The world of business is full of different rules and strategies that we can use. But, one of the most used is marketing without any doubt. Probably in this era, you already heard or read something about marketing, but you do not have a clear idea about it.
Of course, if you are new to business or you recently have your company, it is normal that you do not handle this kind of terminology. However, do not worry because even the most experienced entrepreneurs have difficulties at the time working with marketing.
Even some experts need several tries to find the perfect way to apply some marketing strategies to their business. For this reason, we want to make things easier for you and introduce you to one of the most popular rules of marketing: the 4 Ps of marketing.Just take it easy, and let us teach you all you need to know to make it work for your business. Marketing can be the best thing that could happen to your company if you implement this simple rule of 4 Ps. Once you understand the process, you are not going to doubt using the 4 Ps of marketing on your company.
What is marketing?
In the first place, we have to understand what is marketing before starting to talk about the 4 Ps of marketing. In general lines, the marketing becomes from the market, which means that marketing involves every activity or process related to offering to an audience a product or a service.
For sure, more than only sell products, marketing look for a strategy to promote some business based on the study of an audience to develop the perfect merchandise. But, it is more than the only sell because if it was the same, we could call it selling or something like that.
The difference stays in the process that we implement. After all, marketing requires a complex process to get results of high quality to reach the goals that we plan. For this reason, there are too many companies incapable of use marketing for the complexity of the process.
Besides, some companies use marketing, but they do not do it in the right way. In this way, while they keep using the wrong marketing for their companies, they will see the benefits. For this reason, it is essential to know the rule of the 4 Ps of marketing that we are going to explain to you.
4 Ps of marketing.
Now, we are in context about what is marketing and how can you use it in your company, it is essential to talk to you about the 4 Ps of marketing. When we refer to the 4 Ps, we are talking about four terms of marketing that start with the letter P. It is why we talk about the 4 Ps rules to refer to these four terms.
But, what does it means for each P? The Ps means Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Each one of those terms represents an essential part of the process of marketing. If one of those is missing or failing, the whole process is going to be affected.
For this reason, the key to get success in business and avoid fail constantly is to work hard on each P and not just on one or two. As we tell you before, we can have the best product of all, but if we do not promote properly it never will reach the audience that we want.
Also, if we focus all our efforts to create publicity or marketing campaigns of some product that are not finished or it does not work well, our business always is going to fail. In this way, we want to tell you all you need to know about each P to have success without complications.
Product
The first P is for Product because every company needs a product to sell. However, probably you could think that it is too much obvious and there is not any secret behind it. But, there is more behind the product that you need to know, and it is one of the elements that more failures have at the time of execution. First of all, we have to understand that the product does not only involve an object, for example, shirts, mugs, cars, and others. The product also can involve services like repair services, haircuts, courses, and others.
In this way, it does not matter if your companies provide objects or services; the secret is developing them perfectly. However, develop a perfect product can be very complicated because we need to know all the attributes and features that define your product. For sure, we cannot offer some product that we do not know because it is like trying to walk through a dark hallway. Besides, there are so many features that we have to handle even before developing the product. After all, each product is based on a need of a specific audience.
For example, if we make research and determine that there is an audience that is having problems painting their houses, we can create a product to solve this need. It could be a special brush or paint, but it has to solve the problem partially or totally. The main objective is to improve the experience of the customers with your products.
Of course, some companies create fictitious problems to sell their products to the audience. Certainty, it could work a few times, but then the audience will notice that your product is not real or it is a scam.
Before you define the necessity that you want to solve, you need to determine which are the functions that your product is going to have to solve the problem. The perfect product should solve the entire product, but it rarely happens. For this reason, the knowledge of the functions of your products will help you to promote them. Also, you cannot forget to position your product in the environment of the customers. It will help you to create scenarios to promote your products. On the other hand, we cannot forget about the appearance of the product.
We have to be creative and give our products the best appearance so they can call the attention of the audience. It includes the name of the product, the brand, and how you can differentiate it from other similar products on the market.
Price
The second P of marketing is the Price that, is directly related to the product. Also, the price of the product is going to determine the survival of each company. We have to know that the price of the products is going to be influenced by the materials you use, the experimented people you need to do it, and how are you going to distribute it.
For sure, in the beginning, you are going to make an initial investment to impulse the production and distribution of your products. But, you need to consider that the cost of your product must let you recover the investment per product and let you take your income. Besides, most people do not consider check the price of similar products of theirs on the market. It is very useful to see if your price is or not competitive because if there is some company with a product equal to you, but with a lower price, you cannot fit a primary price higher than that.
If you think about the audience, they are going to prefer a known product for a lower price. Of course, it does not mean that you will sell your products at a price that generates losses for you. There has to be a balance between the production cost of the product and the market price.
If your price perfectly balances, you are not going to have financial problems and you are going to perceive incomes to invest and other product lines and the growth of your company. After all, the price of the product is what is going to determine in some way the evolution of your company.
Place
The third P is for Place that honestly causes a lot of troubles and confusion on the owners of different businesses and companies. When we talk about the place, it means the possible places where your products can be sold.But, it is not about finding a random place where to sell your products because maybe the audience you want to reach is not in the same place you want to sell. In this way, you must try to find the place where your audience could be.
It is a little bit of madness to try to sell ice cream on a snowing place or hot chocolate on the beach. It does not mean that you are not going to have sales in those places with those products, but you are not going to reach the best potential of the product. Besides, it is essential to include digital marketing in this part because some e-commerce does not have physical stores. But, they also have to find the perfect place to put their products like social media, online shops, or other digital media.
The key about the place is to put your products in the right place, after all, what is the point of having a good product at a good price, but nobody can see it. For this reason, the place is essential.
Promotion
The final P is from Promotion which is like the final step of marketing. The promotion is more than just promote a product; it is about selling your lines of products like a brand. In this step, you need to find a way to make your brand be known.
To make this possible, you can use digital marketing strategies or other types of marketing channels like radio, newspapers, or television. Also, according to the kind of product you want to promote, you can take advantage of the circumstances.
For example, you can use the different festivities of the seasons like Christmas or Easter to create promotions or even coupons. It would help you to increase your sales and popularity of your brand. It does not matter the strategy you want to use as long as it is planned to improve and promote your business.
The marketing world is waiting for you.
We understand that marketing can be a complex process, but it is not impossible. The marketing world is waiting for you; you only have to give it a try. If you follow this simple marketing rule, there is nothing you cannot get.
The only thing you cannot forget is to follow the 4 Ps of marketing in order because you cannot promote any business if you even do not have an entire product to promote. Nevertheless, there are occasions when you can think about the place, price, and product at the same time, but it is better to follow the order. Just have patience and never give up.
Marketing can change your business.
Marketing is essential for every company because it lets us make analyze how our company is working to make the necessary changes. We have to think about our company like an engine. Every engine is made of different kinds of pieces that have to be in harmony to work well. In this way, sometimes we try to improve and improve our products, but we do not notice that it is just a tiny part of the process.
Besides, marketing is not only about making publicity without sense. After all, if we do not know the audience we want to reach or we do not have a good product, we can spend big amounts of money on campaigns and they are not going to works.
It is the main reason why all the marketing knowledge can be the difference to the development of your company. It does not matter if your business is big or small, new or old, marketing can adjust perfectly to the rhythm of your business.