It’s not unusual to hear small business owners say they “don’t believe in marketing.” I usually find that this translates directly to the fact that they have been disappointed with the results of their advertising. Sales and advertising are just two components of the larger ‘marketing mix’ for success. 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 4Ps, or four promotional elements to a ‘marketing mix’. These include Product, Price, Place and Promotion. With the rapid rise of social media, more attention is now being paid to two more P’s as part of this formula. They include People and Persistence.

Each ‘P’ is defined as follows:

PRODUCT: A physical object or an intangible service such as tourism and hospitality. The product has a life cycle, 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. The price is not only affected by market conditions, but also by the perceived value determined by the customer.

SQUARE: Simply put, the place is where the product is located. Does the customer have to travel to the product, can they buy through a point of sale or is it something that can only be bought online?

PROMOTION: Refers to how you promote your product or service. The ways you persuade your customer to buy or how you make sure your audience actually knows your product is available in the first place. Potential customers may know that your business exists, but you have to tell them about each individual product and you do this through promotion.

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

PERSISTENCE: A degree of persistence is always required in the marketing and promotion of your product. Since nothing really happens overnight, your persistence pays off.

To a large extent, the marketing mix is ​​controllable. It consists of everything that a business owner or manager can do to influence consumer demand for a product. The key is to combine all the components of marketing into an integrated campaign that adds value to the customer and achieves their small business promotion objectives