The 4 P’s of Marketing: Placement

Product placement is crucial to making sales. You may have an amazing product at an unbeatable price, but it might as well not exist if it isn’t available where your customers are looking.

Placement is all about visibility and accessibility, so that your customers find your product in the right place at the right time. Get this part wrong, and you could be left with products that just won’t sell.

Small businesses can’t afford to have poor placement of their products. This article will help you understand the importance of placement and how to properly place your product.

Marketing Mix: The 4 P’s of Marketing

For any product or service you offer, it’s crucial to evaluate the marketing mix (often called the 4 P’s of marketing). These are Product, Placement, Promotion, and Price [1]. If any of the 4 P’s are not set correctly, it could lead to poor sales.

Take for example a business selling canned beans that taste exceptional and are available at a low price. If this business only sells its product on its website, sales will be very low. The proper placement for their product would be on grocery store shelves with an eye catching label. Without the right placement, getting the other P’s right won’t matter.

What is Placement in Marketing?

Placement is all about ensuring your product is available when and where your customer wants it, in a format that is appealing and easy to understand. This isn’t limited to just where your product is placed in stores; it includes e-commerce availability too.

Your product’s placement should be able to address the following two questions:

1. Where will my product be sold?
2. When will my product be sold?

There are considerations for choosing the best placement with each of those questions.

Where will my product be sold?

Consider the target audience for your product. Where do they shop for your type of product? This not only impacts the availability of your product, but also the audience segment your product targets. For example, if you sell coffee beans, having your product available at a gas station and having it available at a boutique cafe are both viable placement options, but have much different reflections of your brand.

It is also important to consider e-commerce here. While not all products make sense for e-commerce platforms, many of them need it to be placed effectively. For businesses offering services, having online booking tools to generate sales is a vital part of the placement.

When will my product be sold?

Offering your product at the right time is vital. Store hours are often one of the biggest focus points of placement and can make big differences in sales. Consider a steakhouse restaurant for example. If the restaurant is only open until 8:00 PM, it is likely missing out on more sales. Focusing on your intended customer will help you determine the best time to offer your product.

How to Properly Set Placement

The most important part of properly setting placement is focusing on your intended customer. Without a customer in mind, you cannot properly place a product. Consider for your customer, what are their demographic characteristics? Where do they typically shop for a product like yours? When do they usually buy similar products?

From there, evaluate the following:

1. Where would a customer look for your product?
   • Do your customers shop online or in stores for this type of product (or both)?
   • Can your product be available at a related retailer? (for example, energy drinks at a gym)
2. Do customers want accessibility or exclusivity?
   • Is your product something that should be easily accessible in many places?
   • Should your product be available exclusively in your store to maintain an elevated brand?
3. When are customers seeking out your product?
   • Are there specific times when customers demand your product?
   • Is it important to maintain constant availability of the product?
4. How are your competitors placing their products?
   • Do you face competition in the same stores?
   • How is your product placed relative to competitors? (on the same shelf? as a featured product?)

Placement Strategies

There are practical considerations to take for placement of your product. With your ideal customer in mind, consider the following strategies:

Physical Placement

1. Seek out partnerships with related retailers
   • Placing your product in a related retailer’s store can help both parties increase sales.
2. Offer your product at local events
   • Selling your product at local events such as pop-ups and farmers markets can allow for testing out your market and reaching new audiences.
3. Quality product positioning
   • When you sell your product alongside competitors, ensure that your product has placement at eye level and near the check out location.

Digital Placement

1. Sell your product on your website and with digital retailers
   • Large digital retailers such as eBay, Amazon, and Walmart will have much more site traffic than your website. Offering your product with larger digital retailers opens up a much wider audience.
2. Offer your product on social media pages
   • Offering your product on social media marketplaces can enhance the awareness and accessibility of your product.
3. Utilize data analytics to make adjustments
   • Using analytics platforms such as Google Analytics 4, you can determine how users are interacting with your product on your site. You can use this data to determine if products need different placement on the site such as pop-ups or “featured” sections.

Taking the Next Step

If you haven’t considered the placement of your product yet, follow the guidelines in this article to nail down the right placement strategy. Once you feel comfortable that you have effective placement of your product, you can experiment with enhancing your product’s visibility and appeal within its placement.

For example, you may set up decorative display shelf for a featured product that catches the eye of a consumer in the store. You may also create a product showcase video that displays on a website storefront instead of a static photo.

Elevating your placement is an excellent strategy when facing placement among competitor products such as in retail stores. It requires upfront costs and negotiating with the store owners/managers, but is worth the time and effort to gain a competitive advantage over similar products.

Wrap-Up

Product placement is all about making sure your customer sees your product in the right place at the right time. Getting this right requires some careful consideration about your ideal customer, your product, and your brand.

Want help figuring out how to properly place your product? Or perhaps you want to elevate your current placement to help it cut through the competition?

Arwing Creative can nail down the perfect placement strategy and ensure that you have the best looking placement among the competition. Contact us today to get started finding the proper placement for your products.

References

[1] https://www.coursera.org/articles/4-ps-of-marketing