Many people I come across assume marketing it is just the commercials and advertisements you see on Television, or now and days, what you see on the computer. There is more to it than that, which makes a quote I recently come across very valid:
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” – Peter Drucker
Paraphrased, the two most important things for a business is the value you bring to the customer and what you do to get that value into the hands of the customer. If the former is innovation, then the latter is marketing. There are four very important things to consider when marketing and these four things are drilled into the minds of every marketing student. The four essentials are called the four P’s of Marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Entire lectures can be based on each of the four P’s, but for now, I will keep it simple.
Product
The product is the good or service you are selling, whether it be a tangible good, like a toothbrush, or a service, like repairing a car. For a product like a toothbrush, one must consider how easily can it be used to how attractive is the packaging, or what information must be put on the packaging. One also has to consider if the product is a generic good or a custom product.
Price
How much is the product being sold for? If you pay attention to your local grocery market, many of the discount products should end in .99 or a .09 of some sort. Studies show that people will perceive products ending in 9 to be cheaper than products with nice round numbers. With a very powerful psychological effect, setting the price can help consumers perceive your product as anything from a discount, low quality good to a premium item.
Place
Place consists of everything between where your product is located and how it will get from one place to another. Consider your favorite breakfast cereal. How did it end up on the shelf, why is it on that shelf in particular, and where was being stored before it reached that shelf. A restaurant owner, similarly, needs to know where to put their building to get the best inflow of customer traffic it can at minimal cost to the owner.
Promotion
And to wrap things up, we complete our short description of the four P’s with the most well-known of the four. This considers every possible medium to get a product seen and heard by the consumer, which includes the traditional TV advertisements to even using your friends to refer you to a product.
Try picking out a good or service and point out each of the 4 P’s for that product!
This was a post based on a question I was asked a while ago from one of my readers. If you would like me to expand on anything I talked about in this post or have a completely different question you would like answered, please leave a comment or send me a message!
This was a post based on a question I was asked a while ago from one of my readers. If you would like me to expand on anything I talked about in this post or have a completely different question you would like answered, please leave a comment or send me a message!