4 P's

I view this blog as a way to approach life, while integrating marketing concepts and applications. The foundation of marketing lies with the four p's, as you may already know. If you were to sell a new product, you would start to describe the product, your convenience to your community, low price point and promotional tactics of attracting this audience. Without the product and strategy, the other P's cannot function as once succinct unit. Let me break down this chart and describe to you how it relates to your life.


Product: Instead of selling an object, you are selling yourself, so therefore you become the product being sold. You have many attributes or characteristics that may differentiate yourself from the competition and make you who you are. The idea here is that you must build your product and establish a line of credibility. In order to build your product, you should educate yourself through schooling and work experiences and the vast array of knowledge that swarms you in your everyday life. BUILD YOUR BRAND and become a marketable "product."

Place: Now that you have built your brand(yourself), decide where you would like to showcase it or who your target market is for presenting it. These would be companies where you would like to work, whether close or far from your current location. DECIDING ON THE RIGHT PLACE will translate into an enriching experience that will also build your product.

Price: The price in this equation is your net value that you could provide to a company. Your value is encompassed by your wealth of knowledge, title, and years of experience that you bring to the table. As your value increases, so can your asking price for starting salaries. MATCH YOUR EXPERIENCE TO A PRICE.

Promotion: The promotion area of the four p's gravitates towards tactics that define how you get the job you desire. These tactics should be both creative and intuitive and should take into account the other 3 p's in order to be effective. CREATIVELY PROMOTING YOURSELF will enhance your visibility and generate positive responses if successful.

A new year with new opportunities

Summary: After some initial research, it seems like the job market is further developing for 2007. If you are a graduating senior, there will be ample opportunity to acquire a desired position. The salary range for certain majors, has broadened from 2006 and expect growth for 2007. The demand for certain majors, such as IT and auditing are ever increasing, while majors such as engineering remain constant. Entry-level sales positions will have increased salaries and higher commissions.

Suggestions: Although there are new opportunities and wages have increased, competition has also increased at an even higher rate. Saying this, it is still necessary to put in that extra effort to get yourself ahead of the curve. I would suggest meeting with a career adviser, preparing your resume ahead of time, engage in practice interviews and plan your strategy accordingly. Your adversaries for your desired jobs will be taking the same kind of initiative, so you must position yourself with more experience and skills. Those that will pull the higher salaries in each range, are the ones that work the hardest, establish the key relationships and interview properly.

"Overall, 52 percent of employers responding to the Job Outlook 2007 Fall Preview Survey reported that they expect to hire more new college graduates in 2006-07 than they hired in 2005-06. While that number is down from the 66.5 percent of employers that planned to increase hiring last year, the number of employers that expect to decrease hiring this year is just 5.4 percent compared to 18.2 percent last year. The remaining 42.6 percent plan to maintain their hiring numbers, making an impressive jump from 15.3 percent in the Job Outlook 2006 Fall Preview Survey. "
Source: http://www.jobweb.com/joboutlook/2007/fall_outlook.htm


Salaries by title (entry-level)

• Marketing associate: 30,000 - 50,000
• IT Associate: 40,000 - 60,000
  
• Financial Analyst: 48,000 - 58,000
• Accountant: 42,000 - 60,000
• Sales Consultant - 40,000 - 50,000
  

Marketing is life

Ask these following questions to yourself:

• Why do I choose to purchase the items or brands that I do? What creates this preference?
• What drives the decision making in my life?
• How do people perceive me and what do they base these views on?
• Am I being controlled by the organizations that surround me?
  
• What do employers base their decisions on? How can I position myself accordingly?

The decisions that you contrive and the life you live is all affected by marketing, in its entirety and cannot be escaped, unless you shut yourself off from the world that surrounds you. You are judged based on perception and that perception is regulated by how well your "market" yourself to others or convince them that you "fit the part" or are deserving of their time. The media drives its content and targets it directly at you throughout your life in many different fashions. They utilize media outlets, such as television, magazines, the internet, billboards, subways and promotional material such as coupons, in order to entice your purchasing habits and control your way of life. Some might believe this invades our privacy or feel that is a negative habit that constantly affects our lives. Numerous people think that commercials are a plain waste of time. I will not argue any of these conversations, BUT I do believe we can use marketing in order to promote ourselves and be successful in our own lives.

Think of yourself as a brand and marketing as a tool you can use in order to generate influence and success. If you view yourself as one of these companies that try and convince and entice others to "invest" in them, you will do quite well. Your goal should be to have others "invest" in you, in terms of money, time, and opportunities that may arise.

Positioning yourself

Positioning is a marketing term you may often be exposed to in business. The term actually ties in multiple concepts that factor into a competitive approach that you can use to your advantage. The word touches upon differentiation and mapping out where you or your company stands relative to competitors. The example above depicts a positioning map, where an employee is judged on both his or her technical skills and communication ability. The ideal goal an individual should have is to position him or herself in the upper right corner. Use this example to plot your fellow co-workers, whom also seek higher positions within your department. If they are closer to the upper right hand corner, than figure out what technical and communication skills are required to pull yourself up. Another key idea about positioning are differentiation strategies that allow you to stand out amongst your peers. Start brainstorming and researching which skills will suit your interests and what skills others do not hold. Position yourself as a hard worker, an intellectual and someone who can form relationships in order to be successful. With positioning, everything is relative and you will be "graded" relative to your peers, so be careful how you interact with them. You should try not to give away too much of your strategy, but learn to work with them to uncover some of theirs.

It is my goal to educate you on these strategies because I live them each and every day. The object of each of these posts is to infuse your mind with knowledge and to get you THINKING. It may take years to position yourself effectively and to acquire the right skills through training sessions, but there is a high payoff. Positioning revolves around how you present yourself relative to those around you, so make sure you start paying attention to these conditions and research techniques to get ahead.

Questions to ask yourself

1. How do I position myself relative to the competition?
2. What unique characteristics and/or technical abilities do I have?
3. What are others doing that I'm not doing?
4. Where do I find the resources necessary to succeed?
5. How far will I go to succeed?