Marketing aims to build your brand name and business in a consistent way. Pouring money into marketing without any use would simply be futile attempts at making your business reach the limits you intended. Thinking strategically about your business, consider the 5 P’s of marketing.
The 5 P’s cater to the different areas of your business and can facilitate in adding value to your products and services. The 5 P’s include:
Product
What service are you providing to your customers? What other value added services are included with the product? The warranty and the packaging along with the item and/or service make up the product element of 5 P’s of marketing.
When you market your product, you need to keep in mind your target audience and the kind of services they expect of you.
For example, if you are a software developer making Android applications, you need to make sure that your app has a good UI, is useful to all its users, is bug free so it doesn’t crash often and it is updated with better versions on a regular basis.
For a food catering company, the food, the persons delivering the food, the manager at the site, all the utensils, dishes, and cutlery provided by you – are all considered as the product. Make sure all the personnel have matching uniforms, the food is neatly plated, the cutlery and the rest of the utensils all match. Presentation is everything in the food business.
Price
Now comes another important part of marketing techniques. Price.
Price of the product includes the cost of the product/service and also the time that must be invested to purchase the product or service. It also includes the advertised price, discounts, credit terms or other payment options.
When pricing your product you need to keep a few things in mind – the cost to the company, the competition’s price, the value to the customer and the standard markup in the industry. The pricing of your product should reflect what the target audience is interested in and can afford.
For example, if you are a wedding planner organizing small scale weddings, your rates should reflect in that. Or if you’re a company that provides budget car rentals, the pricing should reflect the choice. The pricing should also be relative to your business growth and positioning.
Also Read: Why are most food-tech startups failing?
Place
The place element of marketing refers to how you deliver/provide the product/service to your customers.
It includes a physical location and/or an online presence via a shop front, a website or as a distributor, and the delivery methods. Location is key to your business growth.
For example, if you’re a clothes shop owner you would want your store to be at a prime location in the market to get the needed traffic. Often big brands pay more for prime locations just to get more customers.
If you’re a seller on an online e-commerce website like Flipkart, Amazon or Snapdeal, how you manage your stock also comes into the equation. Failure to deliver your products or not having enough stock can be a big drawback to your services.
Promotion
Promotion is the most important aspect of marketing. Make note! Without proper marketing you cannot expect to get enough revenue.
Promotion tactics includes public relations, sales, advertising, direct marketing and sponsorships. Promotional medium includes word of mouth, and free and paid marketing on the internet, radio, TV, etc. In an era, when more than half the world’s population is online, online marketing is the go-to approach for budding startups.
The best promotion tactic is to advertise your product at locations where your target audience is most frequent. If your target audience is on Facebook and Twitter, you need to be there too.
For example, if you’re trying to set your college tech fest as a brand name, you might want to add sponsorships into your marketing mix.
With proper promotion also comes the responsibility of handling all the footfall traffic at your company front.
People
This element comprises of both the staff and your customers. This covers the customer satisfaction, customer service and customer-staff relations, as well as effective communication and proper training and skills in consumer relations for your staff.
By providing excellent customer service, you create a positive experience for your customers and thus establish your brand name. The customer satisfaction levels guarantee you more traffic and also referrals from existing customers.
Recruit the right people, train your staff to develop their skills and retain the good staff to give your company a competitive edge. Training includes making your staff more efficient in communication, making them aware of proper marketing techniques.
If you’re expanding your business online, your tech department must be well suited to handle a website and the PR team should be invested in advertising your company in the right way.
Imagine if you ordered an expensive black leather watch from some online retailer X and on delivery you see that the packaging is damaged or the watch is faulty or that some component broke during shipping. Now upon complaining about it to the customer service executives, suppose your request is not processed correctly or promptly. This would obviously leave a bad impression in your mind about the company.
Now, imagine if you ordered the same item from some other online retailer Y and you faced the same issues with the product. Upon filing a exchange request with the company, your request was processed promptly and the product was exchanged the very next day. Y has now made a place in your heart for its prompt and excellent customer service biasing you towards itself in your future transactions.
Also Read: The New Breed of Entrepreneurs:”Social Entrepreneurs”
No matter how trivial these 5 P’s might seem, each is very important in your business growth.
Let’s see an example of the 5 P’s in a real life scenario.
Tours and travels
You might run a tours and travels business which organizers trips to various scenic or adventure locations catering to backpackers, campers etc. To position yourself in the market, you might consider having:
- Product – Properly planned itineraries
- Price – Affordable prices for budget-conscious travelers
- Place – an in-town location so you can be found easily
- Promotion – a Facebook page, a Twitter account to promote your business and to attract people for future trips
- People – Experienced guides and friendly staff members who like to interact with fellow travelers
Let’s take another example.
Personalized gifts seller
You might run a business that caters to the people who need personalized gifts made for their loved ones on special occasions. Here’s how you can use the 5 P’s effectively:
- Product – A wide range of designs and products for the customers to choose from with room for changes as required by the customer
- Price – Affordable prices for all
- Place – Preferably a prime location so customers can easily find you
- Promotion – TV ads displaying your best selling products, Facebook page so customers can be updated about new and upcoming products
- People – Tech-savvy salespersons who can understand the customers’ needs and guide them to choose the correct product in accordance.
