Marketing sometimes feels like magic. Consumers find themselves drawn to products, services, or brands, compelled by some invisible force to take an interest in concepts or experiences that previously seemed unimportant. While this shift in mindset may seem, from the consumer’s perspective, to occur at random, it actually represents the culmination of a strategic and carefully planned campaign, potentially carried out over several weeks, months, or even years.
Many frameworks can guide this effort, boosting not only brand awareness but also customer engagement. Among these strategies, an approach known as the four P’s of marketing has long proven influential. It offers a versatile solution for marketing various products and services. This incorporates four distinct yet complementary concepts that form the basis for the marketing mix, which are the key elements of an effective marketing plan.
While the four P’s can play out quite differently from one organization to the next (or even between different campaigns executed by the same business), most brands share a similar goal. This is ensuring that the right products or services reach the right consumers, and at the right time.
The Four P’s of Marketing
The ‘marketing mix’ concept that underscores the four P’s emerged during the 1950s and 1960s, also known as the golden age of marketing. Neil H. Borden adopted a goods-centric approach, suggesting that businesses could improve marketing outcomes by focusing on factors that were clearly under their control.
While Borden’s contributions were considerable, he was just one of many forward-thinking marketing experts to advance the field during its golden age. E. Jerome McCarthy also deserves credit for developing a simple and easy-to-remember acronym. He first introduced the four P’s in the influential guide Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach.
Marketing professionals quickly adopted this framework, and, since then, the four P’s have consistently been discussed in marketing degree programs and leveraged in marketing strategies spanning numerous industries.
Speaking to the ongoing relevance of the four P’s, Marketing Week’s Mark Ritson explains that these concepts do not represent the “totality of marketing,” but offer “controllable levers” to help businesses satisfy their strategic objectives. In other words, these involve the “tactical considerations of what a company wants to do.” To clarify how these work, we’ve outlined each of the critical concepts from the four P’s in detail below:
Product: Defining What You Offer
The most successful businesses will not only identify their core products but also reveal what makes these offerings stand out in a crowded marketplace. This concept is crucial because without a compelling product or service, there is nothing to market in the first place.
Ideally, products will maintain high standards and reflect the target consumer’s unique needs or desires. The design should be appealing, but the product must maintain functional value, with features addressing identified pain points. Once this key requirement has been cleared, other essentials such as pricing or promoting strategies can be tailored to enhance products further or shape how customers perceive them.
Price: Determining the Right Value
Many factors can influence the cost of key products, including everything from supply chain fluctuations to competitors’ pricing strategies. Ultimately, however, businesses must balance providing a high-quality product and ensuring that consumers feel like they are getting a good deal. This calls for a deep understanding of how customers assign value and how pricing can influence their core perceptions. Often, this plays out with tiered pricing schemes or limited-time offers.
Experts at the American Management Association (AMA) reference multiple components of pricing, going beyond the initial price setting to also include “price discounting, price structure, and overall pricing strategy,” adding that these strategies might “evolve as the market evolve[s].”
Place: Reaching Your Target Market
The most impressive product could be offered at a low price point and still fail to gain traction if it is not marketed to the right audience. This is where the concept of ‘place’ proves impactful. Businesses cannot appeal to everyone, even when selling widely used products. Segmentation ensures that the most receptive audiences are targeted and ultimately reached.
Businesses should aim for maximum visibility by aligning products or platforms with target customers’ preferred locations or typical buying habits. Investopedia provides a compelling example. Luxury cosmetics are better suited to displays in high-end stores such as Neiman Marcus as opposed to Family Dollar.
Promotion: Communicating Your Value
With the first three P’s in place, businesses shift their focus to promotion, which determines whether consumers are aware of the other Ps. The BBC defines promotion as “the methods a business uses to create interest in its products and services.” This could encompass anything from TV advertisements to sponsorship deals and even public relations (PR).
In an age of digital marketing, this P also includes search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and social media outreach. Promotion is most effective when closely tied to the aforementioned concept of place, as where products appear online can be just as influential as where they are sold in brick-and-mortar locations.
How to Use the Four P’s in Your Marketing Strategy
In recent years, there has been some pushback surrounding the once widely accepted four P’s of marketing, with critics claiming that this concept is no longer relevant in today’s dynamic world of digital marketing. Others, however, feel that the marketing mix offers a helpful framework but may need some tweaking to reflect new challenges and opportunities.
Ultimately, while the four P’s offer no guarantees of marketing success, they do continue to provide valuable guidance, ensuring that the many different factors that shape marketing are properly addressed and integrated. Over time, the execution of the four P’s has shifted in response to new trends and technologies, and at this point, the following strategies are most likely to drive marketing success:
- Conduct Market Research. Critical for addressing multiple areas from the four P’s, market research provides a solid foundation for all marketing efforts, ensuring that the right products or services are provided and that these meet the verified needs of today’s consumers. This could involve several techniques for gathering and analyzing information, including everything from surveys and polls to A/B testing and even historical sales data.
- Develop a Strong Product Strategy. Equipped with a solid understanding of current market demand and potential obstacles, businesses can move forward with strategic decision-making, focusing first on products that address customers’ pain points while also providing a clear source of differentiation. This begins with clarifying the value proposition (what, exactly, makes the product in question unique) but also calls for a fully mapped-out product lifecycle, complete with an innovation pipeline revealing opportunities for future product enhancements. A basic version of the product (known as the Minimum Viable Product or MVP) can be released to confirm functionality and secure actionable feedback.
