Marketing

The 4Ps of marketing

When launching a new product or service, you have to think carefully about a range of factors that will determine its attractiveness to consumers

When launching a new product or service, you must consider a number of factors that will influence how appealing it is to customers. The 4Ps, or product, pricing, location, and promotion, are the most commonly used terminology to describe this'marketing mix'. This is a handy checklist to make sure you've considered all of the important aspects of your value offer.

When to use it

● To assist you in deciding how to bring a new product or service to market.
● To evaluate your present advertising approach and identify any flaws.
● To compare your contributions to those of your competitors.

Origins

Marketing as a professional field gained shape in the postwar years, despite its much older antecedents. In a pivotal 1964 essay, Neil Borden proposed the 'concept of the marketing mix,' which entailed ensuring that all parts of a product or service were tailored to the needs of a specific type of customer. The 4Ps were established after Jerome McCarthy separated Borden's concept into four categories: product, price, place, and promotion. Philip Kotler, a marketing professor, is also linked to the 4Ps, as he was instrumental in popularizing them in the 1970s and 1980s.

What it is

Consumers in a competitive market have a lot of options when it comes to where they spend their money, so you must think carefully about how to make your offering appealing to them. The 4Ps are merely a framework for thinking about the essential components of this marketing mix.
● Product/service: What features will consumers find attractive?
● Price: How much will they be prepared to pay?
● Place: Through what outlets should we sell it?
● Promotion: What forms of advertising should we use?

The 4Ps are all about market segmentation: recognizing the demands of a certain group of customers and then putting together a product or service (specified in terms of the 4Ps) to meet those needs.

The 4Ps are generally employed by consumer goods companies who want to target specific consumer segments. The 4Ps are less appropriate in industrial marketing (where one company sells to another company) since the direct relationship between the seller and the buyer is often more important. In industrial marketing, product and pricing are still crucial, but location and promotion are less so.

Lauterborn's 4Cs, which present the parts of the marketing mix from the buyer's perspective, are an alternative to the 4Ps. The four elements are the customer needs and wants (which is the equivalent of product), cost (price), convenience (place) and communication (promotion).

How to use it

Begin by determining whatever product or service you wish to study. Then, using the following questions as a guide, go over the four elements of the marketing mix.

Product/service

● What requirements does the product or service meet? What attributes does it offer that will assist it in meeting these requirements?

● What does it appear to customers like? What will their reactions be? What kind of brand image are you attempting to establish?

● How does it vary from what your competitors have to offer?

Price

● What is the value of the product/service to the consumer?

● How price-sensitive is the consumer?

● How are competitor offerings priced? Will you price at a premium or discount to competitors?

● What kind of discounts or special offers should be made available to trade customers?

Place

● Where do most purchasers look for your product or service? What media or channels will you use to distribute it?

● Is it necessary for you to have complete control over your distribution or even your retail experience for this product/service?

● What is the distribution strategy for your competitors' products?

Promotion

● What media will you use to reach out to your target market, and what message will you send?

● When is the most effective time to market your product or service? Are there any particular times of the day or week that are better than others? Is the market subject to seasonality?

● Is it possible to reach your target market using free PR (public relations)? It's a good idea to assess your marketing mix on a regular basis, because some parts will need to change as the product or service evolves and new competitors enter the market.

Top practical tip

First and foremost, make certain that your responses to the previous questions are founded on solid information and facts. Many marketing decisions are made on the basis of unproven assumptions about what customers want, and new product introductions are typically effective because they question existing preconceptions.

Second, a successful product launch requires a high level of uniformity across all of the various parts. Because it is now possible to target a highly narrow set of consumers, particularly in the internet environment, decisions concerning location and advertising are significantly more important than they might have been in the past.

Top pitfall

The 4Ps, if taken too literally, can confine your focus too much. If you're working on an online version of a magazine or newspaper, for example, you can try to mimic the 'product' and 'pricing' that worked in the print world. That, however, would be a mistake because consumers use digital content in very different ways, and how companies charge for online services is frequently very different from how they charged for traditional items. Similarly, a concentration on 'promotion' risks leading to a campaign-based attitude focused on increasing web-page hits, when the firm could benefit from more value-added content like blogs or infographics.

The 4Ps are a good approach to organize your thoughts regarding the aspects of the marketing mix, but you should always be willing to deviate from them if it allows you to do something more innovative.