Marketing Consulting
Many marketing texts and academic institutions still centre their instruction around the four (4) P's of Marketing;
Graham has always believed that this is far too restrictive and prefers an expanded list of nine (9) P's. The following article provides an overview of the 9 P's that form the basis of his consulting services.
The 9 + 1 P’s of Marketing
Let’s start with a definition: Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (American Marketing Association 2007)
As can be seen by the definition, marketing is far more than most people’s view of marketing as just advertising and promotion.
To gain a more in-depth understanding of marketing itself and how this greater understanding can assist in the future success and development of your business, let’s break it down into nine interdependent parts.
Planning
As the old adage goes: “If you fail to plan…you plan to fail.” Just as any good business has a well thought out business plan, it is essential to have in place an equally well-constructed Marketing Plan. Your marketing plan will ideally contain details of the remaining 8 P’s. And like any good plan it should provide adequate structure to provide a surety of future, yet remain sufficiently flexible to adapt to ever-changing times and prevailing market conditions. Regular review of your plan against actuals achieved goes without saying.
Product (and/or service)
What is your primary product? What primary service to you provide? What are you famous for? How does your product or service differ from your competition? What is your niche, your area of expertise? Who is your target market? Who will buy from you? The greatest challenge in business today is sameness. Most products and services have zero or minimal point of difference from similar products and services around town. “Differentiate or Die” is the bestselling book by marketing genius Jack Trout. Get it, read it, and put it to work.
Packaging
How will you package you product or service? This includes physical packaging of products, choice of colours, availability of sizes, model options, optional extras, as well as the intangible warranties and guarantees, delivery options, payment plans, and access to product or service information. Does your product look and feel different from your competition, or does it in most ways appear pretty much the same?
Place
Where is the best place to operate from? How can customers most easily avail themselves of your product and services? CBD or suburbia? Street level or high-rise offices? Retail? Wholesale? Online? Franchise? Single branch, or multiple branches? Will your products only be available locally, or do you have plans to market them across the state, nationally, and/or internationally? If so which countries and why? What alliances could you enter into and with whom in order to create wider distribution and availability of your products and services?
Promotion
How does the marketplace know that you exist? What is the best method of promotion to tell people who you are and what you do? Which of the following vehicles is the most cost effective for promoting your business; press advertising, printed brochures, published articles, newsletters (both hard copy and online), networking events, public seminars, radio and television, newspaper columns, product showcases, websites, blogs, facebook, twitter, or even engaging the services of a professional public relations consultant or publicist?
Programming
What is the time-line of events that your marketing plan has determined? A good way of not having everything happening at once is to set out a calendar of events ensuring that you allocate optimum time and attention to each event. It is far better to conduct fewer quality events, than engage in too many half-hearted activities. Also give considered thought as to when is the best time to schedule certain events keeping in mind the impact of seasonal weather conditions, competing events, public and school holidays, and more specific dates such as the end of the financial year and Christmas. And last but not least, keep your existing and potential customers informed at all times.
Price
What are you worth? What are your products and services worth? How much are your customers prepared to pay? Where in the market place do you wish to play; at the commodity bottom-end focusing on cost and lowest prices, or the multi-sensory experience top-end giving laser-like attention to quality, service and value? Another important activity in regard to setting prices is to rigorously benchmark your competitors, and to keep doing so on a regular basis. Remember that the number one myth in business today is that customers won’t pay for quality service. But again, you need to be able to clearly articulate the value-added difference that customers receive by doing business with you.
People
Who is on your team? Who will assist you? It doesn’t matter whether you are a one-person business operating from home, or an international franchise chain, the reality is that you cannot do business on your own. Obviously each business, depending on its particular product or service, will require the services of people with specialised skills. The trick is to take as much time as necessary to recruit the very best talent you can find. Interview at least twice, and also get your team, the people with whom your new recruit will be working with, to also interview them. Hire attitude ahead of skill. Also seek out the best external advisors available; accountants, lawyers, advertising consultants, information technology experts, webmaster, and business coach.
Performance
Last of the nine P’s is to measure performance on an ongoing basis. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Period! The ultimate test of any plan is to measure the outcome of each component that makes up the plan. Each of the P’s needs to be assigned specific Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to enable the most accurate assessment of your marketing plan, both overall and line-by-line. KPI’s are to be measured and monitored at least on a monthly basis (weekly is preferable), and also analysed in greater depth as part of your 90-day future-storming session where every aspect of your business is reviewed and previewed. This discipline is a must for every business.
The 10th ‘P’ - Persistence
The final P is the glue that holds it all together.
Every business has its ups and downs. Every market behaves in often unpredictable ways. The key is to persist, to hang in there, staying focused on what it is you do best whilst maintaining constant dialogue with your customers; who at the end of the day are both the primary reason you are in business and who are also your CPO (Chief Payroll Officer).
“Today is the tomorrow your plans and actions determined yesterday.”
Graham Harvey B.Com MAICD
Service Leadership Australia
PO Box 1735
Albany WA 6331
Ph: 0403 262 988