Building an Empire with marketing
Why every Founder Should be a Marketer?
In this article, I am going to talk about why marketing is important in building an empire.
To build an empire, every product which enters a market has to go from concept to market availability which includes identifying a market need, researching the competitive landscape, conceptualizing a solution, developing a product roadmap, building a minimum viable product, etc.
So, in the process of product development, marketing starts before creating a product because every product can be created only when you understand the customer and customers’ needs.
This article will be useful for bloggers, professionals, freelancers, mentors, and entrepreneurs.
To market a product, we need to understand the customer's understanding and needs through the fundamentals of marketing, economics, and the importance of personal branding in marketing.
As per my understanding, I am re-framing the below list of what is required to market a successful product and build an empire with marketing:
- Generating Ideas: Niche Selection
- Assess Market: Market Research
- Analysis: Economics, Competiton
- Development: Communication, Personal Branding
- Launch: Marketing, Sales
Generating Ideas
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”
– Swami Vivekananda
Generating ideas is the most important part of launching your own product. Idea generation is a creative process to come up with many ideas, selecting the best idea or ideas, working to create a plan to implement the idea, and then actually taking that idea and putting it into practice.
Niche Selection:
“Chose the niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming and acknowledged leader.”- Richard Koch
Niche is an area of expertise in which you will specialize. Niche is finding the right market requirement and fulfilling that requirement with your skills and interest.
The first step of marketing is to identify the customer and what the customer really needs.
Then you need to create a product that meets the needs of the customer.
You need to ask yourself a few questions.
Who needs this product?
Where can I find them?
How much are they willing to pay for the product?
How is the product going to help them?
Will they buy the product once or will they keep buying it again and again over a duration of one month, one year and so on?
Once you have clarity about these questions, half your work is done.
The figure below shows what niche is:
Your success and wealth depend on the niche you choose. Choose a category and become a leader in that category. If you cannot be a leader, choose a sub-category.
Assess Market
The market assessment is a detailed evaluation of the potential of a new product, new business idea, or new investment.
The evaluation can be done in two ways:
- Primary Market Research: Primary research is research that is conducted by you. Here data collection methods include surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, etc.
- Secondary Market Research: Secondary research is the research of existing research that was previously done for another purpose. So we will re-purpose the data and see if any valuable information can be gathered from it. Such information is in libraries, books, online information, etc.
Market Analysis
To have a better understanding of customer volume and value of the market, potential customer segments, and their buying patterns every founder should go through market analysis.
If your product or service is for the Indian economy, we should have a good understanding and data-driven segregation of the people in the economy who can potentially afford your product or service and hence generate leads and convert them to sales using their power of purchasing.
Understanding India’s Market economics
a. A country’s economy goes up as the average age of the country goes up. To have success, you need to focus on developing countries as long as people are young. (Average age in India is 27–30 years)
b. Debt creates money. (As the average age of India take loans to buy products and service and create demand in the economy, banks reduce interest rates to encourage debt in the economy. More debt in the economy is equal to more cash/ inflation in the economy. )
c. During the recession only strong and trusted companies will survive. (If you are able to build trust and better connect with your customers by giving enough value, people will need you.)
d. Scope of going digital. (The number of online shoppers in India has grown up from 75 million in 2017 to 220 million in 2025 and has target customers buying of 30–35 milling until 2025{www.statista.com}. Digital marketing is well-targeted for an English-speaking audience of about 125 million users.)
e. Scope of traditional marketing. (If your idea is generic and wide targeting (eg Apple) then TV ads, Newspapers and Radio is way more effective and efficient. The number of total TV households in India is 200 million homes with 4–5 members per household, Newspaper in 465 million homes and Radio reach is 65% of Indian Population).
Competiton is part of market analysis. Competition will differentiate your products and services as it will point out competitors’ weaknesses that you can take advantage of.
a. Direct competition: Offering very similar products and services. Your potential customers are probably currently buying from these companies.
b. Indirect competitors: Indirect competition is an alternative solution to the problem you are solving.
Entering a competitive market with a unique angle to your product/ service will give good results.
For example, entering into digital marketing with a focus to give social media solutions to Indian startups and entrepreneurs with low cost graphic design solutions as well can be competitve and can give good results.
Development
Personnel Development is essential to build your own brand, product or service.
