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Innovation Blog

4 P’s of Marketing

90's retro phone and computer

I’m not old. I wouldn’t call myself a spring chicken, but I know that I’m not old. Just ask my kids. They don’t think that you are old until you are about 100. They probably learned that on YouTube. I’m just putting that out there so that you, dear reader, don’t get the impression that I’m an old geezer reminiscing about the good old days of marketing. For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a lunch meeting that involves a martini. (Although there are many days when that doesn’t sound so bad!)

From what I understand, I’m called a Xennial – which sits squarely between Gen Xers and millennials. I remember mix tapes, VCRs and the invention of cell phones – they used to come in a bag. I used encyclopedias in the library. The internet wasn’t a part of my childhood and computers were a luxury not a necessity. I was assigned my first email address in college. Us, Xennials, easily adapt to advances in technology but we aren’t beholden to them. We learned in the classroom, not online. And for those of us business and marketing students, before we learned about digital marketing, we learned about marketing.

OK, finally, now we’re onto the point. I guess that if I really think about it, I learned about “traditional” marketing during my school days. But regardless of what it was called, the ingredients in the secret sauce (to any kind of marketing) are all the same today.

Those ingredients are the 4 P’s of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. A professor in college explained it as a chain, where every P connects with another. The 4 P’s represent the planning that is used to develop the foundation of your marketing strategy and campaigns. These are the building blocks required to effectively market any product, service, brand or business.

I won’t bore you with an explanation of the original 4 P’s. A quick Google search will suffice if you are curious. What I will further explain is why I still think that using the OG P’s as the starting point for any strategy is necessary. Here is the thing, the age-old concepts that have influenced countless successful campaigns are the same as those that are guiding modern marketers to success – and gaining the attention and market share of today’s consumers.

  • You’ve got to have a great product (or service) and you’ve got to know why it’s great. Why it’s better than others. Why it deserves the attention of your target market.
  • You’ve got to price it for the market. Is the price linked to the value? Does it make sense for your target market?
  • Where is the product or service sold? Is that aligned with your target marketing?
  • How are you going to tell people about it? What levers are you going to pull? What data are you going to use to make those decisions? How are you going to measure it?

If those questions are easy to answer, you’ve checked off your P’s and you’re ready to strategize. Now the fun begins, and we’d love to help.

Brandi Gangel is the VP of Audience Data & Marketing

Brandi leads the audience data, operations and insight efforts and teams for the company. She is the primary manager of the company’s audience intelligence assets and is responsible for audience data acquisition, organization, integration and activation. She also oversees the company’s digital strategies and execution. Read the rest of her bio here.

Contact Brandi at [email protected]

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