In the A-Z of marketing F is for … the Four Ps of Marketing

When you start developing a new offer or product for your business there are many things you need to think about. Who am I selling to? Where should I sell? And more.

Marketing professionals can use a simple tool. Marketer E. Jerome McCarthy proposed the four Ps in 1960, which is now used world wide by marketers and businesses.

The four Ps are:

Product

The product is what your business is selling. It could be anything from a book to monthly Marketing Mentoring.

Price

This is the amount of money a customer pays for what you are offering. Price is very important as it determines the profit and survival of the business in the future.

Promotion

These are all the activities you use to provide information about the product or service.

Place

This is where the product or service is going to be made available. Are going to sell it in supermarkets or put it on Amazon?

At Appletree we needed to use the four Ps for one of our products recently. Chantal’s new book went on sale in September last year. We had to think about how we were going to market it. The book itself was the Product. After working out printing costs and design we had to think about the Price, which was settled at £12.99. After this we needed to decide where we were going to sell the book. The Place we decided on was our website and to also make it available at networking events that Chantal attends. The final thing to think about was how we were going to Promote the book and decided to use Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as talks at networking events, to raise awareness of the book.

The four Ps were initially developed for products. However they were soon expanded to incorporate services and extended into the 7 Ps which I will be writing about when I get to S in the A-Z of Marketing.

Do you know what your four Ps are in your latest product? If not, shouldn’t you get working on them?

Next week G is for…?