Article written by Brendon Saunders (ActionCOACH Business Coach)
Have you rated your company against the six P’s of marketing?
Do you know the significant influence this can have on your entire business? It goes far further into the organisation make up than just in the marketing department.
What are the six P’s?
To break it down a bit more simply:
1. Product
Create a product or service that is desirable and offers real tangible or even perceived value. Fulfilling a market opportunity with a timely product that meets customers’ needs will help boost sales, brand confidence, and wallet share.
2. Price
The price you sell your product or service at should be attractive to customers. An effective pricing strategy ensures that customers are willing to buy the product- generating sales for the company. However with personal experience, pricing a quality product towards the lower end of the market can prove to be a costly mistake as this can create a misconception about your product. The trick is to find that happy medium.
3. Place
Find out where your customer ‘hangs out’, this will help you determine the best place to sell your product or service. This may be online (ascertain which platforms you’ll most likely reach them on), a physical shop, or a shelf in a retail store. The correct placement of your products will create sales opportunities.
4. Promotion
Create attention-grabbing promotions. Be really clear about what you want them to know about you, who you are, and what you are about. The aim is to attract a customer’s attention and foster interest in you and your product. This will lead them to buying your product. Doing what the competition is doing doesn’t allow you to stand out from the crowd. What is your outrageous idea to market yourself?
5. People
Identify the right people to improve marketing success. Ensure that the people you work with represent your core values. Your ideal customers will relate to your core values, and this will help them form a connection with your company and product which will lead to a healthier alignment with the brand. The wrong people can kill a company far quicker than a poor market. Hire the team that resonates with your pre-determined, clearly defined “Points of Culture”.
6. Process
Creating great processes throughout the sales cycle of a product will ensure consistency and help you avoid bad marketing. Everyone in the supply chain should know and implement the same processes. Great customer service doesn’t happen by accident, it is carefully engineered. The new processes will require additional steps and potentially, even an overhaul of your company organogram to ensure all the processes and teams work in synergy.
Bonus three questions
Once you have thought through and implemented the above, you should ask yourself these three questions:
- Have you compared your company to that of your industry leaders?
- Have you got to the emotional need your product or service satisfies?
- Does it sound like you have some work to do on your business?
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