Marketing mix

The marketing mix was first developed by McCarthy over 40 years ago. It was designed to suggest that you should have a balanced mix of marketing activities within your marketing plan.

Elements of the marketing mix

The 4 Ps - The main four elements of the marketing mix are described as "the 4 P's" - product, price, promotion and place.

Product

The first P is your product. This should define the characteristics of your product or service that will meet your customers' needs.

Price

The second P is the price of your product and decisions surrounding your overall pricing strategies. Pricing can be a very complex area. Most people believe they should undercut their competitors but this is not always a wise strategy. Consumers place value on higher priced products so it's best if you test various pricing levels of your products and over time you'll find the right pricing level that maximizes your profits.

Even if you decide not to charge for a service it's useful to realise that this is still a pricing strategy.

Promotion

The third P is about promoting your products and services. This may include advertising, personal selling (eg: attending exhibitions), sales promotions (eg: special offers), and atmospherics (ie: creating the right impression through the working environment). Public Relations is also included within Promotion by many marketing people, although PR people tend to see it as a separate discipline.

Place

The final P is about ‘place’ – the location where the service is actually going to be delivered. Many retail gurus will tell you it's all about "location, location, location" and this still holds true today.

The 4 Cs

Many now dismiss the four Ps as being out of date and have developed the four Cs to replace that concept.

For example, there are the C's developed by Robert Lauterborn and put forward by Marketing guru Philip Kotler where by:

• Place becomes Convenience
• Price becomes Cost to the user
• Promotion becomes Communication
• Product becomes Customer needs and wants

The four C's reflect a more customer oriented marketing philosophy. They provide useful reminders that you need to focus entirely on the customer when deciding where to offer a service.

So, the marketing mix does provide a handy framework for marketing analysis. The C's are also not nearly as memorable as the P-words, and marketing texts still tend to use the latter to describe the elements of the mix.

Other experts have further added that business success is driven by PEOPLE and PROCESS.

Whatever you choose you should include all four basic elements into your own marketing mix and then custom tailor this to your specific situation.

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