The 4 Ps of Marketing – Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and How to Put Them into Effect?

The Marketing Mix is quite a popular marketing jargon! And, it can prove itself to be pretty useful in promoting anything you want to. But before that you need to know what its key principles are.

The ‘marketing mix’ primarily consisted of 10 elements, however, today it is all about how you can set your product in the right place at the right price and promote it to your target audience.

Yes, we are talking about the integration of the 4 Ps of marketing – Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But in reality, there is a lot more to it. Let’s find out.

Digging Deeper into Marketing Mix

Marketing Mix is nothing but the set of marketing tactics that can help you skyrocket your sales, when implemented properly. No matter if you are a large enterprise or an SMB, you can use it.

Popularised in the ‘90s by Neil Borden, the marketing mix has grown prevalent over time, and for good reasons. The 10-step strategy has now turned into the four-step tactic which can move mountains for any business.

To elaborate, these four Ps are:

• Product that has potential
• Price that is competitive
• Place that is ideal, and
• Promotion that can help you increase successful conversions

Source: Business 2 Community

Ideally, any business or individual entity that covers these four Ps can generate a huge upsurge in their sales. Is it really that easy? You will find out soon.

So, let’s talk about implementing these four ‘P’-illars of marketing.

P1: Product

In simple words, what you sell is your product. And it is the heart of your marketing mix.

Be it a merchandise, a software, service, even a consultation session, or anything else that you put up for your customer can be your product.

Now, before moving forward, try answering these three questions to yourself:

1. Who are your target audience?
2. How big is your target market?
3. How does your product set you apart from your competitors?

If you know the answers, good for you. If not, then think about what is the key USP of your product. Is it the features? Or, do you feel like relying on an ad agency to make your product stand out?

You do not need to create a blue ocean just to make your product sell. The best way to make your target audience love your product is by addressing and solving their pain points. If your product does that perfectly, you are good to go.

Now, if you are still confused about what product to settle down with, then you should start with figuring out,

What Should Your Product Be?

Again, start by asking yourself a few more questions.

• What customer pain points can you address? How can you solve them? – This question will help you understand the key points that your product should cover.

• What product are you aiming at? – This will help you understand who else has a similar product.

• Find out what specifics are people looking for? – This will help you understand what people are expecting that your competitors fail to deliver.

• How can you get ahead of your competitors? – Lastly, this will help you address the areas that your competitor/competitors are overlooking. That is your opportunity!

Brainstorm these questions and seek for feedbacks. You will automatically figure out what product you need to work on and how.

It is not wise to waste time creating a product that you yourself do not find useful.

P2: Price

Determining the cost of your product plays a pivotal role in implementing the overall marketing mix. And, like you can already understand, we are talking about the second ‘P’-illar viz. Price.

Most importantly, keep in mind that the price of your product needs to be aligned with the real value of your product as well as what your audience think it should be. Now decide yourself,

1. What particular costs would you take into account?
2. What will be your profit margin?
3. How affordable will your product be on the set price?
4. How will your audience perceive your product depending on what it costs?

When it is about figuring out the right price, you can always settle down with a low profit margin. This would help you bring in more transparency and knowledge about how such a product should cost.

However, when your product is a service, it is your job to make your audience understand that they are paying for the overall value that the product is bringing in in their lives.

then, What Should Be the Right Price?

No one can tell you about the exact price that your product should be placed at, other than you yourself. You can also seek help from the Price Intelligently Blog, but it’s you who will be making the final call.

Here, there are certain things that you need to keep an eye on.

• Have you created a blue ocean with your product? If yes, then you can charge a decent amount.

• Is it a saturated market already? Here you need to have your product priced competitively. Consider,

1. What is the lowest price that you can settle down with?
2. How much should your product be of worth for your target audience?
3. Are you dealing with a customer base that is cost-sensitive?
4. How much do your competitors charge?

The best and safest way here is nothing but benchmarking. This will help bringing down the chances of your product getting ignored in the first place.

