ASSIGN

HOW DIGITAL DEEPAK LIT UP MY PATH TO A CAREER IN DIGITAL MARKETING WITH HIS “DEEPAK”

Introduction

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation India has said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.” In keeping with this principle, I, an avid Gandhi fan, started learning Digital Marketing, at the ripe age of 46, through www.digitaldeepak.com.

My goal to learn digital marketing had been crystallized way back in 2019 when my cousin brother used to mention that digital marketing was one of the fields in which he saw a great future. I wanted to start learning digital marketing because I wanted an office job.

By education, I am a civil engineer. I have worked for 20 years in civil engineering. I have done field work just for one year. I hated doing field work in civil engineering. Therefore, I started doing content writing. For ten years I have been a freelance content writer.

I started a company called as HARY CONSULTANTS AND ENGINEERS, which has its own page on Facebook. The link of the page is https://www.facebook.com/HARY-Consultants-and-Engineers-109980477046522/?modal=admin_todo_tour. Coming back to my intention of learning Digital Marketing, I was looking out for a suitable course to do in the subject, when I came across a YouTube video created by Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju.

It was a TEDx talk on blogging. During my content writing spree, I had written many blogs. Therefore, I watched the video. After watching the video, I got further interested in the person and started finding out more information about him. This is when I came across the information that he is conducting an internship in digital marketing.

On further research, I found out that I could also get a job in digital marketing if I pursued a course in the subject through www.digitaldeepak.com. I listened to testimonials of satisfied past students who were currently pursuing their 1st batch of the internship. I was hooked to his personality.

I found out that the 2nd batch of the internship was going to start on 25th February 20, through a webinar, I attended because I wanted to know more about the internship. I did not enroll for the internship on the day of the webinar. Deepak Sir sent me important links to the webinar the next day.

That was when I decided to enroll. I paid the initial deposit of Rs 4999/- through internet banking and decided to pay the rest of the Rs 10,000/- before 25th February 20. I began asking Deepak Sir for an EMI option during the webinar itself. He suggested that I pay in EMI via www.zestmoney.com.

I paid the Rs 10,000/- by taking a loan from the website. The EMI came to Rs 3500 approximately for three months. Then I waited eagerly for the 1st lecture. 25th February 20 came soon and I was online much before the 9 o clock time. From here on, I will cover whatever I learned in the webinar from Digital Deepak.

How Digital Deepak lit my path towards Digital Marketing with his “Deepak”

Digital Deepak started the webinar by thanking people who had joined the class promptly. He then went on to explain the structure of the internship program. He explained about how assignments given at the end of each class were to be submitted. He mentioned that scores would be given for the first 100 students.

Digital Deepak asked the students to share their bank details to make the payments for their complete assignments. He also exhorted his students to join the Facebook Group for interns’ batch 2. Digital Deepak also explained how the payments would be released. In this way, he started the 1st webinar lecture of the 2nd batch of the internship.

Digital Deepak made clear his intentions for forming the Facebook Group for interns. He said that he wanted to give his students a network of alumni and peers, who can support them when they are in trouble professionally. He wanted to create a learning structure like that created in large universities like Harvard and Stanford, not to mention the IITs.

Next Digital Deepak spoke about the importance of having a goal for the internship. He quoted Warren Buffet saying “An ordinary person, who has a goal and a plan, will beat the intelligent person without a goal.” Digital Deepak requested his students to improve their communication skills so as to excel in all areas of their lives.

He further implored them to improve their sales skills so that they can sell themselves and their products/services better. Digital Deepak further called on his students to have a definite goal for the internship. He wanted his students to write down on a piece of paper that they wanted to become after the internship.

Digital Deepak then spoke about marketing. He said that it was necessary to become a marketer first before becoming a digital marketer. He further said that marketing had existed for donkey’s years and the digital medium had just added a technological angle to marketing. Therefore, he opined that knowledge of marketing was essential to become a digital marketer.

