The Four P’s of Marketing – Why You Need Them
Marketing can be a difficult thing to understand. Many think that it’s just a matter of placing a few ads, making some fliers and distributing a few press releases. If it were that easy then everyone would be doing it and their businesses would be booming. However, the fact is, it’s not that simple. There’s more to marketing than what most people see.
With marketing before you begin any campaign, you need to have all your facts gathered. This includes doing an analysis to determine what others in your niche market are doing as well as who are your customers and what are their buying patterns? Knowing this will allow you to develop a highly specific and profitable marketing campaign.
In the marketing world, there is a commonly used method call the 4 P’s. This stands for Product or Service, Place, Price and Promotion. If you focus on only one of these areas then you’re not going to market as effectively as you should. By mixing these items together and really analyzing each part of the 4 P’s then you are leveraging your business to achieve maximum profit from your marketing campaigns.
So, a way to look at it would be:
Product or Service:
What does your customer want from your product or service? How will they use it?
Place:
Where will your customers be looking for this product or service?
Price:
What value will your customers see in your product or service? What price will they be willing to pay? What are your customers charging for similar products or services?
Promotion:
How will you get news of this product or service out to your targeted customers?
Granted these aren’t the only questions you should be asking yourself in these areas but you get the point as to how the 4 P’s really make you analyze your business to determine the best marketing efforts for your business. In the end, it’s about positioning yourself above the competition. The 4 P’s is a tool to allow you to get ahead of the pack if you use it properly.
The Power of Email Marketing
If you’re a business owner, then you’re constantly looking for ways to market your products and services. While you have used traditional marketing efforts, you are now exploring ways to use internet marketing to its fullest potential.
One of those ways is email marketing. Too often, companies overlook this form of marketing because they feel that with so many spam filters today that it’s just not worth it. Many also feel that email marketing is a thing of the past since we have so many other outlets like social media marketing, blogs, SEO, etc. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Email marketing is still a very effective form of marketing. As a business, you simply don’t have the time or money to waste on something that is ineffective. Email marketing, when timed perfectly and targeted to your specific audience, can gain you valuable exposure. Once you have developed the concept and laid out your email marketing campaign, then you need to test it.
Some may say you need to send out an email as specific intervals. This is true however; the intervals need to be times that are proven to work for your customers specific patterns. Only you know your customers. So perhaps in the first two email marketing campaigns you can send them out at different intervals and then compare them to one another to see which campaign got the most results and why. Email marketing is affordable and you can track your campaign results easily.
You need to begin with a valid database of contacts. The issue with spam is those companies who send out emails to anyone and everyone. Most companies have a database of potential and current customers. Potential customers can come from a newsletter mailing list, a webinar training, etc. Current customers are already in your system. Make sure to target each campaign to a specific customer. One campaign generally does not work for all. For example, you would word an email to potential customers differently than you would for your current customers.
Email is here to stay and when used properly, it is one of the most cost effective and quantitative forms of marketing you can have. Email is still a powerful tool. Try this form of internet marketing today and see how it can help your company’s growth. You can also combine it with other forms of marketing to create a dynamic marketing tool. Everyday millions of people read their emails. Your campaign could be one of those read items.
B-to-B and B-to-C Marketing – How to Use Them to Increase Your Revenue
Being a business owner, you assume that you know the in’s and out’s of the business world. The term business to business marketing is not new. However, if you’re a new company or you simply don’t understand this concept, then let’s look closer at this business term. Business to Business or B-to-B marketing is the marketing of goods and services to another business. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Surprisingly, if you were to ask a handful of people what B-to-B marketing was, chances are you get all different answers. The same applies for B-to-C (Business to Customer) marketing.
In marketing, no matter who you’re marketing to, it is always best to set a goal; a target. So if in 2009 you wanted to achieve $500,000 in sales then perhaps for 2010 you may want to raise the bar and achieve $700,000 in sales. While marketing is about business, you need to be able to come up with new and refreshing marketing strategies. A fairly new concept being used over the past few years is using paper and video tutorials (or informative pieces) on the website to increase business. This could be information on how to use a product that is being sold or if you’re offering a service it could be about how that service works or how to choose a provider for that service. While you’re wanting them to choose your company, by giving them more information, you are actually making yourself the expert in this area to this potential customer. This goes for businesses or customers.Of course, this needs to be a constant process. You will always need new and fresh content or tutorials to keep your potential and current customers coming back for more.