P3: Place

This ‘P’-illar of marketing mix, i.e., Place plays a vital role in transferring the ownership of the product from manufacturer to customer.

Yes, Place is where you find your target audience looking for your product. Starting from the Internet to the local stores, it can be anything. No matter how good your product is, if you fail to grab your chances by placing your product in the right market, you are not going anywhere with it.

So, here you need to figure out,

1. Which are the specific target markets that you need to concentrate on?
2. Which places (read, markets) are your competitors targeting?
3. How much revenue would it cost to place and sell your product through a particular channel?

For instance, you can consider Salesforce. They created a blue ocean for their product by designing it a lot different than their competitors. And, since then every CRM you come across in the web is a SaaS CRM. Yes, the “Place” acted as the key differentiator for this brand.

Not only that but, they also started a campaign called “end of software” which was a clever move to bring down the traditional software model. Hence, the right product type paves the way for the right distribution model. All you have to do is keeping your eyes open and ears to the ground.

Let’s Get This Straight

It might seem irrelevant if you consider place as a location, but in reality, the Internet serves as one of the best places to place your product. But choose wisely.

For instance, SEMrush cannot use Tiktok as their Place. They will end up losing all their money. No 18-year-old Tiktok-user would be looking for marketing services other than increasing their followers, but does SEMrush provide that? No, right?

So, to avoid such circumstances, ask yourself these two questions.

• Where can you get potential buyers?

Find out places where your potential buyers are looking for your product.

• Where are your competitors selling their products? ‘

Find out which target market have they opted for and how much revenue are they making.

It is quite simple; reach out to your target audience with your product, rather than expecting them to come to you. Keep it customer centric.

P4: Promotion

Last but not least, here comes the fourth ‘P’-illar of marketing mix, viz. Promotion. And, as the name itself suggests, Promotion is all about the strategies that you use to reach out to your target audience with your product.

But, before you get here, you need to optimize the previously mentioned three ‘P’-illars properly.

Now, prior to jumping directly into Promotion, you need to understand that promoting your product is not just about spreading your brand name out there in the market, but generating qualified leads, successful conversions, and most importantly, revenue.

What is the point in promoting your product, if you do not have a strong sales team to back it up, in place? Although, if you have one already, then get yourself prepared for these three questions in order to formulate a successful promotion strategy.

1. Who are your target audience?
2. How are your competitors generating leads?
3. What is your budget for promoting your product?

Now to figure out what secret sauce your competitors are using, you can just refer to Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest and input their website URL in the required place. There you will get lots and lots of valuable data about your competitors like the amount of traffic on their website, which keywords they use to secure a rank on the SERPs, etc. Although this isn’t going to work for a small business.

You can also refer to Similar Web to get a better understanding of how and where your competitors promote themselves.

Ahrefs is definitely a pretty good option too. Here you can check several topics and get a better grip at the search demand of your target audience.

So, clearly, there are a good lot of tools out there that can help you shoot up your business.

How Can You Promote Your Product?

Following the above-mentioned ways, you can easily figure out the basics of promoting a business. But, to get a more direct approach, start with answering these questions:

• In which channels can you find the highest traffic of your target audience?
• What will be your CTA?
• How much time will you spend in promoting your product?
• How do your competitors promote their products?

Answering these questions will give you a clearer image of your target market and will help you kickstart with your overall journey. Check out Facebook’s ad library for more help.

Wrapping it Up!

These four pillars of marketing mix can help any business succeed, when performed properly.

First of all, pick your Product.

Secondly, fix a competitive Price.

Third, Place your product appropriately.

And, lastly, Promote it to your target audience through the right channels.

Following these four steps might seem to be boring at first, but you need to have enough patience to see them pay you back with a high revenue. They play quite a crucial role in placing you ahead of your competition.

People are always looking for options and tend to opt for them when they find such products solving their pain points with a better resolution, something they can resonate with.

So, what are you waiting for?