Marketing is essential to any business. It tells the world who you are and helps to define your purpose.
Purposeful and targeted marketing will help you focus on actions that reach the right customers and achieve your business goals – saving you time and money.
Define your marketing strategy
An effective marketing strategy will help you to define the overall direction and goals for your marketing. Your strategy will articulate how you're going to deliver your products or services in ways that will satisfy your customers.
The first step is to define your customer or target market.
Next, you need to come up with ways to carry out your strategy and reach your target market.
Reach your market with the marketing mix
The following 7 tactics are often referred to as the 7 Ps of marketing:
- product (or service)
- price
- place
- promotion
- people
- process
- physical environment
You can use any number of these to achieve your marketing strategy. The combination you choose make up your 'marketing mix'.
Consult your marketing plan to work out which will work best for your strategy.
What are the 7 Ps of marketing?
1. Product or service
This tactic is about your product or service and how you can use it to your advantage. Think about:
- the branding, packaging and ongoing product or development
- the features and benefits you offer
- your unique selling points – what makes your product or service different from others?
- what potential spin-off products or services might be
2. Pricing of your product or service
Price is a critical part of your marketing mix.
Choosing the right price for your products or services will help maximise profits and build strong relationships with your customers. By pricing effectively, you'll also avoid the serious financial consequences that can occur if you price incorrectly:
- too low – not enough profit
- too high – not enough sales
3. Place or position in the marketplace
'Place' is the channels and locations where you distribute your product, related information and support services – basically, where a product can be purchased. Your distribution channels might include:
- a physical place such as a retail store
- an online shop like a website or eBay
- social media
The right location can be a deciding factor in whether a customer buys from you.
Market research can help you find out where your ideal customer is buying from.
4. Promotion of your product or service
Promotion is how you promote and market your business. Regardless of how good your business is, if you don't promote it and tell people you exist, it's unlikely you will make many sales.
Promotion is about attracting the right people to use and reuse your business.
There are several promotion techniques that you can combine and use in different ways to create the most cost-effective strategy for your needs. For example:
- online
- branding
- public relations
- advertising
5. People in your business
The people you employ in your business can influence the marketing of your products and services. For example, knowledgeable and friendly staff can help to create satisfied customers and can provide the unique selling experience that an organisation seeks.
If an outstanding team gives a competitive advantage, then quality recruitment and training will be essential to you achieving your marketing objectives. Make sure you have processes in place and training systems to get the most out of your team.
6. Process (the buying experience)
Process is the buying experience the customer gets when they buy your product or service. This can include things like:
- the way someone presents and serves a fine bottle of wine in a restaurant
- how a business reacts to a complaint
- the speed of delivery in a fast food outlet
A poor process can undermine the other elements of the marketing mix. For example, budget airlines might offer competitive headline prices, but customers might feel they've been taken advantage of if the final price is inflated by extra charges and fees.
Try to document your key processes and procedures so your staff and suppliers know what to aim for. You can record these details in documents that are accessible to all staff, such as:
7. Physical environment
The physical environment where your products or services are sold and delivered can have a significant impact on how your customers experience your business. The physical environment can be the:
- quality of the furnishings in your consulting rooms
- design of your reception area
- appearance and function of your website
Creating a positive physical environment doesn't have to be costly – a vase full of fresh flowers or a creative window display can make a big difference.
As you already know, there are four elements in the marketing mix of any product (and seven in case of services). They are product place, price, and promotion and all of the four play an important and valuable role in the marketing of that brand. While the marketing of a brand begins with its product, the other three elements too are equally important and getting them right is essential to make your marketing strategy win. A good quality product outshines its competitors easily. However, a good product also needs to be complemented with a good price and great promotions. Sometimes, having one of the four elements right makes up for any weakness in the other areas. Like you offer great quality and people are willing to pay higher prices. Your quality or your prices and marketing become the talk of the town and you automatically reap its benefits and do not have to struggle with the promotions part. So, a deep understanding of these elements helps you achieve the best thing — sales and revenue because after all, you want to earn profits from your product and brand. Here, I will discuss the role these elements play in your marketing strategy.
Product: This is the central element in your marketing strategy. Not just the success of your marketing strategy but the image of your brand too depends on the success of your product. In the 21st century where competition has become only all the more intense, you need to have a great quality product to shine on the shelf. Otherwise, your product gets lost in the crowd of brands every customer comes across in the market. So, you do not want your product to lose. You must fill it with quality. Consider the example of Apple. It is its product range that has made the brand a celebrity. The case of Starbucks also proves that good quality products are easier to sell.
Place: Placement also serves an important role in the marketing of a brand. If you want your product to sell, you must place it where your customer segment is. If your product is made for the metropolitan crowd then no use trying to sell it in rural areas. If you have a product for the millennials, then you must sell it online because that’s where you will find the largest crowd of millennials. Moreover, you would not like your product to be inaccessible and so you have to place it where it is easily accessible to your target audience. Brands like IKEA have their stores in strategic locations where they attract the highest number of footfalls.
Price: Pricing is also an important part of a brand’s marketing strategy. Many times your pricing strategy is the most effective part of your marketing strategy. Take for example Walmart. It is the most favorite retailer of the majority of Americans because it sells at the lowest prices. Apple has priced its products higher because it is marketing its products to the higher-end segment. IKEA has a smart pricing strategy that has helped it target middle-class customers effectively. If it was not for its pricing strategy, its customer base would shrink to less than half of its current customer segment. So, you must keep your target market and your competition in mind before pricing your products. This does not just help you attract the right customers but also helps you build a distinct image.
Promotion: After pricing, it is the promotional part. Despite getting the rest elements of your marketing mix right, you might need to do some marketing to let your customers have a better glimpse of your product and its features and quality. You have a great product and a smart pricing strategy but still, you need to reach your target market and help it know and understand your brand and its value proposition. It is because there is a lot of competition and you have to reach your customers before others do. This is the importance of your promotional strategy and promotion mix. Being smart at it means achieving higher sales and penetrating your target market deeper than the competitors.
Marketers must focus on all these aspects of their marketing mix to get the desired results from their marketing campaigns. It is not all about promotion because without a great product all the promotion will return no results. So, focus on making all these aspects strong and if you can truly outshine your competitors in a few areas, it might lead to a need for less investment in the others. Even an average product can sell given your pricing, placement and promotional strategies are right.
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