The P’s of Marketing The marketing mix is a popular business promotion and strategy tool. The 7P’s of Marketing model was originally devised by E. Jerome McCarthy and published in 1960 in his book Basic Marketing, A Managerial Approach. Today, the P’s of Marketing have expanded to create a more complete framework you can use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your business activities. Among others, these P’s include: people, product, process, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning, proof, publicity, and public relations. As markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you should regularly reexamine these P’s to make sure you're on the best track for achieving maximum results.

It’s important to develop a practice of looking at your product objectively, like you were an outside consultant brought in to help make important decisions. Critically evaluate whether your products or services, or mix of products and services, are appropriate and best positioned for today’s customers. Companies can use the P’s of Marketing to set objectives, undertake a competitive analysis, and review their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). It's a practical framework to evaluate an existing business and work through approaches while evaluating the entire marketing mix.

Common Marketing Mistakes

Not Tracking Advertising Return On Investment (ROI) John Wanamaker, one of the marketing greats, famously said: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. While this was yesterday’s marketing reality, it certainly need not be the case today. Yet most businesses still do little if any tracking of their advertising and promotions. Not measuring where your leads and sales come from and not tracking your return on ad costs is the mark of the amateur. Now, we can all quickly, easily and cheaply track advertising effectiveness. You’re better off being ruthless with your promotions, cutting ads that are losers and focusing on the winners. In order to do that, you need to be tracking and measuring.

Going Too Broad Who is your target market? If you say “everyone”, it suggests you may not have fully thought through the importance of targeting. Trying to target everyone in practice translates into actually targeting no one. By going too broad you water down the power of uniquely tailored messages and become just some other possibility in an ocean of options.

By defining specific populations you’re able to provide real benefits or promotions to, you become different and special. A specialist is valued and sought out, which is the way you want customers to experience your business. When you narrow down your target market, you not only save wasted energy and resources on directions that are best excluded, but it lets you keep your focus on maximizing message effectiveness and processes for the customers you want.

Wasting Money On “Branding” Many small businesses waste large sums of money on “branding”. They see big companies do so and assume it must be the path to success. Here’s a short illustration of why this in the past, this strategy has not worked so well.

Think of yourself as an archer and your marketing budget is your arrows. You need to use those arrows very wisely so that you can be successful and get the food. If you waste your arrows by firing in every direction, you’re going to startle off your prey and run out of arrows quickly. Targeting very carefully and being clever is the way to be victorious.

Sometimes just “getting your name out there” is the way to go. But unless you’re a large corporation like Pepsi or Dell, it’s likely you can’t afford to burn millions of dollars on “branding.” Rather than “getting your name out there”, businesses can do better by concentrating on getting customers to come in. Small and medium sized business need to get fast returns on marketing dollars. Putting a relatively tiny marketing budget into “brand” marketing usually makes it hard to accomplish any kind of effect.

The game of mass marketing and branding has commonly only been won with massive firepower. If you’re a small to medium business that’s not a game you want to find yourself playing. If you’ve been engaging in any of these marketing mistakes, it’s time to re­evaluate and get your business on course.

Brand Marketing There are two primary types of marketing strategies. The first is mass marketing, brand marketing, (or “branding”) whose goal is to associate your name with the products and services offered. The idea is that the more times you run ads repeating your name brand, the more likely people are to keep it at the top of their consciousness when they buy.

The vast majority of advertising falls into this branding or “image” marketing category. But although it can be effective, it is very expensive to pull off and requires long periods of time. It usually involves saturating many types of advertising media on a frequent and regular basis.

Problems arises when small businesses try to engage in this type of marketing. The few times they can afford to run their advertisements is barely a drop in the bucket. It’s just not enough to reach the minds of their target customers who are bombarded with thousands of messages all of the time.Your ads just get drowned out, you get little or no return for investment, and another marketing promotion bites the dust.

It isn’t that small businesses can’t be good at branding. It’s simply that they don’t have budgets to run ads in sufficient volume to make them effective. Unless you have millions of dollars to spend, focusing on this type of advertising leaves your marketing an uphill battle that’s highly like to fail.

