As a marketer, you may have come across the 4 Ps. The concept was initially explored in the 1950s by Neil Borden, an advertising professor at Harvard. The 4 Ps are product, price, place, and promotion and have become essential to marketing a product or service to the public in modern marketing. They are also referred to as the ‘marketing mix’ and provide a framework for you to market your product and services.
Product
Generally, we will start with products in marketing. As marketing has evolved, product can mean a physical product, digital product, service, event or experience. It essentially refers to what you are selling. It’s especially important because you need to understand who needs your product and why. What the purpose of your product is and why it’s different to your competitors, i.e. your unique selling point (USP) is essential to taking your product to market.
It’s also good to consider whether your product answers people’s problems, and whether it meets the desires and wants of your customers. When taking your product to market, it’s good to think about:
- Product quality
- Design and packaging
- Sustainability elements
- Production and supply chain
Price
Considering your pricing strategy will enable you to be profitable. Price refers to how much your customers are willing to pay for your product. It’s important to think about your competitors and use their pricing as a benchmark, as this will help you to decide whether you need to lower or increase your prices. This also depends on the quality of the product and of course, how much it costs to make in terms of production and resource.
The pricing will also depend on your target market. For example, if you are targeting students, you may want to consider a lower price to make it affordable. However if you are selling to VIP or wealthy buyers customers, you may want to price your products accordingly – particularly if they are luxury items.
Place
Place refers to where your product is sold. How it is sold can also fall into this, i.e. is it sold in a physical store, or online. You then need to consider how the location affects the customer buying your product. If it is being sold in a physical location, it needs to be easy for the customer to get to. You may also sell your products at special events, fairs, pop-ups or temporary markets. Either way, you should also consider a location where it’ll be easy for the product to be distributed, e.g. choosing a location that has good motorway links or close to an airport if necessary.
If your product is being sold online, then your website should be well-structured and easy to follow through the buying process to increase your chances of sales. It’s easier to leave a website than it is to leave a store, so it’s important that this is well thought through to prevent frustrated customers from going elsewhere.
Promotion
Promotion is about showing customers they want and need the product you are selling. It includes your promotion strategy, such as:
- Advertising
- PR
- TV
- Radio
- Social media
- Content marketing
- Direct marketing and influencer marketing
- Discounts and special offers
It’s important to remember that promotion does come with a cost, if you choose to exhaust all of the channels available to you, so this should be factored into your overall costs.
How we promoted 10 years ago is very different from how we promote now. Keeping abreast with the different forms of promotion and what is relevant is key for businesses to stay on top of their competition. For example, promotion before the digital age looked like leaflets through the door, door-to-door salesman. Where there might still be a place for this type of promotion, digital advertising has certainly come at the forefront of advertising tactics.
Conclusion
A strong example of a well known company who uses the 4 Ps in their marketing strategy is McDonald’s. McDonald’s has a product mix composed mainly of food and beverage products. They offer meal sets and other product bundles for prices that are discounted, compared to purchasing each item separately. The restaurants are located where customers can access them and advertisements include TV, radio, print media, and online media for its advertisements. Read more.
The 4 Ps in marketing can act as a framework for introducing and launching new products and services. Your marketing strategy encompasses how you will use each of the 4 Ps. Although it is quite basic and vague, with only 4 elements, it can help you to learn the basics of marketing a product or service and act as the key elements involved in planning and marketing a product or service.
