How to earn ₹1 CRORE : Your Extensive Guide to Digital Marketing in 2020

Published in

Plus Marketing

21 min readNov 11, 2020

This article deals with an extensive step-by-step guide to get you started with digital marketing and lays down the fundamental principles of marketing and how to use them to earn up to ₹1 Crore/annum.

What is Digital Marketing?

If you type this on Google, you’ll get countless different answers. To put it simply, digital marketing consists of any & all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. In today’s world there seems to be a lot of hype around this term and most people have lost sight of what it actually means, they forget the fact that Digital Marketing is more about ‘the marketing’ rather than ‘the digital’.

Marketing is a function within a larger business. It’s about sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Thus in order to understand how ‘digital marketing’ functions, we need to take a closer look at how ‘marketing’ works and get a deeper understanding about it’s framework and how it operates.

7 Step Marketing Framework

1. What : Your Offer
2. Who : Your Customers
3. When : Your Customer’s Journey
4. Where : Channels Your Customers Use
5. Why : Your Marketing objective
6. How : Your Message
7. Measure & Optimize

WHAT : YOUR OFFER

The marketing can be only as good as the product/service that is being marketed. Thus, the first step is to understand the product or service that you intend selling.

In most cases you’re marketing a business or a product/service of a business. It is thus important to map out a strong marketing plan, that starts with understanding the different components of a business that is to be marketed.

(A) Core Components of a Business :-

Revenue Sources : How does the business make it’s money and what prices does it charge.
Costs : What does it cost the business to offer it’s products/services to the consumer.
Product/Service : What is the product/ service and how does it benefit the customer.
Customers : Who are the customers? Are they individuals (B2C) or a business (B2B)? How do they interact with you (the business).

Revenue Sources − Costs = Profits

The core components helps us to understand what the business does, but in itself it is a bit dry. The business usually likes to articulate why it should be attractive to the customer; what benefits they provide and to whom. They do so in a value proposition.

(B) Value Proposition : Geoffrey Moore popularized this idea of value propositions in his book ‘Crossing the Chasm’.

A value proposition conveys 5 things :-

Who is the target customer,
Need of the target customer,
What is the product/ service,
How buying the product/service will benefit the customer, and
How the product/service is different/unique from its competition.

This model gives us a richer understanding of WHAT the offer is and how to make the product/service up to the mark so as to fulfill the needs of the customer who buys it.

(C) Business Life Cycle : The last element of “WHAT” in the marketing framework is the business’s life cycle, the type of marketing approach that is to be taken depends upon where the business stands in it’s own life cycle.

The diagram clearly shows 4 separate stages of a business.

They are : Introduction, Growth, Mature, Decline.

For a Start-up/ Introduction stage as a marketer you would want to know if you have a business to work with and what are it’s potential assets. At this stage the sales are low, the costs are high and there is no − little profit. The marketing plan should focus on building public awareness and creating leads for the business.

For a business in it’s Growth Stage, as a marketer you would want to keep a systematic and timely check on it’s growth and plan your marketing strategy accordingly. At this stage the no. of sales will have increased, the cost would be reduced and the business would reflect some amount of profit.

At the Maturity Stage, the business would have grown into a mature and independent business with a consistent amount of sales, reduced costs and an increasing amount of profit. At this stage you would want to device a marketing plan with the goal of maximizing the profits and the return of investments (ROI).

Finally, if the business is at the Decline Stage, you would want to focus your efforts on it’s retention as the sales would have reduced with the cost remaining the same. The business would want to be marketed in such a way in order to establish new growth initiatives and bringing the profits back up.

It’s the (digital) marketer’s duty to understand the business, the product/service that it’s offering, it’s core components and at what stage the business lays at the time of engaging with it. All the above stated factors gives us a better picture about ‘WHAT’ is that we are marketing.

WHO : YOUR CUSTOMER

A customer is someone (person or an entity) who you as a marketer thinks fit for your business or offer. If you think your customer is everyone, you are making a classic marketing mistake.

“If you market to everyone, you market to no one.”

In order to find the customer that fits perfectly into your business marketing framework you need to first think of an audience, there are lot of different people in an audience, so you can group them based on some similar characteristics.

A group so made is called a ‘customer segment’. So all the customers in one segment would have the same characteristics. Segments could also overlap with each other.

