How to Increase Sales for a Business by Improving the 7 Ps of Marketing

One of the most useful frameworks for doing this is the 7 Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Evidence.

Over the coming weeks, we will examine each of these seven areas individually and look at practical ways South African businesses can use them to improve sales.

But first, let’s look at how they work together.

Increasing Sales Is Not Just About Promotion

When sales are disappointing, one of the first reactions is often:

“We need more leads.”

Sometimes that is true.

But generating more enquiries won’t necessarily solve the problem.

Imagine doubling the number of potential customers visiting your website while the website does a poor job of explaining why they should choose your company. You have increased traffic, but you haven’t fixed the sales problem.

Likewise, more advertising won’t necessarily help if your price is poorly positioned, your sales team takes too long to respond, customers can’t easily buy from you, or competitors offer something the market considers more valuable.

Before spending more money generating leads, it therefore makes sense to examine the entire route from market demand to completed sale.

The 7 Ps give us a practical way to do that.

1. Product – Are You Selling What Customers Actually Want?

Everything begins with the product or service.

Ask a simple question:

Does what we sell closely match what the market wants to buy?

Businesses sometimes become focused on what they want to sell rather than what their customers are trying to achieve.

Look at which products generate the most enquiries. Which are most profitable? Which problems are customers trying to solve? What questions do prospective customers repeatedly ask?

Search data can be particularly valuable here because it reveals what people are actively looking for.

Improving sales may not require inventing a new product. Sometimes it means repositioning an existing product around the needs customers already have.

Coming in this series: How to examine and improve your Product strategy to increase sales.

2. Price – Does the Customer Understand the Value?

Price isn’t simply about being cheap or expensive.

A customer weighs your price against the value they believe they will receive.

Two companies can sell very similar products at different prices and both succeed because they position their value differently.

The question is therefore not only:

“Is our price competitive?”

It is also:

“Have we given customers enough reason to pay our price?”

Guarantees, service levels, expertise, delivery times, quality, convenience, payment terms and after-sales support can all change how a price is perceived.

Discounting is only one way to influence sales — and frequently not the best one.

Coming in this series: How to use Price and value positioning to improve sales without automatically resorting to discounts.

3. Place – Are You Easy to Find and Easy to Buy From?

Traditionally, Place referred largely to distribution: where and how customers could buy a product.

Today it includes both the physical and digital marketplace.

Can customers find you when they search Google? Are you visible in the geographical markets where demand exists? Can they easily find the right product on your website? Can they contact you using the channel they prefer? Is buying from you convenient?

A good product at the right price won’t generate its potential sales if customers can’t easily find or obtain it.

For many businesses, improving sales means removing the distance — physical or digital — between the customer and the purchase.

Coming in this series: How to improve Place by making your business easier to find, contact and buy from.

4. Promotion – Are You Reaching the Right People With the Right Message?

This is the P most people associate with marketing.

Advertising, Google Ads, SEO, email, social media, content marketing and other promotional channels can all generate sales.

But promotion becomes far more effective when three things are clear:

Who are we trying to reach?

Where can we reach them?

What matters to them when making a buying decision?

Instead of simply trying to generate more traffic, the objective should be to attract potential customers with a genuine reason to buy.

Ten highly relevant enquiries can be worth considerably more than a thousand visitors with little commercial intent.

Coming in this series: How to build a promotional strategy around market demand and buying intent rather than simply generating more traffic.

5. People – What Happens When a Customer Meets Your Business?

Marketing doesn’t stop when somebody submits an enquiry.

In many businesses, that is where the most important part begins.

How quickly does someone respond?

How knowledgeable is the person answering the enquiry?

Do they understand what the customer needs?

Do they follow up?

Does the customer feel that the company genuinely wants their business?

A company can spend thousands of rand generating enquiries and then lose perfectly good prospects because calls aren’t returned or enquiries aren’t followed up.

Improving the human side of the buying experience can increase sales without generating a single additional lead.

Coming in this series: How People influence sales and how better enquiry handling can turn more prospects into customers.

6. Process – How Easy Is It to Become a Customer?

Every unnecessary obstacle gives a potential customer another opportunity to leave.

Long forms. Slow quotations. Complicated ordering. Unanswered emails. Confusing websites. Too many steps. No follow-up.

Each one creates friction.

Look at your business from the customer’s point of view.

How many steps are there between deciding “I am interested” and becoming a customer?

Then ask:

Which of those steps can we make easier?

A better sales process isn’t necessarily about pressuring customers to buy. Often it is simply about making it easier for someone who already wants the product to proceed.

Coming in this series: How to identify sales bottlenecks and improve the Process from first enquiry to completed sale.

7. Physical Evidence – Why Should Customers Trust You?

Before buying, customers look for reassurance.

They may examine your website, Google reviews, photographs, testimonials, case studies, premises, branding, quotations, certifications or previous work.

These are all forms of physical evidence.

They help answer the question every prospective customer asks, consciously or unconsciously:

“Can I trust this company to deliver what it promises?”

The greater the perceived risk or value of the purchase, the more important that evidence becomes.

A professional website alone won’t make a poor business successful. But a poor website can certainly make a good business look less credible.

Coming in this series: How to strengthen Physical Evidence and give potential customers more confidence to choose your business.

The 7 Ps Work Together

The real value of the 7 Ps becomes apparent when you stop looking at them separately.

Imagine improving each part of the sales journey.

You offer a Product the market wants.

You establish a Price customers can justify from the value they receive.

You make the business easy to find and buy from through Place.

You use Promotion to reach people who are actively interested in what you sell.

Your People respond quickly and professionally.

Your Process makes becoming a customer simple.

Your Physical Evidence gives customers confidence that they are making the right choice.

Now your marketing isn’t relying on one campaign, one salesperson or one advertising platform.

The whole business is working towards the same objective:

Turning more potential customers into actual customers.

A Practical Sales Improvement Exercise

Before our next article, try something simple.

Give your business a score out of 10 for each of the following:

Product – Price – Place – Promotion – People – Process – Physical Evidence

Don’t worry about achieving a perfect score.

Look for the lowest one.

That may be where your biggest opportunity to improve sales currently lies.

Over the next seven articles, we’ll take each P apart, show you what to examine, and provide practical ways to improve it.

Because increasing sales isn’t always about finding more customers.

Sometimes the fastest gains come from doing a better job with the market, opportunities and customers you already have.