[00:00:00] More 2 Marketing. Welcome to More 2 Marketing the podcaster, explores marketing product and everything in between. I’m your host for today, Susan Walsh, and we’re going to be talking about the marketing mix. Now, this one here, everyone usually knows a bit about it, but sometimes there’s a little bit more for everyone to learn.
So I want to dive in to the marketing mix. Now, the marketing mix is super important and it’s something that I’m very passionate about cause it’s almost like the backbone on any product or service you want to launch or that you want to optimize and bring to market and really hit and nail the strategy to make it go live.
Now the four Ps have been out for a while in the product marketing. And you’ll find them all over the place. Um, they’ve been in textbooks forever in a day. Um, one of the big names out there that you would’ve heard of if you’re in marketing already. [00:01:00] Um, he would’ve come across human university textbooks and probably online mention as well.
And he’s one of the experts in marketing. Now you can look this all up as well, and it is something that’s really interesting to dive into for your niche. So I’m going to be talking a bit more generic with a few examples here about what the marketing mix is and how is it benefit for you to understand it for your products and services.
So first off, we’re going to go with the first four, but as everything happens and our evolves over time, we come along. So we’ve got three new ones that we need to talk about as well that you may or may not have dived in the. , but why is the marketing mix what I call the backbone, is because it really is part of how you bring something to life and you hit a number of the targeted areas, really make it have a bang.
But let’s start exploring that. . Now the first one is product, so obviously this is what you’re going to be bringing to market, either your product or service, [00:02:00] and it has a lot to do with things like your quality of the product. Is it something that is going to last for a year or for a lifetime? Does it stand for this product as well?
Comes a bit into the branding and that’s where we, if we use an example here of cars, the product that Volvo creates, it’s cars. Its quality is known for safety, and that’s also been brought to life as part of its brand message too. As we’ll know that the quality of that product is highly important, that it’s brand appeal as well, and the image it has in market and all this comes under the product, the features.
What does this product actually or service do? What can I help you with? What does the problem does it solve? This is the big problem statement. Why do people need my product or service? What feature or benefit will make it better than a competitor? How can I differentiate myself? What do I do to make it look different?[00:03:00]
When cars we first developed, the Ford said, black is black, you, you’re just going to have to deal with black. But then other colors came out as other brands and other manufacturers, and that was a feature that changed the. The mix itself. So what are you doing with that product? How does it benefit? What support are you giving to the customers or none?
Some products don’t need support where others do, so what’s that going to look like? How’s it going to develop and how’s customer service then going to be impacted here? Do they have to understand how it gets put together? I know myself recently I had to call a manufacturer of a application product that goes on a house, and I actually spoke to the expert who knew how to apply it.
It wasn’t as a call center rep who was reading off a speech or some notes they had and frequently asked questions. It was a person who’s applied it for years in the industry and that made the conversation so much better. And I have to say, I [00:04:00] highly recommend, uh, any Dun product now, and that’s not me selling anything.
It’s, I had a fantastic customer experience based on calling a call center and actually talking to someone who knew what they were doing and the availability and warranties for. That’s super important as well to understand because there can be a huge different misconceptions out there for customers.
So you want to be super clear with the product, what it’s going to do, what’s it going to be useful, and for how long if you have to give that out there. I know for myself, devices in technology space, I like to keep mine for at least, oh, I’m a bit old. I like to keep them for two, three years. I don’t get a new model every year cause I just get too attached.
And plus the apps, I. Can’t we bullet to change them over? So for me, I need to know my product if the phone is going to last me at least two, three years. Whereas other people one year turnaround’s fine cause they want the latest say, I know Apple device when it comes out.[00:05:00]
So this is the next P And it’s all about marketing communications. How do you differentiate your message and. How are you talking? What’s your tone? What’s your differentiation pitch that you’re going to be telling all the customers? What is the personal promotion? Are you going to be doing niche or mass appeal?
How are you going to talk about your product sales? Now the sales itself is interesting, and that does link into the next pay, which is price, and that’s about what your pricing proposition is going to be. In your positioning of your pricing. Are you going to be a product that. A beautiful luxury product that never goes on promotion because people will pay because of the brand bill you’ve created.
Or are you going to be looking at something where you do discounting promotional strategies? And how will you make that for the customer? Is it going to be a gwp? Is it going to be a price? Is it going to make cashback? There’s so many different [00:06:00] ways promotions work these days. What’s going to appeal to your markets?
