4 P’s of Marketing

4 P’s of Marketing

When it comes time to start pushing your company or your product to the market, following a well-established marketing plan is essential. For those that are trying to branch out into something new, following the ‘4 P’s to Marketing’ strategy can help create that plan to offer the best return on your investment, both time and expense.
The 4 P’s of Marketing has long been the go to basic marketing strategy that works almost universally across any business and industry, including a small niche industry like diesel. The 4 P’s stands for Product, Price, Promotion, and Place and if you’ve had any kind of educational experience in marketing, you’ve surely learned about this process.

Product

You need to establish a product to market, obviously. Once that’s done try and answer these questions. Who is the product for? What problems does the user face? What are the features and benefits to your product? How does it solve the user’s problem? And lastly, you’ll want to work on a suitable product name and develop an understandable branding concept for it. Before your product can be successful, you’ll want to be sure that it’s the perfect answer and solution to the targeted customers problems.

Price

Obviously, in todays market, price is extremely important. But if you think just checking your competitors’ price and undercutting it by 5% is the answer, you could be missing out on a substantial opportunity. While you need to be priced competitive in the market, does your product offer an advantage over the competitor? Do you offer something that sets it’s apart and can add value to the product over the competing products? There is also that thought process that ‘you get what you pay for’. Being the least expensive product in your segment may not offer the image you’re after for the brand or company. If you’re product offers something the others don’t, your price point and product value should reflect that.

Place

Before our cell phones were surgically attached to our hands and everything in the world wasn’t at our fingertips, location was key to a company or products success. But today’s world is much different, your customer base could be coming from anywhere and your job will be figuring out how to best put your product and name in front of them. Does your customer use a simple Google search? Social media posts with product interaction? Video clips through an online video host? Which platforms are the majority of your customers using? Nail down those specifics and develop a plan to best engage with those consumers.

Promotion

Lastly, promotion. What good is having a great product at a competitive price with a known customer base if you don’t try to reach them. Promoting your product in the right light is key to growth. Where is your best channel of promotion? What do your want the message the consumer sees about your product to portray to them? Where and when is the best time to project that message to the consumer? How do you start getting that message out to the masses? Dealer interaction? Social media? Word of mouth?
Obviously, this is a very stripped down basic explanation of the 4 P’s marketing strategy, and while this is an older process that has had to evolve through the years as technology has advanced, the principles stay the same. Offer something good. Offer it at a good price. Offer it where make sense. Make that offer visible.