Episode 212: Why you need to know the 4Cs not just the 4Ps
What message are you trying to get out there? And then what medium will you use to deliver that? In today's episode, Fiona talks about the frameworks of the four P’s and the four C’s. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The four C's in marketing
The four P's in marketing
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Eric Coleman
Scott Galloway
The Exhibition Buildings
One thing that I think can really help are frameworks when it comes to marketing, things that are easy for you to remember and things that are easy to implement, I'm all about making it easy, aligning your business with your values and your life. And when it comes to marketing, there is so much out there, you should do this, you should post this many times on social media. If you're not on the latest social media, you're not doing it right. And I can just tell you that from my perspective, having worked in marketing for over two decades now, before social media came along and after, social media by itself is not a marketing strategy. You have to think about the message first. What message are you trying to get out there? And then what medium will you use to deliver that? Podcast, blog, email, content, videos, and then where are the best channels for communication and connection.
–
Hello and welcome to episode 212 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If this is your first time listening, welcome. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you get something useful out of it that you can really implement in your business. And I hope also that you hit subscribe and you come back and listen to future episodes, or you go back and binge on the, what are we up to? Two hundred and eleven other episodes are out there for you. And those are a mix of tip episodes. They're really quick. They're usually 10 minutes or less, and it's a quick tip tool or tactic that you can use immediately in your business. And then we have longer episodes like today's, which is a coaching episode. And then on alternate weeks, we have interviews with small business owners across the globe.
So welcome. And if you listen all the time, thank you so much. I love hearing from you guys. I love reading the reviews and the testimonials and so many lovely things that people say about this podcast. So thank you for being here before we get into today's coaching episode. And if you struggle with marketing or content, then stick around, cuz this is absolutely for you. But before we get stuck in, I wanna acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I am meeting you today. And that is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing that I wanted to bring to your attention is that group coaching is open. This is the last time that we will open it for 2022. So if you are keen to be part of our year-long program, you can find out all the details and apply over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching. If you have any questions about it, feel free to email us, at hellomydailybusinesscoach.com or you can send me a DM, at @mydailybusinesscoach. All right, let's get on with today's coaching episode.
So as you may or may not know, I came to my business seven years ago. This is my seventh year. And I started that because I just had so many people around me that had small businesses that didn't understand marketing. Now, I had worked in marketing for 15 years prior to that, my last job was as head of marketing for a major online and in-store retail group here in Australia. And so I kind of wanted to share what I'd learned. And so that's predominantly one of the biggest reasons that I started the business because I had all these friends who had businesses and they just hadn't had the marketing background. Now, part of what we offer at my daily business coach is obviously business coaching and group coaching, as you just heard, but we also have lots of courses, short courses, and long courses.
Our longest one, our biggest course is the Marketing for Your Small Business course. And we've been running that for years around that as live workshops for a long time that an online course, and now we have the online course and coaching program that we are literally just wrapping up at the moment, the last round, which I love doing that program because I always meet so many people who are struggling with marketing. And then I feel like, by the end of eight or nine weeks, they're like, I actually know what I'm gonna do. And I understand this. And some of the best feedback we've got is that I'm actually excited about marketing again. So I wanted to share today, something that I think will really help you. If you are struggling with marketing, it is something that we touch on in the Marketing for Your Small Business course, and also, something that I might work through with my clients depending on their needs.
But one thing that I think can really help our frameworks when it comes to marketing is things that are easy for you to remember and things that are easy to implement, I'm all about making it easy, aligning your business with your values and your life. And when it comes to marketing, there is so much out there, you should do this, you should post this many times on social media. If you're not on the latest social media, you're not doing it right. And I can just tell you that from my perspective, having worked in marketing for over two decades now, before social media came along and after, social media by itself is not a marketing strategy. You have to think about the message first. What message are you trying to get out there? And then what medium will you use to deliver that? Podcast, blog, email, content, videos, and then where are the best channels for communication and connection.
