1. THE 18 Ps of
INBOUND
MARKETING
By Paul Cash, Author of “In Remarkable we trust”
http://tinyurl.com/bb5r8o7

2. The P was popularized in marketing back in the 1960s
with E. Jerome McCarthy’s Four Ps and the Marketing Mix.
Due to recent changes in the business
and marketing landscape it’s time to
revitalize the power of the letter P to
something even more representative of
the challenges we all face to move from
a push to a pull based model. My Eighteen (18) P model is
designed as a checklist and GPS
device that can help guide you
through the complex challenges
business leaders and marketers
face in this increasingly
multi-channel world.

3. 1: PURPOSE
Why does your business
exist above and beyond
making a profit?
Research from Harvard and
Stanford indicates that the most
successful companies, both in
profitability and longevity, are the
ones who recognize the absolute
necessity of profits as well as the
equally high necessity of having
a purpose beyond shareholder
wealth.

4. 2: PEOPLE
We are living in the
‘People Power Age’.
Never has it been more
important to over commit to
the needs and aspirations of
your customers, love your
employees and take action to
help improve the communities
and societies in which you
operate.

5. 3: POINT OF VIEW
In a world of increasing
competition and a lack
of true differentiation the
real battle ground is in
the minds of your
customers.
Having a strong point-of-view
about the category and market
in which you operate and
exercising this through ‘thought
leadership’ programmes is
critical for both market leaders
and challengers alike.

6. 4: PROFITS
What a company does
with the profits it makes is
equally important as how
it makes them.
Milton Friedman’s view
popularised through the 70s to
recent times was that the ultimate
social responsibility of business
was to generate profits for its
shareholders. He went further to
suggest any deviation from this by
way of corporate philanthropy
would eventually be a cost that
would get born by the consumer.
The reality today is that a new and
more compassionate Capitalism is
emerging: one that gives equal
emphasis to people, profits and
planet – the so-called ‘triple
bottom line’.

7. 5: PASSION
One of the new areas of
brand development is in
the field of implicit
communications.
Think of it like brand’ body
language’ i.e. the non-verbal
cues or signals you emit as a
brand that your customers pick
up on. Showing your passion
and that of your employees by
way of social responsibility and
sustainability initiatives is a
great way to reflect the true
energy and culture within a
company. This is a difficult one
for most brands to measure but
hugely important for people
‘looking in’ on your business.

8. 6: PLANET
The sustainability agenda
in many corporations has
become a huge factor in
their ongoing business
strategy.
Not many would argue that in the
past 50 years ‘big business’ has
damaged the health of the world.
One of the most exciting trends in
business today is how we go
about ‘unfu*king the planet’.
Forward thinking corporations and
brands are concerned with trust,
reputation and legacy not just
profit, profit, profit. Think beyond
your own balance sheet, what are
you doing to help repair the
planet?

9. 7: PERFORMANCE
We will always have core
economic indicators that
are often unique to certain
sectors i.e. profit per
square foot for retailers or
churn figures for telecom
vendors.
The key change in recent times is
to be more reflective on the real
performance indicators that drive
business success:
1: How does your culture and
employee engagement levels
stimulate success?
2: How does your sustainability
agenda and beliefs help increase
the performance of your supply
chain?
3: How does being easy-to-do
business with drive loyalty?

10. 8: PARTNERSHIPS
Transparency of what you
do has never been
greater.
For most companies their partners
and supply chain form an integral
part of their go-to-market strategy.
We’ve seen in recent weeks the
issue of contaminated horsemeat
in frozen processed foods and the
issue this has caused brands like
Tesco, Burger King and Ikea.
Your partnership strategy,
especially for brands that sell
‘indirect’ can have a massive
impact on the reputation of your
brand. The key is to work with
partners and suppliers that share
your purpose and beliefs in the
hope that together you can be
better!

11. 9: PARTICIPATION
Another great buzz word
of the social era but one
that probably deserves all
the hype it gets.
It’s not rocket science to
understand the positive impact that
can be achieved by allowing your
customers and employees to
participate more in the running of
your business. From a customer
perspective brands like Starbucks
have seen huge WINS with their
My Starbucks idea web site and on
a corporate level companies like
Jive Software are allowing large
corporations to tap into the vast
intellectual capital of their
employees by creating enterprise
platforms to facilitate this.

