photo by TooFarNorth

The Marketing Mix that is, You may or may not of heard about the 4 P’s. They are essentially the 4 most important points to consider before launching a product, except I’m going for a slight twist, the product is a blog, your blog (or website).

So time for some clever marketing,

the 4 p’s are:-

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place

So how do they apply,

Product

Your product blog or website must serve a need or want of customers/readers. There is no point creating a blog aimed at no-one. Research your target audience, the likely popularity of your subject/niche and decide what they need or want. There is no point on a ‘make money online’ blog to go and discuss keeping hamsters as a pet, because your readers are not expecting this sort of content. But on the other hand if you have a personal blog you may be able to discuss a wider range of topics, as your readers are not expecting content concentrating on a single subject. In many ways the person behind the blog is the product, in the same way celebrities are in ‘real’ life, the interest is in the actions of the person/blogger.

Price

Unlike normal products, you don’t set a real price on accessing your blog (unless you sell a product). Therefore this part of the marketing mix is open to interpretation to some extent. But for every action for a reader costs, e.g reading your article is costing them time so ultimately they want/need to gain something useful, if they don’t gain from your blog, they may not return. Hence writing valuable content target at your market, therefore your readers, is essential for success. As the average time spent, plus the number of return visits rise, so does the value of your blog.

For those who choose to display advertising, charging too much is not going to encourage repeat business or positive referrals, but charging too little can lead to poor returns. Trying to get a good balance is essential. You may have seen I have added Adtoll and Project Wonderful ads to this site, they are great as the cost of advertising is set by demand and number of readers therefore leading to a fair value for advertising for both parties.

Promotion

If no-one knows about a product it wont sell, If no-one knows about your blog it wont get read.

Promote it, tell the world about your wonderful blog and how it can help them or why they need to read it.

This can be accomplished by many ways, such as web directories, search engine listings, forums, commenting on other blogs, social marketing, exchanging links, widgets (entrecard, blogrush) and word of mouth (tell friends and family) e.t.c.

Placement

Again open to interpretation, for a normal product it describes how many outlets you have got for your product. For a blog this could be seen as how many incoming links you have got, as mentioned within promotion. Network with other bloggers and try to exchange suitable links with your blog. If your link compliments their content, the visitors you get are more likely to be interested in your product, your blog. Therefore could become potential readers/subscribers. A link from a random site will not give you ‘customers’ for your target audience. Targeted traffic is essential.

Overall I hope this has given a useful introduction to the marketing mix and applying it to your blog. Applying all 4 P’s will give you synergy or to rest of us 1+1+1+1 = 5. I will discuss further the 4 P’s individually in future posts, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Martyn.