What is the marketing mix?

It a saying that’s well known in business: if you don’t know your target audience well enough – and have figured out what they want exactly – you’ll commit business suicide and the company will inevitably fail.

You can be sure of attracting mountain loads of profits if you have a good insight into these concepts. Have an in-depth understanding of this and you will know exactly how to maximise profits in your own sustainable business, become a valuable asset within your company or gain endless promotions.

Unfortunately, for many existing digital marketers and those aspiring to be digital marketers, the concept of target audience is glossed over. People think that “everyone seems to know what it is” so it is not discussed because who the company is selling to is disregarded as basic knowledge.

What is the marketing mix?

The marketing mix definition is not complicated. It is about placing the correct product – or a combination thereof – in the correct place, at the right time, and at the right price. The challenging part is doing this well as you need to know every aspect of your business plan.

The marketing mix is associated with the:

• 4Ps of marketing,
• 7Ps of service marketing, and
• 4Cs theories.

In this article, we’ll have a closer look at the 4Ps.

The Marketing 4Ps

The marketing 4Ps are the basis of the idea of marketing mix.

#1 Marketing Mix – Product

The term ‘product’ refers to an item which is built or produced in order to satisfy the requirements of a certain group of people. The product can be intangible, or tangible, because it can be in the form of services or goods.

Make sure that you are designing the correct type of product which your marketing wants. This means that during the product development phase, the digital marketer must perform extensive research on the life cycle of the product that is being created.

A product has a particular life cycle which includes the growth phase, the maturity phase as well as the sales decline phase. It is essential for digital marketers to reinvent their products in order to stimulate more demand once these reach the sales decline phase.

Digital marketers must also design the right product mix. It may be a good idea to expand your current product mix by diversifying as well as increasing the depth of your product line. All in all, digital marketers must ask themselves the question “what can I do to offer a better product to this group of people than my competitors can.

#2 Marketing Mix – Price

The price of the product is the amount which a customer pays for it. Price is an extremely important component of the market and a marketing plan because price determines your firm’s profits and survival. Altering the price of the product has a huge impact on the entire digital marketing strategy as well as greatly affects the sales of, and demand for, the product.

This is intrinsically a sensitive area. If a business is new to the market, and has not made a name for themselves as of yet, it is not likely that your target market will want to pay a high price. Although they may be inclined to hand over large sums of money in the future, it is inevitably more difficult to get them to do so during the first couple of years of a business.

#3 Marketing Mix – Place

‘Placement’ or ‘distribution’ is very important to get right because you have to position as well as distribute the product in a place that is available to potential buyers. This comes with a deep knowledge of your target market. Have a good understanding of them – inside out – and you will discover the most efficient positioning and distribution channels that directly speak to your market.

#4 Marketing Mix – Promotion

Promotion is a vital component of digital marketing because it can boost brand recognition as well as sales. Promotion consists of various elements such as:

• Sales Organisation,
• Public Relations,
• Advertising, and
• Sales Promotion.

The term ‘advertising’ typically encompasses paid-for communication methods such as television advertisements, radio commercials, print media as well as advertisements on the Internet. In recent times, there looks to be a shift to focus on the online world as opposed to the offline one.

There are many distribution strategies. These include:

• Intensive distribution
• Exclusive distribution
• Selective distribution

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about advertising and digital marketing? Check out this course by following this link.