What Are the 4Ps of Marketing?

May 19, 2023
6:41 AM

Marketing is an essential component that can make or break the success of a company’s product or service. The 4Ps of marketing is a concept that a marketer can utilize before devising a marketing strategy. It is a well-known marketing concept you can use to advertise your product or service, optimize sales and build connections with the target audience or even test your current marketing strategy. They are the key elements that every B2B or B2C business must consider before devising its marketing strategy.

The 4Ps of marketing encompass four main factors that must be considered when marketing a product or service and crafting a unique marketing campaign. By understanding the 4Ps of marketing, you can effectively reach your target audience and create a responsive marketing campaign.

Formulating a marketing mix may seem like an old concept to marketers nowadays; however, it is still relevant in today’s marketing landscape. In this blog, we will explore each of the 4Ps in detail and provide practical tactics to use them to your advantage. Let’s dive in and discover how you can spice up your marketing game with the 4Ps.

The Importance of 4Ps of Marketing

A high-quality marketing strategy requires a lot of thought and development. The 4Ps of marketing act as a framework or foundation for any marketer to create a successful marketing strategy for promoting their product or service. The marketing mix and the 4Ps of marketing are often used as synonyms since they both discuss the four main pillars of marketing. The marketing mix consists of critical elements that summarize the four basic pillars of any marketing strategy: product, price, place, and promotion.

Identifying your 4Ps will help your team position your brand and learn what the competition is doing and what customers want from you. Think of it as the recipe for marketing success; just like every great dish needs the right ingredients, every great marketing strategy needs the 4Ps. This process may sound simple, but your team needs a product that can fill a gap in the market, promote it with the right strategies and price it based on the value it provides, and this can be a tedious process. The 4Ps of marketing mix address factors such as:

Understanding the needs, expectations, and pain points of the target audience
Identifying the cause of the failure or finding any errors that may occur while promoting the products and service
Finding ways to bring about brand awareness and changing the public perception of the product or service
Creating distinguishing characteristics to increase competitive advantage
Understanding how the product or service interacts with prospective consumers and vice versa

A Brief History of the 4PS of Marketing

The term marketing mix originated when Neil H. Borden, a Harvard University professor, started using the phrase in 1949. E. Jerome McCarthy, an American marketing professor and the author was the first person to suggest the modern 4Ps of marketing in the 1960s. He presented the four variables that marketers can use while creating a marketing plan in his book, “Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach.”

Phillip Kotler, now known as the ‘father of modern marketing,’ popularized this approach and helped spread the 4Ps model. The marketing mix has developed to the 8Ps of marketing, including elements like people, positioning, processes, and performance, but the basics have remained the same. Marketing professionals and companies still use the 4Ps of marketing today to advertise their goods and services.

Creating a marketing mix can often get time-consuming and challenging. DataCaptive is offering professionally designed free marketing mix templates that can be customized based on your requirements.

What Are the 4PS of Marketing?

01. Product

The first step towards creating a marketing campaign is identifying the product or service that needs to be marketed. A marketer must understand the product’s target audience and its competitors and define its qualities before introducing it to the prospective customer. The product type dictates the cost, where it should be placed, and how it should be promoted.

Once the product’s characteristic is identified, your team can change the packaging, after-sales service, and warranties or even expand to new markets to meet sales goals. The product must satisfy the needs and pain points of prospective customers. Select a product that is unique in some way, fills a gap in the marketplace, or provides a novel customer experience that creates demand.

Product Life Cycle Stages

Marketers need to understand the life cycle of a product and create a plan for every stage of its life cycle. One must understand the lifecycle of their product or service and develop strategies for every product selling stage: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Introduction: This stage happens when a product is launched in the marketplace, and your team starts building product awareness and targeting prospective customers.
Growth: In this stage, you will see product demand growth, and customers are interested in investing in your company.
Maturity: This stage showcases how the products begin to enter the most profitable stage, where the cost of production declines and the sales increase.
Decline: This is the stage where the product or service will decrease sales due to heightened competition.

Example of a Product

Here is how you describe your product; we will use our B2B contact lists as an example.

1 What is your product?

Our B2B contact lists host information on the most prominent global industries, including large corporations, SMEs and contact information of decision makers. They are the perfect tools to scale your lead generation pipelines.

2 What does your product do?

Our email lists have a 95% accuracy rate and 85% email deliverability rate to help the business reach its target audience, build connections with decision-makers, and create personalized email campaigns to grow your business and achieve your marketing goals.

3 What features does it offer?

The features of our email lists include segmented databases, customizable databases, manual and AI verification, opt-in contacts, and data compliance with data privacy laws. It also offers CRM-friendly files, 24/7 post-sale assistance, and, most importantly, affordable prices.

4 How is your product different from what others offer?

Every contact list is verified regularly to ensure you get the most accurate data and avoid hard bounces and inaccuracies. It is also free of duplicate contacts and generic emails, ensuring you only generate qualified leads.

Questions you must answer about your product

What sets your product apart from other products like it on the market?
What is it that makes your product unique or special?
How can we make our product or service better?
How does your product meet your customer's needs?
What is it your customers want or need to buy?

02. Price

Price is the amount your prospective customers will pay for your product or service. Before considering a price, marketers must consider supply costs, other competitors’ pricing, credit terms, freight payments, and seasonal discounts. Sometimes the company’s decision maker increases the price of the offering based on its appearance of luxury or exclusivity of product. In contrast, others might lower the cost to improve the product’s availability. The price is one factor that can directly influence the sales volume, the revenue you generate, and the business profits.

