You might have heard about the 4 Ps of marketing, but now, when conventional marketing is getting revolutionized by every passing day, the key factors of marketing are now up to 7. Marketing experts mainly talk about the 7 Ps of marketing, and since everything has been gradually going digital, that is why the same 7 Ps of marketing are being utilized by digital marketing experts of this era.
Today, if you are not online, you are nowhere. In the 21st century, technologies have evolved so rapidly that conventional marketing has also gone digital in every sense. Before, big organizations had simple marketing departments with statistics for sales and customer service. Now, most organizations have separate digital marketing departments which work on factors like sales, conversions, online reputation, branding, etc. Therefore, the same 7 Ps of the marketing mix have been revolutionized into the digital model as well.
A Review of the 7 Ps of the Marketing Mix
Before we talk about how the 7 Ps can be adapted to digital marketing, let’s that a look at what they are:
- Price: This factor decides the pricing strategy for each product.
- Placement: What is the placement strategy to reach customers? What are the distribution options?
- Product: Rather than selecting the right customer for your product, focus on selecting the right product for your customer.
- Promotion: How will you use various mediums and online media for the promotion of your product efficiently and effectively?
- People: Understanding customers as well as potential customers is crucial through market research.
- Process: What process will you follow to ensure a flawless service delivery, measuring the augmented services and watching the response time?
- Physical Evidence: How will you maximize the customer experience using impressive architecture, well-trained staff and obviously a great online experience?
Now that we have reviewed the primary purpose of the 7 Ps of the marketing mix, lets dive into how these 7 Ps can be improvised digitally.
1. Pinpointing Proper Pricing
After the emergence of the digital world, the competition has also increased rapidly. It has become essential to strategize the pricing of your product or services. Even if a possibility exists that someone might be selling a similar product or similar services to yours, you need to understand about your online consumer is expecting from you. And what the customer is going to pay a for the value of your product.
2. Identifying the Right Placement Strategy
As briefly described above, your placement strategy needs to be impeccable to get your product in front of the right customer at the right time. In the online world, you have to wisely utilize all the available digital marketing options including both paid and the non-paid methodologies. Additionally, you may require an expert opinion about which platform to use and how.
3. Considering the Science of Product
Rather than finding the right customers for your product, find the right product for your customer. This is the key to to having a successful product. Many examples could be found of companies that launch new products, only to fail miserable? Why? It’s because of the lack on online market research and finding the suitable product for your customer.
4. Promoting on the Right Channel
Here comes one of the most critical point of the marketing mix. I have personally seen many companies doing the wrong marketing through the wrong channels because they haven’t understood the key difference between the bricks and mortar and the real online world. Marketers need to understand that same strategy can’t be applied on the promotion of every product, on every channel. One has to understand and study the customer’s needs, wants and demands, then sketch a flawless promotion strategy that uses digital.
5. Understanding People
Understanding the target market or the target audience is the key factor for the success of your online marketing strategy. You need to conduct market research so you can understand the actual desires of your potential customers.
6. Executing and Measuring the Process
Measurement of the results and key performance indicators in the digital world is often easier because everything is automated and is working on a predefined set of rules for execution and measurement. When you are going digital with the 7 Ps, you can instantly change the set of rules you have been following for the marketing, improvising your methodology to get closer to your goals.
7. Leveraging the Digital Environment
Your physical environment and your physical evidence is the key to maximizing your customer experience and turning your customers into a loyal customers. When you are talking about to use your physical environment digitally, the environment becomes websites, landing pages, newsletters, customer support and augmented services. These environments form the user experience and let you turn your customers into loyal customers, increasing your conversion rates up to magical extents.
If you are well-versed in the 7 Ps of the marketing mix, you should be able to execute these digital strategies. Otherwise, find someone who has mastered the art of improvising the above-mentioned 7 Ps of marketing digitally, and watch how it changes your business.