Do you know what ROI means? It stands for Return on Investment. The goal is to get a good return on your marketing investment. A great marketing specialist will adjust content and tone to fit the purpose. You can’t use the same piece to market to a business that you would use to market directly to an individual customer. Too often, companies try to use an all-in-one marketing piece. This is the end, is costing more money in the long run because your not marketing wisely and your ROI is going to be lower. In effective marketing tactics backfire in ways you don’t immediately see. However, when you look at the bottom line, the truth is always revealed.
Marketing for B-to-B and B-to-C isn’t a complicated process if you know what you’re doing. While it takes time, in the end when you greatly increase your ROI, you’ll see why the process is so valuable.
Why a SWOT Analysis is Important
Marketing your business is an important part of running your business. You can’t progress and become successful if people don’t know who you are and what you do or have to offer. How do you know what marketing efforts you need? Which areas of your company or organization are excelling and which wants are declining rapidly?
This is where a SWOT Analysis comes in handy. What is a SWOT Analysis you ask? SWOT stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. When attempting to determine where your marketing efforts need to be placed, the SWOT Analysis shows you the areas where you’re doing fine and where you really need a helping hand. It gives you an overview of where your company stands. Be prepared for what you will see. Not everything will be perfect. You will have weaknesses and you may even be surprised at the areas that you thought were strong that really aren’t. You will see the internal and external factors that are affecting these various areas within your company.
Below is a sample of what a SWOT Analysis looks at:
Overview
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Internal Analysis External Analysis
/ \ / \
Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats
Strengths are your company’s resources and capabilities. This could include solid branding, strong customer base, etc.
Weaknesses are your absence of strengths in certain areas. So this could be things like a bad reputation or high costs in an area.
Opportunities are areas where you have opportunities to grow. This could be a new niche area that will benefit your current customers as well as bring in new customers.
Threats are things that can adversely affect your business. These can include changes in the economy, changes in consumer spending habits, etc.
By using the SWOT Analysis you get the whole picture, internally and externally. This will help you determine where your company is standing in the grand scheme of things. The information is placed into the SWOT Matrix to show you these various areas. This is because not every opportunity is going to be one that you want to take advantage of. Why? Well, it may not be the right time or financially it could be very costly. So you have to look at the big picture and the matrix allows you to do that. Below is what a sample matrix looks like:
SWOT Matrix
| Strengths | Weaknesses | |
| Opportunities | S-O strategies | W-O strategies |
| Threats | S-T strategies |
W-T strategies |
S-O is opportunities that may be a good match for your company.
W-O these are areas where you may need to make some adjustments to them before you can turn them into an opportunity.
S-T allows you to see the ways that you may be able to counter the threats affecting the company making you less vulnerable.
W-T these are areas where you can provide a game plan that allows you to “build a fortress” around your weak areas so you aren’t so susceptible to external forces that could weaken your company.
Using a SWOT Analysis when you’re looking at marketing is very beneficial in the long run. While it takes some time initially writing down all the details, the entire plan will come into view and you will have a better sense of the direction that you need to go. It’s a very valuable tool that no company should be without.
The Power of Internet Marketing
With the invention of the internet, the world of marketing has taken on a whole new life. Traditional marketing efforts were always:
- Newspaper Ads
- Billboards
- Television Commercials
- Radio Announcements
- Magazines and more…….
With the internet, you ‘re reaching more people than just the one’s in your region. You can reach out to people worldwide. What does this mean for businesses? It means a new market of potential customers waiting for you. The world of internet marketing includes:
- Internet Ads (like Google Adwords)
- Article Directories (like Ezine, Squidoo)
- Websites
- Social Media
- Podcasts
- SEO
- Blogs and more………
So when it comes to the internet, are you marketing your company as effectively as you could be? Start by reviewing the list above. How many of the internet marketing tools are you using? If you’re using less than four of them, then you’re cutting your business short by not tapping into this market. Writing articles on your particular niche and then distributing them to article directories gets you valuable linkbacks to your website. That is of course if you have a website. Yes, believe it or not in this day and age, there are numerous companies that don’t have a website in place. In addition, Facebook and Twitter may be all the rage with people trying to stay in contact with one another but they’re also valuable marketing tools. Blogs are one the most used marketing tools online. A blog not only informs and educates but it markets to potential clients. In the traditional marketing world, you give a potential client a coffee cup to remember you by. With online marketing tools like a blog, you give them information they need. This makes them come back for more.
The internet offers so much when it comes to marketing. The key is learning what is available and learning how to use it to benefit your business. In the end, you have everything to gain but a lot to lose if you let these marketing tools pass you by.