Some commons characteristics on which you can segregate your potential customers are : (a) Demographic, (b) Lifestyle, (c) Beliefs & Values, (d) Geography, (e) Behavior.

Segmenting customers into different groups gives you a slightly better picture on who your desired consumer might be, but in order to effectively market your product/service you need a deeper and a better understanding of the customer on a more “individual level”.

Empathy Maps

This is where ‘Empathy Maps’ come into play.

Companies have been doing market research , ethnographic studies & customer research for years. Now, with the advent of web-design came a focus on user experience, to understand users, designers created empathy maps to summaries customer research.

Today most digital marketers use them to understand their customers. The art of marketing includes addressing the emotions of your customers and the only way to do so is by nothing but showing empathy towards their needs and problems, and using that data to develop a product/service to aid their requirements.

Most empathy maps are a combination of 4 aspects :-

Thinking
Seeing
Doing
Feeling

To start building your empathy map you have to start by getting to know who your customers is, this can be done by a combination of methods like interviews, visiting your customer in their environments and the data you have from other researches.

Collecting all such information and sorting it out on the basis of these 4 aspects will be extremely useful to market to the needs of the customers, seeking the right triggers and channels and eventually aiding in the creation and marketing of a product fit to meet the needs of your customer base.

Buyer’s Persona

Once you have your empathy maps you can create a persona.

A persona is a fictional character that summarizes and communicates the key characteristics of the consumer. When creating the persona you use the data from the empathy maps and use them to inform to what your fictional customer looks like.

Creating such a persona is useful as it helps you to be focused on who your customer is and also brings everyone in your team/company on the same page when thinking about the customer and devising a marketing plan.

Understanding The Indian Customer

India is the 7nd largest in area and 2nd largest in the world population, with a whopping 1.35 Billion people living in the sub continent. To say the least the Indian market is going to be one of the major playgrounds for the existing as well as the upcoming business establishments and marketing campaigns.

The largest city in India is Mumbai, with a population of 12.5 million, followed closely by Delhi with a population of over 11 million. Overall, there are more than 50 areas in India with a population of more than one million. While the number of Indians living in urban areas has increased over the past two decades, about 67% of the population still lives in rural areas. India is a vast country, marked by a great diversity of religions, languages, literacy levels, traditions, social customs and economic status. Thus there are several types of Indian consumers. Categorizing them into segments and catering to their individual needs may sound like a tough job but the Indian market is a gold mine for marketers and businesses. In 2017, annual growth in consumer spending was 12% and India is expected to become the third largest consumer market by 2025.

Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju in his Digital Deepak Internship Program explained the concept of the distribution and classification of the Indian population in it’s market economy in a beautiful manner.

As the diagram suggests, the Indian population is roughly divided into 3 sects :-

India 1, India 2 and India 3.

Here, if you are reading this and you are an Indian citizen, there is a 99.99% chance that you belong to the India 1 category. With a mere 6% of the workforce out of the total population, most of the marketing campaigns running today carter to the needs of the India 1 consumer as the most amount of wealth in the entire country is concentrated with the 8% of the total population.

Thus, in order to produce and market yourself or your business in the Indian economy you need an in-depth understanding of who your target consumer is.

Creating a product/service for each of the 3 blocks starting from India 1 and using the profits from the same to move on and cater to the needs of the next block and so on will be a good marketing strategy to use and build a sustainable marketing system here in India.

WHEN : YOUR COUSTOMER’S JOURNEY

The customer’s journey is how marketers explain the process by which a potential customer goes through to become an actual customer. This is what helps the marketer to decide ‘WHEN’ to talk to the customer.

The times have changed, a decade ago almost no one had a smart phone, today the average consumer spends 5 hours a day with a digital media, here how the customer finds out about your business/product/service can start from anywhere. An email, a Facebook ad, google search or even offline modes like newspapers or billboards.

Marketers describe how the customer finds your business through the image of a ‘funnel’. A funnel in which a large group of people become aware of your product and go through stages ending in the purchase of your product/service.

But in the real world however, the average customer doesn’t go through such a linear path, thus the marketers have gone form the funnel concept to calling it a ‘customer’s journey’.

The customer journey is divided into 5 stages, namely :-

Aware
Interest
Desire
Action
Post Action

Your interaction as a marketer with your customer can start at any given point in their journey. Thus, it is important to know the path the customer takes to reach you, so as to figure out a plan on how to market your potential customer at whichever stage them maybe in.

