THE FIVE P'S

Once upon a time, I was a business major. I took classes in economics (micro and macro), finance, accounting and marketing. It all sounds rather impressive, huh? Like I should really know something? Yep. Heck, I even got an MBA.

Wow, look at me, all knowledgeable and stuff. Ha.

What they never teach you in business school however, is what to do when reality stubbornly refuses to conform to the formula. And hoo boy, do they love to teach you formulas in business school. There are formulas for everything: when to buy, when to sell, how to set prices and how to do advertising. It all looks so smooth and neat on paper.

And you get very confident about your ability to make a killing when you're getting good grades on all the important business topics. Double ha. (ha and ha)

So here, I will tell you about an important lesson in marketing that I paid many thousands of dollars to learn in business school. I'll give it to you for free. I'll introduce it in this blog post, and then I'll develop it over time. We'll see how well practice matches theory.

THE FIVE P'S OF MARKETING.

There are five elements of a good marketing strategy. They are Product, Price, Placement, Promotion, and Packaging.

• Product - what you are selling needs to be appealing to your target market.


• Price - your price needs to be aligned with your product's perceived value.


• Placement - where you sell your product should be appropriate.


• Promotion - how you sell your product, the advertising. Which amounts to another product in itself.


• Packaging - your product needs to be appealing "on the shelf".

So I'll stop here for now. What do you think of this list? Which of the "five Ps" are you managing right now?