And in that may well be social media. But I think so often people are kind of starting with social media instead of starting with the message. And today I wanted to talk about one framework in particular that I think can really help you kind of come up with the message of what you wanna get out there and a framework for kind of channeling the message in different ways. So hopefully this will make sense by the end of it. If you are not familiar with marketing, if you're not familiar with certain terms, then maybe pause this, go get a notebook or go get something to write some notes down because I am gonna be sharing quite a bit of information. And of course, we do have the show notes and you can find them for this episode at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/212. But, you might just wanna write down some stuff that I'm saying, or better yet.
You may have ideas that pop into your head as I'm talking. And you're like, that is what we should do. And that is how we're gonna connect with our customers, which ultimately is what marketing is. It's all about driving connection. And sometimes that connection is gonna end up in sales. Sometimes that connection is just gonna end up in a like, a follow, or subscribing to your email. And then that may turn to lead to sales, or it may turn to lead, a referral or transacting in some other way, or it's simply just communication and connection, which is always great. So what am I gonna talk about today? I'm gonna talk about kind of the changing face of marketing. As I said, I've worked in marketing for over 20 years now and I actually, when was the first time I worked in marketing probably 1999.
I know some people listening may have not even been born then, but I am really old. So I'm trying to think of when I actually got that job. I was definitely working there before I moved to London the first time. So that's really interesting. So I'm just talking to myself here. I worked in an Ad agency in London and that was when that was in 2001, but I'm just thinking I actually had a job prior to that which really could be seen as marketing. So maybe it's been even longer suffice to say I've been in marketing for a long time. And in that, I've worked across books, magazines, online, eCommerce in store, like a whole gamut of places and in all sorts of channels as well from way back in the day, when I used to take classified ads for the newspaper over the phone when people didn't have mobile.
And I remember people saying to me who needs an email address? What is all this new business with the internet through to working at Amazon, working at Audible, working at some of the biggest eCommerce retailers in the world, and then through to working with a bunch of small business owners as well. So I do know quite a bit about marketing without blowing my own horn. And it has totally changed. It has changed. It continues to evolve. Marketing is largely experimentation. You're experimenting, you're twisting, you're tweaking, and maybe twisting as well. But you're tweaking, you're analyzing, you're improving. You're always kind of changing. And I think for a lot of people, sometimes that can feel very disruptive and very overwhelming. But I hope today, after going through this kind of coaching session, you will have at least one framework to walk away with that may help you in terms of how to craft your message and how to set up your marketing.
So what I wanted to talk about today is the changing face of marketing. And in regards to that, the kind of four P's versus the four C's. Now, this comes from the four P's. So anyone who's studied marketing, who's listening to this will be familiar with the four P's. So the four P's was really a concept that came up, I think, in the 1960s. And it was the idea that marketing really revolves around four areas, all of which start with the letter P therefore the four P's. So the four P's are product, price, promotion, and place. And so if we go a bit deeper into that product that is either, a tangible, like good, like something you can touch, or it's an intangible service, or it's a mix of both, or it is product service or both. And it really is about fulfilling a need or a want of the consumer or the customer or the client or whatever you decide to call your people.
The guest. I know a lot of hotel groups call people guests. And so, you've got the product. And so it's kind of like, okay, let's look at marketing the product, then you have the price. So the price is once you've got your product established and you're thinking, this is what we're actually gonna offer, then you determine your price, and then you have a pricing strategy. And so your price will determine kind of, obviously your profit margin, but it also will determine the supply. How many can be produced if you're producing a product also with the price and service-based businesses, your price often, I'll always be talking to like my coaching clients, particularly that are in service-based. So I work with photographers, graphic designers, interior designers, architects, and landscape architects, and I'll always be looking at your time.
You cannot make more time. So your time has to be the most expensive thing that you offer because you can't, you can't just get more and more the supply. Doesn't just magically go up of that. And so when you look at your pricing strategy and the marketing of that, you've gotta look at the profit margin, the supply, the demand, and all of that impacts the way that you market. So you'll see, for example, I don't know what it's actually called. Like those big blanket things that people wear, they used to be called Slankets. Was it Slankies way back when I worked at Amazon, which was like at least 12 years ago now in the UK, and now they have basically just been rejigged and come out. I don't even know what they're called, but you see them everywhere, all the tweens, all the teenagers, everyone has them at the moment.
