Three (3) P’s To Marketing Any Business In Any Economy

 

Time and time again, you always hear terms like “my business is different” or “that won’t work for my business”.  I am talking about marketing your business, products, or services.  When you get right down to it, marketing does work if it is done correctly.

Here is a formula to use when marketing any business, service, or product. It’s called the three (3) P’s of Marketing.

The first 'P' represents Passion.  Whatever you are doing, what ever business you are running, whatever product or service you are selling, you better be passionate about it or else you are in big trouble. If you don’t love what you are doing, if you don’t believe in what you are selling it is very difficult to get others to buy into it too.  Whether you are training a staff member or directly selling to potential buyer, if you are not behind what you are doing, the results will be bleak.  Think to yourself why are you doing what you do?  If you are a business owner, go back to why you wanted to be a business owner in the first place?   What was the passion behind you starting your own business.  If you represent a product, you better be passionate about it or maybe you are selling the wrong thing.

The second 'P' stands for Purpose.  Before you doing anything in your business, whether it be creating an advertisement, website, or marketing materials you first have to answer one major questions… ”What is the purpose of ___________?”  If you are building a website for example, what is the purpose of your website?  Is it to give away information?  How about collect leads?  Is it to sell something?  Or is to have them pick up the phone and call you?  If you don’t have a purpose, it is difficult to create something.

It amazes me how often I speak to business owners and sales professionals about various marketing strategies and when I look at their materials, it is not very clear what you want them to do.  Websites are notoriously bad at this.  People say well I have a website.  That is great to have a website but what is your websites purpose?  Many times this question can not be answered.  Make sure that for all your advertising and marketing that you can answer this simple question.  Once you answer it, make sure your marketing piece clearly matches your purpose.

The last 'P' is simply Profitability.  The reason for being in business is to make a profit.  Even non-profits need to make money (profits) so they can give those profits to their cause. If your company makes 1 million dollars in revenue but your operating costs are 1 million dollars, there is no profit.  Same for if your company makes 100 million dollars and your operating costs are 100 million dollars.

The same holds true for any of your marketing.  The purpose of marketing anything is to get a return on your investment.  If your marketing is not being profitable, it is not being effective.  There are many reasons this can happen that we won’t get into here but the bottom line is whatever you are doing in your marketing efforts it needs to be profitable for you in the long run.

So there is the 3 P marketing formula.  If you have all 3 of these, you will have a business that will be around for a long time.

Marketing your products and services is critical to your business growth and long term success.  Make sure that you are doing the right things in your marketing efforts to make that happen.