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.

Lead Generation Top Tips

The best approach to lead generation depends entirely on the decision process of the buyer.

The key strategy is to identify the most likely prospects and then educating and qualifying them before using more expensive sales resources. The education benefits the buyer; qualification benefits the seller.

Although there are many methodologies and tactics, each involves one of two primary approaches: Broad-based or Concentrated.

• Broad-based involves communicating to a broad set of prospects with the expectation of a statistical response back to the marketer. Advertising is a classic example of broad-based marketing rendezvous.

• Concentrated marketing involves identifying well-matched prospects into a subset. Market segmentation and trade shows are classic examples of concentrated-marketing strategies.

A fully iintegrated marketing strategy is very effective when it is developed as a keycomponent of the company corporate strategy, defining how the company can successfully find customers and prospects in their chosen market. Corporate strategies and goals are needed. As the customer is the source of a company's turnover, so marketing strategy is more closely linked with sales. An essential component of a company's marketing strategy is to make sure the marketing is in line with a company's mission statement.

Theory:

1) Target market
2) Sales proposition
3) Marketing mplementation