And so that may be, we've got massive supply. We know that this is going to be a trend item, in which case it'll go up and it'll go down. So the way that you market that will be very different to say marketing a, like a designer desk agenda. I'm saying that, cause I've literally just bought myself one as a gift for myself, actually, no, I shouldn't say that because it actually was also from my family, but that will be very different because that has a different pricing strategy and a different marketing strategy. It's not about going big and wide and huge as quickly as possible. So price is the second P then you've got the third P, which is promotion. And so promotion includes how are we going to promote this?
Like literally like advertising or are we doing public relations or PR media, are we doing social media? Are we doing direct-to-consumer marketing? Are we doing email marketing? Are we doing SEO? Are we doing a video? Are we doing letterbox drops? Like what does our promotion strategy look like? And then you've got the place. So the place is the fourth piece. So you've got the product, price, promotion, and place. And the place is really the concept or the idea and we've probably heard it a million times, you've gotta put the right product in the right place at the right time for the right price. And so it's kind of, where does your product sit? And so if you think about, our place, if you are creating a, I'm trying to think of a product, if you're creating an education product, right, that goes out to, or is created predominantly for English as a second language students say in a country like Australia, where English is the first language and the main language.
Obviously, we have a huge, diverse, melting pot of wonderful people across our country. And there is, I think they're in Melbourne alone, there's something like 200 different languages spoken, which is amazing. And actually makes me feel like such an idiot that I can barely speak one language, but let's say your product was for ESL. So English is second language students. And so you may be like, okay, where is the right place to market this to? And so you may look at the demographics of different suburbs within Melbourne, and you may choose one particular suburb that has a high level of English as a second language and people coming in from different countries. And so then you may go into, okay, well, where should I be marketing within that demographic. And so it's like, okay, maybe community groups, sporting groups, church groups, places where people are building communities within that area.
So I hope that makes sense as a concept of place. Another example might be, if you have, I don't know, like beach towels or beach umbrellas or something, you are not going to be having a strategy around having those in places where it is snowing most of the year, or maybe you do. I don't know. Maybe you have some sort of like, I don't know, but let's just say you have a standard beach umbrella. Chances are the places that you're going to actually market that will be in warmer climates or in places where there are close to coastal towns, beaches, things like that. So those are the traditional kind of four P’s product, price, promotion, and place. And the kind of changing face of marketing is looking at the four C’s. And if you go online, you'll find a million different variations of the four C’s.
There is cost, communication, competitiveness, culture, connection, and curation. I mean, there's a whole bunch of C words, that sound naughty, but the C words for marketing. And so there are lots of different ways to kind of skin the four CS. But one concept that I wanna have a look at is from Eric Coleman. So Eric Coleman wrote a book, Socialnomics. It went off in like 2014 and which seems really long ago now, but 2014 was like, what three years after Instagram had launched. So social media was still so new. And so he created this book, Socialnomics, looking at the economics in terms of what's happening in society and what's happening with social media and things like that. And actually, Eric Coleman creates a really cool two-minute video on YouTube every couple of years about social media with really interesting statistics.
Like I know a few years ago when I watched one, it was like more people in the world own a smartphone than a toothbrush, which is just so bizarre. And when we think about our health, maybe not the best thing, but y so he creates these things, but he, he came out with the four C's to kind of rival the four P's. Now I don't think one out does the other, but I think if you can think about the kind of modern four C's while keeping in mind the four P's, it makes it easier to come up with your marketing strategy and the way that you wanna message and the way that you wanna connect with your customers, audience, whatever you wanna call them. So the four CS, according to Eric Coleman is creating. So are you creating what people actually need?
And are you constantly assessing kind of what they kind of say that they need versus what they actually do need and constantly assessing what your brand is actually standing for versus what products and services you've put out? So creating, I know that the guy who started the L2 email, which people may not know at all. I'm having a total blank. Okay. I remembered professor, Scott Galloway. And he is I think he's a professor of marketing at New York University. And so he used to have this really great email that came out. I think it was called the L2 and it was all about like luxury trends and what's happening in commerce and eCommerce and all sorts of things about retail trends. But I remember years ago, he said that experiences are the biggest threat to retail because people are spending their money on experiences rather than products.
