The four core Ps of marketing form the basis of launching a new product or service. The 8 Ps of marketing is a bit more nuanced, giving you the power to successfully launch your product or service and reevaluate it over time to ensure it remains successful.
What Are the 8 Ps of Marketing?
The 8Ps marketing mix allows you to evaluate and adjust business and marketing strategies in real-time. This methodology saves you valuable time and money and keeps you competitive in a continually shifting marketing environment. The eight Ps of marketing are:
- Product
- Price
- Promotion
- Place
- Packaging
- Positioning
- People
- Partnerships
Product
Ask yourself the following questions as if you were an outside marketing consultant hired to evaluate your products or services:
- Is this the right time to offer this product?
- Are the products and services we offer appropriate for our customers right now?
- In what ways are the products and services we offer superior to our competitors?
- In what ways are the products and services we offer inferior to our competitors?
Make a habit of asking these questions honestly and often. Think about your answers and how you can improve your product to give it a competitive edge against your competitors. Also, think about how you can market the way it excels over other market offerings.
Price
Look at your current pricing model for products and services. How do your customers react to how your offerings are priced? Does the cost of your products and services make customers question their value? Evaluate all aspects of pricing frequently, including current discounts, warranties, fees, and terms. Look at your competitors and see how they structure their pricing.
How much effort does putting your offering into the market cost? Raising your offering price may mean fewer sales, but the higher price might make up for it if it increases the value of your efforts per purchase. Always be willing to revise prices as needed to remain competitive.
Promotion
Always be promoting, and always keep in mind the different ways you can tell your customers about your products or services. Changes can be either big or small, and you should never shy away from small ones. The smallest of changes can make a huge difference in how well a promotion works.
As soon as your marketing starts to become ineffective, change it up. Never be so attached to a promotion that you stick with it even though it is underperforming. Also, keep in mind promotion should happen in a variety of ways, on various platforms, whether online or in-person.
Place
Where do you sell your products or services? Always know when and where your customers meet one of your salespeople or see your marketing. Carefully picking these places can make a huge difference in how customers interact with your offerings.
Do you sell in multiple places? If not, it may be time to look into alternative avenues like mail order or selling complementary products and services in a parallel company’s market area. It is also vital to keep an eye on your competition and see what places their offerings are available and how successful they are.
In the end, you need to choose the best locations to offer your products or services so customers can decide whether or not to make a purchase. Where are your current places? How well do they perform? Do you need to make any changes? Ask yourself these questions on a routine basis.
Packaging
A first impression only takes 30 seconds, so you want to make sure you continuously evaluate how you capture a customer’s attention within that timeframe. Put yourself into your customers’ shoes and try to see your offerings as they would. Think about every step of interacting with your product or service, from when customers see it until they make a purchase.
Packaging also extends far beyond your offerings. Are your salespeople well dressed and groomed? Does your website design accurately reflect your company? Everything or everyone a potential customer interacts with during the process of shopping for your product or service will color their decision on whether to purchase or not.
Positioning
How do people talk about your company or offerings? What words come to their minds when they do? How favorably are you thought of compared to your competitors?
Get into the habit of thinking about this and what you can do to improve your positioning regularly. Ensuring you instill the right thoughts and feelings about your products and services plays an essential part in how well you stay positioned in the market.
People
People make all the other Ps possible. It takes people to create and package your products and services. People market them, sell them, and purchase them
Thinking about how you hire people for your business and how they fit into the overall scheme of things might be more important than anything else. What good are your offerings if you do not have the proper support structure of talented individuals to make the entire business engine work?
Without the right people on your team, you will never get products or services in front of the eyes and into the hands of the customers you target (another group of people to consider). Think about every aspect of what needs doing and the right person for the job. Never stop evaluating each position and person it takes to get your offering into the hands of those who need it.
Partnerships
Marketing via partnerships is a great way to launch and promote your products but requires a bit of time to plan and enact. These deals are often complicated, as both you and your partner company will have their own goals and Ps to consider.
Make sure to consider the overhead of a new partnership, as well as the general lack of complete control you will have over such a deal. If you can navigate these items, a partnership can be a valuable tool in your product or service’s overall success.
Gold Promotion Digital Marketing
While using the 8 Ps as a marketing mix example can help you get your business on the right track, Gold Promotion can ensure all your effort wasn’t for nothing. We use data-backed research to work with growth-oriented companies by providing web design, digital marketing, SEO, and more. Get in touch today at 800-476-3094 for more details.
We built a performance marketing system for small business owners. Cutting-edge technology and tactics power revenue-focused digital marketing
programs for local, b2b, and e-commerce.
- How to Select a Promotion Agency - July 25, 2021
- Top Promotion Tools for Sales & Marketing Success - July 25, 2021
- Event Promotion – Strategy & Tactics - July 25, 2021
Leave a Reply