What is marketing? This is the first definition that many marketers learn as they start out in the industry. Marketing is basically, putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.
You need to create a product that a particular group of people need, put it on sale someplace where these same people visit regularly, price it at a level that matches the value they feel they get out of it; and do all that time they want to buy.
There's a lot of truth in this idea. However, a lot of hard work is needed to find out what customers want and identify where they do their shopping. Then you need to figure out how to produce the item at a price that represents value to them and get it all to come together at the critical time.
Marketing is an excellent place to start when you are thinking through your plans for a product or service, and it helps you to avoid these kinds of mistakes. In this article below, we will discuss more about marketing and the 4Ps of marketing.
You must have often heard the term 4 Ps of marketing. But have you ever wondered what they are exactly and how can they impact the marketing industry? Read on to know more about the 4 Ps of marketing.
Understanding the 4 Ps of Marketing
The 4 Ps of marketing refers to a model that defines the pillars of the marketing strategy. They are the key factors that foster the marketing process. Often regarded as a marketing mix, the 4 Ps are affected by internal and external factors.
Since 1950, the concept of the 4 Ps came into existence. Over the years, the marketing industry has evolved and the components of marketing have become quite important these days.
The 4Ps of marketing are the key elements that need to be combined together to enhance the brand’s value make it stand out from the crowd. These 4 Ps of marketing have a critical role in marketing and have stood against the test of time.
The 4 Ps of marketing are:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
How do you Use the 4 Ps of Marketing?
The model of the four Ps of marketing can be useful for you if you are planning a new business venture, analyzing an existing offer, optimizing sales with the target audience.
The 4 Ps of marketing can also be used to test your current marketing strategy. Follow the below-mentioned steps in order to improve the marketing mix model:
- Find out the product or service you want to analyze.
- Make sure you answer the 4Ps questions listed above.
- Once you are aware of the 4 Ps marketing model, try testing it from the customer’s point of view. Let’s take a look at some of the questions that can help you:
- Does the model satisfy the needs of the customers?
- Will the customers find the price to be reasonable?
- Where can they find your product/service?
- Is the target audience being targeted appropriately?
- Optimize the marketing mix by analyzing these questions and make the required changes.
- Constantly review your marketing mix regularly and adapt the changes that take place in the market
The First P of Marketing: Product
An item that satiates the needs of the target customers refers to a product. It can either be a physical good or a service that can be helpful to the customer. For example, it can be a product such as a soft drink or a dress. It can also be some kind of software tool such as Ubereats
If you are a marketer, you need to have a clear idea of what your products are used for. Also, you should also be aware of what makes your product stand out from the crowd.
In today’s world, the internet acts as a blessing in disguise for marketers. It can either be considered as the medium for purchase through e-commerce email marketing or the product itself such as social media service. That is why it is necessary for marketers to understand the product completely.
Make sure you, as a marketer, have the answers ready for the following questions:
- What can customers expect from your product? Does it satiate their needs?
- What are the features of your product?
- How will the customer use your product?
- How is the product and how will the customers experience it?
- How is it different from your competitors?
The Second P of Marketing: Price
Price is an important component of marketing that determines how much can be charged for your product or service. However, it can be quite difficult to determine the correct pricing of your product. Pricing is an important customer strategy that involves skillful balancing between too high price or too low price. It involves both market data as well as careful calculations to determine the correct price. It is also important to understand the customer's mindset and use good sales psychology tactics to decide the pricing.
There are many factors that need to be considered while deciding the price of the product. Some of the factors are supply costs, seasonal discounts, competitor’s prices, and a lot more. Sometimes the marketers can increase the price of the products in order to make the products look luxurious. On the contrary, they can also reduce the prices so that the customers can try the product.
Another thing that marketers need to consider is that when can they provide discounts to the customers. Providing discounts can help to lure the customers but at the same time create an impression of a less exclusive product.
As a marketer, you need to have the answers ready for the following questions:
- How much is the value of the product or service to the buyer?
- What is the price of the product as compared to your competitors?
- How much will be the lowest price that you are willing to sell your product for?