And so when it comes to the idea of creating it's about looking at, okay, we are a product-based business, but what kind of experiences are we creating, for example? So the first C is creating the second C is curating. So it's really about thinking, as a brand, we have to curate content and we have to enable our audiences to discover kind of new things, new experiences, new people, new events, new activities, and all sorts of great things through us. And so that is becoming harder and harder because back in the day, you used to be able to be like, okay, cool. I'm looking at, you know, trend reports or I'm looking at maybe even you had a trend forecaster and you'd be, you'd be kind of the first to coming out and saying, look at this new musician or look at this new artist or this new documentary.
Now we have so much access to information that it can feel initially like it is harder, but curating is really about being the kind of sign app or the point between your audience and something that you think they're interested in. And I often work with clients on content strategy. And I often am saying like, you've got to think of the audience as real people. No one wants to be told the foot shoe, maybe different colorways that your cup comes in. Like here it is in yellow, here it is in Pink here it is in orange. They wanna know like, I made the most beautiful soup. And it goes into this cup. Yes, it's still connected with the product, but maybe you know, that your audience is really into like, I don't know, keto or vegetarianism, or I don't know, living off the lad.
And so you've created this beautiful carrot soup. I'm just totally going on a tangent here. But the idea is to curate content and so, or curate just curation in general, it doesn't necessarily have to be content. It could be curating of connection between two people. It could be curating content. It could be a curation of all sorts of things, but the second C is curating. So what are we curating for our audience? The third one is connection. So really about meeting your customers, your audience, your clients, where they are, and that is absolutely essential. And this can be a hard thing to kind of get your head around, especially when it comes to social media. So I work with lots of people who are very much in the creative space and very much aligned to creating a business that works with their lifestyle.
We are definitely anti-hustle here at My Daily Business Coach. And so the connection is really, for me working with these people, a lot of them don't wanna be on social media. And yet if their audience is on social media, they've gotta kind of play in the playground where their audience is. There's no point, I don't know, creating a new playground and no one's actually, there cuz not got the equipment that they like or something else. And so you wanna be thinking about connection and really striving for really meaningful content and connection in the channels that your audience is already in. And of course, there might be new channels that come up and down, but even say this podcast, I'm building connection through this, but I'm also playing in a space that a lot of people, a lot of people listen to podcasts while they're doing something else.
Most people don't sit and just listen to a podcast. A lot of the time they are, in my case, a lot of small business owners wrapping products. They are making products. I have a lot of people that are like ceramicists or makers and they will send me a message going. I was listening to this in the studio, we have artists. And so they're on the go or maybe they're driving, doing deliveries. And so I am in their ear as they're doing those things. And so I'm connecting with them on a medium that suits them being in the podcast. Now, if I was to do a whole bunch of YouTubing, which who knows that might happen in the future, I might be going after a slightly different audience. Or I might, if you were in, I don't know, software as a service or an app or a platform or something else, you may well do video because people need to actually watch to see and have a connection.
So the connection is the third scene, it's really about meeting your customers where they are, you know, so if they're on TikTok, Hey, you're gonna have to learn or hire somebody who knows that platform. But really you're striving to create connection in a way that is valuable for these people, but also in a channel in terms of marketing that they are comfortable with and where they can meet you. And then the last, the fourth C of the four C’s is culture. And that is really about creating a sense of community, and that community forges a bond with a customer. And we were, I was literally just talking to a client recently about community and how do you build community? And we were talking about brands that do that really well. And one of the brands they have also been a client and are a client at the moment that I think does this really well is Collective Closets.
