Marketing is critical to businesses, which explains why most organizations spend thousands or millions of dollars on it. It refers to all the activities involved in promoting products and services and can either be done by the business itself or its affiliates. Some of the most common means used by organizations include celebrity endorsement, media exposure, and paid marketing: all of which have pros and cons.
For successful marketing or product promotion, businesses must have comprehensive plans detailing all the avenues they can exhaust to win customers’ attention. This gives rise to the P’s of marketing manager, often considered the foundation of every effective marketing strategy. Before we delve deeper into these, let’s find out why they are important.
Advantages of the 6P’s of Marketing
A good growth strategy should consider all the 6 Ps of marketing, i.e., product, place, price, people, promotion, and presentation because of the following reasons:
Creation of Desirable Products
Considering the first P of marketing, i.e., product, helps businesses offer value by creating products or services that meet their customers’ needs.
Identifying the Right Marketing Audience
Every marketing strategy must be run by the right professionals and target the right audience, which explains why people are among the Ps of marketing. Employees involved in product marketing, such as customer service representatives, impact how customers view an entity or given products and services, while customers generally offer important feedback for product improvement.
Identifying the Best Marketplace
One of the most important Ps of marketing is a place, which refers to where customers can get the company’s products. By considering it when coming up with a growth strategy, a company can determine the best place for selling their products or services, which can be websites, online applications, or physical stores.
Better Communication of a Product’s Value
By understanding promotion, one of the Ps of marketing, a business gets to know the right tactics to communicate the value of its products. Promotions are generally aimed at attracting customers’ attention to the product.
Better Product Presentation
The packaging, messaging, or general presentation of a product greatly influences customers’ purchase decisions, which explains why every business should pay attention to how their products appear in the market. This means considering presentation, another important P of marketing that helps businesses create visually appealing presentations to attract customers.
Better Pricing
Businesses must establish the right prices to sell their products, which brings us to price, an important P of marketing. A good pricing strategy should ensure that several customers can obtain the company’s product easily, generating revenue for the company.
The 6 Ps of Marketing Explained
It’s time to take an in-depth look at the 6 Ps of marketing, now that you have a clue of what they are. Let’s get right into them:
1. Products
Products are the reason why businesses exist. These entities make money by selling products or offering services at a fee: a reason why this had to be our first P of marketing. Note that when we talk of products, we also mean services since businesses that don’t sell products offer services to their customers, while others even offer both. Therefore, it is imperative for an entity to conduct extensive research and discover what its customers need.
Every business should consider what others are already offering to successfully identify new products or services that their target customers may want. Here are some of the information to find out when determining the right products to sell to an audience:
Existing Products/ Services
Every business needs to learn about the existing products or services in the market to develop better options. This is often a recommended way of entering and conquering a saturated market.
The Main Needs of the Marketplace
It is essential to identify specific market gaps, such as the needs that the existing products in the market haven’t successfully met before releasing a service or product. A business that can meet them will be profitable in the long run.
Businesses Enjoying the Largest Market Share
Every business should strive to identify the companies or entities with the largest market share before setting up a shop or offering a service. This knowledge helps them determine the types of products customers need and comes in handy in penetrating markets.
Long-term Market Needs
Repeat business is one of the cornerstones of business success. Therefore, entities must determine the lifecycle of the product or service they wish to offer. A product that is needed regularly guarantees repeat business. For a one-time purchase, businesses need to determine the additional services or offerings they can entice their customers with.
Market Potential
Every business should determine the market potential of the products or services they wish to offer. This information often dictates where they need to adjust their marketing plan to meet a particular niche or work on attracting a relatively large customer base.
What happens once a business understands the right products or services to offer? They must ask the right questions to help them determine the products’ market readiness. They must also come up with an education strategy aimed at helping their customers understand the purpose of their products or services. This means coming up with quality descriptions that highlight the value they, i.e., their offerings, have.
Elements to consider when coming up with the descriptions include attributes, which define the product and tell the customer what it does; a uniqueness which explains how the product is better or different from what others are offering and benefits, which are the advantages the target audience will obtain from given products.
2. Place
Where do you intend to sell your products? The purchase avenues or sites available to customers interested in your offerings impact your business’s success. Almost every business strives to have an online presence, meaning that as much as you prefer selling your products in retail stores, consider running part of your business online. Some of the best options if you intend to go online are Amazon, Etsy, or Shopify.
If you settle on a physical store, remember to place your products where your customers can easily access, view, and purchase them. This means resorting to merchandising and strategic product display, which has worked from time immemorial. Stores such as Target understand the importance of correct product placement.
What happens if you settle on an online or digital store? Simple. Pay attention to the user interface and site function, which often dictates how easily a customer can find and purchase a given item. Ensure that you also invest in Search Engine Optimization, which dictates your product’s ranking in search engines. With the right keywords, your products will appear at the top whenever customers or interested clients need your products.
3. Price
Our third P of marketing is pricing, which normally dictates whether a business model will succeed. Every business should strike a balance between allowing their customers to enjoy the financial value and making good profits. Some of the most important factors to consider under this include:
A. Expenses/ Cost and Customer Margin
Every business must consider the cost spent on production to ensure that their pricing can cover it easily and still allow them to enjoy a good profit. Remember, apart from offering value to customers, one of the main aims of conducting business is to generate profits.
b. Consumer Behavior
Whether you like it or not, your customers will perceive your products’ value differently, which may force you to resort to consumer-based pricing. This pricing model generally involves offering different prices for different customers.
c. Competing Businesses’ Pricing
How do your competitors price their products? Unless you are offering something unique, don’t expect your target market to leave other existing businesses for your products. The market will also define your pricing, which shouldn’t be too high when the value of your products is relatively low.
