As we resume our development of a Marketing Mix we further our review of “The 4P’s of Marketing.”   Remembering our target market, our position strategy and our brand sensory package, we implement our marketing mix utilizing product, price, place and promotion.   We’ve discovered that our product is the material or service that we have to offer.  We have also learned various methods of pricing, and the importance of a pricing strategy.  We continue today with a study of the effect “place” has on our marketing mix.

Place
The right product offered at the right price available must be available in the right place to be purchased by Customers.  Place or placement decisions are associated with distribution channels – getting your products and/or services to the target customers.  The distribution system performs transactional, logistical and facilitating functions.  The distribution decisions include market coverage, selling to end users, middlemen and wholesalers, logistics, and levels of service.   It includes decisions about where to sell your product and/or services and how to find the customers and get them to buy your product.  What is the channel of distribution you use to get your product and/or service to the customer?  Do you have resellers?  Do you have middlemen that represent your product and/or service?

When you consider direct sales, you must decide if supplying direct is appropriate for your product and/or service.  An advantage of direct sales is the contact you gain by meeting customers face to face and relationship building with these customers.  Direct sales may be a good place to start when the supply of your product is limited or seasonal.  However, direct sales require that you have an effective retail interface with your customers.

Selling through resellers instead of selling directly to the customer is another method of getting your product and/or service out in the market place.  Doing this may provide you with a wider distribution than selling direct.  In selling to a reseller, you may lose contact with the direct customer and you may not have control over the deliverable to the end user.

If you sell on the Internet, you should also be considering the 4Ps of permission, privacy, profiling and personalization.   This also includes the accessibility of the product and/or service and your promotion in a service-oriented company should include the input of front-line service personnel that have servant hearted minds to keep those customers happy.

Placement on Major Search Engines-Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. from a discovery perspective is controlled on the web through search engine optimization.  When someone uses the web to search for a product and/or service that you offer, it is crucial to make sure you show up in the search for relevant terms associated with your product and/or service.  If you are not on the major search engines for terms related to your business, you are not taking care of placement and you are likely not to be found or discovered in the search engine look ups.

Placement on vertical search engines such as guides and local searches like www.business.com can make or break your placement.  Trade and business directories and vertical searches are important channels for your business to be found on the web.  Localized search submissions to places like www.local.google.com can make all the difference in being found and being successful as well.