"I am not getting any connections from my marketing!” said a frustrated business owner across a boardroom table as we discussed his present marketing efforts. He went on to explain he had hired a graphic designer to take care of his website and his social media and nothing she had done had caused his phone to ring. Can you relate to his frustration? Pouring money and time into marketing mediums without any return for your efforts is not the way marketing is supposed to work.

So how do you make sure those marketing connections are really happening? The Marketing Mix is one tool you can use to examine your strategy for marketing. In his classic book, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, E. Jerome McCarthy discussed this.The Marketing Mix includes the four Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Are you giving your customers what they want from you? Are your products (or services) what they really need or do you need to revamp them to service your market better? Sometimes sales are down because a product has come to the end of its shelf life. If you want to make a marketing connection, first examine your products.

Next, how competitively are you pricing your products? There was a time when a TV with a 48-inch screen cost $10,000. Now you can get a screen twice that size for 10 percent of the old price. Your marketing will not work if you are not pricing your products in line with what the market will bear.

Place is where your products can be found. In the 1950s, when McCarthy first published his theories on the 4Ps, the primary place was in a brick-and-mortar store. That is not always the case any longer, but the place where consumers find your products is still incredibly important. How easy is it for them to search for your products online and find them? If a keyword search doesn’t pull you up on a Google search, your marketing won’t work.

The last P is promotion. Let me go back to the conversation I had with the disgruntled business owner who did not think his marketing was working. What he really meant was his marketing promotion was not working. There could have been some problems that had nothing to do with promotion, but let’s say that the other three Ps were all up to par. Let’s assume there were no issues with his product, price or the place where the product was sold. How do you fix your marketing promotion so you get a good marketing mix? Let me go back to what we said about your products: what do your customers want from you? Make sure your marketing messaging addresses their needs. Make sure you are promoting your best solution to their problems. It helps if you put a brand name on your solution so it is easy for them to remember. Also, consider that some mediums work better than others. If you are sending marketing via an e-blast system, note that there are firewalls and spam filters that will not allow some emails to be delivered. You might try a different medium, such as social media advertising to deliver your message. This again goes back to the customer. Where are they spending time? What are they looking at? Promote with the mediums that best fit them.

The last thing I will say is it is important to manage your expectations when you are trying to make a marketing connection. It takes time for marketing to work. There are steps to marketing success. Just because you promote your product in the right place for the right price does not guarantee 100 percent participation. Some consumers will become familiar with your brand and remember you when they have a need, but will not buy from you today. That is not a loss for marketing, that is simply a sale for another day.

Have you made a marketing connection lately? Examine your marketing mix and see if you need to shore up your four Ps.

_____________________

 Basic Marketing. A Managerial Approach. by McCarthy, Jerome E. 1960,  Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.