Your Simple Guide to the 8 Ps of Marketing

The 8 Ps of marketing is product, price, place, promotion, people, positioning, processes, and performance. The goal is to get them working together for your marketing mix. If you can you’ll have a much better chance to attract and convert your potential customers. 

When your marketing feels inconsistent, the problem may not be one bad campaign. Different parts of your marketing mix may be working against each other.

That misalignment can contribute to weaker launches, mixed messaging, and results that are difficult to interpret. The 8 Ps give you a practical framework for identifying those gaps and building a more coordinated strategy.

In this guide, we’ll break down each of the 8 Ps, explain how they work together, and show you how to apply them to your marketing.

What is a marketing mix?

A marketing mix is holistic marketing. It's a framework to approach the marketing strategy for your products or services. And it centers on your target market.

It helps you resonate with customers. And it gives direction to  various activities and marketing management across departments in your company.

With an effective marketing mix, you can achieve company goals with various elements working together.

The marketing mix is most commonly associated with the American Marketing Association’s 4 Ps framework: product, price, place, and promotion.

It later expanded into the popular 7 Ps marketing mix, which adds people, process, and physical evidence. And even the 7Cs Compass Model.

This expanded model is commonly used for services because it accounts for the people delivering the service, the processes shaping the experience, and the physical evidence customers use to judge an intangible offer.

But if you're like us, you like to take things a step further. The 8 Ps adds 'performance' to the list.

These 8 Ps are more helpful for a modern marketing mix of digital channels, and more complex customer journeys.

There is no single universal 8 Ps model. Different versions add elements such as positioning, performance, physical evidence, productivity, packaging, or partnerships.

This guide uses the version that best connects strategy, delivery, and measurement in a general use case.

What does a marketing mix look like?

Weed Man is a company I remember from my childhood for being particularly good at putting this altogether.

They're an excellent example of a service marketing mix.

It's a weed-killing service whose core product and sales promotion work together for a services marketing extravaganza.

They successfully combine marketing mix elements to promote their offer and gain customers. 

Their core product self promotes by how green the lawn is. And their sign is one of their advertising tools that work on many levels. 

It signals to people to be aware that there are chemicals present. And also that they can have a green lawn too, simply by calling the number. There's even a referral program. 

These extra marketing mix elements drive marketing objectives in a cost effective way. 

So what are the 8 Ps of Marketing?

Product

The first of the 8 Ps is product. This is the thing you sell. Products are both the tangible and intangible products and services you offer. 

Done well, your product can become a marketing device in and of itself. It can turn customers into brand advocates. 

Think of how Apple's identifiable design choices turned users into brand ambassadors. The white ear buds, logo facing out, and even the iPhone camera distinct designs promote Apple.

Hotmail reportedly reached around 12 million users in less than a year after adding a referral message to outgoing emails.

Marketing services can do this too. Some companies do this with a disclaimer and link on client sites.

Price

Your pricing policies are one of the most important things to nail down. The dollar amount you set for your product or service has ripple effects. 

Your pricing strategy affects your profitability. It can determine who your potential customers will be. And it can affect customer satisfaction.

This is especially true in competitive industries where penetration pricing drives promotion strategy.

This is where new companies, to gain market shares and 'penetrate' the market, undersell competitors and eventually create a race to the bottom.

To avoid this, you'll want to conduct a considerable amount of analysis of your target market.

Cost-based pricing considers the costs involved - labor and resources. But don't forget to factor in the demand and competitor pricing.

It will help you determine a pricing that will speak positively of your product. And it will have a big impact in the success of your marketing department and business development team.

• Price too low and it can impact your brand image.

• Price too high and your target customers may ignore you.
  

Place

Place refers to where your product or service is bought, sold, and experienced. This is very different depending on the business.

Retail is obviously different from digital products online. And products are different from services. 

It is important for there to be consistency. Customer experience should ideally be consistent across all channels. We also explore this in our guide to content marketing for schools.

Place can also refer to promotional channels.

One of the most important things for a market plan is to determine where your target audience is (you may also want to check out our guide to SEO vs content marketing).

Where can your customers find out about your product/service?

This helps you know where to advertise your offer. A successful marketing strategy will focus on the channels where your target audience spends their time. 

This is why companies will sponsor sporting events or Michael Bay movies in return for product placement.

Promotion

Promotion is all that you do to get people interested in buying your product or service.

It's all of your marketing communications:

• Direct marketing
• Traditional advertising
• Product placements,
• Public relations
• And more...

One of the most effective ways to promote is through integrated marketing communications.

This again refers to holistic marketing. It means you share a consistent message across all owned, earned, and paid media channels.

Your marketing blog, social media (see a comparison of Facebook pages vs groups here), ads, partnerships through public relations, and more.

