This article was guest posed by Jack, a 20 yr old Canadian business student.
Whether you are an experienced marketing guru or still tightly gripping your copy of “Marketing for Dummies”, we all run into our fair share of troubles with the marketing process in itself. I find that sometimes, instead of making things more complicated, which it is often human nature to do, it would serve you better to go back to the basics and try to simplify your task.
If we go back to our introductory marketing course with our grumpy professor’s, what is the one thing that they absolutely would not let you forget?
If you guessed the 4 P’s, then you would be correct, and your crabby old marketing professor would be proud. If you are drawing a blank, than you may be in trouble.
What are the 4 P’s again?
The 4 P’s, or better known as the marketing mix, are/is the backbone with which every campaign is built upon, from corporations to the kid on the corner with the lemonade stand. Here is my take on the 4 P’s, I’ve tried to spin it so that it is most relevant to you, the web developers/freelancers who are out there looking for help.
Let’s get started.
Product - What are you marketing? Is it a forum? a service? your blog? You need to be wary of the basic definition for a product; A good or service or idea to satisfy the consumer’s needs. Think carefully about how your product will do this, and build off of it. Don’t sell it short, don’t try to make it out to be something that it is not. Tell people why they should be reading your blog, buying your website, or investing in your start-up.
Price - I’m not going to discuss pricing strategies here, because they deserve their own post. What I wanted to elude to in terms of pricing, was pricing your product effectively. Selling-Out too low or over pricing are mistakes that beginners often make, and it can often be frustrating and discourage many from successfully selling their product. There are many ways to appraise your product, ranging from professional appraisal, to examining similar products in your niche or channel. Perhaps you want to market an e-book on SEO, we’ll, why not use Aaron Wall’s SEO Book as an example. Since SEOBook really has no competition in terms of other e-books about SEO, Aaron could charge an arm and a leg for it, but he chooses not to. Why? SEO book is set at a price of $79, a price that will make him a tidy profit, yet is affordable to his target market of consumer’s. There are many, many factors to consider in competitive markets, but again, we are just going for the basics here. Aaron chose a price that he felt would be affordable to his target market, and that is where he succeeds.
Promotion - Promotion is often the most misunderstood out of the 4 P’s. You see the word promotion, and you think of extravagant deals, 2 for 1 deals, and all the run of the mill ploys used to get you to buy. Promotion, put simply, is a means of communication between the seller, and the buyer. Before you offer elaborate deals to your potential customers, think of your promotion in these simple terms. How am I going to tell people about my product? Your most important task at this point is to decide where you will advertise, who you are advertising to, and the format with which you are going to do it. It is important to do your research for this stage, because you will experience dismal results if you leave your advertisement’s for the wind to take them. Consider
Place - Place is simply described as the means of getting the product into the consumers hands. Depending on your product, this may be highly relevant to you, or less so, and you will be focusing more on the other 3 P’s. None the less, it is important to understand this concept anyway. When considering place, you are thinking about the platform from which you will sell your product. You can sell it from your own site and cut out the middle man, have it listed at a marketplace such as Sitepoint, or if you feel you have many target markets to reach, license it to be sold through 3rd party vendors. Again, this will require a lot of research on your part. Examine where and how similar products are sold, but don’t just copy what they are doing, strive to build of their ideas and create something unique.
If you found this article useful, then you will be happy to know that I am already planning to write a series of follow-up’s, in which I will cover some of the more specific marketing topics such as Building an effective marketing plan, Customer Satisfaction, and identifying market segments.
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