Digital Deepak then talked of his students trying to find the gold in their respective niches. He said there are many niches that can be catered to. It was necessary for his students to focus on their niche and find their gold. The onus was on them to find money in their respective niches.

Digital Deepak then talked of the Ever-Expanding Market. He said that market needs always expand as solutions to need tend to give rise to new needs. Therefore, needs are ever increasing. Digital Deepak gave the example of the car market to explain how the market expands. He said that the car was invented as a solution to the human need to go from one place to another.

This car invention gave rise to the need for seat covers, the need for fuel, the need for car washing, the need for tyres, the need for car stereo systems, the need for alloy wheels, etc. Digital Deepak further said that with each solution for a need, an opportunity arose for humans to do business in that product/service.

This opportunity could lead them to their gold. This opportunity could lead them to their wealth. He further said that there was an abundance of wealth in the world and one just needed to think of a suitable niche and provide products/services in that niche. Digital Deepak exhorted his students to come up with narrow niches.

He further said that the narrower the niche, the more their chance of making money in that niche. Digital Deepak requested his students to become leaders in their chosen niches. He said this because he opined that everybody will remember the leader in a particular niche and the others will vanish into oblivion.

Therefore, he requested his students to become number 1 in their chosen narrow niches. He further went on to tell his students that he wanted to restrict himself to becoming a leader in the digital marketing space in India. His goal was to become the Neil Patel of India.

Digital Deepak said that by trying to become the number 1 in digital marketing space in India, he was trying to become the leader in his narrow niche. His intention in doing so was to be remembered for his work in that narrow niche. He gave the example of Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on the moon to justify his point.

Digital Deepak then went on to talk about Global Economics. He said that knowledge of World Economics was necessary to become a good digital marketer. In economics he discussed that the economy of a country is directly proportional to average age of a country. He further said that the average age of a country is in turn directly proportional to spending.

He further elaborated that the economy tanks when the average age of a country rises above 50 and household spending reduces. Digital Deepak gave the golden rules that debt creates money and deflation of money supply is a result of people repaying debts. He elucidated that during recession, strong companies survive and weak companies fail.

Digital Deepak informed his students that the average age of India was around 28. During the age from 25 to 50 a person’s spending peaks. He gets married, starts a family, buys a new house, and takes vacations. Therefore, there is a lot of opportunity in India as a country at this time. He felt that India is on the cusp of a digital boom. Digital Deepak said that the next 100 billionaires will come from India due to its strong economy.

Digital Deepak feels that debt is responsible for the free flow of money in the economy. The more the liquidity in the economy, the more easily money will flow. This will result in prosperity. At such times, the economy grows. People always pay for value. People pay for gaining skills like Communication.

Digital Deepak opines that communication is a key skill needed to succeed. Therefore, this program will focus on communication and writing skills. He felt that good communication can create a successful professional or a successful entrepreneur. Sir further said that he had made an attempt to include a lot of communication and writing in the assignments so that his students improve their communication.

Digital Deepak taught us the easy ways to improve communication as under:

• Read for 30 minutes a day
• Start with simple books and slowly move on to complex ones
• Listen to podcasts on media like Spotify
• Write a lot
• Watch English sitcoms like Office, Mad Men, Seinfeld, etc
• Watch standup comedy shows to learn culture and master slangs

Digital Deepak further taught us that we can improve our English even if we are from a tier 2 city like him. He told us how he improved his English by following the above mentioned methods He further told us how he improved his English by reading Tinkle comics and Archie comics.

Digital Deepak then talked about the future of digital marketing. He said that since the world is moving towards digital media, digital marketing will never die. In fact, with ever increasing needs, it will be more in demand. Digital Marketing is nothing but a combination of simple marketing and technology. He felt that digital marketing was simply a better way to do marketing.

Next Digital Deepak talked about how integrated digital marketing works. He said that if you have good content which is SEO optimized, you can drive traffic to your website. Moreover, if you have good content and you market it on social media that again will drive traffic to your website.

