Using the 4 P’s of Marketing To Build An Effective Marketing Plan
The 4 P’s of marketing outline the essential components of an effective marketing plan for your product or entire business or brand. These “P’s” include: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement.
Product: What problem does this product solve? What are this product’s features and benefits to the consumer?
Price: How much does the product cost to make, and how much are customers willing to pay for it?
Promotion: How are you going to advertise this product? Which medium (TV ads, print, radio, Social Media, billboards, etc) are you going to advertise through?
Placement: Where will the product be sold? Online, in store?
In this post, we are going to begin to focus on the promotion “P” to determine how and where you should promote your product to drive awareness, as discussed in the last “tip” post.
Gary Vaynerchuck, this week’s “Entrepreneur You Should Know”, boils down the nuts and bolts of promotion to two basic questions:
Where is your audience?
How do you talk to them there?
For example, if you are a landscape or tree company, you shouldn’t advertise on a billboard near a ton of apartment complexes. The people who live there don’t have a need for your services. Instead, advertise near neighborhoods.
If you are a Medicare insurance company, or a home health company, you should think twice before spending money on Social Media ads. Your target audience likely isn’t spending time on social media. They might read magazines like the AARP.
And even when you have pinned down the delivery category (internet, print, etc) of promotion, there may be more decisions to make based on who uses different mediums within that category. For example, if you are a produce company that sells food to grocery stores, it may be a better idea to try advertisements on LinkedIn instead of Instagram.
Important information, such as demographics (age, gender, occupation, etc) used in the above examples can help determine where your audience spends their time.
Once you have determined where your audience spends their time, you must then determine how to talk to them. This means understanding their problems and framing context around your product or services for how it meets their needs.
For example, if you are an auto body shop, don’t just advertise that you’re a body shop, also include benefits to your company like faster turn-around times and appraisal and insurance services, etc. Put context around your advertisement to differentiate yourself from your competitors, tout your features and benefits, and appeal to what your customers and potential customers are looking go “get” or which problem they are trying to solve by using your company.
Next week we will dive further into the different mediums to promote your advertisement to build awareness.