- Set the Right Pricing Model. Product strategies should be closely linked to pricing models. This means aligning core features with perceived values, addressing industry norms, and evolving consumer expectations. Increasingly, many businesses use dynamic pricing to reflect fluctuations in demand, but experts at McKinsey & Company strongly recommend that these strategies remain “merchant informed” and carefully managed to assess risk — otherwise, these strategies risk “confus[ing] and alienat[ing] customers.”
- Choose the Best Distribution Channels. Distribution strategies can shape all four P’s but have an especially profound impact on place (where or how customers access key products) and additional factors (such as process) that we will cover in more detail below, shaping process, in particular. These channels determine how products reach customers and which intermediaries are involved. Common solutions include direct channels, one-level channels involving retailers, or two-level channels that add wholesalers to the mix. Increasingly, many businesses use omnichannel strategies or focus on e-commerce. Every approach offers unique advantages and potential drawbacks, so these should be assessed carefully.
- Create an Effective Promotion Plan. With product features, pricing schemes, and target markets clarified, marketing teams should have all the information needed to proceed with promotion. This may begin with customer personas, which help to clarify the target audience and adjust channel selection or messaging styles accordingly. Timing must also be considered, with promotional strategies incorporating pre-launch and post-launch phases while balancing short-term marketing bursts with efforts to boost long-term brand awareness.
- Continuously Monitor and Adjust. Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. While initial efforts to promote new products or services definitely matter, long-term success is not possible unless businesses are prepared to adapt in response to new developments. Monitoring helps identify trends while also revealing which marketing strategies are more or less effective. This effort centers around key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through or conversion rates.
Additional Elements for Ensuring Marketing Success
The Four P’s provide a strong start, but many other factors can influence marketing outcomes. These, too, can be remembered through alliteration, with the letter ‘p’ again providing a solid framework.
Bernard Booms and Mary Jo Bitner expanded on the concept of the four P’s in the early 80s, detailing an additional three elements to reflect the rise of the service economy and the accompanying need for greater nuance in marketing. Their version, known as the seven P’s, has been dubbed the “service marketing mix.”
Booms and Bitner advocated using environmental psychology theories to improve customer experiences while helping shape their behavior. They believed that, when tangible products were unavailable, elements such as atmosphere could impact customer perceptions outside. These insights, although still relevant in many environments, may not entirely account for the complexities of digital marketing and online services, which call for additional elements that also begin with P:
People: Building Strong Customer Relationships
As a key addition from Booms and Bitner, this aspect of marketing involves the many teams and individuals involved in the customer’s journey. From customer service representatives to technical support staff and, increasingly, digital marketing professionals such as social media managers, many employees can shape customer perceptions.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing reveals that customers often struggle to “separate the product or service from the staff member who provides it,” meaning that those employees (or, in the seven P’s, people) profoundly impact customer satisfaction.
By prioritizing people, businesses ensure all employees are closely aligned with core brand values and committed to providing rewarding customer experiences. This ‘P’ represents a long-term effort encompassing strategic recruitment and onboarding, not to mention ongoing training so that employees understand how to connect with customers.
Process: Creating a Seamless Customer Journey
In an age of convenience, consumers are less likely to purchase products or services if any obstacles (real or perceived) stand in the way. Therein lies the need for a greater focus on process, which ensures that every aspect of purchasing a product or service feels seamless.
Consistency should be prioritized so that consumers feel confident that future experiences will match previous purchasing efforts. Adaptations may differ depending on preferred distribution channels, but typically involve improving website performance and minimizing supply chain disruptions.
Positioning: Differentiating Your Brand
While the concept of positioning may seem relevant to the product category from the original four P’s, it warrants special consideration in an increasingly crowded market, where modern consumers enjoy instant access to numerous products, services, and marketing channels. This determines how products or brands are perceived in contrast to similar offerings from competitors.
Differentiation is key, and may take the form of unique features or value propositions. Businesses increasingly look to innovation as a core source of differentiation, although many also benefit from purposefully tapping into customers’ emotions.
Performance Metrics: Measuring Success
In a data-driven economy, there is a growing focus on quantifying marketing results, especially as they relate to return on investment (ROI). By gathering and analyzing performance metrics, business leaders can get a better sense of whether their marketing dollars are spent wisely. If these metrics indicate minimal progress, businesses can adjust their marketing solutions accordingly, refining products or promotion strategies to optimize marketing based on data-driven insights.
The Importance of the Marketing Mix
Certain elements of the marketing mix may continue to shift over time. Still, the overarching concept remains as relevant as ever. Many factors shape marketing success, representing a strategic and highly layered effort.
Businesses or marketing teams that prioritize either the four or seven P’s are far better equipped to craft marketing campaigns and materials that truly resonate with target customers. This can form the basis for a significant competitive advantage, not to mention long-term loyalty.
Linking Time-Tested Concepts to Cutting-Edge Strategies: Embrace the Marketing Mix With JWU
Discover how to harness the power of the four P’s of marketing and how to use these concepts to enhance marketing outcomes by implementing time-tested strategies, adjusted based on the realities of today’s fast-paced marketing ecosystem.
These crucial insights can be gained through engaging and purpose-driven coursework, with key concepts introduced by the passionate faculty members at Johnson & Wales University Online. Available online, our Bachelor of Science in Marketing & Advertising introduces you to foundational marketing concepts while also providing practical insights that reflect today’s unique marketing challenges and opportunities.
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