Words of Wisdom by MrWes

In yesterday’s blog, we covered the importance of defining the Product “YOU”.  For the sake of argument, we’re going to say that you are selling your services.  The employer is going to exchange currency for your services.  Your services are your time, knowledge, creativity and experience.  Since we know what we’re going to sell, we can focus on the second part of the Marketing Mix.  The second part of the Marketing Mix is Place.

Marketing Mix (Place)

Place is a position

Place or placement is where in the Job Market you plan to promote your services.  So, how do we figure out where YOU are in the Job Market and where you’re going to promote your services?  The answer is we need to do a Personal SWOT analysis.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  A Personal SWOT analysis evaluates our Strengths, our Weaknesses, our career Opportunities, our career Threats.  Seeing it all on paper helps when you’re trying to make some hard decisions about what to do next.

The SWOT analysis helps us discover the following:

• Strengths we have that outshine our competition
• Weaknesses in ourselves that make our competition look better than us
• Opportunities that can take advantage of if we address our weaknesses
• Threats that exist in the Job Market to our chosen career

Doing a Personal SWOT analysis no only helps us figure out where we are in the Job Market.  It helps us to adjust our focus on the positives we can build on and on reducing the negatives that make our competition look better.  Possibly eliminating negatives by developing skills that we lack to at least look as good as our competition.

Place is also a location

When it comes to location you have three options: working close to home, commuting or relocating close to work.

Each option has benefits and trade-offs :

• Working closer to home:  More time with family.  Reduced commuting expense. Usually the trade-off is lower income.
• Commuting to work: Less time with family.  Added commuting expense.  Usually the trade-off is higher income.
• Relocating closer to work: Moving closer to work.  Shorter commute.  Increased living expense.

What are your choices:

• Same career, different locations
  • Market X = Chosen career + Where Career Location
  • Market 1 = Chosen career + Close to home (What if I worked closer to home?  Is my chosen career near by?)
  • Market 2 = Chosen career + Commute (What if I commuted? Is my chosen career at a tolerable distance?)
  • Market 3 = Chosen career + Relocate (What if I relocated? In which cities is my career available?)
• Same location, different careers
  • Market Y = Chosen career + Stay close to home
  • Market 4 = _ Career 1 _ +  Close to home (My time is more valuable, what if I changed to career 1?)
  • Market 5 = _ Career 2 _ +  Close to home (My time is more valuable, what if I changed to career 2?)
  • Market 6 = _ Career 3 _ +  Close to home (My time is more valuable, what if I changed to career 3?)

As an exercise try to answer these questions regarding Place:

• Which of these markets exist for you?
• How far are you are willing to commute?
• Is your career within your commuting distance?
• Are employers hiring commuters or only local people?
• What are the trade-offs related to each of these Market choices?
• Are there threats to your career?
• Is your career choice disappearing?
• Do you need to switch careers?

These questions are very tough to answer.

If you answered these questions you’ll be better equipped to answer the question and action items related to the last two P’s of the Marketing Mix.

• Price – What are the factors that determine the price of your services?
• Promotion – How and where to communicate your services to your customers.

In Personal Marketing (Introduction) the concept of the Marketing Mix was introduced.  The first part of the Marketing Mix is Product.  Before we can even start to think of how we’re going to market a product, we need to determine what the product is.

Marketing Mix (Product)

The Product is YOU
Have you ever stopped for a moment and evaluated who you are?  What do you stand for?  Where are you going?  What is your position in today’s job market? 

All of these questions need to be answered before we can figure out the remaining P’s of the Marketing Mix.

The questions about the product YOU are addressed by doing exercises to determine your:

• Core Values – ideals that guide your decision making process
• Vision Statement – where you want to be
• Mission Statement – how you are going to get to your Vision

Make sure you are honest with yourself when you define the Product YOU.  Without a good definition of the Product, the remaining P’s cannot be accurately defined.

Once we have defined the Product, we can proceed with the three remaining Market Mix P’s:

• Place – Where are you placing your services?
• Price – What are the factors that determine the price of your services?
• Promotion – How to communicate your services to your customers.

What is Personal Marketing and why is it important?

Before we define Personal Marketing, we need to define a marketing term called the Marketing Mix.

In other words, the Marketing Mix is a mix of 4 factors (Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) used to influence consumers to purchase goods or services.  Marketing people refer to this mix as the 4 P’s of marketing.

Marketing Mix

Personal Marketing is a concept that takes the 4 P’s  and personalizes them.  You might say to yourself, “Marketing is for products, why on earth would anyone want to personalize it?”  When I first took marketing in college, no one ever said you would have to market yourself.  Their primary focus was on making sure the product met the needs of the customer.  They also covered all kinds of market influences that could effect the product demand.  Making changes to the Marketing Mix based on market conditions you could reposition the product to meet the changing needs of the customer and the market.

Marketers use the Marketing Mix as a tool to market a product for sale.  We’re going to use this same Marketing Mix as a tool to market an individual.

Why is this important?

You’re employed.  You’ve got job security.  Your career is established.  Everybody at work knows who you are and what you do.  Life is good.  You might want to consider this.  During this recession, many stable companies have gone under and others are struggling to keep afloat.  Many times, decisions to cut jobs are purely economical.  Are you ready to go back into the job market?  Do you know how you would promote yourself to potential employers?  If you answered NO to any of these questions then maybe you might want to read this series of blogs.

Over the next couple of days, I will be writing about the subject of Personal Marketing. Each blog will touch on one of the 4 P’s of the Marketing Mix and how personalizing it will help make you more marketable.

• Product – Who are YOU?
• Place – Where are you placing your services?
• Price – What are the factors that determine the price of your services?
• Promotion – How to communicate your services to your customers.