Key Question:
A: If you start with the product or service, you'll keep it straight. Consider the four "Ps" which are Product (or Service), Place, Price, Promotion.
Marketing tells the story about the right product, offered in the right places, and offered at the right price, that are promoted properly. All that happens and the actual sales follow.
Marketing prepares the sale.
So, start with the product. Without the right product, you're dead in the water.
Then John goes on to tell us that if you have the right product then proceed with the eight marketing functions. To focus on the "Place" forces you to determine who you think your market is. In part that also becomes a factor in your pricing. Then you begin testing the market by doing the following:
1. create awareness
2. build traffic
3. generate leads
4. qualify leads
5. sell directly
6. provide service
7. develop a customer dialogue
8. build loyalty
At each step, you are listening and asking questions so your best potential customers become customers for life.
Think about it
Are you happy with the pace of your growth? Do you think you have the right product or service? Do you think it's time to re-think your offers? Could a new technology make your product or service more compelling?
Clip from: Cowgirl Enterprises: Just Do it! Take charge!
Boulder, Colorado: In this episode of the show we visit with all American cowgirls. They actually ride horses and Harleys. They know how to sweat, roll up their sleeves and get the work done. There are no prima donnas here. They stand in sharp contrast to so many woman in the world. And because they embody the American spirit for freedom and adventure, we encourage the vision, "Take it global, Donna!" Encourage all woman who are held back or in the dark.
So many of our viewers ask, "How do you get a business started?" Here is a good story to study.
Donna Baase had a vision about skincare products that come from botanicals -- herbs, flowers, roots, etc. In the dry air of Colorado, especially in this mile high city, she knows women need and want skin moisturizers that really work.
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John Wargo & Company
John Wargo, founder
Business Classification:
Marketing
Year Founded:
Learn The Marketing Ps
HATTIE: John Wargo, our marketing adviser, explains the difference between marketing and sales and tells us what to include in a marketing plan.
JOHN WARGO: Sales is a part of marketing. Marketing is the whole game plan. Marketing is making sure that you've got the right product, a unique product. It's making sure that you're pricing it right because your product and your price have to be unique in order to be competitive. It's got to be positioned properly. You've got to sell it in the right places. So you put those three together, now you can begin selling. Because what you're really selling is a unique product at a unique price at a unique place. And you put that all together, now you're ready to sell.
HATTIE: This product is unique. I mean, it's not often you get lotion in a bar.
JOHN: Right.
HATTIE: So she's got a product that's standing out. But still, for every small-business owner, marketing needs to include ...
JOHN: Price, place and then promotion.
HATTIE: The promotion part. You were noticing that you thought she was doing a good job of marketing with the postcards. Now why is this working?
JOHN: Well, first of all, postcards have the highest read rate; it is very, very easy to read a postcard. So what she's doing is sending a very concise message that can be read very easily by a very busy employee or manager of a firm. She is really communicating with them. And her message--her message is right to the point. Here is my unique product, here's the unique pricing arrangement I have, and this is when it's available. She has done everything in one simple postcard. She made herself competitive with the largest sales forces in the country and, yet, with a very small, concise message and a simple postcard.
HATTIE: OK. Product, price, place, promotion. Got to do all that.
JOHN: Got to do it all.
