The Four Ps of marketing

In the 1960s, the Harvard Business School discovered a number of company actions that influence the decision to buy goods or services. They suggested that the actions are a “Marketing Mix”, containing four elements: product, price, promotion and placement.

Product: The product aspects of marketing cover the specifications, and how they relate to the end-user's needs and wants. The scope of a product normally includes supporting elements such as warranties, support and guarantees.

Pricing: This covers the process of setting the best price for a product, including discounts. The price does not necesarily need to be monetary - it can be what’s exchanged for the product or service - time, energy, or a measure of attention.

Promotion: This covers web advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and face-to-face selling and branding, and refers to the various methods of sales promotion.

Placement (or distribution): covers how the product or service gets to the customer eg distribution or retailing. This fourth P is also called Place, referring to the channel through which it is sold (eg online or retail etc), which region or industry and which market segment (eg teenagers, families, business people etc).

These four marketing elements are often called the marketing mix, which can be used to create a marketing plan. The four Ps marketing model is useful for B2B both products and services. High-value consumer products require refinement to this model. Services marketing must also take account of the unique nature of the services.

B2B marketing must also take into account long-term agreements typically found in supply chain contracts. Relationship marketing attempts to accomplish this by looking at all aspects of marketing from a long-term relationship-building angle rather than looking at individual transactions.

Top 7 questions to determine qualified sales leads

There are seven main questions used to determine if the contact or business is a qualified prospect:

1) Does this contact or business need my company’s services or products?

2) Does this contact or business perceive a need or problem that may be met by my company’s product or service?

3) Does the contact or business have a real desire to fulfil this actual need or solve this problem?

4) Can this contact's desire to fulfil actual needs or solve problems be converted into a belief that my company’s product is needed?

5) Does this contact or business have the financial budget to pay?

6) Does this contact have the company authority to buy?

7) Is this potential contact's purchase large enough to be a profitable sale?

These are the questions that we ask, and you should ask them as well, during the prospect qualification process (which is the most important part of the lead generation process).