Understanding the 7Ps of a Marketing Mix

Marketing is like baking. With the right ingredients, measurements and conditions, your recipe is sure to be a success. Find out the 7 ingredients for the perfect marketing mix … or risk a soggy bottom!

A marketing mix is a set of actions that businesses and marketers use to help promote their brand, or to sell a product or service they offer. When selling a new product or service, it’s important to create a marketing mix strategy that essentially blends the key marketing ingredients together to achieve the desired result.

What are the 7Ps of a marketing mix?

Product

A marketing mix always begins with a product to sell. In the early development phase of your product, it is extremely important to carry out extensive research on the life cycle of the product you are creating. All products have their own life cycle including the growth phase, the maturity phase, and the sales decline phase. Once a product reaches the sales decline phase, marketers need to find new ways to increase sales again.

When developing the right product, it’s important to ask yourself a series of questions to make sure your product is better than your competitors, i.e. what does the client want from the product? Or, how, where and why the client uses the product?

Place

In a marketing mix, place refers to the position and distribution of the product you are selling in a place that is accessible to your target audience, this could be a high street shop, an online store, or mail order. Examples of distribution strategies include: intensive, exclusive, selective and franchising.

To make sure you position your product in the best possible place, it’s vital to understand your customer and what their shopping habits may be. Therefore, to develop a distribution strategy, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Where do clients look for my product?
• Where do clients usually shop for products?
• Should I sell the product online?

Price

Pricing is an extremely important component to your marketing mix as it determines your profit and costing of your product. Altering the price of a product can affect the entire marketing strategy, whilst also affecting the sales and demand of your product.

As a newcomer to the market, it’s tempting to set your prices high, especially if you know your product is worth the price you are asking for. However, it’s unlikely that your target audience will be willing to pay the price, simply because your brand is only starting out so you’re not as recognisable or trustworthy – this comes with time.

Pricing also helps consumers to determine the perception of your product. For example, a lower priced product is deemed less inferior in terms of quality and ability, as opposed to a highly priced product.

Promotion

In a marketing mix, promotion is an element that can boost sales and brand recognition through advertising, sales promotion, sales organisation, and public relations.

When promoting a product, you may decide on all of the promotion elements above, or simply choose the techniques that will target your audience more effectively. However, in order to create a successful product promotion strategy, here are a number of questions to ask yourself first:

• When is the best time to promote my product?
• What is the strategy my competitors are using?
• Should I use social media to promote the product?
• How can I send marketing messages to my target audience?
• What marketing channel is the best to promote my product for my audience?

The promotional strategy you use is also dependent on your budget, your communication and how you want to get your message across, and your target market.

People

Another important element in the marketing mix is people. This includes whether or not your target audience is large enough, and if there is a large enough demand for your product or not.

Consumers aren’t the only important people to consider in your marketing strategy, you also have to take into the account the people who will be delivering the marketing and sales of your product. To make sure you deliver excellent service and marketing, you’ll need people who are fully trained for the job, whether this is customer service assistants, copywriters, designers or a sales representative for example.

Process

As for processes in the marketing mix, the process of your organisation can affect the performance of the service you provide, involving the delivery of your product to consumers. As a business, it’s crucial to make sure you’re easy to do business with, meaning you’re efficient, helpful and timely.

By making sure your business has a good process in place, you will also save time and money due to greater efficiency, and your standard of service to customers will remain consistent, which is excellent for developing a brand reputation and customer loyalty.

Physical Evidence

The final P in a marketing mix stands for physical evidence and it refers to everything your customers sees or hears when interacting with your business. This includes your branding, your product packaging, a physical space such as a shop, and even the way your staff and sales representatives act and dress – it’s not all about the product! The way that you portray your brand physically has a great impact on consumers and can either lead or an increase, or decrease, in sales.

Using the Marketing Mix

Each of the 7Ps found in a marketing mix work together to ensure your business is a success. The 7Ps also have an impact on your positioning, targeting, and segmentation decisions, so it’s crucial to understand their benefits to create your own marketing mix.

If you would like more information on how you can create your own marketing mix, please call our strategic team on 01462 262020 or a no obligation chat, or email us at hello@focus7int.com