Businesses have to do many things to succeed. But three areas encompass those many things: placement, promotion, and product.
Where is this sold? The placement includes distribution, retail (shelf space), shipping, etc.
How is it promoted? Also known as ‘marketing’ but includes how the customers understand the value.
What is sold? The ‘thing’. What are the trade-offs in the creation?
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Consider toothpaste. It’s universal in retail, it’s promoted with national, regional, and local advertising, and it is designed to feel good.
Or, your local accountant. They have an office (Main St. USA), sponsor a little league team, have a weekly newspaper ad, and do a service many people don’t want to, or can’t, do.
Even, Google. It’s located in the world of bits rather than atoms, it spreads through word-of-mouth, and is the best search engine ever built.
Remove one area (placement, promotion, or product), and each business changes significantly. What if toothpaste loses shelf space to deodorant, if the local accountant stops advertising, or if Google search results become worse? These three areas are ‘gotta haves’.
We’ll look more at how Placement, Promotion, and Product influence how a business succeeds or fails.
Some parts of this diagram we’ve covered. If Product is the goal, then job to be done is the means. If Promotion is the goal, then Alchemy is the means. If Placement is the goal – well – this one we’ve looked at less, and it’s because of the internet which makes getting bits of data to anyone so simple it’s overlooked. We’ll fix that.
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