Tag: marketing mix

  • People as part of the Services Marketing Mix

    People as part of the Services Marketing Mix

    When we think of the Marketing Mix, we’ve all heard about the famous “Four Ps”, made up of product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. However, the importance of people as part of the services marketing mix might just pass us by.

    You see, potential customers will make purchasing decisions based not only on your marketing communications, service quality and reasonableness of your pricing, but on your full services marketing mix – and that includes most especially your people.

    Here in the West of Ireland, there’s this great seafood restaurant along the coastline, serving up fabulous local oysters, mussels, fish and more. The view from the dining room is to die for, with ocean, islands and spectacular cliffs outside its big windows. Pricing is perfectly reasonable. It’s great. But the staff leaves a lot to be desired – especially the owner/manager. I’m not sure if they realise it or not, but their manner is very poor, leading to a big ‘fail’ in this critically important P – people as part of the services marketing mix.

    Meanwhile, inland, there’s this run of the mill (in terms of location, decor and seating) café diner that opens up for lunch each day.  Now, don’t get me wrong, they do really very nice food indeed, especially their great and varied home-made soups. But the thing here is that the owner/manager is fantastic, always wears a smile and is truly friendly. I return regularly.

    I recently read a motivational sign inviting us to smile, because it might confuse people. Unfortunately, this is very often the case. But if you can invest in really great people and add them in to your marketing mix, you’re onto a winner.

    people as part of the services marketing mix

    Anyway, the ‘people’ in your marketing mix involves two key functions : procedures and personality. Procedures is about doing the necessary in an organised and efficient manner. Personality is about delivering that functionality with a nice and friendly manner.

    I remember reading the late great Feargal Quinn’s legendary book about quality customer care entitled “Crowning the Customer” and a passage inside where he mentioned that, at the time when he was still involved in recruitment for his business, that if a candidate didn’t smile during the interview he didn’t get the job. You can buy that book from the publisher here.

    Just remember that there’s no point in having the finest automobile, bought at an excellent price and running on the straightest road, if the person behind the wheel doesn’t know how to drive! In service businesses, be sure your people are the right people.

    Updated 2019.

  • Physical Evidence – One of the Seven Ps of Marketing

    Physical Evidence as Part of the Marketing Mix

    OK, so we’ve all heard of the Four Ps of Marketing, right? But in addition to the well-known Product, Price, Place (Distribution) and Promotion, there are three others to consider if yours is a service business – Physical Evidence, People and Processes. In this post, we’ll look at the first.

    Physical Evidence is about what it says on the tin – the idea that your service business needs to “look the part”. How can an intangible service achieve this? It’s about how your premises and other assets (along with your service delivery) match your branding message.

    Physical Evidence
    Physical Evidence is one of the Seven Ps of Marketing

    A simple way to understand this concept is to think about the last restaurant you walked into. Typically, a restaurant is not located upstairs, because the need to walk up a staircase, peek inside the restaurant and retreat back down when we don’t like what we see is something that makes people uncomfortable. We prefer restaurants at street level, so we can comfortably look in and walk on by, if we so choose. We like to view the menu, see if there is a good crowd inside, check out the ambiance and get a “feel” for the place.

    A friend of mine, who drives a lot for a living, once told me how he would never buy too big a company car, because it might give off the wrong impression to his clients.

    To take a silly example : How would you feel if, when visiting a medical device manufacturing facility, the reception area in which you are seated, while waiting for your appointment, left a lot to be desired in terms of cleanliness? Impressive physical evidence? I wouldn’t think so.

    Let’s imagine you want to open a pizzeria with a fun theme, rather than the traditional rustic “Italian Family” feel. In this case, you might design a bright, funky decor to reflect this concept. Physical evidence should be, therefore, a key cornerstone of your branding message and should fit with your pricing, promotion and other elements of your services marketing mix.

    But the relevance of physical evidence extends beyond simply the bricks and mortar outlet your business might take place in. Imagine if you were a creator of signage for vehicles and didn’t have a good quality sign on your own van. Or if you were a website designer with an outdated, poorly optimised, non mobile-friendly website of your own.

    Physical evidence is one of the Seven Ps of the Marketing Mix for service businesses, along with product, price, place, promotion, people and processes. Like the others, it cannot stand alone, but great physical evidence can greatly help your business set the right tone and thrive.