What you need to know and understand, and TE learns are great for. Here comes under promotion. How you going to rally everyone out there to know about this? Is it old school local papers, which unfortunately some are disappearing. Is it going to be, um, digital focused? Are you going to try and get onto right into the inbox?
Uh, are you, have you got other places that you’re going to be promoting it to make it really stand out versus, say, retail versus online? Or is it. , how do they all interact, but making sure they’re consistent. They all need to be talking the same language, that same tone, that same brand and image appeal so that people can connect the dots.
And direct marketing. Is that something you’re going to look at or not? Are you going to be seeing if you can get some warm leads for some of your personal services you might be promoting out there? How will that help? Do you have. Marketing, [00:07:00] opt-in, opt out, approved, marketing email list that you can send out promotions to, uh, or, um, give advice to something like that, to really, or even coming soon, we’ve got this fabulous new addition coming to your X yz.
You were bought three weeks ago and we’d love you to be the first to try it. There’s all different ways you can. Next P pricing. So we have touched on this one. That’s about what price positioning are you going to do in market, and there’s all different things that you can do. Now, for me, discounting is fantastic if it’s the right product at the right time.
So I highly recommend you to look at a calendar of activities that meet your target market and what is there. If you’re a product that you do want to do sales because you want to maximize big marketing promotions that are happening in the market, say Black Friday, cyber Monday, those kind of really [00:08:00] big shopping periods, even the old school Boxing Day sales, then make sure you align that with your pricing strategy for when you’re going to go on promotion and make sure it’s appealing.
Sometimes you can even do a prem messages saying, coming. We’re going to be part of the kickstarted early. Just make sure that’s part of your strategy, that you understand when discounting needs to be done. Discounting also goes deeper, um, with pricing. If you’re willing to do, say, um, second services or additional products that you might want to tease them forward, get more outta, you can use it with coupon codes and all those, um, lovely things you can do on online checkouts so you can in store in some cases.
To get one free price does also cover payment methods. So I can tell you now, over the last oh 15 years, the new types of payment methods make a difference. [00:09:00] And if you are growing, say a small business that’s trying to grow a bigger, even big businesses, you can do partnerships, which really should be another P that it isn’t with some of those actual payment method.
Myself in the past, I’ve done things with MasterCard, I’ve done ones with Visa where they help co-fund promotions. And the ones I see in the market all the time at the moment are latitude. Uh, what else have we got? AfterPay, even PayPal has been known to do some of these co-funded promotions to help you get out there with a promotion and sell products.
So they get a cut as well, cause it’s going through their payment. And not everyone wants to use Visa and MasterCard. These days with cybersecurity, a lot of people are wanting other options that protect them, like PayPal for example. We’ve got that added layer of feeling like you’re safe and secure. Put yourself in.
The customers think there, what would they like to buy from? And [00:10:00] it comes back down to pricing. You need to make sure that any of those additional charges that you may get from those payment methods. You’ve got all that as part of your actual product slash um, service cost. So you already have that put in there so that you don’t forget the economics there.
The next P place, this is all about what channel it’s going to be in, uh, what the segment going to be target for, is it. Is it Omni? Is it online? Is it something else that’s going to come out? Is it in app? There’s so many things that place can cover these days. For me, one of my traditional favorite old school ones is the good old fashioned trade show.
Trade shows, if you’ve got a certain perk or service and it fits, can be fantastic. There’s baby shows, garden shows, home shows, oh, so many. I think it’s even Crystal shows as. And if even if you’re a niche into sci-fi, you can even go to those type of [00:11:00] big events as well. Now, for me, trade shows are fantastic because you’ve got your target market there.
Generally, you’ll have the buyer there too if it’s a business to business type trade show. And they can, if you design your stand in a way, they can actually touch and feel an experie. In the past, I have done ones with scaffolding to show the quality of the scaffolding that it isn’t cheap, it isn’t flimsy, it’s safe, it’s secure, it’s Australian made.
And that really hit home with the business people coming through that were making those decisions about what the next product was they were going to use on their sites. Cause no one wants a site injury. So again, the place can make a difference as well on how you can enter your. Are the four traditional ones.
Product, motion, price, place, but there are three new ones that have come in people, process and [00:12:00] physical evidence. Now, this is more Spurs a holistic approach to the marketing mix. It touches everyone within the, well, most people within the organization, and also helps you have more of a competitive lens that helps the whole business and the marketing people understand what’s going on and everyone’s involved.
