When a company needs to market its products/services, it needs to create a marketing strategy. A strategy helps combine multiple elements to serve its customers better and achieve specific business goals like capturing the market, improving business goals, etc. A marketing mix is a popular way to create a marketing strategy for your brand. We’ve discussed how you can use the 7Ps marketing mix to create a marketing strategy in this blog.
What is the 7Ps marketing mix?
A marketing mix refers to the business's activities to satisfy customer needs and position their product/service in the market. The 7Ps in the marketing mix stand for product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence.
What are the elements of the 7Ps marketing mix?
The first step to creating the 7Ps marketing mix is to know its elements. In this blog post, we’ve answered the question businesses have, ‘’What are the elements of the 7Ps marketing mix?”
Taking the case of a mobile phone company, we have discussed the 7Ps marketing mix with examples.
Product
Product refers to the key features and benefits the product brings for its user. The quality of the product, what problem it is solving, and how the product adds value to the customer are important factors that a brand needs to keep in mind while formulating the Product part of its marketing mix.
Application: A mobile phone company may provide customers with benefits like an enhanced camera to click better photographs, a high level of storage to download and use multiple applications, etc.
Price
Price refers to the pricing strategy that the company will adopt to promote its product/service. This pricing strategy is based on multiple factors like the competition in that product segment, product features and benefits, level of demand and supply, etc.
Application: The mobile phone company may determine the price of the product/service based on factors like product positioning in the market, level of competition for that segment of product, product features, benefits and models/variants, etc.
Promotion
Promotion refers to specific strategies that help marketers familiarize their audience with the brand and promote the product. For example, advertising campaigns through digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, or through offline media, etc.
Application: A mobile phone company may launch online advertisements related to the new models of phones that it launches in the market or leverage offline advertising techniques like billboards at multiple outdoor locations.
Place
The place refers to the location where a product will be distributed/sold or where the target audience can avail of a specific service.
Application: The mobile phone company can first determine the geographies at the country level where it will sell the mobile phones. Next, it can plan out the specific locations in multiple cities like districts at the state level or neighbourhoods where it anticipates that selling its mobile phones will help it earn revenue.
People
People refers to the individuals directly or indirectly involved with a product/service. For instance, people can refer to employees from the production stage to the operations, to marketing, to sales, to after- sales service; whoever has been instrumental in the product’s journey to the shelf and beyond. In addition, people who have in-depth knowledge about the product and can represent the brand in communicating its value and offerings are also included in people.
Application: Everyone from the people in the sales, marketing departments, to the after-sales support departments in the mobile phone company who have been a part of the phone’s journey, from manufacturing to reaching the store to customer service are included in people. Moreover, people who can vouch for the product and its offerings are also included.
Process
Process refers to the series of steps that a business takes while delivering the final product/service to its customers. These processes are constantly changed as per business requirements/needs.
Application: The process in the case of a mobile phone company can be from when a mobile phone is manufactured to when it is transported to a physical store to be sold to the customers. To make the buying process and purchase decision easier, mobile phone companies have experience centers where consumers can experience the product even before making a purchase.
Physical Evidence
Physical evidence refers to everything that a customer views while looking at a product/service, which proves that the brand exists. For example, the physical store, the website, or experience center. This physical evidence should be in sync with your brand/product to the extent that people associate your brand with what they see, hear, taste, listen and smell. For example, the interiors of a particular mobile store are as per the brand guidelines and the product packaging.
Application: In the case of a mobile store, the front interior of the mobile store, the outer box of the mobile phone, and the mobile phone design are examples of physical evidence.
Importance of the 7Ps Marketing Mix
Here are the reasons why it is important to create a 7Ps Marketing Mix:
Ensures the implementation of a holistic strategy
A marketing mix model enables the implementation of a holistic marketing strategy combining the 7Ps of marketing. The holistic marketing strategy creates a positive image of a business by demonstrating how different business functions can come together to help attain organizational objectives.
Helps in aligning and allocating organizational resources efficiently
The marketing mix model helps appropriately align & allocate resources to marketing activities. For example, the business may allocate costs to product manufacturing (product) or advertising activities (promotional activities) and align the other resources to fetch the common objective of marketing.
Helps in new product development and marketing planning
The marketing mix helps in the process of new product development and marketing planning. The 7 Ps of marketing combine to enable a product launch to take place, from conceptualization to delivery to the customer.
Conclusion
The 7Ps marketing mix is an integral part of a company’s marketing plan. If you wish to benefit from marketing strategy services that can help you grow your brand, contact Let’s Build Brands. You can visit our services page to learn more about our offerings.
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