    Review your Physical Evidence

    So, whether you are providing kayaking tours at the riverside, running a small family hotel or involved in financial services, take a look around your premises (or where and how your service is provided to your customers) and see if your physical evidence matches what your customers would like to experience. You’ve heard it before, punters love to comment on how they “didn’t like the look of the place”.

    How do your premises and other facets of your business look? Are you portraying the right type of physical evidence that will entice your target market to do business with you?

    Read this thread on Quora about the differences between marketing products v services.

  • Target Marketing – Visualise that Persona

    Your Target Marketing Personae

    In Target Marketing, for a business-to-consumer (B2C) enterprise, you should try to paint a picture of a persona that represents the actual real-life market you are hoping to develop.

    Taking into account factors like family status, number of children, age bracket, income level, motivations, behaviours, etc., you should try to build a picture of that special person for whom you hope to solve a problem. Of course, your business might cater for more than one target market, in which case you build two or more distinct personae. The point here is that, if you want to communicate with the right type of person for your business, you need to be able to picture that person in your mind’s eye. In this way, you will more carefully consider your marketing content and the media across which you send out your content.

    Target marketing
    Pursue representative target market personae

    This is not to say that you will refuse a sale of your product or service to somebody who does not precisely fit your established persona. Of course not. It simply means that you will direct your energy and resources solely at clearly defined target markets.

    So your target market persona might be a 50 year-old single lady living in Dublin, who plays tennis and likes to lunch out with her lady friends. Or yours might be a young couple, with two children under the age of 6, who own a Volvo saloon and like to go cycling. Yours might have enjoyed the now defunct Mooney Show on RTE Radio 1, or might always have been more of a Moncrieff on Newstalk listener.

    Target Marketing – Its Place

    Don’t forget that target marketing comes third of the four elements that make up the Marketing Process. It is preceded by Situation Analysis, where you line up what you’ve got and what not, what you’re great at and what not, etc. A SWOT Analysis should form part of that step. Then comes Marketing Research, where you find out all you need to know about the market as a whole, competitors, etc. Only then does Target Marketing take centre stage, as you look at all your cards and realise which market segment(s) your offering will suit best. After all, marketing is about offering solutions to your market. Finally, the Marketing Mix is where you settle on your product, its pricing, distribution and promotion.

  • Marketing Process – The Structure Behind Ideas

    The Marketing Process – Your Strategy

    Play word association with ‘marketing’ and many will respond with ‘advertising’. Others might come up with ‘promoting’, or even offer up ‘Facebook‘ nowadays. Rarely will somebody utter ‘marketing process’.

    And yet, as small business owners and marketeers, we should be thinking more about the Marketing Process as a whole rather than simply its exciting promotional element. So bear with me here.

    In marketing jargon, there are four elements to the Marketing Process – the strategic steps through which we should go when looking for direction, ideas and actions.

    First, there’s Situation Analysis. Here, we look at the marketplace as a whole and what resources we have, how our business, product or service stacks up and what trends are out there that we could be taking advantage of. One part of this step is the good old SWOT Analysis. What are our Strengths and Weaknesses? What Opportunities and Threats are out there?

    Second, there’s Marketing Research. Here, we carry out research into what competitors are offering, or what current and potential customers are looking for. Think of it as validation of what we’ve discovered during Situation Analysis, or as a means to answering the questions that will inevitably have popped up.

    Third, it’s Target Marketing. Armed with the kind of good information that the first two steps will have furnished us with, we should now have a sound picture of the marketplace. It’s now time to pick and choose between the various market segments and home in on the one or more we feel we can best serve.

    Fourth (and only having completed the other steps), it’s time to get to the juicy bit – the Marketing Mix.

    Now, having worked methodically through those first three (less appealing) steps, we can make better decisions about product offers, pricing levels, distribution channels and promotional mix. Why? Because we’ve learned so much already.

    I like to call these four steps “Now, Check, Aim, Fire”. Note how, along with the fourth, the first three don’t stop. They are not a simple once-off exercise; they are ongoing.

    Marketing Process
    The Marketing Process – Now, Check, Aim, Fire

    ‘Now’ signifies looking around and seeing where you’re at. ‘Check’ is about researching and validating what you believe to be true. ‘Aim’ is for finding your preferred target markets. Finally, you ‘Fire’ your mix of product, price, place and promotion at that or those target markets you’ve identified.

    The Marketing Process

    Check back over the coming months for more detailed posts about each step.