4 P's of marketing

In every marketers life, the probability of coming in contact with the four p’s of marketing becomes inevitable. What are the four p’s of marketing you ask? Whether you are marketing online or streetside, the four p’s of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. These apply to both online and offline also. Let’s talk about the four p’s of marketing.

Product is simple. You have a product that you want to sell. Your product can be anything really. It can be a hard form of something that you can buy, like a car for example, or it can be what I like to call a soft form, which is a service, like cell phone service for an example. What is good about products is that they can be sold anywhere, offline or online. So that takes care of product.

Price is necessary unless you are offering something for free, but I highly doubt that unless you are loaded beyond all recognition. You need to set a price for the product you are selling. There is a formula for this, but I will not be talking about that in this post. That comes a little later. You have to set the price of which you are selling the product, unless you are selling the affiliate product and in that case you must follow their pricing rules. This can hinder you a little bit but it’s really not going to make or break you. If you have a strong campaign then you should be alright.

Now we are going to talk about placement. This is really where you are planning on selling your product. Some people like to classify this as distribution. Where do you plan to sell your product. A booth? Online web site? You pick the place that would best fit your campaign. If you were selling cell phone plans, you would not set up a booth at a knife show. Understand? The same goes for online for those of you wondering. If you are selling cell phone plans you wouldn’t market that on a web site that was talking about farm animals. You want it to link to each other and have some meaning. In the real world, I will use Bath and Body Works and Gamestop for example. You will not find video games inside of Bath and Body Works and you will not find hand cream in Gamestop.

Now we are at promotion. I left this one last in line for a reason. You do not want to start promoting your product before you are ready to launch it. Don’t jump the gun. This can cause more harm than good and can lose you a lot of potential customers. There are many ways to do promotion. This is in the forms of advertising. For you people who are internet only, advertising doesn’t have to just be PPC or CPM methods. You can do street advertising also. This includes maybe an ad in the paper, classifieds, TV ad if you can afford it, Magazine ad (again if you can afford it), pin up’s, and the list goes on. You can even advertise with yourself by word of mouth. This is still a powerful player in the marketing world. If someone likes what you have to offer, they will tell others who are interested.

So I hope you have an idea of what the 4 p’s of marketing are. They are important to every marketing campaign you launch and if you disregard them then you are leaving out vital steps in your campaign that can cost you it all. Don’t leave them out. Cherish them. Use them.