The Marketing Mix
The term 'marketing mix' is a foundation model for businesses, historically centered around product, price, place, and promotion. The marketing mix has been defined as the 'set of marketing tools.
Brian TracyStrategic marketing planning and analysis is an ongoing process. As part of almost every “Marketing 101” course, students are taught a basic marketing analysis principle, most often called the “marketing mix.”The marketing mix was originally defined as the “4 Ps” – Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
For service businesses, a fifth “P” – People was more recently added.Still more recently, two additional important categories of strategic marketing analysis were added to the marketing mix: Packaging and Positioning.While many articles on the marketing mix are easily accessible, we feel that the best article on this subject was authored by Brian Tracy. The article is reprinted below in its entirety. The 7 Ps of MarketingBy Brian TracyOnce you’ve developed your marketing strategy, there is a “Seven P Formula” you should use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your business activities. These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you’re on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today’s marketplace.
ProductTo begin with, develop the habit of looking at your product as though you were an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide whether or not it’s in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as, “Is your current product or service, or mix of products and services, appropriate and suitable for the market and the customers of today?”Whenever you’re having difficulty selling as much of your products or services as you’d like, you need to develop the habit of assessing your business honestly and asking, “Are these the right products or services for our customers today?”Is there any product or service you’re offering today that, knowing what you now know, you would not bring out again today? Compared to your competitors, is your product or service superior in some significant way to anything else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of superiority? Should you be offering this product or service at all in the current marketplace? PricesThe second P in the formula is price.
Develop the habit of continually examining and reexamining the prices of the products and services you sell to make sure they’re still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Sometimes you need to lower your prices. At other times, it may be appropriate to raise your prices. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain products or services doesn’t justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining percentage generates a profit on every sale.
Could this be appropriate for you?Sometimes you need to change your terms and conditions of sale. Sometimes, by spreading your price over a series of months or years, you can sell far more than you are today, and the interest you can charge will more than make up for the delay in cash receipts. Sometimes you can combine products and services together with special offers and special promotions. Sometimes you can include free additional items that cost you very little to produce but make your prices appear far more attractive to your customers.In business, as in nature, whenever you experience resistance or frustration in any part of your sales or marketing activities, be open to revisiting that area. Be open to the possibility that your current pricing structure is not ideal for the current market. Be open to the need to revise your prices, if necessary, to remain competitive, to survive and thrive in a fast-changing marketplace. PromotionThe third habit in marketing and sales is to think in terms of promotion all the time.
Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about your products or services and how you then market and sell to them.Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your results. Even small changes in your advertising can lead immediately to higher sales.
Experienced copywriters can often increase the response rate from advertising by 500 percent by simply changing the headline on an advertisement.Large and small companies in every industry continually experiment with different ways of advertising, promoting, and selling their products and services. And here is the rule: Whatever method of marketing and sales you’re using today will, sooner or later, stop working. Sometimes it will stop working for reasons you know, and sometimes it will be for reasons you don’t know. In either case, your methods of marketing and sales will eventually stop working, and you’ll have to develop new sales, marketing and advertising approaches, offerings, and strategies. PlaceThe fourth P in the marketing mix is the place where your product or service is actually sold.
Develop the habit of reviewing and reflecting upon the exact location where the customer meets the salesperson. Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in sales.You can sell your product in many different places. Some companies use direct selling, sending their salespeople out to personally meet and talk with the prospect. Some sell by telemarketing.
Some sell through catalogs or mail order. Some sell at trade shows or in retail establishments. Some sell in joint ventures with other similar products or services. Some companies use manufacturers’ representatives or distributors. Many companies use a combination of one or more of these methods.In each case, the entrepreneur must make the right choice about the very best location or place for the customer to receive essential buying information on the product or service needed to make a buying decision. What is yours?
In what way should you change it? Where else could you offer your products or services? PackagingThe fifth element in the marketing mix is the packaging. Develop the habit of standing back and looking at every visual element in the packaging of your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect. Remember, people form their first impression about you within the first 30 seconds of seeing you or some element of your company. Small improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers.With regard to the packaging of your company, your product or service, you should think in terms of everything that the customer sees from the first moment of contact with your company all the way through the purchasing process.Packaging refers to the way your product or service appears from the outside. Packaging also refers to your people and how they dress and groom.