Direct Response Marketing The second type of marketing strategy is called “direct response.” Direct response marketing is designed to evoke immediate responses and compel the viewer or listener to take a specific action, such as opting in to receive text messages or signing up for a special discount.

So what are the qualities that make an ad direct response? Firstly, they’re trackable. When prospects respond, you know which ad and media was responsible for generating the response as opposed to mass media or “brand” marketing. No one may ever know what compelled you to buy

that can of Pepsi, but most of us feel we’re being very intentional when we take advantage of special offers from our cell phones. The most important quality of direct response ads is they help you track exactly which campaigns are successful and making money.

Secondly, they’re measurable. Since you know which ads customers are responding to and the resulting sales from each one, you can measure exactly how effective every ad is. Dropping or changing ads that are not giving you a return on investment then becomes common marketing management.

Third, they use compelling headlines and sales copy. Direct response marketing has a compelling message that generates strong interest from targeted prospects. It uses attention grabbing headlines with strong sales copy that target specific audiences or niches. The advertising aim is irresistible messages that appeal to specific populations of customers.

Lastly, they make a specific offer and demand a response from the prospect. Usually the ad makes a value­packed offer or special for taking action. The aim may not be to necessarily sell anything from the ad but to get the prospect to take the next action, such as requesting a report, receiving a coupon code or simply phoning. This “call to action” compels the prospect to do something specific and captures important marketing data.

The benefits, including opportunities for customized engagement, developing leads into buyers, and much more make direct response advertising the clear path to market success. Add to the equation the mass expansion of personal cell phones, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect for businesses to claim entirely new ground through the use of their own direct marketing and sales processes.

Because direct response marketing focuses on meeting specific customer interests with real benefits, it is an honest and straightforward way to sell products and services and the most cost effective way for businesses to reach consumer consciousness, elicit responses quickly, and accomplish real results.

Memory Numbers ­ The Best of Both Marketing Worlds Using phone numbers in marketing creates many important advantages for business that can be tough to envision. To consumers, when a business uses a U.S. toll free number, they presume certain qualities without even thinking about it. Consumers will assume you’re more professional and prepared for their call simply because you use one. When that toll free number is special and unique to the name or message of your business, it conveys a level of reliability and commitment beyond average companies.

Top level domain names also have that effect. When a company has a short, easily remembered online name, consumers will presume you’ve been around for while and are more likely to trust you. When the two factors are combined, U.S. toll free numbers and top level domains, it conveys a readiness, professionalism and capacity to customers that you can’t convey with any advertising budget. In today’s aggressive online and around­town advertising worlds, combining quality phone numbers with online factors brings together genuine marketing, technological and operational advantages. New, small and existing businesses

immediately get those advantages by reserving the best MemoryNumbers name, keyword or specific marketing phrase for their arsenal.

One particular type of MemoryNumbers are called WebNumbers, a combination of toll free phone numbers and website address. When a business develops a WebNumber into an online site, it becomes a Telesite, a combined telephone and website address. Telesites solve the challenges of branding and direct response advertising, and bring real operational advantages for local and regional marketing.

The most important aspect of branding is imprinting ­ leaving an impression on the consumer’s brain so that they’re more likely to

remember your business. The best place any company can be with their product or service is at the front of customer’s minds. If everywhere I advertise I make it easier for customers to act in my direction, respond to my offers, and have consistently good experience with their memory delivering quality results, I’m quickly the only business they want to work with, and on a path to endless growth.

See The Business Card Test for just one example of branding brought together with direct­response advertising. With advances in tracking technology, SIP telecom, and the new phone numbers available, businesses now can create their own immediately effective marketing platforms. Number inventories are limited but opportunities are available for most industries. The perfect number could be taken by other businesses or re­translated at any time, so secure the right MemoryNumber for your industry before they’re gone. MemoryNumbers can be contacted directly by dialing This­Is­Easy (844­747­3279).