The P’s of Marketing
Basic to any Marketing course or seminar are the P’s of Marketing. In school, we just breezed through this subject, memorizing what each “P” stood for and moved on to the next topic.
I was recently a member of a team in a computer college’s marketing department. During my time, we were able to achieve a 10% growth in yearly enrollment in the nearly two years I was there.
I was ready to retire in academia, but after two years, I was ready to move on. As the academe hired to replace me and I were discussing our programs, he reminded me of something I had learnt years before. He was showing me a piece of paper he had written explaining the “4 P’s.” It was then that I recognized the significance of understanding the fundamentals of marketing.
Anyway, whether they are Baby-boomers, Gen-X, or Millennials, the “P’s” of Marketing are more or less the basic guideline for any marketing campaign, activity, or process for Marketing Peeps. This is the fundamental core.
P’s of Marketing
During my time, there were only four (4) P’s, namely: Product, Pricing, Promotions, and Place. Recently in some circles, they have added the fifth (5th) P, which to me is the most important of all: People.
Product – Is the item or items being sold, marketed or promoted. The product is not limited to physical or tangible items like automobiles, mobile phones or refrigerators. This should include how the product is Packaged or presented. This presentation should be designed to attract a Product’s target market or the fifth “P” or People.
Pricing – like Packaging and Promotions, how much a Product would cost is computed or offered mainly based on the target markets’ purchasing power. Certain items like distribution and logistics, marketing, and promotions also play a major factor in Pricing.
Promotions – the culmination of the Marketing study, this is the implementation aspect. These are the promotional activities you use to make your customers aware of your products and services, including advertising, sales tactics, promotions and direct marketing. Generally, these are referred to as marketing tactics.
Place – Place is where your products and services are seen, made, sold or distributed. Access for customers to your products is key and it is important to ensure that customers can find you. For networkers, Place could mean where they do their BOM’s or presentations.
People – the importance of People is it is all about our “Target Market”. People is the sole basis of Product design and Packaging. This is where demographics (ex. gender, age, social status, etc.) come into play.
For the uninitiated, what are the P’s of Marketing and how can we apply them? Can we do it ourselves? Should we do it ourselves, even if we are only a salesperson selling skin care products? Seriously? There is already far too much paperwork.
We may apply this on a micro level to individuals. Marketing is not rocket science, and it can be updated and adjusted in response to market movements or changes in our target market’s purchasing behavior or purchasing preferences. The entire purpose of this exercise is for us to understand our product and how to market and sell it to our target market (People).