A shared message across these channels will increase your market coverage and keep you top of mind. 

A digital marketing strategy with online marketing campaigns centered on an honest benefit can help maintain a consistent message at scale.

It helps build familiarity with potential customers. This leads to trust and positive expectations with your brand.

People

People refers to your marketing team and all people responsible for your marketing. And what they think about your prospects will have a critical impact on your marketing efforts. It will bleed through and show in everything they do.

The first step in creating a marketing plan is understanding who your target market is. It's important to understand your audience and create detailed buyer personas.

This will help you speak directly to various needs, goals, and roadblocks of your target market with clarity and purpose. 

That's why an effective content marketing team takes a human approach to the SEO efforts.

Respect and empathy are more than just keywords. They are words with deep meaning and the foundation of a sustainable marketing strategy.

It's critical for everyone involved in promoting your offer, including affiliates to be aligned here. Each plays a role in your overall brand reputation. 

Positioning

Your positioning is what helps you highlight the unique features of your offer. 

It also helps direct and benefit your public relations strategy. How you'll communicate with customers and prospects.

All other aspects of your marketing mix and competitive environment will play a direct role in your positioning.

Consider what you offer and to who. Who are they, what do they want, how can you help them get it.

It can be helpful to create a product mix that matches various markets. This can take time to develop though and you'll want to be very strategic.

You don't want to hurt your brand image trying to please the masses.

It's very difficult for luxury brands to maintain prestige with budget priced offerings.

Processes

This refers to how your company delivers products and services to customers. It other words, your service performance. 

It also affects planned marketing and campaign processes that encapsulate your promotional efforts. This is true at each stage of your sales funnel.

Both products and services require detailed processes. Good processes are a significant competitive advantage. Luckily, with widespread digital integration, we are blessed.

We have access to countless tools to help with sales funnels, re-targeting, and checkout processes. They help maintain a consistent customer experience. 

Combine detailed and refined processes with high standards in customer service and you have a recipe for success.

Processes can also help align your team through fair and standardized key performance indicators. You can set clear, company-wide expectations.

And of course it helps save you the cost of time when training new hires.

Performance

Performance tells you whether your marketing is producing the results you expected.

Revenue is important, but it is only one measure. Depending on your goals, you may also track:

• Customer acquisition cost: How much you spend to gain each new customer
• Conversion rate: How many prospects complete the action you want them to take
• Retention: How many customers continue buying from or working with you
• Customer satisfaction: How customers rate their experience with your company
• Brand visibility: How often people discover, search for, or talk about your brand

Choose the measures that connect most closely to your marketing objectives. Then review them regularly to see which parts of your marketing mix are working and where changes are needed.

Tools such as Google Analytics life cycle reports can help you examine the customer journey from acquisition through engagement, monetisation, and retention.

Performance should help you make better decisions. It should show you where to invest more, what to improve, and what to stop doing.

How to Apply the 8 Ps to Your Marketing Strategy

The 8 Ps are most useful when you turn them into a practical review of your current marketing.

1. Choose the right marketing mix

Start with the model that fits your business and your goals.

The original 4 Ps may be enough for a straightforward product or campaign. Service businesses may need the 7 Ps. Use the 8 Ps in this guide when positioning, internal processes, and performance measurement also need attention.

2. Audit each P

Review each part of your current marketing mix.

Ask whether your product solves a clear problem, your price matches its value, and your promotion reaches the right people. Then examine your positioning, team, delivery processes, and results.

3. Identify the weakest links

Look for areas where one P is undermining the others.

Y

ou may have a strong product but unclear positioning. Your promotion may attract attention, but a weak sales process may prevent conversions. Focus first on the gaps with the greatest effect on the customer journey.

4. Assign an owner to each priority

Give each improvement to a specific person or team.

Set one clear action, a deadline, and an expected result. This prevents the marketing mix from becoming a planning exercise that nobody implements.

5. Review your metrics each month

Track the measures that connect to your goals, such as revenue, customer acquisition cost, conversion rate, retention, customer satisfaction, and brand visibility.

Reviewing these metrics each month helps you see whether your changes are working. It also lets you adjust your marketing mix before small problems become expensive ones.

Kickstart Your Marketing Mix Today

The 8 Ps of marketing can be used as a marketing mix framework for any type of business or organization. 

It's remarkably effective as a form of symbiotic marketing that applies to all types of products and services.

And it'll help you think deeply about your target segment so that you can spread your message with the most effective customer-focused marketing mix possible.

Find the Weak Links in Your Marketing

If you're not sure which parts of your marketing mix need attention, you can always send us your website URL for a short site review. We’ll identify the main content, positioning, and conversion gaps we can see, so you know what to fix first.

Request your free site review.