The 7 P’s of marketing

Knowing how your customer interacts with your brand, product/service is a powerful tool when it comes to setting a successful marketing strategy and plan. The 7 P’s of marketing provide really useful areas to think of ahead of strategy and planning…

PRODUCT (OR SERVICE)

What features of your product or service have an influence on your customer and their decision to buy? What is it about your product/service that means your customer should choose it over that of your competitor?

PRICE

This refers not only to the actual cost of the product/service but also the cost to the customer to buy yourproduct/service ie will they incur costs if they switch to your product from a competitor product

PLACE

When and where is your product/service available to your customer? Timing and placement is everything!

PROMOTION

What is the best way to promote your product to your customer? Would they prefer to be approached via email? Social media? TV? Almost always, it is best to have a mix of several carefully selected channels of promotion.

PEOPLE

In the majority of cases, your customers will come into contact with at least one member of your team – what do you want that contact experience to feel like to the customer? Is it consistent across all of the various customer touchpoints within the business?

PROCESS

Process, process, process – every business has processes that the customer will come into contact with – are they creating the right customer perception of your business?

PHYSICAL PRESENCE

Where there is no product, the image that a company portrays is even more important. Whether it is your company vehicles, staff, office, all of these things will create an overall impression of your business and prospective customers will be influenced by this in their buying decision making process.

Hopefully this has given you some food for thought ahead of your strategy and planning. The next step is to list the activity against each ‘P’ that you think will work best for your business.