Art of Marketing
Chapter 9. Marketing mix
The story is the heart of the sale. — Matthew Pollard
The marketing mix is like an elaborate recipe
for a particular dish you’re about to cook.
Each type of ingredient is essential,
they must be put into the dish
with the correct quality and quantity,
at the right time for the dish
to reach the taste buds of even the most demanding people.
There are 7 P’s associated with the marketing mix.
Just a change in ingredients can make a big or small change
to your business.
Often, changing one element of the marketing mix
can transform your business completely,
from a small business to a large one,
or,
if you’re unlucky,
from a small business becomes a small business.
Let’s look at each component in the order below.
Some people want it to happen.
Some wish it would happen.
Others make it happen. ― Michael Jordan
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Product or service
The first ingredient of the marketing mix is your product or service.
This is the starting point.
What exactly are you selling?
The first half of the answer to this question is the product
or service itself.
What’s that?
How was it created?
What is its effect?
What purpose does it serve?
The other half of the answer to the question
“What is your product?”
What your product actually “does” to change,
improve,
or transform the lives of your customers.
This is the most important question
you must ask and answer to achieve marketing success.
What will you say?
Whatever your answer is,
it should be at the heart of your business.
Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come.
Get up and make them. ― Madame C. J. Walker
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Price
The second component of the marketing mix is the pricing strategy.
What exactly do your products and services cost to produce,
including both direct and indirect costs?
On that platform,
how much do you sell or need to sell to customers
to generate enough profit
to have a reason to do business in the first place?
Your pricing strategy can make the difference
between high and low profits.
Sometimes, a gradual price increase of a few percent
over the year can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.
Small but consistent reductions in costs
with constant quality can dramatically
increase your bottom line.
Sometimes,
you can add a new feature to an existing product
and dramatically increase the perceived value
and cost of the product.
Sometimes you can remove a feature
that customers don’t care about
and reduce costs to increase profits accordingly.
Pricing strategy is something
you need to consider continuously,
for any product or service,
throughout its life.
Small changes in price can lead to drastic changes in your profits.
Always deliver more than expected. — Larry Page
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Promotion
The third component of the marketing mix is promotion.
This is a general term that refers to everything
you will have to do to inform customers about your products
or services in order to convince them to buy them rather
than to buy your competitors’ products or services.
Promotion starts with your marketing strategy.
Who are your customers?
What do your customers value?
What benefits can your product or service provide to your customers
that your competitors cannot?
How can you explain or pinpoint the most important reason customers
should buy from you?
Your answers to these questions,
or your unique selling proposition,
will become the focus and core of all your advertising and promotion.
The reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is my focus has never,
ever for one minute been money. ― Oprah Winfrey
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Place
The fourth P is the place where you will sell your product or service.
How and where do customers buy your product or service?
Will they buy it directly from you,
from your office or store?
Is it sent by mail or e-mail?
Changing your sales location can dramatically change the sales
you’re making and the profits you’re generating.
Amazon has become the world’s largest online retailer,
largely because of the location
where it stores its warehouses
and the speed at which its products
and services are delivered.
How can you change the location
or location of your business,
or make it more convenient and attractive
to deliver your products and services to customers to increase sales?
This is one of the big questions that can make or break a business.
“Choose to deliver amazing service to your customers.
You’ll stand out because they don’t get it anywhere else.” – Kevin Stirtz
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Packing
The fifth component of the marketing mix is packaging,
which contains the bulk of the visual impression made
by any part of your business to potential customers.
Everyone has very powerful intuition
95% of a person’s first impression of your business,
product or service will be based on what they see with their own eyes.
They then take 4 seconds to make a rating on whether your product
or service is good,
worth buying,
valuable,
worth it,
and/or better than yours competitor or not.
Over the next 30 seconds,
they started using something called “confirmation bias.”
That’s when they justify, rationalize,
and reaffirm the firm decision
they made in the first 4 seconds.
Prioritize visual perception.
What can you do,
starting today,
to improve the packaging of any part of your product or service?
How do you make your products,
services,
people or company more visually appealing?
How do you improve the look of your company’s brochures,
print materials and website to attract people at first sight?
Make today worth remembering. — Zig Ziglar
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Positioning
The sixth component of the marketing mix is your position.
This is one of the most important factors in marketing
and sales today and just as important as the others.
Your location refers to the way your customers
or non-customers think about you
and talk about you after they use your products and services
when you are not there.
Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School once said,
“A company’s most valuable asset is its reputation.”
Your credibility is defined
as “you in the eyes of others, especially your customers.”
What do customers,
prospects, and non-customers think of your company,
product or service?
You need to know the answers to the above questions
and also need to continue to improve those answers.
“In order to achieve goals you have not achieved
before you have to become someone you haven’t been before.” — Jim Rohn
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People
The seventh component of the marketing mix is people.
In the final analysis,
people do not buy products from companies.
They buy them from the company’s sales staff.
In my business seminars,
I have pointed out one of the golden rules of selling:
“A customer will not buy from you
until he is convinced that you are his friend,
and you are acting in his interest.”
In our explanations of “relationship selling,”
we’ve shown that it’s how people perceive you
—personal and personal connection
—that largely determines whether
that customer will buy from you or from competitors.
We only buy from people we like
or who are like us in some way.
Choosing the people who interact
with your customers can be the single most important factor determining
your success or failure.
You need to choose people who care about others.
Who are the key people inside
or outside the company that determine your sales?
Who creates the lasting impression
that governs what your customers think
and feel about you when you’re not there?
Successful marketing is based on correctly defining
the right marketing mix.
If your product or service isn’t selling as expected,
or if your company isn’t generating the desired profits,
usually one or more elements
of the marketing mix need to be changed.
This mix needs to be constantly reviewed
and weighed to deliver the highest possible sales
and the greatest possible yield.
And there are always many ways for you to improve one
or more of the seven factors above.
“Don’t ask for life to be easy.
Ask for it to be worth it.”— Jim Rohn
