Introduction

In this article, I am going to write about how marketing is changing with time and place and what the future of marketing looks like. But, before that, we need to learn about some laws of marketing that remain the same.

What is Marketing?

Is marketing only advertising?

Is marketing is only sales?

Is marketing only copywriting? Or ….

Marketing is the combination of all activities that take place to achieve the ultimate motive of any business entity is to generate revenue. Read more about marketing

List of the activity that marketing include are:-

• Research: Research include every aspect of business, like knowing the market, competition, economy, consumer behaviour and other business affecting factors.
• Product development: Marketing starts with creating the product. As for developing any product it’s important to customer’s need and develops the product that fits the needs very well.
• Price: pricing is not about the selling price of the product, it includes cost, merging, current and future price, ROI and nature of product and business you are doing. Sometimes we need to go with generous pricing to keep the nature of the product and service.
• Packing: Packing is not about the outer look of the product. While planning for packing we need to keep so many factors in mind, like:-

           o   Branding and Sales Appeal. …

o   Variety in Sizes and Shapes. Based on your intended consumers

o   Prevent Squeezing or Damage to Produce. …

o   Shelf Life. …

o   Biodegradability.

• Branding: “Branding is endowing products and services with the power of a brand” (Kotler & Keller, 2015)

Branding is the process of giving meaning to a specific organization, company, product or service by creating and shaping a brand in consumers’ minds. It is a strategy designed by organizations to help people quickly identify and experience their brand, and give them a reason to choose their products over the competition’s, by clarifying what this particular brand is and is not.  (Source https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/) Read more about Branding

• Sales: Sales gives fuel for running any business it means by doing sales we generate direct revenue for the business. The ultimate goal for doing marketing or all other activity is to achieve sales. Sales are transactions of exchange of ownership of a product/service in exchange for money. Read more
• Physical Distribution/Service Delivery: Rodrigue and Hesse write “Physical distribution includes all the functions of movement and handling of goods, particularly transportation services (trucking, freight rail, air freight, inland waterways, marine shipping, and pipelines).
• Inventory Management: Inventory management means the right stock of raw material and finished goods, at the right levels, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost as well as price. It also ensures have an adequate quantity of products without creating overstock or undersupply.
• Storage: An important marketing function that involves holding and preserving goods from the time they are produced until they are needed for consumption.
• Promotion: It’s referred to any type of communication used to inform the target audience about the brand, product, service and the aim is to generate sales customer loyalty.

We also understand that some basics of life/learning that never changes same applies to marketing also. Whatever you do and you aim to achieve this 4P of marketing is always going to apply:-

1. Product (Product include services also)
2. People (Core of any business)
3. Place (Geographical location of business)
4. Price (Exchange value of product/service)

Some integral part of marketing

Some things are an integral part of marketing irrespective of the medium used for marketing or product. These are:-

• Focus on a great product
  
• Building a strong brand
  
• Right Message – > Right Person -> Right Time
  
• Communication skills: Good marketing is all about good  communication of good product
  
• Understanding economy of place/country/state/city
  
• Building Trust – > Post Service
  
• Never goes out of fashion only enhance 

Now, we have understood some basics of marketing, let’s talk about how the Future of the Market looks:-

Moving toward Digitisation of activity:-

We can see changes around us and changes in consumer buying behaviour. Due to the availability of digital resources and automation of processes things move and change very fast. For example, now you no need to go out in the market for buying or selling for most of the things you need, you can do that with a click sitting in your own space and comfort.

When we talk about digitisation we are not only taking just digital marketing, however, we talk about the entire marketing process of digitisation for research to promotion of products.

