Creating a marketing plan is the first step to increase your brand awareness and scale your business.
Without a clear marketing strategy, you won’t manage to target your customer in a smarter and more effective way.
Planning is essential as it will help you manage your resources more efficiently, supercharge your customer lifecycle endeavors, and lead to more sales.
While a marketing plan is critical for your business’ success, there are a few things you need to consider first.
Staying faithful to your original plan won’t give you the results you desire. Marketing is evolving, so you need to evaluate and re-evaluate your strategy on a regular basis.
Today, we’ll take a look at the 7 Ps of marketing, an exceptional formula to help you create a marketing plan that’ll adapt to the market and convert your audience.
1. Product
The most important thing you need to consider is whether your product covers your customers’ needs and to what degree.
If you want to have a successful product, you need to make sure that it stays relevant and useful.
Having products that don’t suit your customers’ needs is common for businesses around the world.
For instance, companies like GAP and Nintendo have undergone significant product changes to become the giants they are today.
More specifically, GAP started as a record store that also sold jeans. This product combination, though, wasn’t successful, leading the company towards bankruptcy.
What marketing did to save the brand was to re-evaluate the core product and give customers what they actually needed.
While it might sound risky, GAP’s product change led it to become one of the most popular billion-dollar companies globally.
All in all, having a popular product is crucial to achieving sustainability.
The market has a plethora of similar products, and to make yours sell, you need to show your customers why they need it.
2. Price
Another essential aspect of the formula is the price of your products.
If you take a look around the market, you’ll see that companies have very different pricing models.
For instance, an iPhone and a Xiaomi phone cover the same need. However, their prices differ to a great extent.
Behemoths like Apple have earned a place among customers’ hearts mainly because they feel that the product is worth their time and money.
For newer and smaller companies, though, price should be a matter of constant re-evaluation.
One of the things that COVID-19 taught us is that certain events can have a great impact on specific products.
Increasing your prices might seem like a smart move; however, raising them when your competitors lower theirs may lead to fewer sales.
Instead, make sure to evaluate your current product price frequently and even run an in-depth competitor analysis to see how your competitors bring attention to their products.
If you find yourself receiving complaints about your prices, you should rethink your strategy to avoid losing trust from loyal and potential customers.
That way, your company will remain competitive and survive the rapidly changing market.
3. Promotion
Promoting products might sound easy; however, there’s a whole science behind the successful promotion of new items.
A well-structured marketing campaign can lead to hundreds of new sales and increase your brand awareness.
A prime example of that is The Shave Dollar Club’s video that took the world by storm.
The company came up with a fresh way to tackle the razor industry, resulting in 12.000 new orders within 48 hours.
As you can see, the power of promotion is immense. However, keep in mind that trends change, and a once successful marketing campaign won’t give you the same results.
Studying new consumer habits and interests is the only way to keep up to date with them.
While it might be difficult to abandon a successful campaign, if you see that something doesn’t work as it did in the past, you need to change it and deliver something new to your audience.
Embracing change and accepting that you’ll eventually need to create something fresh is crucial to keep your business afloat.
Keep in mind that your marketing plan is a living organism that needs to change to align with modern customers’ needs.
So, don’t hesitate to re-evaluate your promotional strategies, study your target audience, and create something outstanding to convert them.
4. Place
The place where your customer meets your product has changed a lot since years ago.
In the past, a customer would step into a shop, meet your salesperson, browse your wares, and then decide to buy something or not.
Now, eCommerce has simplified this process, enabling buyers to purchase something from the comfort of their couch.
For example, if you used to play videogames as a child, then you remember that to play a game you had to go to the store and purchase it physically.
Now, all you need is to log into your account, add your credit card, and download it directly into your computer.
This shift from physical to digital has become very popular in the video game industry, simplifying how consumers acquire products.
While this strategy has worked miracles for online products, not every company can benefit from it.
IKEA, for instance, allows customers to buy products either from its physical or eCommerce store.
The combination of these places enables customers to see the products and then purchase them online at a better price.
What drives IKEA customers to the physical location is the buying information they will receive from a salesperson and the ability to test the product before buying.
Making the right choice about the location of your product will affect your profitability.
So, make sure to consider your product first and then select the best possible location for it.
5. Positioning
Positioning is all about your reputation and what consumers think about your brand and products.
While positioning focuses on the “place” you have at people’s hearts, it’s actually more than that.
Your customers’ language to describe your brand is the first impression you made when they came across your products.
Labeling you as “the best company in the world” will contribute to building a perfect brand image to ensure your success.
This will also help you build a solid reputation to make your products last through time.
For example, Coca-Cola has a 125-year history of success in the market. The reason is simple.
Through numerous campaigns like “ShareACoke,” the company has made customers associate it with terms like “happiness,” “sharing,” and “fun.”
Becoming the synonym of happiness can be hard in a competitive market, especially when you have a beverage company.
Coca-Cola’s success, though, helps us understand that investing in positioning will elevate your brand into something more, encouraging a new generation of customers to invest in your product.
6. Packaging
Consumers care about packaging, and that’s a fact.
As visual creatures, people pay attention to detail, especially when it comes to buying more expensive items.
Beautiful packaging will contribute to a great first impression. To give you an example, let’s take a look at this product by Thelma’s Treats:
I’m sure you’ve bought cookies before. However, have you ever bought anything close to that?
The main idea here is to distinguish the product and make it more appealing.
The right packaging is essential to help your customers form a great opinion about your brand.
While you might not have Thelma’s creative packaging, wrapping your products in a piece of plastic isn’t going to make the product more desirable.
Evaluating your packaging and redesigning it when necessary will give your product a huge boost and help you reach more customers.
For example, Electronic Arts, a famous game developer, has recently rebranded its popular The Sims 4 game, changing the box art and UI.
Many older gamers weren’t particularly fond of the change. However, this strategic move was meant to attract EA’s younger audience with brighter colors and modern patterns.
Now, you may wonder, what about companies that don’t have a physical product like agencies?
Your packaging is more than a piece of plastic. It can be your office, your meeting room, or the way your employees dress.
Unique packaging is all you need to become memorable and recognizable. Nevertheless, if you want to scale your business, consider your new potential buyers, re-evaluate your strategy, and make changes for the better.
7. People
The last of the 7 Ps of marketing is, of course, people.
Your employees are the gears that keep your company running. From marketing to sales and customer service, having the right team will help you thrive no matter what.
For that, you need people who, according to Adam Enfroy, will help you find “your mission and send messages to the world to achieve a specific outcome.”
Of course, hiring processes can be long and tiring, and you might not always find the person you are looking for at first.
Nevertheless, you should always try to select the right person for the job; otherwise, you might end up with a dysfunctional team.
Choosing, for instance, a salesperson to carry out your marketing strategy might not be ideal.
Hiring an experienced marketer, though, will give your marketing team the right leader to thrive.
Furthermore, always keep in mind that retaining talent within your organization is more important than hiring new people.
Motivating your employees and giving them the right tools will help them execute your marketing plan and offer better customer experiences.
As we saw, a successful marketing plan might look great on paper; however, without the right formula, you’ll end up with a stagnant strategy.
Implementing the 7 Ps of marketing will help you re-evaluate your marketing tactics and prepare your business for the future.