Mind Your P’s & Clues!

Five P’s

I’m constantly asked what a Marketing Engineer does. Well, since I’m the only one I know who is a Marketing Engineer because I created the title, I do Business Engineering and it’s based on five P’s; People, Product, Placement, Price and Promotion. Some of you are wracking your brains trying to remember something they learned from Marketing 101. Actually, the classic four P’s (marketing mix) are taught in college. People aren’t included and I’ve lumped classic Place with Placement What’s so important about this? Knowing your P’s will give you the right clues as to what’s going on with your business.

People...

We’re all people, whether we’re the business owner, the customer or the employees. Include your managers and your family if they are involved in your business. Making people happy is one thing. Keeping people satisfied is another. Someone said, “What we are never changes. Who we are is always changing.” Many businesses forget that each employee identifies the entire company. One bad apple will spoil a whole barrel of image!

Product...

Or, service if that’s what you provide. What is it – really? Can you simply define it? What consumer problem does it solve? Compared to other products or services, how good is it and what value does it represent to the consumer? Customers seek out products and services to solve problems. If you need or want something and you can’t find it – that’s a problem! Your salespeople are then problem solvers. I tell my students, when you help solve a customer’s problem, you are properly serving them. Service then is selling.

Place...

I’ve bundled a couple of place concepts in this one. Place traditionally is about distribution. Your "brick and mortar" place of business. Is it conducted at your street location, over the internet or the phone or does your sales go out to your customer’s place of business? I also ask you to consider that place in the consumer’s mind where your business or product resides. Are you positioned at the top of their mind or way in the back? Speaking of positioning, what’s you competitive position. Are you the largest, oldest, first, best…

Price...

Now he’s a subject worth at least an entire column! How does your pricing compare to that of your competition? Well, that’s not as important as the value it represents to your customers. Buying is a simple act of exchanging one value for another. A good buy is paying less for something you think is worth more. If you think your customers only buy on price it’s because they have no other way of differentiating your business from your competitions’. Fix this problem now!

Promotion...

Ok, call it advertising. Good advertising can do more harm than bad advertising. Good advertising can send customers to a business that does not meet their expectations. At least bad advertising doesn’t compound a bad situation. Before you go out and advertise make sure your People, Product, Placement and Price are doing a good job to promote you – then you can advertise to tell your story; a story that your customers can embrace.

Five More P’s of Another Persuasion

After all, Business Engineering is about:presenting solutions based on observation and analysis. So remember the...

• Proper
• Preparation
• Preventing
• Poor
• Performance!