Let’s take a closer look into these stages to understand how to approach the customer in the said stage of their journey.

Aware : Contrary to what the name suggests, the customer in this stage is not aware of your business/product/service thus at this stage the marketing approach should be to let the customer know who you are and what is that you do.
Interest : After the customer is familiar with who you are and what you do, the role of the marketer here is to introduce the potential customer to the product/service that is being offered.
Desire : When the customer knows who you are and is aware of the product/service that you are offering, this stage focuses on making it clear on why he/she/it(customer) should choose your product/service over your competitor’s. The aim of this stage is to convert the interest that the customer has developed into a desire for buying/investing in your product/service.
Action : Now, when the customer is ready to take action, ‘action’ here may mean directly making a purchase of your product/service or even signing unto your email newsletter. This stage requires the marketer to make the customers comfortable with taking action e.g. being clear about the price.
Post Action : Finally, when the customer has taken the action this stage describes how you should interact with your customer after they have done so, e.g. Sending them the confirmation email, or explaining them how the product/service works.

This final stage is often neglected by most marketers and plays a very important role in making the customer feel valuable and interturn making them come back for more.

While the customer journey here is less linear than the original marketing models assumed, no matter how secure the route maybe, your goal as a marketer is to move the customer along the relationship.

CATT Marketing Funnel Model

WEALTH = n^CATT

Your niche (n) determines yours success & wealth as a digital marketer. The niche of your choice must be so that to solve a particular set of problems that your potential customers are facing.

CATT : Content Attention Trust Transaction

Content : Your content is the asset that will draw people towards your business or product/service. In order to draw people you need to create high quality content. The content can be anything from videos to live webinars to lead magnets. The richer and stronger the content the greater the output.

“Content is king” — Bill Gates

Attention : After creating good quality content now you have to drive your audience towards it, in other words drive attentions of your customers towards it. This can be done by various methods like SEOs, Facebook Ads, Referrals.

Trust : Now when you have the attention of your customer, the ball is in your court, it’s your duty as a marketer to gain their trust. Why should they pay you for your product/service? The better the trust you build with your customer the better will be your output.

Transaction : After you successfully gained their trust you need to convert those leads into sales with natural sales methods.

As the formula above states that Wealth=n^CATT where n= niche. Thus choosing the right niche is of utmost importance.

Your niche = The Market + Your Talent + Your Passion.

As shown in this Venn Diagram.

WHERE : CHANNELS YOUR CUSTOMER USES

Earlier the options for the marketers to reach their customer were limited to TV’s, Radio’s, Newspaper’s and Billboards. Even marketing communication used to be only one way. Now, as we are moving towards the digital era of technology there are abundant platforms to reach out to customers that it is overwhelming.

Now, you can target the right customer for the product/service at the right time in a manner which wasn’t possible before with a 2 way communication, you can have real life connection with customers.

This is where marketing merges with the digital age and evolves into what we refer to as Digital Marketing.

Where you reach your customers is referred to as ‘channels’. They can be loosely categorized into 4 types :-

Broadcast : These can be seen as the billboards of the digital world, they pop up on websites and mobile apps. People pass by them.
1:1/Direct : These are more direct e.g. E-mail, SMS. This provided the marketer an opportunity to specifically target you as a customer.
Search : These are used by people who know what they want, marketers here use ‘keywords’ to show up in these channels e.g. Google
Social : These can be seen as the word of mouth of the internet, marketers here use social media to market their business or product/service.

This is just a rough categorization of the channels that are used in digital marketing. There are various number of other channels used for the purpose of marketing online as well as offline.

Customer Journey & Channels (Connecting the WHEN & WHERE)

As a marketer you can reach customers at different stages of their journey using different channels.

In the awareness stage you can use the broadcast channel to draw in more customers towards your content. Furthermore in the interest stage, social channels can be used to derive more attention towards your product. In the desire stage when the customer is deciding on which product to buy is where social and search channels come into action. In the action stage where the customer knows what they want, where to buy it and whom to buy it from is when you have to build in the trust within the customer and may do so by using search or direct 1–1 channels. Finally in the post action stage when the customer has done the transaction is when you can use the 1–1 Direct channel to interact with the customer and further build the relationship with the customer.