It refers to your offices, your waiting rooms, your brochures, your correspondence and every single visual element about your company. Everything counts. Everything helps or hurts. Everything affects your customer’s confidence about dealing with you.When IBM started under the guidance of Thomas J.
Watson, Sr., he very early concluded that fully 99 percent of the visual contact a customer would have with his company, at least initially, would be represented by IBM salespeople. Because IBM was selling relatively sophisticated high-tech equipment, Watson knew customers would have to have a high level of confidence in the credibility of the salesperson. He therefore instituted a dress and grooming code that became an inflexible set of rules and regulations within IBM.As a result, every salesperson was required to look like a professional in every respect. Every element of their clothing-including dark suits, dark ties, white shirts, conservative hairstyles, shined shoes, clean fingernails pand every other feature gave off the message of professionalism and competence. One of the highest compliments a person could receive was, “You look like someone from IBM.” PositioningThe next P is positioning.
You should develop the habit of thinking continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. How do people think and talk about you when you’re not present? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?In the famous book by Al Reis and Jack Trout, Positioning, the authors point out that how you are seen and thought about by your customers is the critical determinant of your success in a competitive marketplace.
Attribution theory says that most customers think of you in terms of a single attribute, either positive or negative. Sometimes it’s “service.” Sometimes it’s “excellence.” Sometimes it’s “quality engineering,” as with Mercedes Benz.
Sometimes it’s “the ultimate driving machine,” as with BMW. In every case, how deeply entrenched that attribute is in the minds of your customers and prospective customers determines how readily they’ll buy your product or service and how much they’ll pay.Develop the habit of thinking about how you could improve your positioning. Begin by determining the position you’d like to have.
If you could create the ideal impression in the hearts and minds of your customers, what would it be? What would you have to do in every customer interaction to get your customers to think and talk about in that specific way? What changes do you need to make in the way interact with customers today in order to be seen as the very best choice for your customers of tomorrow? PeopleThe final P of the marketing mix is people.
Use for this instead.No posting 3rd Party software, this includes unknown links or downloads.Please no double posting. Show-off' posts that include, but are not limited to: pack pulls, chests rewards/pulls, tournament results, screenshots of quirky things that happened to you during a match, etc. Pokemon trading card game online free. Are not allowed.Code Giveaways:When giving away codes, try to hold some kind of contest rather than giving them to anyone who asks. If a post exist before yours that has almost identical information, your post may be removed.Please do not use inappropriate language/behavior when creating posts, or extreme inappropriate language in the comments.' Although we find some of them enjoyable, they do not add or bring worthwhile content to this subreddit.
Develop the habit of thinking in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales and marketing strategy and activities.It’s amazing how many entrepreneurs and businesspeople will work extremely hard to think through every element of the marketing strategy and the marketing mix, and then pay little attention to the fact that every single decision and policy has to be carried out by a specific person, in a specific way. Over the years Stewart has personally marketed and consulted for over 1,457 healthcare clients, ranging from private practices to multi-billion dollar corporations. Additionally, he has marketed a variety of America’s leading companies, including Citicorp, J. Walter Thompson, Grubb & Ellis, Bally Total Fitness, Wells Fargo and Chase Manhattan.
Stewart co-founded our company, and today acts as Chief Executive Officer. He is also a frequent author and speaker on the topic of healthcare marketing. His personal accomplishments are supported by a loving wife and two beautiful daughters.
Find reviews, trailers, release dates, news, screenshots, walkthroughs, and more for Transformers G1: Awakening here on GameSpot. Transformers g1 awakening pc.
Communicating your company’s brand positioning and delivering it to the target audience is the foundation of the organization’s marketing strategy. Designing the right marketing mix involves the four P’s i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion. If you are in the field of marketing communications, then you must coordinate your efforts towards the last P of the marketing mix – Promotion. You need to develop strong sales and advertising messages that will connect with your customers instantly and effectively highlight your product’s quality and differentiation from other brands. Remember, while creating your promotional mix, you should ensure that you can deliver your promises and are able to create a believable position in the market. Company reputation is built over years but it just takes seconds to lose it because of unethical promotions or inability to deliver to your customers. Therefore, promotions are as important as your product or service quality, pricing and other offerings. Creating an effective marketing communication mix through a well-researched strategy will not only help your reach out to your customers but also help you adapt to the ever-changing marketing environment. Learn more about creating an effective Market Strategy with this course.