They have done so much work in that space to cultivate community. And I think they do a really good job of it. So culture is really about creating a sense of community forging bonds with your customers and getting them talking. And maybe they're not coming back all the time to buy from you, but they're talking about your brand. They are becoming advocates for your brand. And therefore they're creating a culture around your brand that is driven by reputation, recommendations, referrals, and all the R words. And it keeps people coming back from more. But culture also refers to kind of the type of business that you are and what your employees or your staff or your suppliers or your contractors say about working with you because when it comes to marketing, so often we are focused on external, like what does the audience think?
What does the audience think? And sometimes we forget that internal marketing also exists. So the way that people are welcomed and onboarded into your business, the way that staff is celebrated when they have certain milestones or a birthday, or all sorts of things that is also part of your marketing. And so the fourth C is culture and all of these seas actually relate to internal marketing as well. I feel like I'm doing a workshop on this but I wanted to talk about kind of the four C's and the four P's, because I think each of those eight elements is important, but I think quite often we can get sort of trapped into the old school way of thinking, which is the four PS, the product, price, promotion, and place. And we are not allowing for all this stuff that modern marketing really needs to have, which is creating, curating, connection, and culture.
And so just to leave you with like two examples of this of each really is the first, when I'm talking in a workshop or in the marketing field, small business course or anything around these things, I will use the example of in Australia and you may be living elsewhere and listening to these, but you may have something similar. In Australia, at the end of the year, we have like most places around the world, a lot of sales that are happening straight after the 25th of December. So we have boxing day and boxing day sales, and end-of-year sales and all of that. And we have this one company, I don't even know who does it, but we have a big building in the middle of the city and here in Melbourne called The Exhibition Buildings. And we will have this Carpet Company that every year for like my whole childhood. And I don't know, I'm thinking that they must still do it. They will have like 10,000 rugs must go three days only all slash to prices.
And that epitomizes to me, the four P’s. Here we are big sale price, product and that's what it is. You go there to get a cheap rug or you go there to get a rug at major discount forgiveness for anyone who doesn't know those, please just bear with my bad interpretation of them, but maybe you have some other ad like that, that you've seen where it's just like in your face, throwing it at you, big, horrible colors. And it's just garish. And it's just like in your face. Whereas the four C’s, an example of that is Warby Parker. I love Warby Parker If you've ever heard me speak, come to anything, or bought any of my causes, you'll know that I look to Warby Parker as a fantastic brand to look at in terms of the way that they have built that business and the experimenting and the marketing and the brand connection that they have done.
So one example of that is their kind of buyer pair gives a pair about page really on the Warby Parker website. And it really often shows things like stats. 1 billion people don't have access to glasses in the world. And so it shows you, it kind of curates this, this content like, I didn't know that. If I buy a pair from Warby Parker, I might be helping somebody else. And it talks about glasses increase per a person's income by 20% and how many they've donated and they're kind of bringing you into that journey of, Hey, by buying from us and being part of the Warby Parker world, you are part of our community and the community as a global community. And we are here helping people and they have a whole bunch of statistics and content and information to really that they've curated and they've created and they are building connection and they're building culture.
So literally ticking every single one of those four C’s off through the content that they put out. And so I really hope that this little kind of mini-marketing workshop has helped you when it comes to the frameworks of the four P’s and the four C’s. What are you doing in your business? Are you focusing too much on the P’s or are you leaving space for the four C’s to come into the way that you market, the way that you put your messaging out there? So just a reminder that the four P’s are the product, price, promotion, and place, and there is definitely space for those things, but they shouldn't be everything that you're putting out there. And then the four C’s, according to Eric Coleman author of Socialnomics is creating, curating, connection, and culture. So I really hope that has been helpful for you.
If you have found this useful, I would love it so much. If you might share it with a friend, share it on social media, making sure you tag @mydailybusinesscoach. So we don't miss it. And also if you have time to leave a review, it just really helps us get found. And if you have found this useful and you wanna go deeper into marketing and find out a whole lot more information like this sort of stuff, and how to actually apply it to your business, check out marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. That is one of our courses you can buy at any time. It's always available for self-paced. And then you can upgrade for a really small price to our nine-week coaching programs that happen twice a year. So this will be available in text format over at mydailybusinesscoach.com slash podcast/212 as this is episode 212. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
