Marketing
Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Some marketing is done by affiliates on behalf of a company. Marketing as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw in customers and maintain relationships with them.It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct their product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).
Marketing makes use of the “marketing mix,” also known as the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion.
4Ps of Marketing
The four Ps of marketing are the key factors that are involved in the marketing of a good or service. They are the product, price, place, and promotion of a good or service. These are the key elements that must be united to effectively foster and promote a brand’s unique value, and help it stand out from the competition. Often referred to as the marketing mix, the four Ps are constrained by internal and external factors in the overall business environment, and they interact significantly with one another.
Product, price, place, and promotion are the Four Ps of marketing. The Four Ps collectively make up the essential mix a company needs to market a product or service.
The easiest way to think of 4 Ps of marketing is like a chain, where each P links to the next.
Product
A product refers to any item that intends to satisfy the needs and wants of a target customer. It can be a tangible good, such a clothing item or piece of software, or intangible, like a service or experience (think legal services or a cruise).marketers need to understand the life cycle of a product, and business executives need to have a plan for dealing with products at every stage of their life cycle.
Price
The second of our 4 Ps is the price, First comes the product, and immediately after comes a determination of its value among target audiences. Pricing strategy is an art and a science, in that it involves both market data and careful calculations, as well as skillfully balancing between pricing that is too high or too low, and understanding how skewing either way might damage the brand.
Price not only refers to the monetary value of a product, but also the time or effort the customer is willing to expend to acquire it. Marketers also need to determine when and if discounting is appropriate. A discount can sometimes draw in more customers, but it can also give the impression that the product is less exclusive or less of a luxury compared to when it is was priced higher.
Place
Place” is another word for location. As they say in marketing, it’s all about location.
Place refers to providing customers access to the product, and it also calls into play convenience for the customer. Marketing, through digital means or otherwise, is about putting the right product, in the right place, at the right price, at the right time, in front of the customer.
Promotion
The final P is Promotion of your product or service. The promotion is how your product/service is presented to the public and the marketing strategy behind it. Within the framework of the four Ps, promotion refers primarily to marketing communications.These communications use channels such as public relations, advertising, direct marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, or sales promotions; think of it as any way marketers disseminate relevant product information to their target customers.Marketers tend to tie promotion and placement elements together so they can reach their core audiences. For example, In the digital age, the “place” and “promotion” factors are as much online as they are offline.
The extended 7 Ps
Physical Evidence
Physical evidence often takes two forms: evidence that a service or purchase took place and proof or confirmation of the existence of your brand. Almost all services include some physical elements even if the bulk of what the consumer is paying for is intangible. For example, any services or products received count as physical evidence. As do the likes of your receipts, packaging, tracking information, invoices, brochures or PDFs, and so on. Physical evidence includes your branding, your product packaging, a physical space such as a shop, and even the way your staff and sales representatives act and dress – it’s not all about the product! The way that you portray your brand physically has a great impact on consumers and can either lead or an increase, or decrease, in sales.
People
Another important element in the marketing mix is people. The ‘people’ element of the 7Ps involves anyone directly, or indirectly, involved in the business-side of the enterprise. All companies are reliant on the people who run them from front line Sales staff to the Managing Director. Having the right people is essential because they are as much a part of your business offering as the products/services you are offering.
Processes
The 7th ingredient in our marketing mix – ‘process’ describes a series of actions that are taken in delivering the product or service to the customer.As for processes in the marketing mix, the process of your organisation can affect the performance of the service you provide, involving the delivery of your product to consumers. The delivery of your service is usually done with the customer present so how the service is delivered is once again part of what the consumer is paying for.
Leave a Reply