The Marketing Mix (Often Called The 4 Ps)
Every business major in college had to take Marketing 101, but it’s always good to run a refresher course when possible. In that class, students would have learned about the Marketing Mix, also referred to as The 4 Ps:
Product
Place
Price
Promotion
The mix is especially important in designing a strategic marketing program for bringing a new product or service to market, and all of them represent what you as the business are able to control during in the process. Each one of the components should be consistent with each other, thereby creating a clear message.
What do each contain?
Place
Locations
Brick and mortar or online
Inventory levels (where is it stored?)
Product
Features
Quality
Packaging
Warranties and/or guarantees
Style
Brand name
Services
Options
Promotion
Any type of advertising (physical, online, etc)
Sales promotion
Personal selling
Publicity
Point of purchase (POP) materials
Price
Value to the customer
List price
Payment period
Rental or lease
Discounts offered (and where/why)
Credit terms
Questions to ask yourself when developing the marketing mix for your product or services:
What are your competitors doing in terms of product, price, place and promotion?
Why would your customers need this product or service?
Why would your customers need a particular feature(s)?
How could you improve your product?
We will expand more on the 4Ps in later blogs. In the meantime, let us know if we can help develop your marketing mix!
- Consumer
- Costs
- Convenience
- Communication
(The 4 Ps are Product, Place, Price and Promotion)
The idea here is that the 4Ps make you business-oriented, while the 4Cs make you more customer-centric.
- Product becomes “Consumer needs/wants”
- Price becomes “Cost to the consumer”
- Place becomes “Convenience to the consumer”
- Promotion becomes “Communication to the customer”