12. 10: PROMISE
One of the less fashionable
aspects of branding these
days seems to be the humble
‘brand promise’.
Making them is easy, keeping them is
the hard part. In periods of market
instability with pressures on costs
and high staff turnover a brands
promise can often be the first thing
to suffer. Your promise however is
central to everything you do and
should be informed from your
purpose and vision. It must be clear,
compelling, concise and credible. It
needs to act as a rallying call to all
your employees and a lighthouse to
your customers. Most importantly it
needs to flow from your CEO to every
touch point of your business.

13. 11: PRIDE
We talk a lot these days
about trust, integrity and
authenticity as desired
outcomes that all brands
gravitate towards.
However, in order to get there having
pride in what we do is a key
ingredient. The only way to give a
brand pride is to infuse it through all
employees and your supply chain
partners. Pride is another great
example of a powerful brand signal.
Pride is a by-product of having a
strong purpose, a great
product/service/solution and
empowering people to make a
difference in their day jobs.

14. 12: PLAN
Sounds like an obvious one
doesn’t it. The importance of
a flexible and fluid plan that
guides rather than stifles is a
key requirement in business.
A 10 year plan, a 5year plan, a 1 year
plan – there is no one size fits all plan
that’s for sure. The key thing is that
planning adds rigour and discipline to
the process of setting your business
on a course for success and more
importantly helping you navigate
your way there.

15. 13: PRODUCT
One of the original Four Ps.
Your product is at the core of
what you do.
Modern marketing tells us that the
old world, product-centric approach
needs to be refreshed with a more
customer experience centric
approach. Today we need to
consider the notion of the ‘whole
product’ and not just the physical
and often functional side of what we
do. By wrapping a unique set of
services, tools and experiences
around our core product we can
often transform it into something
more compelling and unique.

16. 14: PRICE
Here’s a biggy. Price
determines profit so it’s of
interest to every business
person.
How companies and brands price,
bundle and discount products and
services is a hugely complex area.
Mobile phone vendors are notorious
for having multiple skews and tariffs
which make it impossible to work out
the best deal. In recent times
through the rise of Smartphones,
cashback, codes and voucher brands
like Quidco and Vouchercloud have
emerged which adds another layer of
complexity to brand driven pricing.
What’s vitally important in this multi-
channel world is to make sure your
pricing is simple and consistent.

17. 15: PLACE
From eBay to pop-up
shops, bricks and mortar
to online, mobile apps to
Facebook, TV to
telephone, franchising to
direct selling.
The channels and places that we
can buy from are vast and
growing. Managing this complexity
of touch points is one of the
biggest headaches facing
business today. Choose your
channels and places wisely; they
have a huge impact on brand
reputation and customer
experience.

18. 16: PROMOTION
We are all well versed in the
traditional marketing
channels from packaging to
advertising, sales promotion
to PR.
We’re all learning to blend these with
the emergence of social media,
content and mobile marketing as well
as becoming Chief Data Officers
along the way. The critical factor
moving forward is to build a credible
brand platform first. Focus on shifting
from a push to a pull based
communications strategy and work
heard to earn your customers
attention rather than simply buy it.

19. 17: PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
This is an interesting one
because it forces us to think
in more detail about the
physical artefacts, materials
and components that reflect
the brand experience we are
trying to create.
For example: storefronts and
merchandising, uniforms and
signage take a great deal of
thought in traditional retail
environments but equally
employers are now looking at how
these same aspects lend
themselves to creating better
working environments as well.

20. 18: PROCESS
Most organisations today are
the result of a complex web
of business processes that
have been fine-tuned over
the years to form the
operational side of a
business.
This can include everything from
recruitment to supplier
management, online ordering to
customer service. With the advent of
new technologies into the marketing
department such as email
management, web site management,
social media analytics and such like
more and more processes are being
created. In my view the challenge for
marketers is to re-invent and re-
imagine the processes that have
most impact on their business.