- What is the maximum amount consumers can pay for your product?
Having a good pricing strategy will help you mange your business and marketing better.
The Third P of Marketing: Place
The main goal of a marketer is to make sure that the product reaches the customer. That is why it is important to consider the place where the product will be sold; will you be selling the product online or in a physical store?
It is very important to understand what your ideal locations are if you want to convert potential customers into actual customers.
For example, if you are a vegetable seller, what should the prime location of your shop? Should it be in a business district? Or should you be closer to a residential area. Understanding the customer is a major key to decide the location. In this situation, having a shop on the commute between the business area to residential area, closer to the residential area will help your sales more than keeping the shop at the business district.
Understanding the local mindset of the community and needs of your target customer's will help you choose the right location and the right channels to sell your product successfully.
The Fourth P of Marketing: Promotion
Now we have got the product, price, and place, it’s time to promote it. Promotion is the best way to make your audience aware of your product. This can be achieved by opting for various methods such as public relations, advertising, public relations, email marketing, social media marketing, direct marketing, and a lot more. Promotions can also be offers and special prices for loyal customers.
With the advancement in technology, more efficient B2C marketing methods have been developed to promote a product, making it easier to promote a product these days.
SEO, online marketing, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, affiliate marketing, content marketing, and email marketing are some of the advanced promotion methods that are being used today.
How to Create an Amazing Product Your Customers Love?
There are various tools such as Hotjar where you can run a poll and ask the following questions from the customers to know their perspective:
What is the biggest problem of the customers you can help to solve?
This will provide an insight into what your product needs to aim at.
What is the favourite marketing product of your customers and why?
This question will help you understand who is your competition and what practices they are following.
How can we make our product better?
Getting feedback from your customers is the best thing you can ask for. This way you can work on the flaws and improve your product.
Besides asking the above-mentioned questions, you can also ask your customers about what they don’t like about your competitors? This way you will be able to identify the opportunities you can have.
How to Pick the Right Price for Your Product?
The most important element of your price is that it needs to sustain your business. If you price your products at a loss, or at an unsustainable profit margin, you are going to find it challenging to grow and scale.
There are other important factors that your pricing needs to account for, like how you are priced in relation to your competitors, and what your pricing strategy means for your business and your customer’s expectations. But before you can worry about anything like that, you need to make sure you have found a sustainable base price.
There are many ways you can look into pricing. Some simple methods are as mentioned below:
Markup is the difference between a product’s cost and its selling price. Generally, depending on the industry, it is expressed as a percentage of cost.
Margin (also called Gross Profit) = Selling price – Cost of goods sold
Margin and Markup move in tandem. For example, a 40% markup always equals a 28.6% profit margin, 50% markup always equals a 33% margin.
These are some simple methods. You can start with this method and as your business progresses, you can use different and more complicated methods for ideally pricing your product.
If you are a leader, or in a new space, you can charge a premium amount. On the other hand, if you are late to the market, or in a saturated place, you should keep cheaper price.
How to Pick the Right Place?
The place may seem irrelevant; however, it is the most important factor in marketing. You need to think about where your ideal customers are and choose the place accordingly.
Just remember that don’t try to bring the customers to you, you need to go where your customers are.
For example, if you have an ad agency, and you are looking for ideal customers on Tiktok, will you succeed? Well, the answer is an obvious NO. You need to choose a platform whether online or offline where you can expect your maximum customers to be.
Let’s take a look at some of the key questions that you, as a marketer, need to answer:
- Where do customers look for your product or service?
- Are your customers using desktops or mobile devices?
- What distribution channels are you using?
- Do you sell your product directly to the customer or some middlemen are involved?
- Where are your competitors located?
Always remember to keep customers at the center while making any decisions. This would help you in choosing the right place.
How Do You Promote Well?
For any product to be successful, promotion is key to bring in more leads and customers. For promotions, you can use a wide network of email marketing strategies to social media and offline marketing push. Before going into it, you as a marketer, need to have answers to the following questions:
- What methods will you use to reach your target audience?
- What are the methods used by your competitors to promote the product?
- What is the ideal time to promote your product?
