blog/consult and mentor.

It can be ideally represented as shown below:

Conclusion:

Marketing is a vast & a beautiful topic and would run into reels and reels. This article is an overview of how a practical approach to marketing should be. I use the term ‘practical’ since Marketing is a science and the use of commonsense also is of paramount importance.

I sincerely hope that I have done justice to the article and you found it useful & interesting.

Am mentioning few books which you may refer to if you like.