GSB-06: Place & Process – 6P’s of Marketing mix | Part 1

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In this episode, we discuss first 2 of the 6 P’s of marketing mixes and how they can effect your business. We dive deep into “Place” and “Process” and their importance in the marketing effort of your business.

When it comes to a retail business, the “Place” or the location is the key factor to success, and we discuss 10 key points of a successful location, which are:

• Indoor lighting
• Outdoor Lighting
• Cleanliness
• Restroom
• Clutter Free Checkout Counter
• Parking Lot
• Ambience
• Effective layout
• Appealing Beverage Station
• Signage
• Operating hours
• Pricing Visibility

 

In the “process” mix, there are two types of process that takes place in any business.

Inner Process

Outer Process

We discuss both of these processes in depth.

The book I want to recommend today is written by S J Scott the book is called Habit Stacking: 97 Small life changes That takes Five minutes or less.

 

[spp-transcript]

Hello everyone, thank you for joining me in yet another episode of gas station business 101 podcasts. Todays’ episode will be part 1 of a 4 or 5 part series all about Marketing your gas station/C-store business.

You may have heard about 4 P’s of the marketing mix, any and all basic marketing 101 teaches and talks about 4 P’s of marketing, which are the place, product, price and promotion. So basically place is where and how is your business location, Products is what products do you sell at your location, what pricing strategy do you follow for your business and lastly how you promote your business and products that you sell. All of which can be vast topics when it comes to marketing.

But I think for most retail businesses there are two very important elements of marketing that we need to add in to this mix, and they are People and Process. So essentially I will be talking about the 6P’s of marketing and not 4, and they are place, process, people, product and promotion

Since these are all very broad topics, in today’s episode I will address two of those topics. I will discuss and analyze “Place” and “Process” first, and then in next episode I will discuss “People” and so on and so forth. I am hoping to address all 6 mixes in next 3-4 episodes, so let’s get started.

Place:

In this mix, the place is essentially your business location, your store. A question may come to your mind, what is so important about your business location in the marketing mix?

Well, let’s see, your business place /location is one fo the most important mix in your marketing effort, because location can make or break a business, like I discussed in an earlier episode, you may have the best product, food and service but if the facility is not clean, not inviting, not well lit, does not have easy in and out access then chances are that business will fail or not succeed to its full potential.

The reality is when choosing what business you need to buy, first and foremost your attention should be at the facility itself or place and its layout and access, remember there are few things you can change and improve and there are some things which you can not. For example if the in and out access is difficult, you can not change that on the other hand if the facility is not well lit or dirty and unclean, you can most likely change that with some minimal effort.

So picking the right location is always the most important key to your success. Having said that now let’s take a look a look at a list of 12 things you can do to make your facility stand out in the crowd and improve your sales and grow your business. Some of these items may seem obvious or even silly at first but bear with me as I explain the importance of each of the items in this list.

1. Indoor lighting

Is your store well lit?

You can have the best merchandise, beautiful layout and very clean store but if your store is not well lit, the products will have a gloomy look, remember the design of most retail product packaging are designed to shine and attract customers BUT only under proper lighting, so if your lighting is dim they will not shine or attract customers. Most stores are fitted with 48-inch fluorescent light bulbs, and they are easy to replace and do not cost as much. One point to remember, there are 4 types of bulbs, first you can opt for LED bulbs which will replace the fluorescent ones without changing the whole fixtures, they tend to cost more, rest of the 3 types are your typical fluorescent bulbs but they come in 3 varieties: cool white 34 watts, warm white 34 watts and daylight 34 watts, you can also find all 3 varieties in 40 watt, I always choose the 40 watts bright white or daylight ones as they make the store very bright and well lit.

2. Outdoor lighting

Is your parking lot well lit at night?

Proper outdoor lighting is very important for your store’s security and business. Many study shows women tend to avoid poorly lit stores at night for obvious security reasons. So pay attention to that, if you have blown canopy lights, replace them, if you have some pole or area lights out replace them as well. If your store is an older facility one easy way to add area light is installing some wall mounted the outdoor light on the building focusing on the parking lot. Lately there are many LED conversion kits are being sold for a reasonable price, and they can reduce your power bill by about 30%.

3. Cleanliness

Is your store clean?

Typically gas stations are high traffic locations, so it is hard to keep them clean, but taking a few steps to make them appear clean is the key. Make sure no loose paper or visible dirt or sand on the floor, no water spill is on the floor. Then look at your shelves specially the ones that are close to the front door as those doors open and close more than 100 times a day so the dust settles easily on those shelves, assign your night shift employee to dust those shelves every night or whenever your store is slow.