This is all to say that there are no hard and fast rules on which channel to be applied on what stage of the customer’s journey. Different channels can be applied at different stages depending on the marketer’s strategy and plan or action. The marketer decides on which channel to be used when

Traditional v/s Digital Marketing (Indian Perspective)

All the channels discussed are mainly focused on the digital marketing side of things but the traditional form of marketing also plays a huge role in the Indian market. Digital marketing is the best medium only to reach the affluent English speaking population in India, whereas almost more than half of the population doesn’t have access to any form of digital media, the traditional conventional form of offline marketing still has a big market in the Indian economy.

TV ads : In India 196 million/298 million homes have TVs. Thus TV has a reach of up to 800 Million to 1 Billion people.

Radio has a reach of up to 65% of the population

Newspapers have a reach of 465 million people.

As India is a developing country even though the digital channels work for 8% of the population, focusing only on the digital aspect would be a huge blunder. When you are selling to a low end customer grade product, the use of traditional marketing seems to be the way to go.

WHY : YOUR MARKETING OBJECTIVE

Marketing is a means to an end. The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and capture a position in the minds of the consumer.

All marketing needs a marketing objective. It is what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. You can have 1 or several marketing objectives.

Your objective must be -S.M.A.R.T (Refer to the illustration)

The smarter your objective is the more easily you will be able to access whether or not you have achieved them.

Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Relevant. Time Based

This approach is not only true for marketing but also planning your own life and setting up goals. The more S.M.A.R.T your goals are the better you will be able to access them and plan for the future.

Off the top of my head if I had to create a S.M.A.R.T objective for myself for the next coming 12 months will be :-

“Complete my graduation and start applying my digital marketing knowledge to help produce and market my album by the end of October 2021.”

Some examples of S.M.A.R.T ‘marketing objectives’ would be :

“Raise brand awareness by driving 100k new visitors to the website” or “Get 10,000 sign-ups for the newsletter by the end of July 2021.”

HOW : YOUR MESSAGE

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the consumer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. — Peter Drucker

Good marketing is all about how you communicate your idea to your customer in a manner that fits his needs and creates a necessity or an urgency for him/her to make the transition and buy your product/service that you are offering.

Thus, good marketing is all about good communication. It doesn’t care about vocabulary or grammar but just if you as a marketer are able to transfer your ideas to your potential consumer in a effective manner.

To develop these great communication skills there are some tips and tricks Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju elaborates upon in his internship program. They are as follows :-

Write like you talk.

Have you heard of the term ‘writer’s block’? Of course you have but have you ever heard of the phrase ‘talker’s block’? Of course not. In order to build your communication skills to it’s most refined form you need to practice writing like you are talking. It should be effortless and should convey your thoughts in the same manner.

2. Join a conversation in people’s minds.

In order to market a product you need to join into a thought that your potential customer is already having. If they are thinking about buying a new car, you know that they have that idea rolling around in their heads, now tap into that thought and help them sort it out.

Your main role as a marketer is to solve people’s problems with your business or product/service hence it would be easier when they know that they have a problem rather than you introducing a brand new idea which they have not even thought about.

3. Write a lot.

I can’t stress enough on this point, the analogy is simple. The more you write the better you can write. Like anything else in the world, everything comes in place with persistent and deliberate practice. Writing slows down your thought process and gives you a better clarity and insight into your own thoughts.

So, this is to say, practice writing everyday for a specific period of time. Have a goal about what, when and where you will do this and be persistent about this practice and in no time you will see an increase in your writing, speaking and your overall communication skills.

4. Think in English.

This is true for any and all languages that you want to increase your acumen in. When you think in the language that you want to communicate in, so that your brain doesn’t have to go through the long process of churning your thought through that mental machine and convert your thoughts from your native language to English (in this case).

Thus, apart from writing and speaking in English, start thinking in English and the more you adapt and surround yourself with the language of your choice the better your command over it will become.

Build a Brand

Marketing is not only about selling, but also about keeping an existing customer happy, so that they remain a customer for life. This is covered under the post-action stage of communication.

Thus, creating a ‘Mass Trust’ amongst people is very important.

“Don’t aim to be #1, Be the only one” — Digital Deepak

Choose a category and become a leader in that category. Deciding where to compete is half the battle won.

If you can’t become a leader in a category become one in a sub-category.

People only remember the #1 or at max #2. Every market eventually becomes a 2 player playground.

