2. 4Ps of Marketing

The 4Ps of marketing is a model for enhancing the components of your ‘marketing mix’ – the way in which you take a new product or service to market. It helps you to define your marketing options in terms of price, product, promotion, and place so that your offering meets a specific customer need or demand.

It's simple! You just need to create a product that a particular group of people wants, put it on sale some place that those same people visit regularly, and price it at a level which matches the value they feel they get out of it; and do all that at a time they want to buy. Then you've got it made!

There's a lot of truth in this idea. However, a lot of hard work needs to go into finding out what customers want and identifying 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.

But if you get just one element wrong, it can spell disaster. You could be left promoting a car with amazing fuel economy in a country where fuel is very cheap or publishing a textbook after the start of the new school year or selling an item at a price that's too high – or too low – to attract the people you're targeting.

The marketing mix is a good 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 we'll discover more about the marketing mix and the 4Ps, and how you can use them to develop a successful marketing stratégy.