The Marketing Mix

Video Transcription

Hello, and welcome to this tutorial on the Marketing Mix. And, as always with these tutorials, please feel free to fast forward, pause, or rewind as many times as you need in order to get the most out of the time you're going to spend here.

Now, let me ask you a question to start off. What can we use to make sure we're getting marketing right? We talked about marketing before and how important it is, so how do we know we're doing it right?

It's a big part of what the success or failure of our company is going to be. So what we're going to talk about during this lesson is going to be the marketing mix. We're also going to talk about the 4 rights and the 4 P's model. The key terms for this lesson are going to be the 4 P's. So let's start off with the marketing mix.

The marketing mix is those key tools and decisions that bring products to the marketplace for a business. And there's several models that we can choose from that are out there. And we're going to focus on just a couple of them today. But it's everything I need to get from resource, to production, to getting it to the final consumer's hands. That is what the marketing mix is.

Now, the 4 P's are going to be our primary focus today. And the 4 P's is a marketing mix for organizations looking at product, price, place, and promotion. And we're going to be looking at each one of these in more detail in later tutorials.

Right now, I also want to talk about the 4 rights because they closely relate to the 4 P's. Now, the 4 rights consist of the right product. I need the right product to get to the market.

If people don't want to buy my product, it's not going to do me any good. So it has to be right for who it is I'm aiming for.

I also need to have the right price. Price it too high and no one will buy it. Price it too low and I'm not going to make any money and my business ends up failing.

It needs to be in the right place. It needs to be in a place where people can expect to buy it or it makes sense for them to go to purchase that. If it has to be out of the way, if people have to work to go and find my product, they're not going to find it. And they're not going to buy it.

And it has to be at the right time. If something is way too advanced and too complicated, people won't buy it. If it's behind the technology curve, it's yesterday's news if you will. People won't buy it.

Any one of these that fails or is incorrect and our product isn't going to sell. So these are very important. And we have to look at the right product, price, place, and time for every product that we want to get out there. Let's think about the Apple iPhone.

It was the right product. People were looking for something that was the replacement, the next generation for what was the pager and then finally the flip cellphone.

It was the right time. People had become comfortable with technology. They had become comfortable with internet use. And this was seen as a major improvement, a major convenience for them. They set it at a price that people were willing to pay for it. So they didn't have a problem with price.

And they put it in the right place. They partnered with service providers. They put it in retail stores. And they sold it at the Apple Store. It was in a place, or places, that people understood. It made sense for them to go look for this particular product.

And next we're going to look at that 4 P's model we defined earlier. Now, the 4 P's is the most well-known model. There's a lot of different models out there, but this is the one that's probably used the most. Or at least, is talked about the most.

Remember, it's that product, price, place, and promotion. And these are elements that the business can control. These are internal. These are not things that are external to the business, external to the product that the business has no control over. These things we can influence directly.

Now as I said before, this model focuses on the whole mix of the marketing plan and the marketing of a particular product. But there are other ones out there.

For instance, the 8 P's. The 8 P's consist of product, price, promotion, place, people that are going to be using, the process I'm going to be using to make or market it, and the programs and performance. A little complicated, huh?

You kind of see why the 4 P's starts to look a lot better. It's simple.

Also, the 4 C's. The customer's needs and wants, which, as you can imagine, are pretty important. If it not be the customer's needs and wants, I'm not making the right product. The convenience. Is it easy to buy? Is it easy to find? Is it easy to sell? Is it easy to service? What's the cost to the customer?

And lastly, communication. How do I communicate with the customer to make sure that they're getting the information they need in order to make a purchase for my product? So those are the four P's and some of the other marketing methods or mixes that we use in business. So what did we learn today in this lesson?

Well, we looked at the marketing mix. Those key tools and processes within marketing decisions that businesses use to bring products to the marketplace, to us, the consumer. We also looked at those 4 rights. We have to make sure that our product is in the right place, at the right time, at the right price. And, of course, it needs to be the right product that people are willing to buy.

And we also looked at that 4 P's model-- price, product, promotion, and place. Then we also talked a little bit about some other ones, just to realize that the 4 P's is not the only marketing mix in town.

I want to thank you for spending some time with me. It's been great as always, and I hope you guys have a great day.