Best Pricing Strategies
What strategies do you intend to use to maximize your sales opportunities? Here is something for you: Remember only to pick the one that works for you.
Psychological Pricing
This pricing strategy uses customers’ emotional responses to generate more sales. Good examples include “buy one, get one” offers or setting prices at .99 instead of a whole dollar. These examples have always proven to work.
Economy Pricing
This is an intelligent way of product pricing where businesses set low prices for their products and services to attract large sales volumes, which are generally profitable.
Bundle Pricing
Under bundling pricing, entities package different products, often priced differently, in one package and offer a relatively lower price than the individual products combined.
Competitor Pricing
This is the most common pricing strategy for businesses. It involves finding the prices charged by the closest competitors and either setting prices that beat or match them.
Skimming
This is a short-term strategy used by different businesses that involve setting a higher initial price before gradually lowering it through discounts and other offerings.
Penetration Pricing
This is one of the most common pricing strategies that businesses use to gain part of the market share their competitors enjoy. It dictates that entities artificially set lower prices to drive customers away from competitors.
The last pricing strategy is captive pricing, a popular one used by businesses dealing with products that require additional products. It helps entities generate and sustain brand loyalty and create surplus business opportunities. Pick one that works for your business, and you will be good.
4. Promotion
The fourth P on our list, promotion, helps you communicate your products or services to your target market, which is essential in convincing them to buy. However, it dictates that you determine your target audience first to tailor your promotion initiatives to meet their wants and influence them to buy different products.
Businesses are also free to resort to digital or traditional promotions in pushing their products. Some of the most successful traditional promotions we have seen over the centuries include flyers, partnerships with different corporations, advertising, and public relations. However, it’s also important to identify the role that digital promotion has played in supporting business growth.
Here are some of the examples of traditional and digital marketing promotions businesses can resort to pushing their products successfully:
Social Media
This is one of the most common promotion avenues for businesses. It supports the easier creation and sharing of content. Most businesses use social media influencers who enjoy a huge social media following and can therefore get their clients’ products noticed by several people. Some of the best platforms for this include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Email Marketing
This is one of the first digital marketing tools. It involves directly contacting customers and potential clients via email. It is mostly used to convince prospects and generate brand loyalty, which every entity should strive to achieve and enjoy.
Contests
This is another relatively old marketing method that is still being used to date. It involves using methods such as giveaways and sweepstakes to attract leads, usually required to offer their information in exchange for a chance to win a prize. It also exists in digital marketing.
Public Relations
This method of influencing customers involves spreading positive information about a business or its offerings to prospects or the general public. It intends to sway public perception, make people more interested in a company’s products and create more attention.
Surveys
You can also use surveys for marketing your products- a method that relies on forms to capture customers’ opinions which are then used to improve products.
Advertising
This is where people pay to get their products marketed in different media channels. Nowadays, people have many such as in-app sponsorships, a digital form of advertising.
Other promotions include content marketing, customer referral incentive programs, customer appreciation events, and POS (Point-of-Sale) promotions. Find whatever works for your business and stick with it.
5. Presentation
Our fifth and second-last P of marketing is presentation, which is essential whether your product genuinely promises value to consumers or not. You must focus on your product’s appearance and ensure that it captures your business’s image. Therefore, ensure that everyone involved in your product presentation, e.g., designers, understands your target market before coming up with the right product presentation.
Here are examples of some of the things to consider when deciding on your overall product presentation:
Branding
This is one of the most important aspects of marketing. You have to envision the effect you want your brand to have on consumers before coming up with one. Make sure your brand enjoys a positive perception to increase sales opportunities, which means it should inspire positive feelings and thoughts.
Packaging
This is one of the cornerstones of presentation. Your product packaging determines how people perceive it at first glance, and as we know, first impression matters. Make sure that you settle on a package that makes your product outstanding. You definitely want someone to spot your products from a shelf with thousands of other products.
Communication
What do you intend to communicate to your customers or target audience regarding the company, its brand, and other products or services? Ensure that you shed more light on the primary selling points, including, and not limited to, your company’s values.
6. People
Our last P of marketing is people, which refers to different participants. This category includes those within the organization, such as the marketing team, and others, such as partners and customers. Let’s take a look at some of these people.
Examples
These are some of the people involved in marketing
Production Workers
Production workers are responsible for all the production processes required to convert raw materials into finished products. These professionals meet the assigned production deadlines, operate production equipment, store products and materials, and check (and then report) deficiencies in finished products or raw materials.
Salespeople
Salespeople or sales representatives are usually at the forefront of promoting an institution’s products. They must work in stores or outlets where they welcome customers, answer their queries about different product offerings and help them find a product within the store.
Customer Service Representatives
These professionals are usually at the beck and call of customers. They offer the required information, respond to complaints, and ensure maximum customer satisfaction.
Managers
One of the most important internal marketing staff members is the sales and marketing manager, whose main role is researching and developing excellent marketing opportunities and implementing excellent sales plans. An important additional role in promoting the company’s brand and ensuring the successful introduction of products in the market.
External People
The two main external people that every business should focus on are customers and partners. Every marketing strategy has to be tailored to meet their needs. Everybody within the business involved in product or service marketing generally impacts customer satisfaction and product marketing success directly or indirectly.
Good strategy businesses should use to enforce or meet this particular P of marketing is correct hiring, which means getting the right people capable of helping the business succeed. This can be achieved by selling the company to convince top professionals to join the company.
Conclusion
These P’s of marketing are important for businesses trying to develop effective marketing strategies. They focus on some of the most important aspects of marketing that every marketing team should pay attention to. We hope that we have answered all your questions regarding this topic.
