7'ps of target market
Once you've developed your marketing strategy, there is a "Seven P
Formula" you should use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your
business activities. These seven are: product, price, promotion, place,
packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and
needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to
make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible for
you in today's marketplace.
Product
To begin
with, develop the habit of looking at your product as though you were
an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide
whether or not it's in the right business at this time. Ask critical
questions such as, "Is your current product or service, or mix of
products and services, appropriate and suitable for the market and the
customers of today?"
Whenever you're having difficulty selling as much of your
products or services as you'd like, you need to develop the habit of
assessing your business honestly and asking, "Are these the right
products or services for our customers today?"
Is there any
product or service you're offering today that, knowing what you now
know, you would not bring out again today? Compared to your competitors,
is your product or service superior in some significant way to anything
else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of
superiority? Should you be offering this product or service at all in
the current marketplace?
Prices
The second P
in the formula is price. Develop the habit of continually examining and
reexamining the prices of the products and services you sell to make
sure they're still appropriate to the realities of the current market.
Sometimes you need to lower your prices. At other times, it may be
appropriate to raise your prices. Many companies have found that the
profitability of certain products or services doesn't justify the amount
of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their
prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining
percentage generates a profit on every sale. Could this be appropriate
for you?
Sometimes you need to change your terms and conditions of
sale. Sometimes, by spreading your price over a series of months or
years, you can sell far more than you are today, and the interest you
can charge will more than make up for the delay in cash receipts.
Sometimes you can combine products and services together with special
offers and special promotions. Sometimes you can include free additional
items that cost you very little to produce but make your prices appear
far more attractive to your customers.
In business, as in nature,
whenever you experience resistance or frustration in any part of your
sales or marketing activities, be open to revisiting that area. Be open
to the possibility that your current pricing structure is not ideal for
the current market. Be open to the need to revise your prices, if
necessary, to remain competitive, to survive and thrive in a
fast-changing marketplace.
Promotion
The
third habit in marketing and sales is to think in terms of promotion all
the time. Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about
your products or services and how you then market and sell to them.
Small
changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to
dramatic changes in your results. Even small changes in your advertising
can lead immediately to higher sales. Experienced copywriters can often
increase the response rate from advertising by 500 percent by simply
changing the headline on an advertisement.
Large and small
companies in every industry continually experiment with different ways
of advertising, promoting, and selling their products and services. And
here is the rule: Whatever method of marketing and sales you're using
today will, sooner or later, stop working. Sometimes it will stop
working for reasons you know, and sometimes it will be for reasons you
don't know. In either case, your methods of marketing and sales will
eventually stop working, and you'll have to develop new sales, marketing
and advertising approaches, offerings, and strategies.
Place
The
fourth P in the marketing mix is the place where your product or
service is actually sold. Develop the habit of reviewing and reflecting
upon the exact location where the customer meets the salesperson.
Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in sales.
You
can sell your product in many different places. Some companies use
direct selling, sending their salespeople out to personally meet and
talk with the prospect. Some sell by telemarketing. Some sell through
catalogs or mail order. Some sell at trade shows or in retail
establishments. Some sell in joint ventures with other similar products
or services. Some companies use manufacturers' representatives or
distributors. Many companies use a combination of one or more of these
methods.
In each case, the entrepreneur must make the right choice
about the very best location or place for the customer to receive
essential buying information on the product or service needed to make a
buying decision. What is yours? In what way should you change it? Where
else could you offer your products or services?
Packaging
The
fifth element in the marketing mix is the packaging. Develop the habit
of standing back and looking at every visual element in the packaging of
your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect.
Remember, people form their first impression about you within the first
30 seconds of seeing you or some element of your company. Small
improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or
service can often lead to completely different reactions from your
customers.
With regard to the packaging of your company, your
product or service, you should think in terms of everything that the
customer sees from the first moment of contact with your company all the
way through the purchasing process.
Packaging refers to the way
your product or service appears from the outside. Packaging also refers
to your people and how they dress and groom. It refers to your offices,
your waiting rooms, your brochures, your correspondence and every single
visual element about your company. Everything counts. Everything helps
or hurts. Everything affects your customer's confidence about dealing
with you.
When IBM started under the guidance of Thomas J. Watson,
Sr., he very early concluded that fully 99 percent of the visual
contact a customer would have with his company, at least initially,
would be represented by IBM salespeople. Because IBM was selling
relatively sophisticated high-tech equipment, Watson knew customers
would have to have a high level of confidence in the credibility of the
salesperson. He therefore instituted a dress and grooming code that
became an inflexible set of rules and regulations within IBM.
As a
result, every salesperson was required to look like a professional in
every respect. Every element of their clothing-including dark suits,
dark ties, white shirts, conservative hairstyles, shined shoes, clean
fingernails-and every other feature gave off the message of
professionalism and competence. One of the highest compliments a person
could receive was, "You look like someone from IBM."
Positioning
The
next P is positioning. You should develop the habit of thinking
continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your
customers. How do people think and talk about you when you're not
present? How do people think and talk about your company? What
positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words
people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?
In the famous book by Al Reis and Jack Trout,
Positioning,
the authors point out that how you are seen and thought about by your
customers is the critical determinant of your success in a competitive
marketplace. Attribution theory says that most customers think of you in
terms of a single attribute, either positive or negative. Sometimes
it's "service." Sometimes it's "excellence." Sometimes it's "quality
engineering," as with Mercedes Benz. Sometimes it's "the ultimate
driving machine," as with BMW. In every case, how deeply entrenched that
attribute is in the minds of your customers and prospective customers
determines how readily they'll buy your product or service and how much
they'll pay.
Develop the habit of thinking about how you could
improve your positioning. Begin by determining the position you'd like
to have. If you could create the ideal impression in the hearts and
minds of your customers, what would it be? What would you have to do in
every customer interaction to get your customers to think and talk about
in that specific way? What changes do you need to make in the way
interact with customers today in order to be seen as the very best
choice for your customers of tomorrow?
People
The
final P of the marketing mix is people. Develop the habit of thinking
in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are
responsible for every element of your sales and marketing strategy and
activities.
It's amazing how many entrepreneurs and businesspeople
will work extremely hard to think through every element of the
marketing strategy and the marketing mix, and then pay little attention
to the fact that every single decision and policy has to be carried out
by a specific person, in a specific way. Your ability to select,
recruit, hire and retain the proper people, with the skills and
abilities to do the job you need to have done, is more important than
everything else put together.
In his best-selling book,
Good to Great,
Jim Collins discovered the most important factor applied by the best
companies was that they first of all "got the right people on the bus,
and the wrong people off the bus." Once these companies had hired the
right people, the second step was to "get the right people in the right
seats on the bus."
To be successful in business, you must develop
the habit of thinking in terms of exactly who is going to carry out each
task and responsibility. In many cases, it's not possible to move
forward until you can attract and put the right person into the right
position. Many of the best business plans ever developed sit on shelves
today because the [people who created them] could not find the key
people who could execute those plans
Read more:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/70824#ixzz2sQf0O3wV
