Whenever you visit a shop, click on a website, view an advert, and make a choice about what to buy as a consumer, you are being influenced by the forces of marketing. Marketing has perhaps the biggest impact on the wider shape of our society, and it’s absolutely vital for the success and performance of businesses large and small. Marketing is responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements in a profitable way, and history will show that if you can’t get close to customers and satisfy their needs, a competitor will.

With that in mind, businesses are always looking for the magic formula for marketing success. The ultimate strategy that can help them do their marketing the ‘right’ way and achieve the success they dream of. The bad news is, marketing is ever-changing, and so details of how it all works are something you need to keep up with. There is good news however: The ‘7 P Formula’.

The 7 Ps of marketing are simple principles that should be followed to improve your marketing success. They include:

• Product
• Place
• Price
• Promotion
• Physical evidence/environment
• People
• Processes

Product: 

This is perhaps the hardest P because it requires you to really look at your business offerings. There is no point in developing products or services that no one wants to buy, and so you should be designing every product around what your target market wants. This might sound simple, but many businesses decide what to offer first, and try to find a market for it afterwards. The ‘Product’ P is all about crafting a sellable and durable product that meets a genuine need for your target market. Doing so might mean improving quality, adding variants to existing products or services, or creating new ones to meet new emerging needs. 

Place: 

The phrase ‘right place, right time’ has never been more applicable than right here! It’s all about promoting your product or service in the correct place to get it in front of those who need and want it. But as well as having your product in the right place at the right time, you also need to have it in the right quantity, in an accessible way. That means keeping storage, inventory and distribution running smoothly. It applies to both e-commerce and bricks and mortar businesses. But in e-commerce, it’s absolutely essential—especially since surveys show that delivery performance is one of the most important criteria when choosing a supplier.

Price: 

Your product is only worth what a customer is prepared to pay for it. But that doesn’t mean you have to be the cheapest product on the market. In fact, many businesses justify a higher price in exchange for a more personalised service or product, little value-adds, or just better value for money than larger competitors. Your price positions you in the marketplace, and everything you do should be consistent and in line with that position. 

Promotion: 

This is how you communicate what you do and what you’re offering your customers. This is what a lot of people think of when they hear ‘marketing’, since it includes sales promotion, PR, branding, direct marketing, marketing communications and personal promotion. Good promotion gains attention, is appealing enough to retain that attention, sends a consistent message, and above all opens up a dialogue between customer and company. It should also seek to understand and appeal to the customer’s needs, and focus on the benefits of the product or service, not just its features. 

Physical Evidence: 

Providing physical evidence of your trustworthiness is important, especially if your service is intangible, or what you’re offering is unfamiliar to the consumer. Your job is to reduce the uncertainty they feel before buying and make them confident in choosing you. This means considering the impression your premises give, the experience a customer has when interacting with your employees, what your packaging looks and feels like, and what the online experience is like if you’re an e-commerce business. Physical evidence folds in all of the things that make uneasy customers feel more comfortable choosing you over another unknown.

People: 

Every single person from your business that comes into contact with a customer will leave an impression—and you need to make sure it’s a good one. Many customers struggle to separate the product or service from the person who provided it, which is what created the saying ‘people buy from people’. Your people will have a huge impact on customer satisfaction, and on their likelihood to recommend your company in the future. So when building your team, ensure everyone is well trained, suited to their role, and provide superior service.

Processes: 

The delivery of your service is almost as important as the service itself, and it’s a big part of what the customer is paying for. Many buyers are investing in the experience that starts the moment they discover your company. That means that the process of delivering the product or service, and the behaviour of the people delivering it, are a crucial part of your strategy. It also means you need to have provable processes in place that are designed for the customers benefit—that can be seen if they want reassurance that they’re dealing with an authentic supplier. Everything from the way you generate documents and your phone answering policies to the way your product ends up in a customers’ hands needs to be considered and designed appropriately.

We know it can be a lot of work, but the results of following the 7 Ps of marketing really do speak for themselves. By using these techniques, many businesses have seen huge success and are now ‘go-to’ brands that have built up trusted reputations with their loyal brand advocates.

www.lionspiritmedia.co.uk