- Which are the channels used by your target audience to look for a product?
- What kind of messages can be effective while promoting your product?
- Does seasonality have any effect on the sale of your product?
Having the answers to these questions would help you in analyzing how well are you promoting your product!
Where do the 4 Ps of Marketing Fall Short?
The 4 Ps of marketing are quite effective, however, there are some cases where this model falls short. Let’s take a look:
1. Solution Instead of Product
Most of the time businesses try to incorporate new features, and functions. But in realty, this would do any good to attract the customers unless you provide them the solution they are seeking.
Make sure you focus on the needs of the customers rather than the advanced features which will be of no use if the problem doesn’t get resolved.
2. Access Instead of Place
These days you can gain any information with a click of a button, all thanks to the internet. That is why it has become important for the companies to provide all the information customers are looking for. It’s not about the place but about accessibility these days.
Companies should strive to create a cross-channel platform that incorporates the entire purchase journey of the customer, not just where the customer closes the deal. Customers look for companies which are easily accessible, for example, a customer would prefer a company that provides excellent customer support services so that they can rely on it even when things go wrong for them.
3. Value Instead of Price
These days customers have concerns about what value does the product hold instead of the price? Price is crucial but the value is something that has gained more importance these days.
Research reveals that comparative pricing is not a good way to frame the prices. Rather the ideology of value plays a vital role in accepting higher prices.
4. Education Instead of Promotion
With the advent of technology, there has been a paradigm shift from the old marketing methods to the new tech-savvy methods. The old methods focused on the interruption whereas the new methods focus on creating a bond with the customers by providing them information and advice that helps them in some way or the other.
Content marketing is a great tool that aims at providing content that our customers want to read especially educational content. This helps in creating a relationship with the customers, thereby creating a great compounding asset.
How can Deskera Help you with Marketing?
Deskera is the best platform if you want to gain an edge in the marketing industry. Using Deskera CRM can help you in managing your contacts, sales pipeline, email campaigns, and a lot more. It will help you have a streamlined process and generate more leads for your company. You can use Deskera CRM software to run your email campaigns and increase your brand awareness and manage your customer lead generation.
Deskera also gives analysis and insights across all these business activities’ data. This help makes quick decisions, foreseeing the future of your business and be prepared for rocky times ahead.
This system also ensures timely deliveries to your customers by keeping real-time track of your inventory, reminding you of the activities that need to be done and also sending out invoices on time.
It plays a vital role in digitizing customer service and keeping track of customer service metrics. Together, all of this will improve customer satisfaction and experience and therefore improve customer retention as well as encourage returning customers.
It will also increase return on investment, revenue earned by your business, profit margin and reduce the losses and penalties incurred. By being affiliated with various banks and payment options, Deskera books will also make it easier for your customers to make your payment which will hence improve your cash flow balance. A positive cash flow will lead to further growth and development of your business which would yield benefits in the long run.
Deskera books will also assist you to pick pack ship your orders as well as track your drop shipped orders. Further on, Deskera CRM will help customer relationship management activities like contact and deal management, sales pipeline, email marketing campaigns and customer tickets.
Deskera will hence be that best friend to your business which will lay down the steps for you to grow bigger and reach higher.
The team at Deskera works towards the best interest of the businesses to help them stand out from the crowd. You can take your business to the next level with the help of this company as it is the best platform for accounting, invoicing, and inventory management.
Key Takeaways
- The 4 Ps of marketing is a marketing mix model that defines the pillars of the marketing strategy.
- Product, price, place, and promotion are the 4 Ps of marketing.
- Whether you are planning a new business venture or evaluating an existing offer, the four Ps of marketing can be useful for you.
- Certain steps can be followed to improve the marketing mix model.
- An item that satisfies the needs of the target customers is known as a product.
- Price is an important factor in marketing that defines how much can be charged for your product or service.
- You need to make sure that the product reaches the target customer. For this, picking the right place is quite important.
- Promotion is the best way to make your product available to the customer. However, using the right promotion method is important.
- The 4 Ps of marketing are important, however, there are some cases where they fall short.
