Back in the day, when I was studying business in school, we had been forced to remember the 3 Ps of successful business and marketing.
Price, place, promotion. These 3 were said to be the ultimate reasons brands fail or succeed.
Getting one P right was not enough as the only way business would work if all 3 of the Ps were reinforcing and improving each other.
Price had to be set at the best point on the marginal utility function to maximise the customer's value while keeping his satisfaction with the price also to the maximum. But the customer would only go the distance to do the transaction if both Place and Promotion were done correctly.
The place was another important P that basically determined whenever people would buy your product. If your store was out of the way, and the only way to get there was full of friction, getting a result would be hard.
On the other hand, if your shop was right on their path from the office to the subway, taking a peek at goods that are offered would be much easier, and so both your price and promotion would be required to be competitive, but less than before.
On the other hand, the promotion has always been neglected by me. I have always thought that if your product is good and you do everything correctly, word of mouth would be your best way to promote your product. But let’s be honest. In order to get word of mouth promotion these days, you have to be extraordinary beyond belief.
Promotion is what actually makes or breaks the business because you can sell a medium quality product at a high price just if you do the promotion correctly.
Ensuring that you tick all the boxes that the customer is looking for is an art of its own.
Balancing out
If your store was outside of the city, to justify it being so far away, you would have to improve and focus on promotion and prices considerably to get your customers to the store.
Also, with Place, in the time’s of online retail, your website is your Place. The design, the fast load and speed are some of the most detrimental reasons people stay or leave the website. But online, the picture is a little different. If you have no promotion online, hoping for people to walk into your store passively is impossible due to the way the internet works.
4th P
I always have thought that Product was another P that people underestimated. The product can sometimes be placed as the side thing when studying business, but look at what people have created and tell me, what is the first thing that you think about Uber? Is it an app, is it a promotion on the busses, is it the low prices?
Or do you instead think: Uber - taxi.
I think that product is one of the most important things in the product and if you fail that, no matter what you do, all of your other efforts will be futile.
Klim Y
Click to tweet!