What is Marketing Communication Mix?
An organization’s promotional mix consisting of various promotion tools like advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, direct-marketing tools and online, digital and integrated marketing methods is called the Marketing Communications Mix. It is the way to communicate your brand value to the consumer and build long-lasting customer relationships. If you are a marketing professional, a business owner or an entrepreneur, then this course on Marketing Fundamentals can help you get started in one day. We will look at these promotion tools one by one and understand the various benefits that each has to offer. We will also visit the need for an integrated marketing communications and identify the communication objectives that companies must focus on.
Importance of Integrated Marketing Communications
Most often your advertising department and sales management team may be communicating different messages to your consumers, which lead to an inconsistent promotional message. For example, your newspaper advertisement might have promoted a certain price whereas the product label doesn’t reflect the same price; this causes confusion in the mind of the consumer that further aggravates due to a totally different message on your website! Since different communication channels are handled by different departments of your organization, very often your marketing communication mix falls out of sync. This is where the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) helps you integrate the various channels to deliver a uniform and compelling message about your brand to the target audience. It brings together all the company’s messages under one campaign to promote a single, clear and consistent positioning statement.
Different Factors of Marketing Communications Mix
- Identifying target audience – If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t decide on what to communicate, how to communicate, when, where and who will communicate the company’s message. Therefore, the first step to building a marketing communication mix is to identify your target audience.
- Determine Communication Objectives – Companies must find out at what stage of buyer-readiness their consumers are presently in. The six stages that consumers normally go through before buying a product are – awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. For more insights on creating the right marketing communications mix, skip right ahead to this course on effectively managing your digital Marketing Campaign. You must design your communication mix so as to address all these aspects as well as the organization’s objectives in delivering the message and moving the target audience towards a favorable stage.
- Delivering the Message – Your promotional messages must not only be catchy and hold the consumers’ attention but also compel them to like your product and make a purchase. Putting the message content together and choosing the appropriate communication media either through personal or non-personal channels is an important part of delivering the right message at the right time.
- Setting up Promotional Budget – While there are innumerable ways to attract the customers, you need find out how much you can spend on promotions. Budgeting based on the target consumers and industry requirements is key to achieving promotional success.
- Creating a Promotion Mix – Different companies have different marketing strategies wherein they use several promotional tools like advertising, direct marketing, personal selling or online marketing etc. Each tool has its own advantage and costs involved; therefore it is important for you to choose the right marketing communications mix also called as promotion mix.

Elements of Marketing Communications
- Advertising
This is widely used by companies to reach out to geographically distributed consumers in a large scale. It could be through TV ads, paper and print ads, billboards, radio announcements etc. to reach out to a mass audience. While such a promotional tool is quick and seen as legitimate by the consumers, it is very expensive and also happens to be a one-way communication with your potential customer.
- Personal Selling
This is very effective in building customer relations and helping the consumer move from awareness and knowledge stage to conviction and action. Your marketing personnel need to use their people skills and learn to listen to the audience so that the consumer’s requirements are addressed. You get immediate feedback and increase sales potential.
- Sales Promotion
Through discount coupons, contests, daily deals and other offers, you can promote your product sales and create short-term marketing effects. Learn more about Sales Promotions in this course.
- Public Relations
You can use company news, promotional events, sponsorship programs etc. along with other promotion tools to reach out to prospective customers. Such a campaign is very cost-effective and economical while reaching out to a larger audience.
- Direct Marketing
This is a highly personalized communication tool that is addressed to a specific person through emails, telephone or mobile messages, online media etc. It also allows for customer interaction and is mostly used as a targeted marketing approach.
- Online Marketing
Internet and powerful mobile technologies have rapidly increased company efforts to market their products and build customer relationships via social media, websites, mobile apps, e-commerce, online promotions etc. Create your online presence and find out the best way to communicate with your audience in a cost-effective, quick and reliable way. This course can help you create a smarter, faster and better online marketing blueprint.
These are the main tools of creating an effective marketing communications mix for your business. However, while doing so, you should be aware of the various legal and ethical issues surrounding marketing communications. Respect customer privacy and adhere to social norms and government regulations while you build a powerful marketing communications mix for your organizational growth.