The Four P’s of Marketing: Product, price, place, and promotion
ARTWORK BY Margarida Mouta in Portugal
Success is having the right product, at the right price, in the right place, and at the right time. Those four key elements, when considered together, are referred to as the Four Ps of marketing, and are often thought of as the basis of a holistic marketing strategy.
The marketing theory behind the Four Ps, known as Marketing Mix, isn’t a new one. In fact, Marketing Mix is a theory that was popularized in the 1960s by Harvard advertising professor Neil Borden. That theory was later built upon by E. Jerome McCarthy, who coined the term we still use today, the Four Ps. Despite the psychographic, societal, and technological changes that have happened since the ’60s, the Four Ps are still important for developing a strong product marketing strategy.
Let’s start by defining each of the Four Ps
Each P represents an element of any marketing strategy:
Product - What do you sell?
Price - How much do you charge?
Place - Where do customers find you?
Promotion - What are your promotion strategies?
Product
Your product is what you sell. This could be a service, software, or physical goods. Defining your product also means defining what sets you apart from your competitors. Your product should offer a clear value that customers can’t get elsewhere.
Having a product development flow where product marketing starts before product scope is one way to ensure a differentiated product that stands out from the competition. By involving competitor analysis and customer research early on in your product development, you can build a product with positioning that connects with your ideal customer.
If you already have an existing product, dive deeper into your product-market fit and adjust your positioning and product accordingly. When defining your product (whether new or existing), begin by answering the following questions:
What is unique about your offering?
What is your value proposition?
What problem do you solve for your customers?
How are you different from the competition?
Price
Price is what you charge for your product. However, there’s more to price than just the number—it signals to customers how they should perceive your product. Are you high-end? Affordable? A great deal?
How you choose to set your price will have a major impact on how customers perceive your product and brand, plus it requires time, expertise, and different executive buy-in. What’s the right price? Start by answering the following questions:
What is the least you are willing to sell your product for?
How much are your customers willing to pay?
How crowded is your product space?
How does your price compare to the competition?
How price sensitive is your customer?
Place + Positioning
In order for customers to buy your product, they have to know about it and be able to find you. Your main goal in determining place is to get your product in front of the consumers who are most likely to buy it. Where should you be placing your product that will garner the most attention from your target audience?
To get started, think about the places where your ideal customers are, and then try to be there. That could mean social media platforms, certain websites, conferences, retail stores… The possibilities are limitless, but what’s important is figuring out where your customers are and meeting them there. Customer personas are a great way to help you identify where your ideal customer is spending their time (which is also where you want to help them find your product).
Some additional questions to help you determine where your product should be:
Which outlets sell your product (online and offline)?
Where do your ideal customers spend time (online and offline)?
Where is your competition?
Promotion
Once you have the other three Ps defined, it’s time to think about promotion. Promotion covers your broader marketing strategy and could include a mix of advertising, content marketing, personal selling, and public relations. How you choose to promote your product should be guided in part by the other Ps.Promotion should help inform consumers who are already aware that your product exists of why they need it. This is where you are pushing your audience to act on what you’ve already presented to them. This element is often strongly linked to place, though all the elements interact.
When defining how you will promote your product, you may want to ask yourself the following:
What channels (defined in place) will be most effective for reaching your audience?
How is the competition running promotions?
What messaging is the most effective for converting customers?
What are your acquisition costs? (And how do they fit into your price?)
How frequently do customers need your product?
Expand your strategy with three additional Ps
The Four Ps are a solid foundation—they provide the essentials for any thorough marketing strategy. But as business and marketing models have become more sophisticated and migrated online, creative marketers have evolved the Four Ps concept. Many now recommend considering Seven Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical evidence.
People refers to anyone in your organization with whom customers interact, including sales staff, service reps, even chatbots. The focus here is on skills and representation—is everyone your customers communicate with able to convey the benefits of your product well? What training/skills should they have to give customers the best experience?
Process considers how reliable and efficient your product delivery systems are, and how they can be leveraged as part of your marketing strategy. Are any internal processes hindering your ability to get your product to customers in a convenient, consistent way? And what elements of your process can be highlighted? (Are you committed to sustainability? Do you follow, or maybe improve upon, your industry’s best practices?)
Physical evidence involves the physical—or the online equivalent—marketing aspects of your product. How is it packaged? Displayed? How do customers interact with your website? Is your branding consistent across all purchase collateral (receipts, invoices, confirmation and retention emails, etc.)?
Start with the Ps to build your strategy
As you develop your own Four (or Seven) Ps, it’s important to remember that each component is crucial on its own, but they also interact heavily. Make sure the elements you’ve already defined still make sense in relation to the others. For example, your price will be impacted on the acquisition costs of your promotions, so it’s important to take that into account when determining the minimum price you should set for your product. Go back over the questions in this blog post to help iron out some of these relationships.
It’s also important to understand that once defined, your Ps aren’t static. These foundational elements should be revisited when developing new or growing product marketing strategies and evolve, along with your product, as the market changes.
