4 Ps of Marketing: The Secret of Understanding the Marketing Mix

Successful marketing is the act of putting the right product, in the right place, at the right time and price.

On paper, this sounds like a simple process, but we know it’s not. The problem is that there are millions of wrong products, places, times and prices.

You have to dedicate hours of research and testing just to meet this seemingly simple mix of conditions. If one element is off, your entire marketing strategy is flawed.

Knowing 4Ps of marketing is very important. Even the most innovative and exciting product or service can fall flat if you don’t have a good marketing mix.

The marketing mix is one of the oldest tools used by companies to determine the best delivery methods for their offerings.

In the Digital Age, having a proper marketing mix is even more crucial because you have far more channels, strategies and competitors to manage than ever before.

This guide will explore the 4 Ps of marketing:

1. Product – the good or service you’re offering
2. Price – what the consumer pays
3. Place – the location or channel where products/services are marketed
4. Promotion – the advertising itself

Understanding the 4Ps of Marketing:

Let’s discuss how you should use the 4Ps to deliver an effective, market-worthy strategy that customers will respond to.

Product

The product quadrant of the marketing mix refers to the good or service that your company is bringing to market.

A perfect product should fulfill an existing consumer demand. In other words, there has to be a need for your product before you can have a successful marketing mix.

Alternatively, you can create a product that is so compelling that customers believe they need it.

The product side of your marketing mix requires you to think about the many qualities and traits of your product.

To help demonstrate the product side of your marketing mix, let’s take a look at an example.

PPC Signal is a tool that helps Google Ads users manage their multiple campaigns to understand the unexpected or outstanding behavior by looking at different signals generated by this tool.

The marketers for PPC Signal have to consider many factors when it comes to their product:

Design

This side of the marketing mix has to do with how convenient and aesthetically pleasing the product is. You should consider everything down to the packaging of the product at this phase. It’s about delivering the best possible user convenience.

If you look at the screenshot of the PPC Signal interface, you see a cool, effective, yet simple design.

The user is immediately drawn to the latest alerts for their ad campaigns. They don’t have to hunt or cycle through tedious menus to find the features or tools they need.

Example: The design of your product can help define your brand persona. It’s the outward appearance of your offerings, like its clothing. Do you want to dress it casually? What about sporty or lavishly?

Automobiles are a great example of this idea. Each car is essentially four wheels, an engine, battery, steering wheel, etc. Yet, they all look radically different from one another.

There’s a big difference between a family-oriented minivan and a high-end, luxury car. Each vehicle’s design accentuates this persona.

You should consider how the design of your offerings helps develop their image.

Features

Whereas design choices make each product look different, features are what separates your product from similar offerings on the market.

Features build upon the product’s initial purpose. For example, PPC Signal is a PPC management tool that features AI and machine learning algorithms to detect unusual behaviors, whether good or bad, occurring in the user’s account.

PPC Signal also offers various filtering options to help users get right to the data they need most. For more accessible analysis, every data signal is visualized, so the viewer immediately recognizes the most valuable information.

These types of features that make a product stand out. You can develop added features over time to solve user pain points or fix future problems.

Brand Name

Who makes the product? What expertise do they have in the field? Consumers want to shop from brands that they can trust.

PPC Signal, for instance, is developed by PPCexpo, a software company that specializes in data analysis tools for PPC data. Including “PPC” right in the name helps demonstrate the purpose of the product.

Their wide range of software tools helps solidify that they are a brand name that has extensive background knowledge and expertise in the field.

Example: You can also use brand names to develop a stronger brand personality.

Betty Crocker was a fictitious personality developed to write personalized responses to customer letters. The character then became the brand name of the baking products company that the world knows today.

What makes Betty Crocker such an effective brand, beyond their delicious-tasting products, is this persona. The Crocker character is depicted as an expert, at-home baker, which is exactly the experience the company wants to deliver to its customers.

Price

Pricing is always a crucial component of marketing, especially when you’re operating in a hyper-competitive space.

This is how much money consumers will pay for your product or service. The value of the price needs to align with the product’s real and perceived value, which takes into account several factors, including:

• Supply, production and distribution costs
• Profit margins
• Discounts, rebates and other deals
• Competitor prices
• Quality of the product
• Pricing plans, periods and other policies

These characteristics are rarely easy to determine. For instance, offering a discount to customers can draw in more interested parties. However, there is a trade-off. A discounted product may give the impression that it’s not as exclusive or less luxurious than other options.

Some products require a more comprehensive pricing strategy. For example, subscription services may have multiple pricing plans, ranging from a free version to a premium one.

Other tools, like PPC Signal, use a progressive pricing model. With this strategy, the cost relates to the size of the user’s account.

