If you’ve been following this series of blogs that I’ve been posting over the last few weeks, you’ll know that we’ve reached the final part of the series, which is about the 4Ps of Marketing. To recap, we’ve looked at Price – deciding what to charge and using pricing in your marketing; Product – getting clear on what you actually sell; and Place – or how to actually sell your service . 

So here’s the final part of the series, where the fourth P is for Promotion – or how to bring together all the Ps, in order to promote your service.

Number 4 = Promotion

If you’ve worked through the other 3Ps, you know now what you’re selling and what makes it different to the services of all your competitors. You know what you want to charge for your service and how you can use your pricing to promote it. You even know how to package your service, to make it easy for people to buy from you. Now you can bring all this information together, to work out how best to promote your service to potential clients.

Let’s take them one at a time:

1. Price – when you’re promoting a service, you can’t just stick a price tag on it and put it on a shelf. But you can put your prices onto your website and talk about the value of your service, or how much time, effort or money it will save someone who buys it. Networking is another good marketing tool you can use to explain the benefits of your service. However, placing an advert in a magazine is never going to give you enough space in which to promote the value, so don’t waste your money on that sort of marketing, when you’re promoting a service.

2. Product – when you’re selling a service, you’re actually selling your own time, expertise and experience. So what’s the best way to promote that? How do you ‘show’ time or expertise to a potential client? The simplest way is by demonstrating what you do, or giving someone a free trial. Think about taking a test drive in a car that you’re thinking about buying. You need to allow prospects to test drive your service. Talks at networking events, seminars and workshops are all great ways of doing this. Turning your service into an actual product is another way – like sharing your knowledge in a book that you either charge for or give away. If writing an entire book sounds a bit too daunting for you, why not start by writing a regular blog that’s full of advice and shows off your expertise?

3. Place – as I said in the previous blog in this series, Place is about where a potential client can buy your service. It’s about how you package your service, in order to make it easy for people to buy from you. And that gives you an extra marketing tool. When you package your service into a number of ‘products’ that clients get when they buy from you, don’t just create one single ‘fits all’ product. Think about creating three different packages – gold, silver and bronze; large, medium and small – or however you want to describe them. This gives you three times as much marketing material to use and allows you to tailor your message, according to who your markets are and what they want from you. Three pages on your website and a series of three blogs – one for each market and package.

The fourth P of Marketing is actually how you bring the first 3Ps together – it doesn’t exist without them. If you’re at all unsure of the basics of those first 3Ps, go back to the earlier blogs in this series and reread them. That way you’ll be in a much better position to use them, going forwards.

The next time you’re reviewing your marketing, think about the 4Ps of Marketing. Even though they were first used many years ago, they are still relevant and provide a good basis from which to develop a clear, concise marketing message and campaign. Used effectively, they can help you achieve the results you want, with your marketing and your business.