Getting the marketing mix correctly for your product or service means you are covering all of the important bases in your marketing campaign. Here is a definition of marketing mix and a description of its major components.

The term marketing mix refers to the primary elements that must be attended to in order to correctly market a product or service. Also known as The 4 Ps of Marketing, the marketing mix is a very useful, if a bit general, guideline for understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good marketing campaign. Here is a brief description of each component of the 4 Ps of the marketing combination.

Product: The marketing mix concept has its roots in the 1950s U.S. corporate marketing world, and the practice of marketing has obviously evolved tremendously since this term was formulated. One of the changes is that there are plenty more services available these days, such as those available online. Also, the difference between product and service has become more blurry (e.g., is a Web-based software application a product or a service?). Either approach, product here refers to products or services. The product or service you provide needs to be able to meet a specific, existing marketplace demand. Or, you need to be able to build a market niche through building a powerful brand.

Price: The price you set for your product or service plays a significant role in its marketability. Pricing for products or services that are more commonly available in the market is more elastic, meaning that unit sales will go up or down more responsively in reaction to price changes. By contrast, those products that have a usually more limited availability in the market (but with heavy demand) are more inelastic, meaning that price changes will not have an effect on unit sales very much. The price elasticity of your product or service can be determined through various market testing methods.

Place: This term really refers to any way that the customer can obtain a product or receive a service. Provision of a product or service can occur via any number of distribution channels, such as in a retail store, through the mail, via downloadable files, on a cruise ship, in a hair salon, etc. The ease and options through which you can make your product or service obtainable to your customers will have an effect on your sales quantity.

Promotion: Promotion is concerned with any vehicle you employ for getting people to know more about your product or service. Advertising, public relations, point-of-sale displays, and word-of-mouth promotion are all traditional ways for promoting a product. Promotional advertising can be seen as a way of closing the information breach between would-be sellers and would-be buyers. Your choice of promotional marketing strategies will be dependent upon your budget, the type of product or service you are advertising, and availability of the mentioned promotional marketing material.







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