Product: What can you do? What service do you offer? What, exactly, is your “product”? Think very carefully about this. You might be “selling” more than the actual service. What does your service actually provide? What you do is write articles, for example, but your product might be the time you save your client.

Price: What will the product cost, and how will your target audience perceive the price? Is it within an expected range? Does it offer an acceptable exchange rate for the service (i.e., your audience perceives that the price is appropriate for what they will get)?

Place: Where can people acquire your service? How do they get it? Where is it performed?

Promotion: How will people learn about what you have to offer? Where does your target audience go for information? What kinds of promotional tools and media do they respond best to? (And don’t forget to write clearly, professionally, and appropriately for the audience!)

Here’s an example, using one of our services at Precise Edit: Writing Tips for a Year.

Product: The service is writing tips and strategies delivered daily by e-mail, but the actual product is confidence in one’s writing.

Price: We would like to charge a lot for this, but the potential buyers, our target audience, are unlikely to pay much for daily e-mails, so we set it very low at $2.

Placement: We can’t go to everyone’s offices to sign them up for this service, nor can we deliver it in person. That would be impossible. The placement for getting the service, in this case, is online at our website, and the service is performed by e-mail.

Promotion: People will learn about this from a variety of sources, since our target audience is varied. Once we decided where people already go for information about writing and instructional services, we tailored our efforts to promote the service in those “places.” This may include classifieds in campus newspapers, our main website, our various mailing lists, and our social networks.

Here’s the bottom line: Research your target audience, and then create a marketing plan based on the four Ps of marketing.

I have had friends who really enjoyed Toastmasters. I never joined myself, but I have heard good things. I’m glad to see your endorsement as well.

One of the best things I learned in my capstone class for my undergrad degree was to have a portfolio. It was the culminating project for our class and I’ve kept one ever since. However, you have added some new ideas as I had never thought of including a professional biography.

Last, but not least, thanks for including the shout-out to Toastmasters. Being part of Toastmasters has opened numerous doors for me.

Thanks for this series, John.

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