In a previous article, (Four Little Words that Smacks a Marketing Punch), I talked about the importance of the 4Ps. Just to refresh you, the 4Ps are:

They are:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Placement (or Distribution – they needed a P)

I’d like to add two of my own Q’s that I learned through my experience as a salesperson. They are:

• Position
• People

I think these six P’s follow a stepwise approach. It goes from Position to People.

This article introduces you to my 6Ps (other marketers have their own versions) and how they can have a profound effect on your business. If you work on them individually in a sequence, you’ll see the results for yourself. Most companies work primarily on promotion and pricing and, depending on the type of business, placement. The others, to tell the truth, are not necessarily considered.

Position

I like to think of this as the core of the marketing mix. Entrepreneurs are market driven, they see a gap in the market and seek to fill it. At this stage it is important to have the ‘T’s crossed and the ‘I’s dotted. By this I mean you need to know where you are going, who you are going to, who your competitors are, what makes you different, and what go-to-market strategy you will/will employ.

In a nutshell, you need to set marketing goals and objectives and create a marketing action plan. It doesn’t have to be a 55 page report, it can just be a two page document that you review weekly or monthly. It is a living document, so it is open to changes when market opportunities arise.

Product

Once you’ve decided where you’re going, you need to focus on your product or service offering. From the P position above, you should know what your unique selling point is. What makes you different?

Prices

Pricing refers to setting a price for your product or service. It’s really that simple.

Placement

Placement or distribution refers to how your product or service reaches your customer.

Promotion

This ‘P’ is the ‘P’ used by most companies. It refers to how you promote your business, product or service to current and potential customers. The media to consider are vastly varied and really only limited by your own imagination. Some well-known methods are public relations, advertising, personal selling, telephone selling, website, and referral marketing.

People

People do business with people, not with business. It’s often a forgotten P in the literature, but the customer is your business. The renowned Brian Tracey will always say that the purpose of being in business is to get and keep customers. From them come your profits, your growth, your margins.

The cornerstone of understanding people and their customers is customer data. This helps you understand a customer’s lifetime value, their loyalty levels, their buying patterns, their expectation levels, and much more.

Within this ‘P’ is how to best communicate with your customers. Some companies take their customers for granted. No, I get it, but when was the last time (other than Christmas) that you contacted a client or past client just to say hello or ask how your business is going (depending on the service)?

Most companies spend 80% of their time looking for new business and 20% on existing customers. It costs much less to sell to an existing customer (or existing customer contact) than it does to a new customer.

What is your customer relationship strategy (CRM)? Has all of your staff been trained to provide excellent customer service?

Summary

The 4Ps are a great way to see how your company approaches marketing. These additional 2Ps help you focus a little more on what’s important: getting on the right track and your customers.