11 Things I Learn in Week 2 of Digital Deepak’s Internship Program.

12 min readJan 23, 2021

Learning anything is complex.

It encompasses tons of struggle, disciplined hours, failure, dedication towards honing a skill and how can we forget, learning from your mistakes. That’s the reason many great minds pursue knowledge and look out for mentors to guide them from making those mistakes that they have already made.

To be honest, I am not a great mind (might be lazy), but I have always believed in playing smart over hard. I am also a fan of timeless learning, strategies, and tactics. I am always looking out for them. When I find do found them, I make sure I apply them immediately to witness the result.

In this article, I am sharing 11 strategies that I have learned from the week 2 Assignment by Digital Deepak’s internship program. For better results do apply it or just make a note.

1) Mastering Setting Goals:

You may be the lover of chaotic order, an anarchist and maybe have a fallacy that setting up goals makes you a mundane person, but it’s far from the truth. In reality many great accomplishes have advocated their success in setting goals and sticking to them (including ups and down). Setting goals gives you direction and in long run, happiness. If you don’t tie yourself with a goal you will have trouble in making good decisions, the idea is to wander not to be lost in the pool of chaos.

You will be amazed to know that in several scientific studies & experiments conducted it was found that people who make smart and tangible goals are living happy and anxious free over those who don’t make the use of goal setting.

The best approach in setting up a goal is to aim for tangible goals and avoid ambiguity. Example “In 3 months I will learn HTML/CSS & JavaScript. Through XYZ Inc.” is a tangible goal statement. Now writing “I will learn web development” an ambiguous goal statement (which I call a doomsday goal statement) will make you directionless.

For Liberation set Financial Goals: Young founders, freelancers, and even people in their 20s take this subject for granted that there is no need for financial knowledge. I bet to differ.

There is a quote by Robert J. Shiller an American economist emphasizing the importance of finance.

“Finance is not merely about making money. It’s about achieving our deep goals and protecting the fruits of our labor. It’s about stewardship and, therefore, about achieving the good society.”

Having knowledge of finance is important for marketers. It won’t make a big difference in the creative side of the business but will assist in constructing strategies. Accompanying its funnel framework will help you in creating a clear vision.

2) Be a Marketer over a digital marketer, understand fundamentals first:

Everyone has a different opinion about marketing. Many are strange, some opinions are out of the context with what marketing is, and while some opinions had made marketing infamous. I had an out of the context opinion before watching this week’s video. I used to consider digital marketing as a new wave and used to deem classic marketing fundamentals as old and outdated. Oh boy, I was wrong.

To explain to you in simple terms “Marketing is actions which you take in business to make people buy your product and service”.

Now, this can be anything understanding their need, giving better buying experience & support, making your product visible to the public (advertising), give a purpose to the public for them to buy your product (branding), it can be as simple as wearing a T-shirt of your company name and many other crazy marketing gambits.

The purpose of marketing especially in today’s age where consumer also has a voice is to not only to make a sale but also to help consumers in their journey. Make a dent as Steve jobs quoted.

Here having a depth understanding of marketing works as a wonder for you. You can apply it in digital marketing easily but initially, you have to your marketing fundamentals right.

Marketing is based on science, not on creativity.
Marketing is only a perception. But the product is the reality.
As a brand, the focus should be on telling a story rather than broadcasting to your audience.
Advertising, copywriting and content writing are components of marketing.
Building a viable product and service is essential. The product should be the priority over marketing.

3) Marketing boosts sales — but why?

Do marketing help in making sales? Of course, no denying this, it’s a holy truth. Sales are marketing-driven and good marketing is all about being obsessed with customers.

Today more than ever it becomes crucial for companies to do research and coming up with viable products or services before offering them. Sales are also essential to run a business, and having a good sales funnel is also reacquired but if you have a good product or service base on good marketing research, makes doing sales easy.

Properly executed marketing makes sales easy and fun too.

4) Being an effective communicator:

Most of what we know about communication is wrong.

We know that as a marketer communication has become an important skill and area to work upon, a lifetime venture. But most people are confused about where they should focus on.

Loosely explain: the best communication is the ability to deliver the message to the right audience. You don’t have to become a great literature writer, no one expects from you as a marketer, or neither you need top-notch grammar and vocabulary skills. All you need is to become a good articulator.

