As any good chef knows, it takes more than one ingredient to create a truly delicious dish. It’s often the combination of flavors and textures that make the recipe work. Such is the case in marketing. To build a successful – and growing – business, you must have the right marketing mix for your company.
What is Your Marketing Mix?
Your company’s marketing mix refers to the tactics you use to promote your brand, products and services to your audiences. The 4Ps of marketing – product (or service), price, place and promotion are key factors to consider. Foster Marketing has long been an advocate of the fifth P, people, because we’ve seen time and again that people are often a company’s most valuable resource.
7Ps of Marketing
As the tools available to marketers have expanded, so too has the level of competition for your audience’s attention. Today’s marketers now have to focus on the 7Ps of marketing – product, price, place, promotion, people, physical environment and process.
- PRODUCT: Your audience needs to know the significance of your offerings, whether it is advanced technology that brings efficiencies or superior service that can help move their business ahead.
- PRICE: It is important to show the value of what you are offering, be it a service or product, so the cost your customer will pay is easily justified. Even if your product costs more than what customers have previously paid, they should clearly see they are getting more for their money.
- PLACE (OR PLACEMENT): Are you being seen in the right place? This can refer to physical geography of your operations, but Foster Marketing advises our marketing partners to focus on where you are placing ads, billboards and participating in industry events to maximize your chances of getting in front of your specific potential buyers.
- PROMOTION (OR PRESENTATION): How are you presenting yourself in the marketplace? And are you using the right tactics to reach your audiences? Foster advises having the right recipe in place for marketing success by sprinkling in a dash of several marketing tactics that work together to create a successful mix. For one company, the right mix could mean lead generation efforts through trade shows and brand awareness through print/digital advertising, public relations and social media; while another company’s mix may focus on thought leadership via content generation, speaking events and articles and lead generation through product-focused online events and a search-engine optimized website to ensure they are found first.
- PEOPLE: As we said, people are your most valuable asset due to the knowledge, experience and reputation in the industry, but consider who you should be presenting in the market as thought leaders via speaking events, articles, webinars and white papers, and how you can connect with prospective clients and partners using tools such as social media.
- PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT: How are you perceived in the market? As the field of competitors expands, you want to be seen as an established company who can be trusted to deliver. This could include how your crews appear when they show up at a jobsite – professionals who proudly wear your brand and demonstrate your core company values, and also how long you’ve been active in an industry sector and the results you deliver. For Foster Marketing, a key part of who we are is that we have a successful track record of helping energy clients achieve results for nearly four decades.
- PROCESS: This can refer to how your services are delivered and used; but with the wealth of marketing tools available, savvy marketers have a firm grasp on what happens next in their efforts. For example, what happens after a prospective customer completes an online form requesting a bid; when someone sees your advertisement in an industry publication or clicks an ad online, how do you deliver the next level of information; or when someone shows interest at a trade show, what is the plan for following up? There should always be a path for every marketing effort that takes a prospective customer from casual interest and research to a signed and paying client.
Add Some Flavor
As you factor in all of the above and filter through how to efficiently stretch your marketing spend to maximize your potential reach using multiple tactics, the overall impression and feel you present matters. Effective branding adds flavor to your total marketing mix. The messaging, core values, colors and images you use in every campaign should make prospective customers know you are the right choice to meet their needs and make them want to work with you.
Building Your Recipe
We help clients find the recipe that works for them by creating an integrated strategic marketing plan — the complete action plan for their marketing mix. We consider how they are currently positioned and perceived in the market, competitors in the sector, what they’d like to achieve and the key value they offer before selecting which ingredients to use in the mix. The right recipe factors in brand awareness, lead generation and thought leadership using efforts that fit their specific industry sector and could include news releases and articles, website optimization and social media, event marketing and email promotion, just to name a few likely possibilities to be included in the marketing mix.
As you build your recipe and add a dash of this or that to season your marketing mix, Foster Marketing wishes you much success; and as always, we’re here to help create the perfect flavor for marketing success. Contact us today.