Even if you’re entering a competitive market it’s alright but have a unique angle/approach of your own that separates you from the crowd.

MEASURE & OPTIMIZE

The 7th and the final stage of the marketing framework deals with measuring and optimizing your methods, tools and everything all together.

In the world of digital marketing, everything can be measured and accounted for. This becomes a major advantage that digital marketing has over the conventional means of marketing. You can know everything about the customer from how many seconds did he/she view your product to if he/she is or isn’t considering to buy you product/service.

Thus, as a digital marketer it is you job to combine all the above elements and make it into a smooth, functioning machine.

Digital marketing only works when all the elements of the marketing framework come together as one. When all of them integrate together that's what we call as Integrated Digital Marketing.

HOW TO MAKE ₹1 CRORE?

Now, as we have understood the fundamentals of how (digital) marketing works let’s talk about how to use this new found knowledge of yours to make make money.

The 1 Crore Framework

The formula to make 1 crore as illustrated above looks pretty simple.

It is a function of your product price to the no. of customer you sell your product to.

Number of customers (x) : Product Price (y)

In order to do so, first you need to set up a personal brand.

Power of Personal Branding

“The best known will always beat the best”

People as individuals are emotional and you as a marketer need to tap into that emotion to make the sale and further more enhance their lives in any way possible by giving them your product/service.

Like Digital Deepak — the personal brand of Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju is helping people to learn about digital marketing and grow their knowledge and make wealth out of it.

Knowledge is power, and you as a personal brand have to use your power to enhance the lives of others.

People will only pay you, if they think you have something that they want.

Company Laws Act, 2013 defines a company or a business as an ‘artificial person’ who has a separate legal identity from the person that constitutes/owns it. So it is evident that people want to hear form an actual person and not an artificial person.

Evolution of a Personal Brand : How to make it real?

In order to set yourself up as a personal brand there are specific steps listed out by Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju in his Digital Deepak Internship, which are as follow :-

LEARN : From the very first day that you are born, you have been continuously learning, learning to walk, to eat, to talk. We as humans have this inbuilt habit of learning. Consciously or unconsciously we are feeding ourselves information all through our lives.

You just have to tap into that learning capability and make its work for us rather that against us. Learn a new skill through Concepts, Fact & Procedures.

Understand the concepts; Remember the facts; Practice the procedure.

2. WORK : Now that you have learnt this new skill, you need to test yourself on how competent you have become in this new field.

Put your newfound skill to work. Go from Practice ↠ Implementation

Implementing the new skills you have acquired in the real world will give you a deeper understanding of the subject and you will be compelled to grow more into the field of your choice as much you implement it.

3. BLOG : Writing as stated above is an important life skill to learn. Now as you have learned and worked your way into this new found field, write about what you have learned and experienced through your work.

Writing here here servers 2 purposes :

➞ You will understand what you have learned and worked in a better way.

➞You will start building your personal brand

4. CONSULT : Now that you have a personal brand through your blog, you have work experience and have learned the fundamentals of the field that you are in, in this case 'Digital Marketing’. Start consulting other businesses instead of working for them. Here you are putting everything up to this stage into play and building yourself into a brand. This gives you freedom and helps you grow further in your career.

5. MENTOR : Now you have become a well known brand and are consulting companies on how they should be working, naturally people will be drawn towards you. You then mentor those people who want to be like you. Mentoring will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level. Because teaching what you have learned strengthens the concepts deeper into your mind.

6. START-UP : Now, at this stage you will be well equipped with all the necessary fundamental information that you need to know about your chosen subject and have the sufficient work experience and also the in-depth knowledge about how the market responds to your ideas and the things that you want to offer. Start your own product or service with all this understanding.

CONCLUSION

If you did read it till here, Congratulations! May this be your first step into the immense and exciting field of Digital Marketing.

Now, it’s one you to research and study in-depth about each of these components that we talked about in this article. There is no such thing as knowing too much. So study, learn and put your heart into it and you’ll rise up to the top.

Digital Marketing is one of the newest emerging fields in India and the world, and it is here to stay.

I hope this article provided you with an insight and flushed you with enough motivation to start your own digital marketing journey. Feel free to let me know how you felt after reading this and what you are going to do to implement and convert your dreams into action.

Best of Luck for you journey.

I’ll see you in the market.

Cheers!

Akash Narayan.