So the people, it’s all about the individuals that are working on the marketing activities, the people that are in the call centers, the recruiters, even those that’re doing the training. And a big call out for me on people is commissions. You’ve got salespeople out there selling the products and services. You want to make sure that they’re all on board to understand the product, promotion, price, and place so that they do the best job they can do when they’re going out and representing.
And that means they’re talking the same lingo as well, which is really, really important. And they know what the key features. That is huge when it comes to those selling [00:13:00] guys and girls cause they understand this and they know the target they’re talking to. Process, process is all about those design features.
Um, it support business led decisions, the customer focus points, all those um, business type processes that we work on with all the departments to make sure things are running. Now for me, this one here touches on product development. because when you’re building a product, it doesn’t come as in air. You have to research it.
Think about it, go to the drawing board sometimes and bring it to life, and that’s product delivery. I have a podcast coming up very soon on this with an expert, and we’re talking about some of the key features and thoughts that you need to have when you’re doing product delivery. Within that is also research and development, because as we know, you never.
1.0. You always have other iterations, like [00:14:00] 1.2, 2.0. Like look at Vegemite, a great example. Sorry, Vegemite. Um, they tried to relaunch it into the modern world and yeah. [Laughter] Google that one. An interesting book I started to look at. Uh, but again, that’s important about research and development. Make sure you understand your key demographic before going out and launching different pieces or even the correct service itself.
Physical evidence is the last one, and that’s about making sure the sales staff and contact experience is on. Your packaging presents your product, your quality, your branding, your features, it speaks to your target audience. It covers off everything and anything they want to know. Is it a picture of a product being used?
Is it the warranty information? If it makes them feel secure, that’s where your physical evidence comes in. Sometimes it’s an, it could even be a [00:15:00] supporting flyer, but a key one is the online. How does your website flow? How do they get information from there? How do you optimize that for the best customer experience possible so that customers are talking about you in a positive way?
No one wants to be on par review as a negative post or any of those type of forum. We want to be positive we, we make these products and services to help people, not to make things worse, not to make things harder, but to help them. And that’s the whole. Of these products, and that’s why we want to make sure that all these seven Ps talk the same language, have the same vision, have the same meaning out there across all channels that they’re in, or people that you touch along the way.
So it has the most op opportunity for success. And then the customers get what they need and want from it as well. And it’s exactly what they. [00:16:00] or you could be giving them something that they are beyond their expectations in a positive way. And both of those two examples can mean that you get positive reviews, those nice five out of five stars, and that just builds your reputation.
Again, going back to product about the branding and the image and the quality, you want to make sure you tickle. . That’s why these seven are so important for the backbone of your product and service you’re bringing to life. I highly recommend that for any product and service, you do this exercise for neither Excel, word PowerPoint so you understand what it is and you share it with your teams.
It’s really important to make sure everyone’s on that same page cause that’s how you evolve. How you succeed, how you work together for success. I know a lot of success there, but that’s what you want. You’re not doing this [00:17:00] to not succeed. Some other key ones that aren’t here that are worth noting is partnerships, as I mentioned before about um, you can actually do financial partnerships with payment partners.
There’s all different types of partnerships you can do out there from real partnerships where it’s like a sponsorship through to affiliate marketing and other display type opportunities. The missing p it. Appear in the future. But partnerships is definitely something that I think should be included in the marketing mix.
It’s an important aspect, particularly for in some areas free promotions, which is great to targeted audiences. If you can find that link in there. And the last thought I’ll leave you on is the future of technology when it comes to artificial intelligence. That AI piece, it’s evolving so much. , you now have these customer service reps that sound like real humans that [00:18:00] are actually just bot.
You’ve got the ability that you can have a chat, I AI go online and you ask it a question and it gives you these huge, long answers because it can scrape websites, all different websites and make its own answer. There’s something interview said there on how that may impact. Customer forums, uh, even questioning or even how some of our digital social media works.
So I, I think there there’ll be something in the future when it comes outta artificial intelligence and how that will impact the marketing as well and how we get involved in it. Because we know TV shows are now doing even more product placements than one of the biggest call outs. Infamous Coffee Cup on Game of Thrones, for example, probably left you with a fair bit to think about there, and there’s a bit of the future thoughts there too.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this [00:19:00] podcast from marketing. Don’t forget to subscribe so you can follow us and hear the next one. They’ll be coming very soon and have a fantastic day.
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