Let’s differentiate Traditional Marketing Vs. Digital Marketing

In simple words, we can say the main difference is the medium used for communication to the audience. In traditional marketing, we used TV, Radio, Newspaper, Billboard as mediums of communication. In Digital Marketing we use digital media like Website, App, Social media, Search marketing, Email, SMS as the communication medium. Some other differences are:-

1. Nature of product/service: If the product is generic with a wide range of targeting then TV/Radio/Newspapers can be reached millions of users. If you have a high-end specific product/service then digital marketing can reach your target audience.
2. Affordability of product/service: Normally low priced products/services are difficult to sell through digital. It’s preferable to go for Traditional Marketing by doing some BTL (Below -The -Line: like roadshows) activities.
3. Personalise/ Deep Marketing: through Digital Marketing you can do more personalise and deeper campaigns compare to using Traditional Marketing.
4. Natural sales: After doing some campaign on social media and other eCommerce platform and based on your past result sales goes up with much investment and effort.
5. Availability of resource/ infrastructure: One of the main obstacles for reaching the mass audience through digital marketing is the availability of resources like (phone/smartphone/internet/electricity) with the audience.

Direct Response Marketing

Normally people don’t know how ads are doing or you can’t measure your marketing performance just know your brand awareness. Then it’s become very difficult to know how well your marketing is doing or what medium is working for you. By using direct response marketing you can measure your efforts.

Direct response is the type of marketing designed to elicit an instant response by encouraging prospects to take a specific action. Techniques used in this lead customers for Call -To -Action (CTA) like making phone calls/email/messages/sign-up or purchase.

The best thing is that it can be used with any kind of product/service with a limited budget.

 Some of the tools that can be used in Direct response marketing:-

• Webinar
• Advert with phone number
• Lead form
• Info commercial advert
• Landing page/sign-up form
• Final Purchase
• Email campaign with CTA

CATT Marketing Funnel

Content (C) – > Attention (A) – > Trust (T) – > Transaction (T)

In simple business formula is Wealth = n^CATT,

Here n= niche (It’s your product/service focused target audience)

Content:-In today’s digital space your content drive your sales. Content is key for starting any digital/social media campaign or starting direct communication with your niche. With content marketing, you talk to your customer instead of telling them about your product/service.  (Example of Content)

“Great content is the best sales tool in the world.” ~Marcus Sheridan

Attention: With your great content you get attention from your niche and that brings traffic for your product/service.  Content is the main driver of attention (traffic), so you can imagine if your content is weak then how much traffic you will drive.

Trust: Once you got attention then you need to build trust with offer/commitment/review to convert your potential customer into an actual customer. Once you have done that your sale comes naturally.

Transaction:  Finally you achieve your ultimate goal which is getting the transaction done.

If you follow the process and keep enchanting your content with having the trust of the current customer base your sales will multiply themselves.

“A great product/service convert the customer into your brand ambassador and then word of mouth marketing is the best channel marketing ever” so, retaining your customer will bring new customer naturally.

We need to note here that one of the most important aspects of the CATT funnel is niche. Without choosing the right niche you will be wasting your time and energy.

The niche is selected by best of the Talent in Market that derived by Passion.

Integrated Digital Marketing

We need to know that one of the most important things is to integrate all digital activity. The success of any campaign will not drive by one channel/medium, we should have the same aligned communication on the channel.

Content Marketing + Paid Advert + SEO + Social Media + Sell & Convert + Email Marketing +All other marketing activity

It’s also very important that all channels have the same brand/ message /concept image/text /font /colour scheme etc. That don’t allow the customer to divert from your product/service to another or it’s always reminded to the customer by a different source.

Personal Branding

One of the important factors in today’s marketing is personal branding. “People want to hear from people not from the brand”.

A personal brand becomes an influencer and brand ambassador for the companies that they run. Read More

Conclusion

We have seen that the basic law of marketing always remains the same as the Law of Science. However, the combination changes to achieve a high result.

Future of Marketing is not only ATL, BTL or Digital Marketing. It’s the combination of all and would be evolving forever.

Last and most important is that people and products always remain the core of any business entity.

I will write more on some topic in my next article till then

Keep reading, Keep Learning, Keep Growing!!!

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All the Best !!!

Sudhir Gupta