This post maybe all you need to know about marketing, well maybe not, but it is a great primer. Most people don’t know the basics of marketing, we not only provide you that, but here we go further. We might give you better than a marketing MBA. Because we cover the most ignored principal of marketing, the 5th P. Having made millions with my marketing skills and entrepreneurship, I have not only been a student of marketing, but an enthusiast.

All of these the major topics of modern day will be covered in the book. Are you feeling the theme of the new book yet “Secrets to eSuccess: blogs, social, and search marketing”?

A few of my friends/advisers have Stanford MBA’s, and a conservative one with a Harvard MBA.  They all agree that SEO and search marketing are a must for any business in todays market.  As you already know, we cover a lot of these topics in our blogs, but something was missing, a holistic Marketing approach. So we decided to take a step back and provide the basics.

If some of you were lucky, smart or blessed enough to study marketing in college you certainly know about the 4 P’s of marketing. I have been talking about these 4 p’s for 7 years now. The 5th P, I will tell you in a second, and you will agree it is the most important. Marketing is not just about public relations or advertising, as most people assume. It’s a complex world of strategic positioning, product strategy, product development, product management, and public relations and advertising. Advertising, public relations and sales are really one of the lagging parts, though very important. The most important lessons of marketing was from Anthony Robbins, yes Tony, the great motivational speaker. He talked about the VALS research from Stanford, and profiling different types of people, but most marketing people don’t emphasize the 5th P principles.

The 5th P does not stand for “Process” as an MBA in Marketing from the U. of Washington in Seattle told me.  I can’t believe that is what they taught there at U. of W. U Dub is a great school, but folks, process is just a process. So here are the 4 P’s and the 5th will be discussed in detail below:

1. Product; if you don’t have a product, you don’t have anything. A product can also be a service so for sake of simplicity we will bundle them.

2. Price; if you can’t make money selling your product, should you sell it? Or go back to the drawing table, Well you know the answer right?

3. Place; needs more clarification, it’s where you will sell the product, retail, online, jewelry parties, it’s the sales channel.

4. Promotion; this is the world of public relations, advertising, and call to action sales materials, search marketing etc. etc. For those of you who study marketing you may already know that eMarketing tools is the fastest growing segment of technology. This is from a recent Gartner report, of July 2007 on marketing automation.

Without, any further a due, the drum rolls rolling, the hearts beating, yes the claps, and church bells ringing.  Tadaha..It’s People, People, People, how can the marketing geniuses of the MBA’s forget to teach about “People, the 5th P”. Is process more important than people, no silly.  So what do yo need to know about People and marketing?

Forget about demographics, focus more on psycho-graphics, and get the data to back up your strategy. It’s the art of understanding not only who your customers are. The 5th P of marketing is all about people, you need to know everything about your customers, their profile is just a start. You need to know their likes, dislikes, passions, dreams and aspirations. Where are they going today? How much money are they spending on products that you sell, how much will they spend on them tomorrow?  VALS research covers types, that I can’t really forget. There will be more on this topic tomorrow, so we will call the series, “Secrets to eMarketing, Part 1-6″, we will start with Part 1. tomorrow.