4. Restrooms

Are your restrooms clean?

If you are located on a heavily travelled road chances are your restrooms stay busy. It is one of the hardest things to maintain in our business, but it has to be done. Train every employee to go and check restroom every hour, make sure it is stocked with both paper towels and toilet paper, and that it is clean, it has soaps and the floor is not wet. Also, a good idea to add an automatic air freshener in each toilet to make them smell good.

5. Clutter Free checkout stand/counter

Is your checkout stand full of shelves and products?

Go visit a 7-11 or a circle K or any other chain retailers and look at their checkout counter. Then compare that to yours, often times we tend to fill this space up with lot of shelves and merchandise, we think this is the most valuable space for customers to see what we carry so we need to fill this space up as much =nd as high as we can. Bad idea! Make that space open and clutter free and you may see a difference in not only appearance but in sales too

6. Parking Lot

Is your parking lot clean?

First impression is always the most important one. When people drive up to your store, first thing they see is your parking lot and parking spaces and if your parking lot is full of debris, empty soda cans and cigarette buds all over, then you just lost the chance to create a good first impression. A good habit would be to schedule and train your employees to go out to the parking lot twice a day and pick up all trash and debris.

7. Ambience

How does your store smell and feel?

Thinking why am I asking this odd question? Well to a few well-known researchers the smell and feel of a retail store can boost or lose sales, and it is true. I will have a link to one of those research findings in my show notes so you can go read all about it.

Walk into any big box retail store, you will notice the smell is fresh and inviting, the air temp is not too cool not too warm, and there is music playing in the background. I recently tested this in one of my stores where I added some music by adding an old receiver I had laying around the house and added two ceiling mount speakers which cost around 100 bucks. I also added a few automatic air freshener that sprays every few minutes in and around the store especially around the entrance. Right after I did these, I started hearing compliments as to how nice and clean the store is and in 3 months I noticed my deli sales has increased by about 6%! People associate good smell with clean environment and thus think the food we sell is fresh and tasty.  Here is a great study on this topic, you will enjoy reading about it. Just click here to read it.

8. Effective Layout

Does your store have a logical & effective layout?

Well layout is essentially how you designed and placed your shelving gondolas, check out counter and beverage stations, there are few things you can not change in an existing store, but there are other things you can, for example, you can not change where your cooler or beverage station is if you have an existing store, but you can change how and where your shelvings and gondolas are places. I will touch more on this when we discuss merchandising in a future episode. But remember one thing; you don’t want your food or snacks on an isle which is next to the restroom,

9. Appealing Beverage Station

Is your beverage Station clean and appealing like a 7-11 store?

7-11 stores are well known for their coffee and soda beverage stations. They pretty much set the industry standard many years ago on this concept.

But you don’t have to make yours look like their’s but follow the concept, the idea of what they do. Make it appealing by creating an environment that attracts coffee drinkers towards the beverage station, if your facility is older then consider using a backdrop right behind the coffee and fountain machine, you can have any coffee company to provide you with a nicely done backdrop on canvas where there is a picture of a cappuccino or a hot cup of coffee. A good clean and properly merchandised beverage station can draw lot of customers from far away especially if they know you always have fresh coffee especially in the winter time and similarly cold soda fountain for the summer months

10. Signage

Do you have proper and adequate signage in your store?

For example, do your customers always walk and ask where the restroom is or where the ATM is?? if, so that is an indication that you do not have properly placed signs in your store. Do pay attention to your gas price sign as that is THE MOST IMPORTANT piece of advertising and attraction for your business, make sure it is well lit and no tree branches are covering the view of it. I have seen many stories where some of their cute landscaping plants or trees have grown big and covered half of the sign.

11. Operating Hours

Do you have proper hours of operation?

Most neighborhood gas stations and convenience stores typically open around 5 or 6 in the morning and close around 10-11 at night, but how do you know if that your optimal business hours? Do you adjust your hours for the summer months vs. the winter? Finding out the best opening hours for your business actually may increase your sales by a double-digit sometimes.

12. Pricing Visibility

Does your store display proper pricing on all merchandise?