“Personal development is a major time-saver. The better you become, the less time it takes you to achieve your goals.” ―Brian Tracy
I think the most important part of personal development is communication and building a personal brand.
Good marketing is all about communication.
If you have a good product or service, you need to communicate about your product or service and if you communicate well your product or service will definitely sell well. Communication can be improved when you write like you talk. The more you write, the better you can write and speak. You can also watch TV and standup comedy shows.
If you can communicate your ideas, thoughts, and intentions well, the customer can find a reason to believe you and trust you. Then, and only then, you can propose to them an idea of how you can help solve their problems or needs through a product or service of your own.
Personal Branding becomes an influence and a brand ambassador for the companies that they run.
Building a personal brand is important as customers(people) want to hear from people not from brands. If you want to build your personal then you need to follow these. This is a method to build trust or Deepak sir says #MassTrust with people.
a. Learn
Learning new trends in different arenas, understanding concepts through writing to remember facts, and practice the procedure. You do not necessarily have to expert in each of these.
b. Work
Put your new-found skills to work. Go from practice to implementation. You can choose to work as an employee, freelancer, or work on your own projects.
c. Blog
Write about what you have learned and experienced through your work. When you write you understand better and automatically you will also build a personal brand.
“Power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it” — Maria Khan
d. Consult
When you have gained your personal brand through blogs, work experience, and learning from fundamentals start consulting others instead of working from them.
e. Mentor
Mentoring others who want to be like you will help your understanding to a whole new level. A good mentor is an enthusiastic person, enjoying the role they play in helping others achieve their goals.
f. Startup
Now you are on the engine to start your own product or service business. You have developed an understanding of the market, the product, and your own skills.
Launch
Now when you nailed down your niche selection, market research, economics, competition, and even built your personal brand it’s time to launch your product.
Marketing is all about sending right message to right person at the right time. Advertising, copywriting, sales are just the components of Marketing.
A sky-high level of sales is only possible when the product sells itself without much of an effort. A product becomes saleable through the story or description written by a salesman. This is only possible with great marketing.
A great marketing strategy has a targeted audience with a clear goal to engage and build a relationship with customers by delivering a relevant offer and a meaningful experience of your brand.
To build a relationship with customers and engaging existing customers you need to have proper marketing plans. Marketing can be done in the following ways:
- Direct Response Marketing:
Direct response marketing is online or offline advertising that motivates people to take immediate action like making a purchase, registering for an event, referring a friend, downloading an app. Direct response aims to generate an immediate reaction from the customer through calls-to-action.
2. CATT Marketing Funnel:
How your audience will go through the entire journey with you?
This marketing funnels can be used to track down the customer’s engagement with your product or service.
Wealth=n^CATT
n= Niche (Niche is finding the right market requirement and fulfilling that requirement with your skills and interest.)
C= Content (Creating useful content that attracts people from your Niche. This can be done through blog posts, videos, books, etc.)
A= Attention (Driving attention to your content using social media, SEO, Paid ads, and referrals.)
T= Trust (Building trust with your audience with tripwires, marketing automation, and retargeting. Personalizing your communication in emails is a part of the trust.)
T= Translation (When the trust is built it becomes easy to convert the leads into customers through natural sales.)
This cycle continues to generate more sales, customer interaction, and building trust within your target market.
3. Integrated Digital Marketing:
Integrated digital marketing is a way to use all the digital marketing available today with content as a leader in such a way that each channel complements the other.
It’s like using a single language to speak in different situations.
Getting attention through quality content (putting CATT funnel) and executing this is in an integrated way will drive sales.
Conclusion
Marketing starts before creating a product or service, you need to understand customer and customer needs that leads to creating a product that fits. So, every founder should be a marketer as it cannot be outsourced.
It is a way to build your personal brand and capturing a position in the mind of your customers. Marketing gives a direct return to your business and has a long shelf life.
So, if you want to build your brand with a product or service start with marketing your content because content marketing always has been and always will be one of the most effective lead generations, branding, and sales.
If want to write content you can learn new skills, work with these skills, blog about your new skills, consult and mentor one’s who want to be like you. This will help you build your own personal brand. The best-known people will always beat the best.
Once you have your content, drive attention, build trust, and convert your leads into customers.
To create more wealth, Repeat!
If you think building an empire with marketing is essential do leave a comment about this article.
This article is one of the several assignments in the Digital Deepak Internship Program.