Expressing yourself is not just a skill that will help you in marketing but will help you in other aspects of your life also.

Improving communication is not a one-day job. You have to refine it over the period. Have to put tremendous effort, it’s a lifelong process. But there are some strategies which you can start from day one.

Become an avid reader. Consume more relevant knowledge on your forte. Make it a habit of practicing reading every day.
Interact with your target audience. Make a habit of listening and observing their behavior.
Write a lot, just start writing. You can’t learn swimming by reading a book similarly writing can’t be learned through books and courses.
Watch sitcoms and stand-up comedy on the language you want to learn. Focus on how they interact and communicate.
Think in English. Try to speak and think in English as much as it is possible. You have to realize that you are learning a language, not a subject.

Practicing above these tricks will help you moving in mastering communication.

5) Learn the basics of global economics and the market.

Seriously, economics? You must be thinking that how come knowing about economics will help you in building your business and marketing acumen. All economics has is theory plated in big boring books, with a cherry on the top as weird-sounding jargons. But I am afraid that’s not true, but a myth.

Excluding jargon (which you start grasping overtime), economics is a very interesting topic. By definition: “Economics is the study with the use of scientific methods to understand how scarce resources are exchanged and utilized within society”. As a marketer and someone who is starting his or her business, you have to manage with limited resources and time. There is always a tight budget and time management becomes important. Managing them becomes harder and it keeps getting harder every day. Here having a basic knowledge of economics helps us to be more productive.

There are many basic fundamentals of economic theories and I am not going to bore you by naming them all. But all of them are crazy productivity booster, all you have to do is apply them in your business and life.

Why be global?

Today more than ever all businesses are interconnected, because of globalization. Now socio-economical movements, politics, technologies, and other factors of a different area of the globe are giving rise to different challenges and opportunities. Having a clear understanding of economics fundamentals for a businessman helps him in becoming a productivity genius:

Here are some important reasons to learn economics:

Economics helps in identifying opportunities and threats.
Economics makes it easier for entrepreneurs to utilize & manage resources.
Understand policies and politics better.
How individual decisions impact the whole nation and industry.
Economics assists you in identifying which area you should work on base on your competitive advantage.

Take a leap to dig deeper you will start loving it.

Books: Economics 101 by Alfred Mill, Currency War by James Rickards, and Capital by Thomas Piketty.

6) Having a good product is important.

Most of the time, raw marketers make the mistake of being marketers over being an inventor. You have to understand that product marketing and marketing are synonyms to each other. Both of them are hybrid to each other.

Product marketing is all about selling a product before its born. Confused, don’t be. Product marketing is easier to understand when you start listening to your audience’s need and demand over your market obsession.

It is all about catering and creating a product or service which your audience wants. Before Amazon’s entry, all readers wanted was the wide variety of options to buy a book. Amazon understood this, and America lost leader Barnes and Nobles.

First, create an excellent product or service, and this will fabricate your success.

7) Say yes to Direct response marketing:

Executing a marketing campaign can be an overwhelming process. From managing a huge budget to scaling the outcome of your campaign. It becomes harder for marketers to execute it without getting exhausted.

Here being smart and using direct response marketing make it more comfortable over general marketing.

Direct response marketing is all about making your customer take actional steps on the spot.

Unlike brand awareness where it is hard to measure your campaign success, or if you even can measure it. It becomes a lot easier to identify mistakes and work on them.

To understand it better here, are some examples of direct response marketing:

Call to action number in newspaper.
A late-night infomercial commercial promoting call and action.
A product sales page. That will late you into the checkout.

Books: Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugarman, and Confession of an advertising man by David Ogilvy.

When your direct response marketing is properly executed, it will drive more subscribers and boost your cash flows.

8) Executing actions with a framework:

Marketing is dynamic and zestful. It is upgrading every day, and often this makes it hard to work on. Here being smart helps! As a marketer using frameworks which are template containing instructions makes it easier to execute the idea into action by converting it into a marketing plan.

The framework ensures that you are considering all major points (works kind of like a checklist).

Marketing framework gives your plan a shape — which becomes vital when you are planning the execution and measuring metrics.

