The Eleventh P, Do you know any other?
In my work as a marketer I have resorted to various ways of analyzing and facing marketing challenges, based on the knowledge of various authors such as Jerome McCarthy who in 1960 defined the concept of Marketing Mix in 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.
Also from Jack Trout or Al Ries who defined positioning as the construction of value in the mind from the product, among other authors that I cite in this article.
And the idea of this brief reflection and summary of concepts arises from a recruiting process that I was carrying out, where I interviewed more than ten people (ALL MARKETERS) and asked them the following question:
How many P’s do you know in Marketing?
Some og the candidates did not even remember McCarthy’s original 4 P’s and the best-answers simply recited them robotically without integrating them into an argument that impressed their interviewer.
Finally, we found a candidate and today we were precisely discussing in her induction, about the strategy that we would follow for one of our products in a high competitive segment and I allowed myself to propose the following framework analysis of the 11 P’s:
1) Product: Which is to determine what exactly sells, what benefits it offers, the characteristics of its product and its competitors, seeing the object and the service as an integral whole that makes up the product.
2) Price: The economic and perceived value of your product, the pricing of your competition, the financial proposal of the payment period, interest rates, premium, the value invested in advertising per unit sold.
3) Place: It refers to the sales channel and forms of marketing, to the places where its clients are regulars, whether physical or virtual.
4) Promotion: All this combination of advertising and public relations aimed at persuading about the acquisition of our product or service, the key messages and the means for its dissemination.
5) People: The people involved in the execution of the marketing strategy are key, a sale can be won and lost in the sales room or the counter, or WORST EVEN: In a phone call, for example, I have the perception that there are always bad receptionists in advertising agencies. Therefore, the evaluation and continuous improvement of this factor must be taken into account with respect to the quality we must provide and the quality with which our competition delivers it.
6) Process: I remember that some time ago I bought something in a large store in the country, but between comings and goings, documents, calls, etc. I said to the seller: Wow, how difficult it is to buy from you! Many times in the paperwork and the bureaucracy the sale battle can be lost.
7) Physical Evidence: It is necessary to keep a printed, electronic and audiovisual record of the entire experience of our client. Recording improvement opportunities for complaints or congratulations from our customers can be vital to positively or negatively influence other buyers, I ask: When was the last time you read reviews of something to decide to buy it? Surely very recently.
8) Profile: How wonderful it is to be able to say my client is primarily women between 21 to 45 years old, who live in cities, especially in Tegucigalpa and Choluteca, whose profession is administrators, lawyers or engineers, with income of… and a frequency of purchase of…. THIS “P” IS PART OF THE LAST FRONTIER of the Mercadologist, it is one of the elements of the Philosopher’s Stone of the Mercadological Warrior.
9) Positioning (Trout,Ries): In a very simple way it is a method to build the perception of a product, brand or corporate image, but at least in this particular case I mean the following:
- Have you defined the positioning that you want to achieve from your store, from your company, from your service?
- ¿Realiza y difunde mensajes clave para comunicar ese posicionamiento?
- Do you carry out and disseminate key messages to communicate this positioning?
10) Purple Cow (Seth Godin): refers to a product or service that is different from the rest and is for some memorable reason. I recently spoke with a foreign friend about whether customer service could be a Purple Cow for companies in Honduras and we concluded that taking care of specific details of that experience could definitely be the differentiating element in a country where we appropiate the paradigm that we give wrong service.
By the way, godin himself in his book deals with this issue of multiple P’s, mentioning: Packaging, Permission and Pass-Along.
11) And the Eleventh P, I learned it very recently, and Simon Sinek gave it to me when he explains that great leaders inspire starting with WHY. The theory is that people connect through common beliefs, start for the reason that It drives you to bring this product and solution to people, and then when you find that valuable reason for people they will connect through their purchase with you.
This is a very brief summary of what Jerome McCarthy, Jack Trout, Al Ries, Seth Godin and so many other authors have contributed to this exciting art-science of marketing.
Surely by this time you will have enriched my brief definitions, which makes me happy but even more brilliant is that I am sure you have already added one more P to this list (I do not mention the 4 Cs because I consider that they are intrinsic in what is described), so I ask that you please send it to me to further increase my market stock.
