Last editedJun 20212 min read
The marketing world is full of professional secrets, and the 5 Ps, or 5Ps of marketing, are guidelines many marketing pros should follow.
The 5 Ps of marketing
The 5Ps stand for:
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Let’s look at each of the 5 Ps in a bit more depth.
Product
Describe your product in detail. Identify what makes it different or special and worthy of customer interest compared to competitors. Understand the issue or demand that your product is looking to answer or fix and say precisely how it does that.
Product decisions also need to cover things like packaging, quality, appearance, and added features like warranty.
Price
What will you charge for your offering? This is a crucial piece of information for customers, and also for your own profit. Your pricing needs to be sustainable to cover your expenses, but it also needs to be an amount that your targeted customers are willing to pay. As with the first of the 5 Ps, knowing what the competition is up to is vital.
Pricing also needs to match your branding. Are you positioning yourself as a premium product? Then don’t sell for budget prices. Similarly, if your brand is trying to create a value-for-money identity, then your pricing needs to prove it.
Place
Where do you plan to sell your product or service? Again, you should look at competition, but you also need to make sure you fully understand your customer. For example, a fast fashion crowd will no doubt expect social media marketing, online purchasing, and delivery to their door, so limiting your offering to a click-and-collect service only just won’t work.
Place also refers to expansion, for example, if you should consider an additional location. For online businesses, considering this one of the 5 Ps may also lead to the decision to make an offline location, such as a pop-up store.
Promotion
The fourth of the 5 Ps is concerned with how you promote your product. Again, this has to do with understanding your market. As mentioned above, some customers will fully expect you to have a strong social media marketing presence, while other customer segments may expect TV and radio commercials. Most modern companies will need to embrace an omnichannel marketing plan.
A ROI analysis will help you find the best route for your promotional efforts. You may find targeted marketing could be a good match for your brand, and based on this data, a certain type of promotion may become apparent, such as sponsorship.
People
The 5 Ps of marketing was once known as the 4 Ps, and people is a newer addition. The people you invite to join your business on its journey can make a big difference to how you operate. From helpful sales people to innovate marketing teams, you need to pick the best people, and you also need to know how to attract them. In many ways, the previous 4 Ps directly impact this, as they help boost brand awareness, which attracts not just customers but also talent.
People can also refer to the connections you make, be that through followers on social media, through would-be collaborators in your shared office space, or with suppliers. This last of the 5 Ps also considers things like training the people you have, to keep employee satisfaction high.
Using product, price, place, promotion
The perfect marketing mix will strike a balance between each of the 5 Ps. So, before you go ahead with your marketing plan, make sure you’ve given them all due consideration.
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