Our last few marketing tips have been focusing on the 4 P’s of Marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Today, we will continue this discussion by exploring how to get into the right mindset to pick the best place to sell your product or service. In other words, finding the best place to sell your product
Where to Place Your Product – What Does That Mean Exactly?
In marketing, when we talk about “place,” we are referring to where and how you are going to sell your product or service. If you are opening up a physical brick and mortar business, this simply refers to finding the best location for your storefront. If you are creating a product or service to sell, then we look at how you will make your idea available to your customers and how you will distribute your product.
How to Pick Your Place
The trick to any successful business is to show up where your potential customers are looking for you. I know – that’s an earth-shattering, life-changing statement. You’re welcome! In all seriousness, it really is a shift in the way that business is done. We used to spend most of our marketing efforts on finding customers and inviting them to come to us. In today’s world, it is now about making it easy for customers to find us. As we will learn in the next Marketing Tip, this also helps save us money and be more effective in the promotion section.
Your location needs to be easy to find and easy to access. Customers have too many options to bother with the hassle of trying to find you and get to you. Today, convenience is key. Your success depends on it. This includes thinking about your online web presence, physical brick and mortar locations, hours of operation, and/or the distribution of your products or services.
Finding The Best Place to Sell Your Product
No matter what kind of business you have, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for customers to get to you. This means that you need to ask and answer two primary questions:
- Where are my potential customers already looking for what I offer (location)?
- How do I best get my idea to them (distribution)?
The best place to show up may be online, in retail and grocery stores, at farmer’s markets, and trade shows. More often than not, a combination of different online and offline locations. Distribution can be as easy as showing up to provide the service or as complicated as needing a full-scale supply chain. Or, at least an order fulfillment center.
From a marketing perspective, “place” helps us better understand how our business will function. It provides us with the opportunity to get into the mindset of the customer and figure out how we can serve them as efficiently as possible.
In later Marketing Tips, we will dive into more specifics between things such as eCommerce versus retail, and even how to best position your service-oriented business. But the main takeaway is that “place” does not happen by accident. You need a plan, and that plan should be focused on meeting the customer where they are. The best way to serve them is to show up where and when they need you. Figure this out and the rest of the details quickly start to fall into place (no pun intended).
