I imagine that you have thought about the article's title and said "who want to kill his product?" Right?
Well, today that is what we will discuss about, and by saying you killing your product, i mean without your intention of course. But after reading this article, if you did it, then you will be killing it with premeditation.
Through this article we will know the importance of the 4Ps of Marketing (known as Marketing Mix), and how we make sure the homogeneity of the 4 of them.
But first, let me tell you a story.
This story is about a violinist in the rush hour in a subway in USA. He played for 45 minutes straight, in that time, he was passed by hundreds of people and only about a dozen of them gave him some attention, after that 45 minutes, he came up with about $52. Perhaps it is normal to you, but what is not normal is the person who was playing was Joshua Bell, one of the most renowned violinist in USA, and the violin that he was holding worths 3.5 million USD, and this same violinist had has an event the night before with average price of a ticket 100$.
Same person, same thing, he made 52$ in the subway and more than 100K in the event.
Sorry for boring you with a repetitive story that you may have heard it a million times. But in that story you'll find a practical example of the importance of the 4Ps.
So, let's analyse his 4Ps:
- Product: is the violinist himself and his art is one of a kind.
- Price: in the subway was quasi-free (52$). It gave the idea of unimportance, nobody gave attention to him. Here we can see that price is important, sometimes upping the price might change the conversion.
- Place: in this situation, it was an important factor. The place where he played- subway- wasn't appropriate and time is also a factor, while when it was in theatre, it was fitting for it.
- Promotion: in the subway, there wasn't anykind of promotion (advertisement) for him, while when it was in theatre it was well promoted and let people know who is this person in the first place.
Now, do you see the importance of the 4Ps.
This social experiment was done by "the washington post" to study the priorities of the people and their perception.
But for us, how can we benefit from it in Marketing?
The conclusion of the lesson of this experiment is how you kil your product with your own hands, when you don't give improtance to all elements of the 4Ps.
In contrary, with the same product when you make homogeneity of the 4Ps, good price, timing, place, and promotion, All this give successful results and strengthen your product, because the value of a product itself is not enough.
Let me tell you that the opposite is right also, if you put a high price, a chic place, and good promotion, but the real value of your product isn't there, then your product won't succeed, even if it was a success in the short terme, but not for the long run, everybody will know that the product doesn't have a value.
But before all of the 4Ps, there's segmentation, targeting, and positioning.
Choosing the right segment, and targeting this segment with the appropriate product/service, and finally doing a good positioning to the brand and services, those are all essentials to succeeding.
This social experiment showed us the importance of homogeneity of the strategies in general and specially the 4Ps, and how can we benefit from it in our work with practical exercise.
To conclude, the 4Ps are vital for a successful product. Here's an article explaining the 4Ps in depth:
I hope you took some infos from this article, and i will be writing about segmentation, targeting, and positioning in the near future, so stay tuned.