The Most Important Letter In Marketing (Hint… it’s M)

There are a number of different tools we use in marketing to help make sure that everything is aligned and consistent within a business.

These include the “4 P’s” of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

We also have the services marketing “VIPS” for variability, intangibility, perishability, and simultaneity.

(We even have some more P’s if you’re interested like Product, Packaging, Positioning, and People.)

But the most important letters of all belong to the 3 M’s.

Because without these 3 M’s not much else matters when it comes to marketing your business.

Get them right, and business is a breeze.

Get them wrong, and life becomes a whole lot more difficult.

As with most things in marketing, the key is in the alignment, and in making sure there is clarity and consistency throughout your brand, company, and business.

So what exactly are the 3 M’s.

They are Market, Message, and Medium.

Market

Your market is your current, or ideal customer. This is who you offer your product or services to and should be as detailed as you’re able to make it.

These details should include demographic details like age and gender, geographic details like where they live (right down to the neighbourhood if it’s a local business), and psychographic variables such as their interests, likes, and behaviours.

Message

Your message is your value proposition, or your unique selling proposition (USP for short).

This is the reason that customers choose you, opposed to your competitors.

What makes you different? Special? Unique? It’s important to clarify that being different for the sake of being different is rarely a key differentiator. You need to aim to be unique in a way that matters to your current or ideal customer.

Medium

Without a doubt, this is the area that I see business owners struggle with the most.

And understandably too.

After all, there are an overwhelming amount of options to choose from when trying to decide how to connect with customers and effectively communicate your value proposition.

Should you advertise in the phone book? On local TV? In the newspaper? On the radio? (No, No, Probably not, and debatable at best…)

The key to an effective medium selection really comes down to a careful and thorough review of both your market and your message, and then choosing the 1 or 2 tools that will have the greatest impact and provide the greatest return on investment.

How To Use The 3 M’s

Like with all aspects of business, it pays to know what’s going on.

The best place to start is to work through your market and message which shouldn’t take much time if you have an established business and customer profile.

From there, it’s time to look into choosing the most effective Mediums to use to communicate with your market.

In today’s day and age these include website conversion optimization, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and Adwords.

If you’re not familiar, or are looking to make them even more effective, it’s worth talking with a digital marketing consultant first which can save you both time and money, and make your marketing that much more effective.