What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing? (2024)

What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing?

The 4 Ps of marketing are a framework that explains the key elements a business needs to address customer needs. These 4 Ps are product, price, place and promotion, and together, they make up what is called a marketing mix. Once you define these four elements, you can use them to market your product or service to customers.

Neil H. Borden, a Harvard advertising professor, first introduced the concept of the marketing mix in the 1940s. E. Jerome McCarthy expanded on this with the introduction of the 4 Ps in his 1960 book “Basic Marketing: The Managerial Approach.” The concept of the marketing mix and the 4 Ps is still widely used in marketing strategies today as a way for marketers and businesses to understand how to position their products and services.

Product

Your product is what you’re selling.

This can be a physical product, such as clothing. Or, it can be something less tangible, such as a service or software. Whatever you choose to sell, there has to be a need for it. Are you offering something completely new that no one else has thought of? Or, if there are other companies selling a similar product or service, what is unique about yours? These are key questions to ask yourself to make sure you have a clear picture of what your product is.

Price

The second P is price.

Choosing the right price for your product is a tricky balance. Setting it too high could mean that you lose out on sales, while setting it too low could mean you lose out on revenue. There is also the added factor of brand and product perception. For example, a high price suggests luxury, quality and exclusivity. A low price could mean either cheap or affordable, depending on the customer.

Place

Place is where you sell your product.

Consider how your target consumer shops. Are they young, having grown up with Amazon and other e-commerce sites? Or, do they prefer brick-and-mortar stores? The type of product you sell should influence this answer as well. For example, software is sold online because it’s not tangible. However, you could choose to sell clothing in a store, online or both.

The last P stands for promotion.

Successful businesses often use strong promotional campaigns to position themselves and their products in the market. Promotion can include any number of efforts, including:

• Public relations
• Print advertising
• Email marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Organic and paid social media content
• Organic and paid Google content

Place often helps you choose what path to take with promotion. For instance, it makes sense to promote online products through an online channel, such as email or social media. For in-store products, maybe you use physical advertising, such as billboards and signs.

Examples of the 4 Ps of Marketing

Every product or service has its own unique marketing mix. Let’s consider some examples for both products and services.

The 4 Ps of Marketing for Products

Consider a company that sells soda:

• Product: The product would be the can of soda.
• Price: The price would be how much the single can costs.
• Place: The place could be a grocery store, gas station, vending machine and/or sport stadium where the drink is sold.
• Promotion: The promotion could be any number of efforts, but it would probably include a physical component, such as a billboard, since it is a physical product.

When we think through an example like this, it becomes clear how one component of the marketing mix might influence another. For example, a can of soda usually costs more in a stadium than it does in a gas station. This means that place is influencing price.

The 4 Ps of Marketing for Services

Let’s use a music streaming platform as an example of how the 4 Ps apply to a service:

• Product: The product would be the platform’s music library.
• Price: The price would be the monthly or annual cost of the subscription to access the music library.
• Place: The place would be the app and/or site consumers use to access the library on their devices.
• Promotion: The promotion would probably use digital marketing efforts, such as social media, as it is a digital product.

How To Use the 4 Ps of Marketing

As you start figuring out how to implement the 4 Ps for your business, here are some questions to ask yourself.

Product

• What problem does your product solve for customers?
• What makes your product different from the competition?

By answering these two questions, you can come up with your “elevator pitch.” In other words, if you only had the length of an elevator ride to convince someone to purchase your product, what would you say?

Price

• How much does it cost to make your product?
• How much does it cost to promote your product?

Add these two amounts together. This total is the minimum amount you should charge for your product to break even. If you want to turn a profit, you need to charge more.

Place

• What does your ideal customer look like?
• Do they like to shop in stores or online?
• If they shop in stores, do they like local shops or big-name retailers?

Use the answers to these questions to meet your potential customers where they are.

Promotion

• What media does your ideal customer consume?
• Are they traditional (e.g., reading newspapers, watching cable)?
• Have they tapped into newer media channels (e.g., social media)?
• How much of a budget do you have for promotion?
• Are there any free/low-cost channels you can implement quickly while you work on larger campaigns?

Whatever media channels come up as you answer the above questions should be the channels you use to promote your product.

Additional Marketing Mixes

The 4 Ps are not the only marketing mix businesses use to bring a product to market. The 5 Ps and 7 Ps expand on this framework.

5 Ps

The 5 Ps build off of the 4 Ps by adding a P for people. People refer to both your employees and your customers. From the employee perspective, you want every person you hire — from the sales representative to the social media influencer — to represent your brand and your product well.

For customers, you must understand consumer behavior. Why do they buy what they buy? What about their personal beliefs and external surroundings influence their purchasing decisions? Knowing this information for your target audience can help you decide how to market your product to them so that you’re influenced to buy it.

7 Ps

The 7 Ps add process and physical evidence to the 5 Ps. All together, the 7 Ps of marketing are:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• People
• Process
• Physical evidence

Process refers to how you deliver your product to consumers. Think about how complicated the ordering process is, how long it takes for the product to ship and other factors that affect the buyer’s interaction with you beyond just the product itself.

Finally, physical evidence refers to anything that helps establish credibility for your business, convincing consumers to purchase your product. Does your website look professional? Do you have a lot of positive customer reviews? These factors and others affect whether potential buyers feel like you know what you’re doing.

The Bottom Line

The 4 Ps of marketing are a basic marketing concept. Individually, they are product, price, place and promotion, but together, they make up a marketing mix. A marketing mix is how a business creates a marketing strategy that successfully attracts customers.

Today, it’s common to see expanded versions of this framework. There are the 5 Ps, which include people, and the 7 Ps, which tack on process and physical evidence. Regardless of which framework you choose, using a marketing mix can help you identify how to market your product.