I am not talking about how much to sell a candy bar or your fuel for but what I am talking about it is how you display that price, I am sure you have walked into a store where everything looked clean and nice, you walk over to the candy rack to pick up a snicker bar and now here it says how much that candy bar is, all you see a bar code next to each product but no price sign. You walk up the checkout counter they scan the candy and tell you it is 1.75, so you are now trying to calculate how much the candy actually was without the sales tax right? If this is the case in your store, you are already annoying some of your customers, just put yourself int heir shoes, before you buy any item don;t you want to know how much they cost?

So you need to make sure every product in your store has some type of price on or around it, now it does not mean you have to individually price each candy bar but you can put a tag with price right under the candy box next to your barcode. Walk around in your store make sure every item has a price on or under it. Another good example is coffee and beverage station, I have seen many new stores, that has a huge beverage stations with 10 flavors of coffee and cappuccino and 10 different flavors of Icee and soda fountain, and no price, or even worse, confusing price, like in one store recently I noticed on cappuccino machine they listed small cup for 1.29, med for 1.79 and large for 1.99 but no price for coffee, should I assume they are same since they are next to each other? So remember to walk your stores sales floor at least once each month and make sure every item has a clear and visible price on them.

 

Process:

The next component of this marketing mix I want to address is the Process.

First let me explain what process I am talking about here, simply put, the process is how your business operation functions for you and for your customers. There are two processes that take place your business:

First the outer process, where a customer comes in pays for the goods or services and receives what they paid for. The second process is the inner process where you layout a pain-free yet simple but effective easy to follow system for your business.

Let’s look at the outer process first. The outer process is essentially simpler than the inner process as there are less moving parts; all you do is collect payments and deliver goods to your customer. But while doing that, you need to make sure of certain things are working like a well-oiled machine.

Are your customers waiting longer than expected? In some stores during rush hours some customers may have to wait more than 2-3 minutes to pay for their goods. Your goal should be to minimize that as much as you can, no one wants to wait, time is money, if you have a 2nd cash register, get an employee to start checking people out in both registers, if you do not have a 2nd cashier you can do that yourself, this way you get to interact with your customers directly and get them out faster.

Are the dispensers working properly?

Often most common complaints about gas stations are that the pumps are running slow, or that the card readers didn’t work properly or that they did not get a receipt at the pump or even that the window cleaner squeegees were missing.

Just remember the reason people pay outside is so that they can save time by not coming inside the store and stand in line. But if your credit card at the pump does not provide a receipt than some of those customers have to come inside and stand in that line that didn’t want to do at the first place. So it defeats the purpose. It is a good idea to check each of the outside receipt printers and make sure they all have papers in them.

Then check the window cleaning buckets in each island and make sure each is stocked with enough windshield washer fluid and a squeegee. If you hear any complaints about your dispensers running slow, take it seriously and see if you can change the filter inside, it is not a hard thing to do, most times the reason a dispenser runs slow because it has a dirty fuel filter, filters only around 10 bucks so keep them in stock and change them whenever ever you hear a complaint about being slow.

Your goal is to make each customer’s buying experience at your facility pain-free and fast

The inner process as I mentioned is little more complex. This is the process where you lay out step by step instruction for your employees to follow for the daily operation of your business. It can be cash handling procedure, hiring and training your staff. A typical process starts at the hiring of new staff. You hire a new employee, you put them in training for certain days, and you teach and test them on basic customer service to basic math skill. Then you teach them procedure like how to properly handle cash how to run the register, how to handle vendors, how to handle any incident or complaints and how to fill out shift and other paperwork.

Well you get the idea these are all examples of the inner process of business and only an owner or a skilled manager can set these process and monitor them. Remember there has to be a good chain of command in place and each employee needs to know up to what capacity they can make general business decision on your behalf. For example if the Pepsi vendor comes and offers a special on 50 case 2 liter deal,   if you or your manager is not available should your employee make a call to get an OK or should he or she decide on your behalf, you need to clarify this during training, so you do not have surprises.

Just remember without proper training and monitoring no process will work effectively.

The book I want to recommend today is written by S J Scott the book is called Habit Stacking: 97 Small life changes That takes Five minutes or less.

It is a book about self-improvement and some of the 97 ideas are actually very effective and yes so they can be done in less than 5 minutes.

Once again thank you so much for joining me today. I really would love to hear from you, if you have any suggestions or ideas for an episode or topic feel free to email me. You can reach me by visiting my site at gasstationbsuienss101.com, you can also reach me via facebook, ….. or Twitter CSB_Academy

If you found me on iTuenes and you liked the show, I would love to see a review or two on there.

Thank you and take care see you next week.