Ultimately, you need to align your pricing strategy with your overall marketing goal. Are you trying to attract new users? Then, you want a lower price point that doesn’t deter people on the fence.

On the other hand, if you want to maximize revenue, you should structure your pricing strategy to attract high-end customers.

Place

Marketing decisions regarding place are meant to answer two critical questions:

1. Where the product should be sold?
2. How do you best deliver to these locations?

Where The Product Should Be Sold?

There are many ways to define the place where your products are sold:

• The physical locations where you want your product to be available.
• The placing or arranging of products within a store’s display.
• The selling of products online versus in-stores, or both.
• The choice between selling products to consumers versus other businesses.
• The media placements and channels that garner attention for the product.

The cross-section of all of these places is your market. It’s the unique space where your customers are most likely to gather and buy.

How Do You Best Deliver To These Locations?

Now, there’s the how question. Again, you have a broad term with many different elements in the mix:

• Channels of distribution
• Warehousing decisions
• Product handling protocols
• Transportation
• Inventory management
• Order processing
• Coverage

Any aspect that helps your products reach the market can fall under this category.

The best delivery methods will change based on whether you’re selling physical goods versus digital ones.

Since PPC Signal is a software service, its definitions for channels of distribution, product handling protocols, etc are slightly different compared to a company selling physical goods.

For example, PPC Signals channels of distribution include being compatible with multiple browsers, etc. If PPC Signal attracted customers through an app or software marketing place, this would be another element of distribution channels.

Promotion

The promotion and place parts of the marketing mix share a close relationship. Place determines where your market is and promotion aims to bring customers there.

There is even some crossover between the two where promotion and placement meet, especially on digital channels. For instance, which search pages you target with ads for your product involves both placement and promotion.

The goal of this final stage is to engage and persuade customers. You’re trying to show customers why they need the product and why it’s worth the price.

You can have free audit of your campaigns and check the campaign performance in the areas which need attention.

To achieve this goal, marketers have to implement many different promotional strategies, including:

• Traditional advertising
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Personal selling
• Public relations
• Direct marketing
• Social Media
• Sales Promotion

PPC Signal uses a free trial as one of its most effective marketing tools. This offer helps prospective users learn how the product positively impacts their PPC management and why it’s something their strategies need.

They promote this offer on many different channels to draw more customers to test their product.

Why Are The 4 Ps Of Marketing Important?

The 4 Ps are a mechanism that breaks down the complicated and broad act of marketing. They are the four vital factors in successfully defining and bringing a product to market.

It helps you determine:

• What customers want?
• How their product can fit those needs?
• The perception of their product in the eyes of the consumer.
• How they stand out from the competition?
• How to best interact with target audience?
• And more

The 4 Ps are essential factors involved in making sure your product is ready for market and poised for success. There are several reasons why they are vital to marketing.

Boost The Success Of Your Campaigns

The 4 Ps help a marketer answer every question or concern regarding their product, from start to finish. By structuring your marketing around the 4 Ps, you can learn valuable lessons about your customers.

Creates Synergy

Every piece of your marketing serves a particular purpose and plays a crucial role in the process. When you blend product, price, promotion and place together, it creates a coordinated and cohesive strategy.

It’s the saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Stimulates Brand Loyalty & Value

Since one of the primary goals of the marketing mix is to identify and meet the needs of the customer, their satisfaction is a top priority. In turn, this earns you substantial customer loyalty and a compelling reputation as a brand.

Forges A Link Between Consumer And Organization

The combination of the 4 Ps creates an ongoing “conversation” between your company and the customer. It’s an open communication link where you’re consistently listening to customers and refining your strategies to serve their latest expectations in the best ways possible.

Carves Your Unique Space In The Market

Most companies are facing pressure from multiple competitors. Analyzing the competition is a significant component of the marketing mix. This activity helps you find the features, qualities and other elements that make your product unique. When you can secure your own space in the market, it helps you attract more business.

Higher Sales Volume

Arguably the most compelling result of all of the above efforts is higher sales. Aligning all four areas of your marketing mix leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, which translates into a larger share of the market and more sales.

Wrap Up

You offer an outstanding product or service that you’ve committed ample time towards refining and perfecting.

It’s a great start, but it doesn’t guarantee marketing success. For that, you need to implement the 4 Ps of marketing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to build the proper presence and hit your audiences at the right place, time, price, etc.

In other words, without consulting the 4 Ps of marketing, lousy marketing decisions are an inevitability.

Even an amazing product idea will struggle to meet success without these four aspects. You owe it to yourself and your customers to maximize the value of your product with proper utilization of all 4 Ps of marketing. There are other products as well to consider as best example like PPCexpo Reporting tool, which gives you easy interface, beautiful visualization for the data analysis which adds value to the customer need.