In the week 2 video of the internship program, we learn about two frameworks. And I am going to share with you both of them.

9) CATT Funnel Framework:

CATT funnel process lets you make your audience journey. Through this process, your customer reaches to you. To better understand the CATT funnel, we have to dig deeper.

To understand the CATT funnel, we have to first demystify it.

CATT funnel stands for n^CATT where:

N stands for NICHE: What unique service or product you offer? Niche makes you stand out from the crowd. To make your audience journey awesome it is the first step to have a particular niche that has needs and you are also passionate about it.

You can choose the niche considering this image. Your niche should align with the market need and with your passion and talent.

C stands for content: “Content is the king” — Bill gates. This quote by Bill Gates sums up the importance of content. For a brand sharing content is one of the best ways to communicate with their audience & build trust.

These are some basic content types:

· Article

· Blog post

· E-course

· Email marketing

· Infographics

· Case studies

· Good landing page

· Audio etc.

A stand for Attention: Start getting attention after selecting a niche and creating content. Drive traffic through Social media ads, SEO, and other alternatives that suit you.

T stands for Trust: After having their attention not it is important to build trust. And the best way you can do is by delivering what you have promised them.

T stands for Transaction: Now you have to convert your audience into your customer and you can do this with the natural sales method.

CATT funnel doesn’t work alone it works best with integrated digital marketing.

Also, the CATT funnel works like a cycle.

10) Integrated Digital Marketing:

The ultimate goal of marketing is to serve customers. It sounds simple, but it becomes essential to strategize an action-oriented marketing plan. Turning an idea into actions is a challenging and yet necessary step after planning and brainstorming. Experimenting with different tactics, A/B testing, and if required outsourcing specialization are some of an integral part of the planning and execution.

Due to lack of time and resources, it requires to experiment with new strategies and it becomes important to apply predefined strategies. One of them is Integrated digital marketing.

As its sounds, integrated marketing means combining & making coordinating with all the marketing strategies to form a connected approach for your business. In simple terms, the idea is to combine all the individual marketing strategy which doesn’t have huge impact alone and making it stronger and more influential.

Integrating all individual marketing strategies makes it easier for businesses to build an effective online presence.

11) Uphold the power of personal branding:

If you want to reach a goal, you will need support or to better frame it, a blessing. Having a personal brand gives entrepreneurs, young freelancers,s or anyone multiple advantages. Building a personal brand is not a day job it does require dedication, skill to tell a story, and most important of all discipline to be consistent. But deliver tremendous success in the long term. From networking opportunities to making an authority figure, it certainly becomes crucial for aspiring future leaders to invest their time and money.

Evolution of personal branding:

Personal branding is something that continues to evolve. These are the stages where a personal brand has to go through to become prominent.

Learn: Learn a new skill through concepts, Facts, and procedures.
Work: Put the effort into doing work.
Blog: Blogging about what you have learned including both experience and theory will give you two primary advantages. First, it will amplify your learning, and second, it will build your presence as a thought leader in your niche.
Consult: Now you know your subject and niche. Now all you have to do is to build a holistic view. The best way to do this is to consult. Consult someone who needs your guidance in their business. This will help you get exposure to a different business.
Mentor: It is the next step after consulting and the second last step of your whole evolution process. Mentoring someone is one of the best to become an authority figure and leader in your niche. But most prominently mentoring brings clarity to your thought process. Teaching brings a sense of responsibility in you which helps you in your branding as well as in your other venture.
Start your Start-Up: Now after crossing 4 stages of learning and experimenting. You have come a long way and have proved yourself. Now starting a start-up with your set of skills will be the end of your evolution.

You must follow the above-mentioned steps in accordance for better results.

The above-mentioned process is also known as Mass trust blueprint a term framed by Digital Deepak himself. You can check out his blog and can even become a member of his Facebook group.

Conclusion:

In the end, I want to say that their many points that I learned but I am writing points that had impacted me the most. I would recommend everyone to visit Digital Deepak’s website to know more about both internship and what he is about.

The most crucial thing I learn is to take action. I would also encourage you to take action from the above-mentioned strategies. Also, do leave comments.

I am calling a day, be happy and be curious.