Business, Marketing with the 7Ps - Beyond Harry Potter

Okay, so Harry Potter is hot stuff once again and you're trying to figure out how to ride the Harry Potter wave - somehow. It's helpful if you're a bookstore, a theater or a blogger on Harry Potter. But otherwise, don't let the highs and lows of hot topics spell success or doom for you.

Learn how to market!

Marketing is a consistent and constant effort to grow a business. When you launch a new marketing effort, you may not receive any results for 3 - 6 months. Take a longer-term approach and don't get discouraged if short-term results are less than expected.

Evaluate your marketing efforts with this structure:

Plan
Who is your ideal customer? Are you selling limited editions for a niche market or do you need a large volume of customers? Also, what gets you excited about your product or service and what benefits are there for your customers?
List these out in a plan and it will help you determine a marketing budget.

Here is an article I wrote on how much should you spend on marketing.

People
Who will you reach and why?

Ex: Families or more specifically adoptive families. Women, or more specifically stay-at-home moms or female executives.
Men, or more specifically men who play basketball or men who hate sports.

What are their hobbies? Where do they work? Why will they select your product or service (or stop and read your blog over and over?)

Why do you want to reach this particular segment?

Product (or service)
What are the benefits of the product or service? How is it packaged? Do you have a competitive warranty or guarantee? What is your promise to the customer if they visit your coffee shop or wear your shoes or fly your airline?

Price
What price are people willing to pay for what you offer?
What price do you want them to pay and what price do you need them to pay?

Price sets customer expectations. I know a hair stylist who charges up to $80 per visit. He treats the customers much differently than a franchise charging $12 - $20 for most services.

I sold roofs for the Home Depot during the past 2 years. Our prices were often 15% to 30% higher than local companies, but there was a reason why.

Starbucks doesn't sell a cheap cup of coffee, but you expect a certain ambiance and flavor. I buy my coffee at a donut shop for 80 cents and I like it.

If you fly Spirit Air or Ryan Air, you shouldn't expect a meal or even complimentary snacks.

Promotion
Personal selling, advertising, public relations and direct marketing are all part of promoting your business. How much money do you spend on each activity and how much of your time? You need to evaluate your promotional activies over a designated period of time.

Success or failure can't be evaluated on a one-time effort.

Place (Distribution)
Where will you conduct your business and where will you advertise or promote. I believe successful businesses are well-known locally.

Here is an article I wrote on being world-famous in your zip code.

Partners
These are people who can help distribute your business. Bloggers have other bloggers who do reviews, meme tags, and more.

Corporations like McDonalds give away (or used to give away) toys from Disney movies.

Is there a local business who could complement what you do? If you're a home improvement salesman is there a hardware store who would place flyers in the bags of each customer? And would you leave their flyers with the people you meet?

This structure can be used to develop and track the success of any marketing effort whether you're a company like Toyota, an airline like Jet Blue or a blogger like me.

I hope you find it useful!

And please any marketing tips that have helped in your business.