Both SEO and social media will help you build an email list. Once you build an email list, you can sell and convert. He further said that paid advertising will also help you build traffic to your website but that will be at a cost. Digital Deepak said that all the methods of advertising be it SEO, social media, email marketing and paid advertising can be successful if you have excellently written content.

Next Digital Deepak dealt with the topic of how to select a niche. He said that your niche should be selected from a combination of passion, talent and market opportunity. He further said that the three main niches were health, money and relationships. Our Sir told us to get 1000 customers who can each pay Rs 10,000 so that we can earn Rs 1 crore.

Then Digital Deepak discussed how to find market demand. He said that we could use Google Auto Suggest. Another tool that could be used is AnswerThePublic He also exhorted us to look for Amazon Reviews. He told us that we can also scratch our own niche like Bikeadvice.com and DigitalDeepak.com which were his niches.

Additionally, he said students could talk to their customers in order to find market demand. He also said that market demand can be found by looking for pre and post products/services of other products/services. Therefore, locating market demand was easy. This was essential to know what products/services to create.

Then Digital Deepak explained the importance of building a personal brand of our own. He said that the best known will always beat the best and therefore we should not hesitate to put our content out there. We should not have the fear of standing out. We should stop trying to just fit in. We should stop trying to adjust in order to become a part of a group.

He exhorted his students to show their character and personality on social media. He further requested his students to publish more of their content in different forms in order to own more of the internet. He further said that only by building a personal brand can we push ourselves ahead of the competition. Our personal brand will help us fulfill our desire to become unique.

Digital Deepak gave his own example. He said that more students joined his internship because they were attracted by his personal brand. The way he put out his free content in basic digital marketing on the internet and the way he was giving out freebies to people. He further said that such things helped him create his own personal brand which further rubbed off on his blog www.digitaldeepak.com and made it famous.

Next Digital Deepak went on to explain the benefits of having a personal brand. He said that by this his students can have their own style and their own tribe. He further said that customers want to hear from people and not from brand logos. He said to his students that they could build their own training business/their own consulting, get a job or close a client if they had a personal brand.

Digital Deepak further went on to request his students to build their own personal fame within a community. He told them to write, publish videos and do public speaking. He further went on to tell them that it was cool to be known by other people. These were some of the benefits of building their own personal brand.

Digital Deepak finally talked about how the funnel works. He asked his students to build a free line. He gave his own example. He had put out a free course in basic digital marketing before he announced his internship. He said that he built trust in people’s minds through the free digital marketing course.

He further build brand ambassadors in the form of the first internship batch of students in order to promote his personal brand. Thus, it was possible to attract such a large turnout for his internship. He explained that the funnel worked for him and he got traction in his internship course. Digital Deepak asked his students to make the funnel automated and build relationships on the funnel.

Finally Digital Deepak shared the mind map of his activities with the students. He showed us how he put out free content, testimonials and weaned new customers for his internship. He further showed that he gave TEDx talks and did book publishing which gave a fillip to his personal brand. He also undertook webinars which gave him an edge over his competitors in teaching digital marketing.

Conclusion

At the end, Digital Deepak shared the assignment. He said that his students were to write an article of 500–2000 words on what they learnt in the first lecture of his internship. He asked us to publish the article on www.blogspot.com or our own blog or on www.wordpress.com. He asked us to share the article on social media. He also shared the form for embedding the assignment in it.

He also shared links of the telegram channel and asked his students to join the channel. He said he will also give a free gift at the end of the class. This is all that we learnt in the first class of the digital marketing internship of Digital Deepak. This is HOW DIGITAL DEEPAK LIT UP MY PATH TO A CAREER IN DIGITAL MARKETING WITH HIS ‘DEEPAK’.

THIS ASSIGNMENT IS SUBMITTED AS PART OF THE DIGITAL MARKETING INTERNSHIP PROGRAM