You can take the cheese off pizza but how many pizzas are you going to sell?

I send out a monthly newsletter to all of my Ultimate Discount Card clients. I do it for many reasons but reason #1 is because I truly care about the success of my clients. I love helping them grow their business. If I can educate, inspire and offer some great practical ideas and knowledge then I have served my purpose. I really strive to add a lot of value to my newsletter or else they won’t read it.

I want to share an email that one of my older mentors/friends sent me. I thought it was so important that I wound up replying to the email in the next months newsletter so all of my clients would see it. Here it is:

After last month’s newsletter, (and an overwhelming positive response) a well respected real estate entrepreneur I am friends with emailed me back with an interesting response. ‘John’ to keep anonymity, said I was educating incorrectly about marketing. John said ‘promotion’ and marketing is not the same thing. ‘Promotion’ is only 1 aspect of the marketing mix. Product is extremely important if not more important, John added. He also said that I am being totally naive.

Let me respond. First off, I am so happy that I am getting people to think. If you ever have any questions, comments or anything to say for that matter please feel free to email/call me. Marketing out of all the skills needed in business is the most intriguing to me. If you know how to market you truly hold the key to wealth. There is a saying that goes, “Any fool can make soap, but it takes a clever man to sell it”. Now, let’s talk about the marketing mix.

The “old” marketing mix consists of the 4 P’s: Product, Place, Promotion and Price. I absolutely agree with John that promotion is not the only aspect of marketing. Maybe I am being naïve in believing that all of you have done everything in your power to ensure that your product is as good as it possibly can be. Let me make something clear. If your product is not as good as it can be than all of the ‘promotion’ in the world isn’t going to help your business. I personally could never sell anything unless I believed in it 1000%.

Where I come into play is to help you with the ‘promotion’ aspect of your business. My goal is to create for you the very best marketing solution and medium to help increase your business from new and existing customers. Every business on this planet needs to focus heavily on their ‘promotion’ aspect of their business.

You need to get the word out somehow whether it is through newspaper ads, posters, contests, seminars, television ads, signs, door-to-door, radio ads, banners, trade shows, yellow pages, articles, classified ads, charity events, infomercials, online ads, billboards, take-one-box, sales letters, flyers, email, ezine ads, postcards, door hangers, media releases, special events, word-of-mouth, gift certificates, website or business cards to name a few. You get the point. However, promoting your business can only do so much if your product is not as good as it can be.

If that’s the case, then it might be wise to focus your efforts and resources on producing a better product. There’s no point in spending money trying to attract new customers through your marketing efforts if you aren’t providing a good enough product, service or experience for your customers to want to come back. Hopefully, you have done everything you possibly can to make your product as good as it can be. Word to the wise.

As a small business owner myself, there are places you can skimp and save money and there are places to put your money into. Your product is definitely not something you want to cheap out on. You can take the cheese off pizza but how many pizzas are you going to sell?