The Marketing Mix provides a foundation for thinking about marketing and the ideal strategy for every unique situation. Historically, the mix was made up of the 4 ‘P’s of marketing, these having been ‘Product’, ‘Price’, ‘Promotion’ and ‘Place’, as designed by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960. Developing this model further, today most marketing specialists speak of the 7 ‘P’s of marketing, adding ‘People’, ‘Process’, and ‘Physical evidence’ to the mix for a fuller, more detailed picture of the situation. It is when all aspects of the Marketing Mix are aligned that a solid image of the product or service can be established, gaining the consumer’s trust.
The Product or service must fill a need for a segment of People; those People must be able to buy it from a Place easily accessible to them; the Price must suit the type of People you are marketing to; the Promotion must suit the culture of the Place and the reality of the Product; the People must experience Physical evidence that reassures them that their need will be filled; the quality of the Process of sale must match the People’s expectations based on the Price and the Promotion;… and so on and so forth.
The Marketing Mix can help you streamline your business’ public image, increase trust in your brand and boost sales by thinking deeply about:
- Product: ‘What am I selling and what need does it fulfil?’
- Place: ‘Where am I selling it?’
- Price: ‘How much does it cost the consumer to buy it?’
- Promotion: ‘How am I getting consumers interested in it and what image am I trying to spread?’
- People: ‘Who am I going to sell it to?’
- Process: ‘How do I go about the sale and delivery?’
- Physical evidence: ‘How am I reassuring consumers that the product or service will fill their need effectively?’
Do all your answers complement each other or are there adjustments you need to make to create the right mix?
This framework for thinking is discussed to different levels of detail in our Award in Marketing, consisting of a module in our Undergraduate Higher Diploma in Business and Management and our Bachelor in Business and Management, and in our Master in Business Administration – The Henley Flexible Executive MBA.
If we have peaked your interest and you have a thirst to know more about the Marketing Mix, you can read about it in more detail through a previously published article here.
