Hello again, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing, where business takes shape. I’m wearing a t-shirt today that reads: Faster, Farther, Stronger. I used to wear this when I would watch my daughter compete in the New Mexico high school track and field championships. In a way, this sums up what we are trying to do here at Once a Day Marketing. We’re trying to make you move a little faster, get you to go a little farther, and definitely make your business stronger.
Today is Smart Monday so we’re going to try to enhance your marketing IQ a little bit. Today we’re going to be talking about the “7Ps of Marketing.” You heard me allude to it several times. I’m going to define it because I believe it’s such a big part of our Once a Day Marketing program for you and the foundation for everything that we do.
So just what is the “7Ps of Marketing?” It’s really a business tool for analysis, for strategy and for taking action. Let’s go through and define the 7Ps.
The first is product. Now as a company you are offering a product or you may be offering an intangible or service of some sort. Through the 7Ps we take a look at product and figure out how to make that product more appealing to your customer.
Next is price. There are all sorts of pricing strategies out there. Over the course of Once a Day Marketing we’ll be talking about how you can price your product better. Believe it or not, sometimes companies under-price their products.
Next is promotion. All sorts of things going on in the world today with respect to promotions. There’s the traditional side of things which include television, radio, print and billboards, and so forth. And now there’s this whole new, modern social media approach where you use Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. All of this is part of the 7Ps as well.
Next is place. Another term for it is distribution, but that doesn’t start with a “p.” Place (distribution) refers to everywhere your customers can get access to your products. It used to be they might go to the store to pick up something but now that something might be digital and instantly sent to them from across the world. Distribution channels are changing and they are also key to the 7Ps.
Next are the people. This if often forgotten. You have people in your organization directly dealing with your customers and you have people in your organization behind the scenes. All of those individuals help shape your branding and marketing, believe it or not, and we’ll be discuss that too.
Next is the physical evidence. And as I have described physical evidence before in another blog, it’s everything that your customer sees. If you think about a professional football team, it might be the signage on the stadium, it might be the stadium, it could be the uniforms, the impressive or not so impressive players on the team. It might be the flamboyant coach or it could be the beers that are sold at the concession stand. Let’s not forget about the branded merchandise. All of those things tie into the physical evidence.
And then there’s process. I have two parts to the process. On the one side I have the internal process and that’s everything you do to market to your customers. And then there’s the external process and that’s everything your customers experience in obtaining your products or services. We will be looking at all of the 7Ps in the future.
Now there’s one more “P” which is positioning. Although not part of the 7Ps per se, I include it so it’s like 7Ps plus or the eighth P. But it’s very important to understand about differentiating your product and where that product fits in the marketplace or its niche. And so we’ll be talking about that positioning. And that in essence is what the 7Ps are all about.
Why are the “7Ps of Marketing” so important for us? Now we have a way to communicate. Right? If I mention the “7Ps of Marketing” you’ll understand what it is and if I start talking pricing, promotion or physical evidence, you’ll also have a grasp of that. Now we can communicate a lot more effectively here at Once a Day Marketing.
The other thing is that it’s going to provide for us a systematic way to analyze your business, to analyze your market and your competition. So little by little I’m helping you become that marketing expert I want you to be.
Over the next few weeks on our Smart Monday I’m going to elaborate and expand on each one of the Ps. We’ll talk a lot more about product, price and place, etc. Why that’s so exciting to me is that later on when you’re out there in the real world applying these marketing tactics you might come across a problem like a pricing problem or a physical evidence problem. What’s nice about Once a Day Marketing is that you’re going to be able to use it as a tool to go back into our database and find blogs by 7P categories and look them up to give you ideas to solve your problems. The unique nature of Once a Day Marketing is that you can in fact attack problems from the 7Ps using our resource.
Well thanks for joining us for Smart Monday and be sure to stop by tomorrow if you can for Strategic Tuesday. I guess the big question is: Are you feeling like you are moving a little bit faster, going a little bit farther, and becoming a little bit stronger? I hope you are. I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing, where business takes shape and we’ll see you next time.
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