Have you heard of the 7 P’s of marketing? They are the basic ingredients in promoting or advertising anything, and these are: product, pricing, place, promotion, physical evidence, people, and partners.

This and many other lessons were what the 50 participants brought home with them after attending the Seminar on Effective Marketing and Selling Techniques at the Kasama Kita sa Barangay Foundation in Amanperez on July 11.

Deborah I. Beltran-Castillo served as facilitator. She is a certified public accountant, author of a book on entrepreneurship, and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)/Negosyo Center trainor. Castillo started by putting the participants in the right frame of mind by teaching them the “7 Ups of Scaling Up,” then later urged her audience to discuss among themselves the challenges facing their own respective businesses.

After the brief workshop, she segued into what marketing and selling are all about, detailing the various strategies being used out there to effectively promote and sell one’s product.

Among the attendees were new and long-time entrepreneurs and a number of entrepreneurship students. They were both grateful for the new insights that the seminar taught them.

Levin N. Uy gave the inspirational speech in his capacity as the LGU’s Focal Person on Investment Promotion. The Executive Director of the Foundation as well as CSFirst Green Agri Industry Development Company relayed his experience in bamboo and corn cob briquetting with the help of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the marketing experts of DTI. The technology, he said, taught them to reduce the 3-4 month carbonization process to just 4 hours.

He reported that the DOST’s Forest Products Research and Development Institute (FPRDI) granted CSFirst Green a token of recognition during their 60th anniversary celebration last July 5 at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños for being an adopter and cooperator in charcoal briquetting research.

Uy also gave context to the day’s affair by noting how the current business climate cannot help but be affected by the ongoing 4th Industrial Revolution, thanks to nanotechnology and robotics/artificial intelligence. (He explained that the 1st Industrial Revolution was mediated by automobiles and machineries, the 2nd by food franchising, and the 3rd by information/computer technology.)

The seminar was organized by the local DTI representatives, namely Senior Trade and Industry Development Specialist Bella A. Cerdan and Bayambang Negosyo Center’s Kim Martinez, in cooperation with the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development (MSMED) Council and LGU Bayambang. (Bayambang Public Information Office)