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

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Questions to ask yourself when developing the marketing mix for your product or services:

1. What are your competitors doing in terms of product, price, place and promotion?

2. Why would your customers need this product or service?

3. Why would your customers need a particular feature(s)?

4. 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!

*Side note, I should also mention that some marketers use a customer-centric version of the 4Ps called the 4Cs, which are:

• 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”

What Place Does Marketing Hold In The Strategic Plan Of An Organization?

Ask many people what they think marketing is and they will group it in the same category of sales. When applying for a job, many times one will see the category of “marketing/sales” only to find out that the job is purely sales or a graphic designer position. The truth is that marketing is the collective process of things like sales, public relations, conversion analysis, traffic, advertising, community involvement, pricing, media planning, marketing research, distribution and so on. Marketing is the overall process of the inception of an idea all the way to putting the product in the hands of the consumer or business.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration:

“Marketing is your most important organizing tool. There are four basic aspects of marketing, often called the four Ps:

• Product: The item or service you sell.

• Price: The amount you charge for your product or service.

• Promote: The ways you inform your market as to who, what, and where you are.

• Provide: The channels you use to take the product to the customer.

As you can see, marketing encompasses much more than just advertising or selling. For example, a major part of marketing involves researching your customers: What do they want? What can they afford? What do they think? Your understanding and application of the answers to such questions play a major role in the success or failure of your business.” - SBA, 2014

So, what role does marketing hold in the strategic plan of an organization? Answer: AN ESSENTIAL ONE. When, for example, a candle shop opens and wants to sell candles to consumers, where do they start? First you need to find a location that will be convenient for potential customers to find you without going way out of their way; after all, they could just go to Wal-Mart, so why go to your candle store or order from your website? Next, what advantages does your store or website have that will make people choose you over competitors? Maybe a knowledgeable staff on the products, special items that are not easily available at other places, cheaper prices, and so on. There also has to be a way to get the word out, otherwise no one will know about your store, that’s where advertising gets into the mix. Although, if you spend $100 on advertising but only sell $60 worth of products then was it worth it? That’s where media planning, pricing, and distribution/logistics come into play. The customer comes into the store, buys a product, then what? Did the customer have a unique experience? Will he or she come back? That’s where community involvement and public relations come into play.

To be successful, there has to be a way to let the customers know about you, sell the products, fix problems and still be profitable. This process is marketing and it is crucial to any organization.

References:

U.S. Small Business Administration. (Retrieved 2014). What does marketing involve? U.S. Small Business Administration. Retrieved from http://www.sba.gov/content/what-does-marketing-involve