Aubrey's Corner

Definition Of The Marketing Mix- Product, Price, Place & Promotion.

Getting the marketing mix correctly for your product or service means you are covering all of the significant bases in your marketing campaign. Here is a meaning of marketing mix and a description of its main components.

The term marketing mix refers to the primary elements that must be attended to in order to correctly market a product or service. Also known as The 4 Ps of Marketing, the marketing mix is a very useful, if a bit universal, guideline for understanding the basics of what makes a good marketing campaign. Here is a short description of each component of the 4 Ps of the marketing combination.

Product: The marketing mix idea has its roots in the 1950s U.S. corporate marketing world, and the performance of marketing has obviously evolved tremendously since this term was formulated. One of the changes is that there are a lot more services available these days, such as those available online. Also, the difference between product and service has become more fuzzy (e.g., is a Web-based software application a product or a service?). Either approach, product here refers to products or services. The product or service you offer needs to be able to meet a specific, existing marketplace demand. Or, you need to be able to build a market niche through building a powerful brand.

Price: The price you set for your product or service plays a large role in its marketability.

Pricing for products or services that are more commonly available in the market is more elastic, implying that unit sales will go up or down more responsively in reply to price changes. By contrast, those products that have a usually more limited availability in the market (but with strong demand) are more inelastic, meaning that price changes will not have an effect on unit sales very much.

The price elasticity of your product or service can be determined through various market testing techniques.

Place: This term really refers to any way that the customer can obtain a product or receive a service. Provision of a product or service can occur via any number of sharing channels, such as in a retail store, through the mail, via digital files, on a cruise ship, in a hair salon, etc. The ease and options by way of which you can make your product or service available to your customers will have an effect on your sales volume.

Promotion: Promotion is concerned with any vehicle you use for getting people to know more about your product or service. Advertising, public relations, point-of-sale displays, and word-of-mouth promotion are all traditional ways for advertising a product. Promotional advertising can be seen as a way of closing the information breach between would-be sellers and would-be buyers. Your choice of promotional marketing strategies will be dependent upon your budget, the kind of product or service you are advertising, and availability of the mentioned promotional marketing material.