Week 7 at Purpol Marketing by Intern Bronwyn Jesse

This week is yet another cause for celebration, as Purpol Marketing are recognised as one of the Top 10 businesses within the category of the Best Construction Supplier to Work With (Under £25m) in the Construction Enquirer Awards.

So most importantly a huge thank you to everyone who has voted for us! These awards are industry led, voted for by fellow people within the construction industry, so this is a great achievement for Purpol. The overall winner for each category is to be announced on the 10th October, so I wish Purpol and all other winners the best of luck!

In other areas this week, I have been working to generate some content for Purpol. Of particular interest to me was producing a whitepaper concerned with whether the 7P’s of marketing, which are the pinnacle of all marketing theory, are still valid. Until set the task to research this area, this is something that had escaped my attention. I stood a lot to learn from doing this, with an appreciation of the paradigm shift towards a relationship-orientated approach to marketing. Whilst the marking mix is very much still the foundation of all other marketing activity, I now understand how this needs to be revised to remain relevant and hold up to the digital age.

The main criticism refers to the internal orientation of the marketing mix, which marketers argue should consider the customers point of view and also capture the relationship between businesses and consumers. From this several subsequent frameworks have been developed which take a customer-centric approach, including SAVE and the 4C’s- customer value, cost, convenience and communication.

Particularly, for small businesses and start ups emerging onto the consumer market are less likely to rigidly stick to the 4P’s, and prefer to improvise, with a preference for following what they believe to be the right thing for that stage of business development.

Amongst other whitepapers I have been research within our Promote area of our unique structure, I looked at incentives you can offer to drive business.

Here I have learned about the importance in the tone of voice you adopt in your marketing efforts in relation to what action you want your target audience to take. For example, if your looking for something and you want someone to achieve, have a challenge, asking them to do something and telling them the benefits this will bring. So, evoke excitement, make your content relevant, and use words that sell to create a ‘snappy’ impact. This element is sometimes overlooked, but I learnt that you need to ensure the incentive sits well with your brand and reflect the quality you offer.

The purpose of our whitepapers is to help people develop a greater understanding of the different elements of marketing when writing their marketing plan, but actually us interns also learn a lot from doing it to!