Brian Tracy breaks down the seven P's of marketing: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning, and people. Small changes in any of these areas can shift your business results.
Hello. I want to share some great ideas with you today. Here is a 7Pmarketing strategy formula that I've developed that you can use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your marketing and sales activity. Now these seven used to be called the marketing Mix. Their my version are product, price, place, packaging, positioning and people. Let me explain these to you in detail because a change in any one of these areas can dramatically change your business results. Products and services as well as markets, customers and needs change rapidly. So you must continually revisit these seven P's to make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible in today's market. The first P stands for your product or service. To begin, develop the habit of looking at your products and services as though you were an outside marketing consultant, having been brought in to help your company decide whether or not it is in the right business at this time. Ask yourself critical questions such as Are my current products and services appropriate and suitable for the market and the customers of today? What is it that people want and are willing to pay for? And are my products and services satisfying those wants and needs at a price that they're willing to pay? 2. Pricing the second P in a successful marketing strategy has to do with price. Develop the habit of continually examining and re examining the prices you charge of the products and services that you sell to make sure that these prices are still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Sometimes you need to lower your prices to match competition or change market demands. At other times, it may be appropriate to raise your prices a little bit. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain products and services does not justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. Remember, 20% of your products and services account for 80% of your profits. And that means 80% of your products and services probably account for 80% of all of your costs and expenses. So companies find 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 an appropriate strategy for you? Number three is promotion. The third key factor in marketing and sales is for you to develop the habit of thinking in terms of promotion all the time. The word promotion includes everything that you do to communicate with your customers and to make sales. It's the way you tell your customers about products and services and how you then attract them to your offerings and how you sell. Many companies transform their businesses by simply improving their sales process. Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your sales and profitability results. For example, experienced copywriters writing your advertising for your print or your Internet advertising can often increase the response rate from advertising by 500% to 1,000% by simply changing the headline or the offering in the advertisement. We have taken products that were selling $100 a month and by rewriting the description of the product, changed it to selling $1,000 a month in one change of advertisement. This could be possible for you the fourth P in the marketing strategy mix is the place where your products and services are actually sold. Where do you make your products available to your customer? So develop the habit of reviewing and reflecting upon the exact location where the customer meets the salesperson. Sometimes a change in place or location can lead to a rapid improvement in marketing and sales. Sometimes going from being a local company to a statewide company or a statewide company to a national company, or from a national to an international company. Changing the places at which you offer your products or by offering your products through other companies, retail and wholesale, that already have established customers can dramatically improve your business. The fifth element in successful marketing strategy is packaging. This is so important. Develop the habit of standing back and looking at every visual element in the packaging of your products and services through the eyes of a critical prospect. Remember, people are highly visual. They form their first impression about you within 30 seconds of seeing you or some element of your company. Small improvements in the packaging, the colors, the layout, the letter size, the headlines, or the external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers. This is a simple solution to increasing your marketing and the attractiveness of your products and services. The next piece Successful marketing strategy is positioning. Now there are many, many books on this, but basically it has to do with influencing the way people think and feel about you when they think about you or see your business. You should develop the habit of thinking continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. And here's the key how do people think about you and talk about you when you're not present? How do people talk about your business or your products and services? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market in terms of the specific words that people use when they describe your products and services to others? What words do they use today and what words would it be helpful for them to use in the future? And then number seven, the final P is people. A great marketing strategy requires great people. So develop the habit of thinking in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who have moments of truth or direct contact or communication with your customers, think about the people who are responsible for every element of your marketing and sales activity. Remember, your ability to select and hire, recruit and retrain the proper people with the skills and abilities and personalities to do the job you need to have done is more important than everything else put together. So those are the seven There's a product or service you offer. There's the price you charge, there's the promotion or method of selling or marketing. There's the place at which you offer it, there is the packaging of the product, there's your position in the market, and there's your people. An improvement in any one of these, an alteration in any one of these can transform your business completely. But you need to keep thinking, how can we change or improve in one or more of these areas? And you'll always find something.