Factors Impacting Pricing Decisions:

Manufacturing cost of the product
Utility and demand in the market
Industry and market conditions
Government and legal regulations
Top competitors in the market
Pricing objectives set by the company
Any marketing strategies used

Example of Price

Some companies offer subscription services, and here is an example of that:

US$0/month (free)
US$75/month (starter)
US$350/month (professional)
US$675/month (enterprise)

Questions you need to answer before setting the price

What is the price range of your competitors' products or services?
What is the value of your product?
How much are your prospects willing to pay for the product or service?
What price is too high for your audience? What price is too low?
What price best fits your target market?

03. Place

Place determines where your product or service will be available and how it will be delivered to your target audience. This can be a brick-and-mortar store, an online website, or social media sites. The goal is to ensure that the product is readily available to prospective customers who are most likely to purchase the product.

Advertising the product or service on the right channel can help you get the target audience’s attention and drastically boost your sales. A pro tip here is to consider the buyer’s persona while finding the right channels, as it can help you decipher the channels your prospects are most active on.

Top distribution channels for a product or service

Retail Stores
eCommerce Platform
Online Website
Email Marketing

Omni-channel Marketing
Social Media Sites
Podcast Marketing
Video Marketing

Example of Place

If your main product is a SaaS product or automation software, the best advertising channels are online websites, email marketing, and social media sites. If your brand has an eCommerce platform and uses social media platforms to promote that eCommerce website, then your place and promotion are tied closely together.

Questions you need to answer before finding right channel

Where will you market and distribute your product?
What distribution channels are best to reach your target market?
What channels are my target audience active on?
Where are customers looking for your product?
Are there middlemen involved in the process?

04. Promotion

Promotion is part of the 4Ps of marketing strategy that involve advertising, direct marketing, and public relations decisions. The main goal of this marketing mix section is to spread awareness about the company’s product or service. It helps you identify the right marketing strategies that your team can use to persuade your prospects to choose your offering over the competitors.

The promotion also includes determining the design and layout of a company’s website or the content posted on social media handles such as Twitter and Instagram. The marketing strategies showcase why the prospects should purchase the product and what pain point it aims to solve.

Promotional efforts include following:

Advertising: Your team can sell a product or service by communicating a promotional message.
Public relations: It includes management of the information from your organization to the general public or other institutions.

Top promotional strategies:

Sales promotion
Digital marketing
Personal selling
Social media marketing
PR campaign

Paid advertising
Affiliate marketing
Influencer marketing
Content marketing

Example of Promotion

There are numerous ways to promote your product or service. Still, if you have a B2C product, your team can choose traditional marketing strategies such as word of mouth, print advertisements, eCommerce platforms, and television commercials. At the same time, B2B product promotions can be done on platforms such as online websites, B2B social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, email marketing, and content marketing.

Questions you need to answer to choose the right promotional strategy

Understanding the needs, expectations, and pain points of the target audience
Identifying the cause of the failure or finding any errors that may occur while promoting the products and service
Finding ways to bring about brand awareness and changing the public perception of the product or service
Creating distinguishing characteristics to increase competitive advantage
Understanding how the product or service interacts with prospective consumers and vice versa

Conclusion

A well-planned marketing mix will aid your company in creating winning marketing strategies that help you profitably launch and promote your products or services. If your current marketing strategies do not seem to be working, then it is vital to perform a marketing analysis to determine the loopholes that your company is facing.

Therefore, start by analyzing the product you want to promote and write down the characteristics that make it appealing and unique. Then find out more about your target market and do a competitor analysis to write down your marketing mix. We hope that this blog will help you formulate the perfect marketing mix. However, if your team still needs a reference or framework, our marketing mix template will help you develop a successful marketing campaign.

Creating a marketing mix requires an accurate database. DataCaptive’s B2B contact list goes through a 7-tier verification process to help you reach your sales goals.

FAQs

1. Can the 4Ps of marketing be applied to nonprofit organizations?

Yes, the 4Ps of marketing can be applied to nonprofit organizations as they can help you bring awareness to the cause or the social issue by creating a consistent message. The right marketing mix can aid the organization in finding a cost-effective marketing strategy, identifying the perfect channels, lower operational costs, and boosting engagement rates.

2. How can I effectively price my product?

Tips to effectively price your product are:

Define the business objectives
Keep your pricing flexible
Consider the manufacturing costs
Understand your customers’ budget

Study your competitors’ pricing

3. How to ensure that my product is accessible to my target market?

One strategy that will make your product more accessible is by implementing targeted marketing. Whether it is Google ads, influencer promotions, or social media ads, they all provide advanced targeting options to aid your team in reaching its target audience. This strategy will allow your team to create targeted campaigns based on demographics, location, and your audience’s interests.

4. How do the 4Ps of marketing apply to service-based businesses?

The service is intangible and cannot be measured in terms of look, feel, and other qualities present in a commodity. This is why marketers must choose specific marketing strategies that can enhance customer satisfaction. Product, price, promotion, and placement are the marketing mix for promoting a service. However, it can also include extended people, processes, and physical evidence, which can aid the company in communicating its organizational and brand message to customers.

5. What role does packaging play in the marketing mix?

Packaging is vital to present your products or services as attractively as possible. It allows you to communicate the price and value of your products effectively. Packaging allows the company to tell its brand’s story, boost awareness and attract loyal customers. This is why finding your product’s best size, shape, design, and finish is crucial.

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Amberlynn Adam

Blogger, Content Developer & Editor. Amberlynn is a Content Marketing Professional and is an integral part of DataCaptive since its inception. She holds a passion for tracking new changes in the ever-evolving business world and putting them down in the form of blogs to encourage intelligent discussions & thought exchange. Apart from writing, reading fiction and thriller novels are her major interests.

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