Democratizing Markets with Platforms: A Platform-focused approach to the 4P’s of Marketing
From Facebook to Uber and Alibaba, platforms have digitally transformed businesses not only by creating and harnessing a large, scalable network of users and resources that can be accessed real time, but also by creating a new wave of markets and communities, allowing users to engage and transact. This leaves behind digital footprints that let platforms open up new markets with high growth opportunities by accessing valuable sources of consumer data to target consumers effectively.
In this digital era of connection between humans and machines, it is important to understand that, what a company can connect to matters more than what a company owns.
The various product features that the customers have access to uncovers an extensive data library to understand why people chose what they chose. Conversely, the consumer interactions that leave behind digital footprints from app usage, email responses, social engagements including subscriptions, event responses, and poll submissions are comprised of descriptive attributes that expose consumer’s unique preferences, behaviors, motivations and passions. This extensive knowledge bank comprising of insightful and unprecedented information is provided by platforms. Artificial intelligence is then applied on platforms to drive personalized recommendations, content, offers and messaging, and addresses the most relevant aspects of the product-consumer relationship.
Platform design is a concept dating back to human civilization itself — early marketplaces and bazaars were the platforms in the ancient times. In the 20th century, brick-and-mortar locations such as shopping malls and stores were the platforms.
Today, in this digital era of connection between humans and machines, digital platforms facilitate the exchange of brand value by decentralized network of consumers.
Rather than considering Platforms as the 5th P of Marketing, I consider it to be the Business Model integrating the 4 P’s of Marketing — Price, Promotion, Place and Product. By putting platforms at the center of your 4 P’s of marketing, you create an innovative business model that provides the means of connection.
Putting Platforms at the center of the Marketing Mix
Digital platforms have democratized markets by putting the digital consumer in control. Here is how you can adopt a Platform-Centric approach to the 4 P’s of Marketing:
Product:
Platforms provide a rich library of data on descriptive attributes of the product-consumer relationship, which I explained before. Product companies that don’t have a platform can use one of the platform companies like Facebook, Alibaba or Google to capture and segment potential customers and provide custom products through personalized marketing for a regional market segment. Traditional companies outside the technology sector, such as L’Oreal, are creating an underlying digital ecosystem that taps into various social platforms.
Price:
While companies use dynamic pricing, consumers can compare prices across different platforms, resulting in lowering down the pricing until a uniform price is achieved. It is therefore inevitable to strike strategic partnerships with key digital platforms in your target markets while ensuring that you stay in control of your pricing, and provide a great brand experience.
Place:
As consumers spend increasing and varying proportions of time across different platforms, companies find it challenging to spread and optimize their social media marketing efforts across all of them. With a well-structured data lake and intelligence system, you can identify trends and patterns in social engagements and transactions by aggregating, segmenting, and comparing real-time data from different platforms, campaigns and channels. By running advanced algorithms you can also forecast demand, understand demand fluctuations, and discover hotspots to optimize distribution and better manage your marketing.
Promotion:
Platforms serve as a robust tool to reach consumers. While doing so, brands must reach consumers through such advertisements and marketing promotions that puts human values back into innovation — consideration and respect for their time and needs, attentive to their lifestyle and mindset, and building relationships based on comfort, loyalty and security. You can read more about digital consumerism in my article — “Marketing in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
By tapping into the extensive data offered by the platforms, brands must embrace novel marketing strategies to achieve personalization that consumers now expect.
…And this is achievable by implementing an AI that is
Responsible: Deploying technologies that emphasizes human values through trustworthy design, effective monitoring, and workforce-reskilling
Explainable: Teaching machines to understand reasoning behind a decision making by providing specific, prescriptive, and technical explanations to AI of how, what and when something is supposed to be done
Practical: Directing the development of AI systems to augment human productivity to practically automate industrial processes for a secure, transparent, and an accountable system
