I read an article recently that the 4Ps* of marketing are no longer relevant in today’s digitally driven market, and it made me pause and wonder how old I actually was.  The suggestion was that because consumers and businesses have moved online that we don’t need to think about the “old 4Ps” anymore.  While the definition of each P needs to be broader than it was 10 years ago (e.g. promo can’t just mean TV and a banner ad), ignoring the importance of these fundamentals risks a business, or at best, unnecessarily inhibits growth.   

One of my clients has a business that’s been in a steady decline over the past few years.  Last year, they launched a new ad campaign that had very strong diagnostics—branding, purchase intent, and recall were all strong—but the business didn’t turn around.  One of their sales directors commented that the ad campaign couldn’t have been as good as marketing said because it didn’t fix the business.  I replied, “There are so many things wrong on this business that there is no ad campaign in the world that could fix this.”

The product is a good product, but the packaging design and structure is inconsistent across the portfolio, making it hard to shop.  The distribution is inconsistent across retailers and eComm.  The pricing strategy is inconsistent across the SKU assortment, and discounts have become so frequent and deep that consumers have been trained to wait for a sale.  Basically, 3 of the 4Ps were working against the brand, and that ad campaign could only do so much.

There is power in great advertising to be able to change a person’s relationship with a brand and motivate people to take action.  Creating connections with consumers is what every single brand should aspire to do.  But we can’t overlook the less-sexy P’s that can fundamentally help or hinder the growth of a business.  As you think about the challenges that your current business or brand faces, the 4P framework can be a simple but powerful assessment tool on where you can optimize your plans.

Product—the fastest way to grow a business is to have a truly great product or service (note: the converse is also true).  I had the privilege of being the marketing manager for Listerine PocketPaks.  Unfortunately, this was long after the big launch that made it a huge success, and by then business was on the J&J “harvest” list.  One of the biggest challenges was that there was no clear reason to buy Listerine strips vs. Altoids or a breath mint.  There is actual, germ-killing Listerine in that tiny strip, and very few consumers knew that, even regular Listerine users.  The packaging also didn’t look that much like Listerine.  The design team came up with new packaging that fit with Listerine master brand and leveraged the germ-kill claim so that it was clear that this was Listerine, just in a different format.  While there were still some distribution challenges, these relatively simple changes to the product helped to stabilize the business.   

What makes your product unique?  What makes people fall in love with it?  A friend was recently gifted a bottle of La Mer face cream, and went from “no way is this as good as they say,” to raving about the experience of it and trying to figure out how this could fit into her household budget.  Listen to your consumers about what they love.  Listen to what people complain about after they’ve bought—can you make that better?  In the words of Seth Godin from Purple Cow: Transform your Business by Being Remarkable, “…as consumers, we’re too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we’re desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.” 

Pricing—Amazon Prime has 153 million US subscribers.  In 2018, they took their annual fee up by $20 a year.  Even with only 100 million subscribers, that one change added $2 billion dollars to their annual revenue.  It’s critical that you understand your consumers’ willingness to pay.  If you underprice your product, you’re leaving money that you could have easily earned, and if you overprice your product, you’ll find sales lacking. 

Evaluate the shopping context for your buyer— how does it impact what people are willing to pay?  When my hot water heater started leaking in my basement, I didn’t spend much time shopping around for a replacement and paid what the plumber wanted.  On the other hand, when my kids needed new backpacks for school, I had time to shop different brands and wait for a sale, so the final price played a much bigger role. Be sure to review your pricing regularly and especially when there’s a shift in your market.

Place—For Super Bowl, I tried to find Velveeta to make queso (don’t judge).  I wandered around Acme for a while trying to figure out where they would shelve Velveeta.  After all, it’s a shelf-stable cheese, so where is that in the store?  I even googled it.  If I hadn’t promised my son that he’d get to try the “famous” family recipe for this dip, I would have grabbed a tub of hummus instead and gotten out of there.  I ended up finding it on an end cap in a Shop Rite near the cheese but not actually in the dairy aisle, and it was a pain in the butt to find.  Whether you’re in the business of a FMCG, a service or a small business, you need to make it easy for your customers to shop for you.  If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. 

If you’re in the world of consumer goods, there are all sorts of rules about how to drive optimal distribution.  If you have this group in your organization, make sure they’re included in your business planning.  If you have a small business, how easy is it for customers to find you?  Do you need your own eComm site or can you be easily found on Etsy?  If you sell a service, how can customers find you to learn more about what you do?  There are very efficient ways of listing your business online to help make sure that people can find you.

Promotion—  This is anything that you do for your brand to engage your consumers to make them want to ultimately buy your product.  Promotions is where marketing spends most of its time and attention, so I’m not going to save this area for future discussions.

The critical piece is that if you’re spending 90% of your time focusing on making your Promotion great, and only 10% of your time worried about the other Ps, it is only going to be able to get you so far.  A well promoted product that a person can’t find can’t be purchased.  If the pricing is off-putting to too many consumers, any ROI on promotions will probably not be high.  A well-promoted, but not great product experience might get great trial, and then die with no repeat.  Whether your business is entirely only or primarily sold in brick and mortar stores, these 4 areas have to work together in your business plan. Be sure your plan encompasses all 4Ps so that you’re maximizing your marketing efforts and driving growth for your business.   

*If you’re reading this, you probably know what the 4Ps are, but just in case, the Marketing 4Ps are Product (what are you selling), Price (what you earn for your product), Place (where consumers can by your product), and Promotion (how you engage consumers and motivate them to buy your product)