Is Your Brand Using The Four Ps Of Marketing?

Starting a business and building a brand is one of those particularly unique experiences where it’s easy to gain a false sense of confidence because everyone has been a consumer. This logical fallacy can blind people to the reality that understanding marketing itself is complicated and far from understood by most consumers, and that understanding your product is only one of the four key elements of effective marketing.

In today’s world of digital marketing and online businesses, it is important to make a solid start with your brand so that you don’t end up wasting time and money trying to correct mistakes that could have been prevented.

Mistakes will happen, and we all learn from them, but you can do a lot to make sure you make as few mistakes as possible by learning about the Four Ps of Marketing.

What Are The Four Ps Of Marketing?

Product, Price, Place, Promotion. That’s it; the Four Ps. They seem like fairly obvious ideas, but that’s why this simple set of words is effective. Knowing your product is only one of the elements that is necessary to effectively expand and grow your brand, and the other three Ps are just as important.

Let’s delve into each of these from both a business owner’s perspective and a digital marketing perspective.

• Product

  Business owners generally know this part of the brand extremely well. This is the core of your business model, the product or service you are selling, and essentially what you are good at.

  To a business owner, this is the means of making money, whether you sell a physical product or provide a service, it is known as the product. One of the biggest mistakes new business owners make is thinking that because they know their Product, they can sell it without much effort.

  This is partially true – you likely have some idea that there are consumers who want your Product. But for how long? How much market research have you done beforehand?

  Digital marketing looks at Product differently. While a business owner might think that they are selling car parts, digital marketing realizes that Products have multiple layers – the actual purchased service or goods, and the selling proposition.

  The selling proposition is often referred to as the Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and will get its own coverage in a future blog post. Essentially, however, this is what makes your brand stand out.

  Think of this as an adjective or another way to describe your brand.

  For example, there are a lot of sub sandwich shops out there. So how does a new one stand out? Jimmy Johns is a great example of this: they aren’t just a sub shop, they are a sub shop that is fast and offers fast delivery.

  The key here is that your product cannot simply be “car parts” in today’s massive market. It needs to be something that makes your Product stand out from the competition, and effective digital marketing makes sure that is what happens.

• Price

  This might seem straightforward, especially for new business owners. But Price in digital marketing is, again, two things.

  A lot of business owners look at the cost of production, decide on a markup that earns them a decent profit, and jumps into their business. This is a good start, but it is only half of the definition of Price.

  Digital marketing requires a look at price points, of course, but also must consider how Price represents the brand. Does it make your brand look cheap? Expensive? Valuable?

  This obviously isn’t something that you can just instinctively know. Digital marketing teams spend a lot of time and money on researching marketing trends in specific fields in order to help place your brand in the right market.

  Let’s compare Walmart and Kroger, two grocery store/department store brands. Walmart focuses on expansive reach, with a single brand, that markets itself as a place where consumers can save money. Their current slogan is “Save more. Live better,” which emphasizes that they offer savings.

  Kroger, on the other hand, is more focused on its brand as a grocery store, even though some of its locations also offer some types of department stores. Kroger wants consumers to see their brand as a place where they can get fresh, healthy food. Their ethos is “Fresh for everyone.”

  This ethos also emphasizes the fact that their products can have good prices (note the “everyone”), but first and foremost on the “fresh” aspect.

  Without those defining factors, both Walmart and Kroger would just be “department/grocery stores” with no other element to their brand.

  In digital marketing, it is even more important that your brand have a solid outline of its defining price values based on quality research conducted by experienced teams.

• Place

  Since we’re discussing digital marketing in this article, you might think that the only effective way to market is through the Internet. This is only partially true. Place is not only where you market your Product, but how consumers and potential customers find it.

  A lot of business owners take the first steps in creating an online presence, spreading the word, and so on by creating a website, Facebook group, Instagram account, and so on. But simply having the accounts is only one part of the Place in digital marketing.

  An effective digital marketing team knows that placing the brand online is important, but the real key to the Place of your brand is making sure it is accessible to people at the right time, in the right way, and with quality outreach.

  Consumers can tell right away when something is not genuine or feels forced, and with interactive marketing that can be very disruptive to your brand’s outreach. That same type of advertising, however, might work extremely well in a place where advertisements are expected and might reach a different audience.

  Instagram and Facebook are among the top places people find products and make purchases in today’s digital market. But that doesn’t mean that’s where everyone should focus their brand. Knowing who looks for your brand in each market is the key to making sure that the correct marketing is in the right place for the right consumer at the most effective point of purchasing your product or service.

• Promotion

  This is the P that most business owners appreciate and understand the importance of the most. It’s also the hardest place for a business owner to invest their own time and energy while still operating the business and keeping the brand growing and alive!

  Promotion is essentially the aspect of digital marketing that focuses on brand visibility and all of the behind-the-scenes elements of marketing in general. Is your brand reaching its target consumers? Is your brand as visible as it should be? Is it staying relevant?

  The key here is that Promotion requires a lot of research, data management, and analysis to be effective. An effective digital marketing team does research on similar brands, consumers, and marketing campaigns before promoting. They then track and analyze data during Promotion, and use all of that gathered data to create and move forward with future marketing campaigns and promoting of your brand.

  It’s a lot of work.

  But doing it effectively can make the difference between your business struggling, barely staying afloat, or becoming the next big success story.

Can PixelPop Marketing Help My Business?

Absolutely! PixelPop Marketing focuses on digital marketing and has clients from all different types of businesses – from doctors and portable data management to public speakers and construction companies.

Schedule a consultation today to find out how PixelPop Marketing can help your business reach new heights – locally, nationally, or globally. Our team of digital marketing experts will help you stand out from the crowd.