Effectively Use Your Brand Strategy with the 7 Ps of Marketing

The 7 Ps include Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical Evidence and help outline a business's strategic marketing, planning, and analysis. Products, markets, customers, and needs are ever-changing, so it's important to revisit these principles often to ensure you're on track with your brand strategy and receiving maximum results.

Product

When focusing on your product or service, ask yourself if what you've created serves your customer's needs. Your product or service should solve a problem for the customer. Why is your product or service the best one to solve it?

Action: Outline your offering's benefits that match your solution to each need and problem your customer experiences.

Price

Pricing is essential for dictating how your customer reacts, how that impacts the competitive landscape, what others are offering below and above yours, and the cost of making your product or conducting your service. The strategy behind pricing your product or service is to consider what your customers would be willing to pay, the cost it takes to manufacture, retail space and overhead, and your brand positioning as a luxury or attainable brand.

Action: Find five competitors and map all the prices on a scale to determine your position. Adjust pricing accordingly to match your brand positioning.

Promotion

You will want to spend time and money promoting and marketing what you have to offer. Promotion is crucial to making your product or service known to the public to increase sales and brand visibility. Activities in Promotion could include advertising, direct marketing, in-store promotional activities, and much more. Digital promotion can catch many paid and organic opportunities, including live streams, social media groups, short videos, and online events.

Action: Make a list of all your current promotion activities and methods. Identify gaps. Calculate ROI on any paid activities.

Place

Place is where your product or offering is showing up and being purchased. This could be manufacturing or makers' locations, advertisements, and other print and digital media. Your offering needs to be in the right place at the right time, ensuring your customer can find, adopt, or purchase it easily. The placement of your product or service should be informed by your potential customers and your target market's likelihood to engage with it. To understand the target market for your brand → Understanding Your Brands Target Market.

Action: List out all the areas your product or offering is currently placed. Identify gaps. Calculate ROI on any paid activities.

People

People are not just those who may purchase what you're selling. It's also the individuals participating in any of the marketing, sales, and product development steps. Having excellent people in customer service and people confidently advocating for your brand increases brand awareness resulting in sales and referrals and expanding your customer base. It's essential that everyone representing your brand or communicating with customers has a deep knowledge of your offering, brand, and positioning.

Action: Schedule a team huddle (including vendors and contractors) to review core facts about your business and trajectory; empower your people with information.

Process

Process is the systemized and personal steps associated with delivering your offering to your clients. This can cover onboarding, unboxing, customer service, responsive time, delivery, and more. Designing your process for maximum brand building, efficiency, and reliability is vital. If your brand focuses on being environmentally friendly, messaging and steps in the process must reflect that. If your brand focuses on a luxury experience, every step must match.

Action: Audit your current process against your brand values and see what needs to be corrected and adjusted for ultimate brand building.

Physical Evidence

Your brand isn't an idea; it needs physical evidence to validate the customer experience. Digital platforms need to include user stories, testimonials, and recommendations. Physical experiences like packaging, including shipping materials, packing inserts, and receipts, as well as store experience, including smell, texture, and lighting. Every piece of physical evidence should evoke a sense of value from the transaction — proving your brand exists, provides value, and is worth a transaction taking place.

Action: Make a list of all the physical touch points of your offering with a customer. Identify any gaps and ensure your brand strategy is evident at every point.

These seven Ps are core elements in deploying your brand strategy. When harnessed effectively, they can help increase sales, expand brand awareness, and build loyalty.

If you want to learn more about how to do those things, read Mastering the Brand Experience next.