The Four Ps of Marketing — Aka; the Marketing Mix
Selling ice cream on the beach in the summer is easy. Raising people’s expectations, engaging in their hopes and dreams, helping them see further — that’s the difficult work we signed up for. Seth Godin.
At the core of marketing is a single concept that E. Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Michigan State University, developed in the 1960s. In short: The Four Ps. The four Ps represent Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Essentially all activity under the massive umbrella known as marketing fits nicely into one of these four buckets. Over the years, and especially in the early 2000s, people began adding to the four Ps, things like “People” or “Purpose” started to add to the mix. Still, for the vast majority of activity you or I will conduct as a marketer, the four Ps work just fine.
- Side note: People can easily fit into any or all of the four Ps depending on what you mean by “People” (often target market and thus — Promotion), and Purpose fits nicely into Product (literal purpose) or Promotion (the thing you want people to believe when they see, hear or experience your product or service).
While there may be some disagreement, and trust me, I used to think that the four Ps were limited, I now see this model as the most powerful model that we as marketers have, but unfortunately forget.
See, if we’re to speak with most people — so not you — about marketing, they would often think of marking as advertising. They see the external communications of brands (think Super Bowl ad) as marketing. And while they’re not wrong, they’re far from right. Advertising is a small portion of the overall marketing mix. While Advertising may receive the lion share of the budget from a Promotion sense, if you were to compare the spend of Advertising dollars to say, Product development dollars, research, or even physical space of company/brand, you would quickly see that advertising does not get the lion share of the Marketing budget. But, because the association between marketing and advertising is so strong, we quickly assume that all marketing is advertising and go about our merry way.
This is a crippling idea if you want to be an effective marketer, primarily if you work in or for a small to medium-sized business. Why? Because these are often the businesses, who do not have the “war chest” of advertising dollars to throw around. They need to embrace all aspects of marketing, not just promotion, to win the day. Why do so many people and business owners see advertising as marketing and marketing as advertising?
The best way to explore this question is first to see where the four Ps came from. The original marketing mix, or four Ps, proposed by Mr. McCarthy, was created to provide a marketing decision-making framework. McCarthy first proposed this four Ps concept in his textbook Basic Marketing: Managerial Approach, which was first released in the 1960s. Since then, the four Ps have endorsed many criticisms and, as mentioned above, expanded to include an additional three Ps, bringing the total to seven Ps of marketing. These, just for reference sake, are Physical evidence, People, and Process. While I can respect the thinking from the 1980s, I would say that these three could fit into different aspects of the original four when expanded further. Regardless of four or seven Ps, the concept remains the same. Provide a framework to assist marketers in assessing any company’s viability and ensuring that said company can be appropriately positioned (both internally and externally) for success (aka value creation and revenue generation).
From the 1960 and the adoption of the four Ps, we went through the second and third Golden Age of Television, with the first happening in the 1950s. Television became the place where most people became aware of a company, considered their purchasing options and eventually selected (mentally) what products or services they were going to buy. This was all predicated on those lovely TV Ads, and thus the idea of Marketing as Advertising was born and quickly enforced. It wasn’t uncommon for a sub-par brand with sub-par products to beat out a better quality brand/product simply because they could afford television advertising. This was further reinforced through the 1990s and early 2000s where we saw a dramatic increase in mass consumer goods and the massive change in the manufacturing sector.
As people got used to learning about a brand/product through television, it quickly became the marketing department’s responsibility to figure out the most effective way to deploy ads to their target markets. This is when we saw a dramatic rise of some of the biggest Advertising agencies in the world. We entered an age where the internal marketing department and external agencies had only a few significant focuses — with the 800-pound gorilla being “ads.” And this was fine until it stopped working, and we began to question the role of a modern marketer once again.
- Another quick side note: Many people still work in the advertising industry. This section does not mean to imply that advertising no longer has a place in the marketing mix, far from it. Advertising is still a growing industry and an essential aspect of the greater marketing mix. This section suggests that Advertising isn’t the ONLY part that matters or that Advertising IS the marketing mix.
Now heading into 2021, the question of “what makes for a great modern-day marketer” is rooted in the four Ps’ use and deployment. Yes, you need to be knowledgeable about Promotion — external communications and the effective use of different media channels are critical aspects of the marketing mix. I see a great deal of BAD and the potential for those who are entering the marketing space. But to be solely focused on external communications is cutting yourself extremely short. You’re giving yourself a disservice if all you worry about is how a Facebook ad or Influencer will perform for you. This isn’t to suggest you shouldn’t care. Still, if you don’t understand the end-to-end experience that the customer is going through, if you don’t know why a company’s motivations around developing and selling a particular product or service, and if you have limited impact on those other aspects of the marketing mix you may be fighting a battle you can not win. Let me give you a quick example to express what I mean.
If you are a fan of outdoor apparel, you have likely heard of the clothing company Patagonia. They are a brilliant organization that continues to grow year after year. And from the outside looking in, they are a marketers dream. Why? First, they allow their products, which are the center of their universe, to do a lot of the talking for them. They don’t need an ad to tell potential customers that a Patagonia jacket is reasonable. They have brand advocates everywhere extolling the exceptional quality, craftsmanship etc., essentially selling that jacket on their behalf. Plus, when you walk into their store and pick up a coat — you sense all that in an instant.
Furthermore, where they invest their outward dollars (aka their advertising budget) is on initiatives they care about and reinforcing their sustainability stance. You are more likely to hear/see an ad for their recycling and fixing programs than you are about their latest and greatest gear. So Product and Promotion (oh, I’ll mention that their staff, which I often put under Promotion, are often their biggest brand advocates), but what out Price and Place? To no surprise, they have retail stores in all the “right” locations and other than online, it is hard to find a Patagonia product outside of those stores. Unlike their competition, Patagonia has kept their “direct to consumer” mantra. If you are buying a Patagonia product, you are either buying it from Patagonia or using a friend (or eBay). Finally, Price for them, like other sustainability companies, hasn’t been a focal point. They’re not cheaper — but they are not overpriced either. They price their products (again, from what I can tell) at a point where they can create sustainability for themselves, the cloth manufactures who produce their products and everyone else along their service lines. Unlike some of their contemporaries, Patagonia doesn’t appear interested in squeezing their manufactures to make a quick buck or save you and me a few extra dollars. They price things “fairly,” and people buy. They also put sustainability ahead of profitability, having programs to repair old jackets vs. making their loyal customers purchase new.
As we continue down this path of an effective, modern-day Marketer, I would kindly request that you keep this model from the 1960s in the back of your mind.
