It is not unusual to hear small business owners say that they don’t believe in marketing. Typically I find this translates directly to the fact that they have been disappointed with the results of their advertising. Sales and advertising are only two components in the larger marketing mix for successful small business promotion.

According to Wikipedia the term marketing mix,was first coined in 1953 by Neil Boden who took the recipe idea one step further and coined the term marketing-mix. Traditionally there are 4P’s, or four promotional elements to a marketing mix. These include Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. With the rapid increase of social media closer attention is now being paid to two more P’s as part of this mix. They include People and Persistency.

Each is defined as follows:

PRODUCT: A physical object or an intangible service such as tourism and hospitality. Product has a lifecycle, which can mean ongoing research and development to ensure it meets ongoing customer demands.

PRICE: How much the customer is willing to pay for your product or service. Not only is price affected by market conditions but also on the perceived value determined by the customer.

PLACE: Simply put, place is where the product is located. Does the customer have to travel to the product, can they buy through a retail outlet or is it something that can only be purchased online?

PROMOTION: Refers to how you promote your product or service. The ways in which you persuade your customer to buy, or firstly, how you ensure that your audience actually knows your product is available. They may know that your company exists but you have to tell them about each individual product and you do that through promotion.

PEOPLE: Anyone who consumes your product for example; consumers, vendors, suppliers, wholesalers, staff etc

PERSISTENCY: There is always a degree of persistency required in the marketing and promotion of your product. Since nothing really does happen overnight its persistency that pays off.

The marketing mix is controllable. It consists of everything a business owner or manager can do to influence consumer demand for a product. The key is to blend all the components of marketing into and integrated campaign that brings value to the customer and achieves your small business promotion objectives.

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