Marketing mix: learn how to define the value proposition that your company offers!
- The marketing mix is essential for defining your company’s value proposition. Visit our blog and check out the full article on the subject!
- Before we delve into the concept of marketing mix, also known as marketing mix or simply 4P’s, have you ever wondered what marketing is?
Understanding the marketing mix: what is marketing, after all?
- Marketing is related to sales strategy, promoting brands, products and services, and increasing profits; in short, there are infinite possibilities with which marketing is related – directly or indirectly. But, for the study to have focus, we will stick to the definition of marketing as “understanding and meeting the needs of the target audience of a given company, brand or organization (which can be for-profit or non-profit)”.
- Marketing is a potent tool for the success of your business and can create needs in people. Yes, develop conditions! And when we talk about needs, we are not just referring to markets in the basic sense linked to human survival; we are referring, above all, to those that are symbolic, which are related to the need for belonging and our identity. Extended conditions are generated from consumer trends.
- But what are these consumer trends? We can translate the concept into some names: Nike, Adidas, Instagram, iPhone, MacBook… Everything that surrounds the universe of marketing, advertising and influence trendsetters.
Need + desire = demand/marketing.
- In short, marketing is built on the perfect equation between need and desire, which generates what we popularly know as demand. Yes, need and desire are different things; after all, not everything we desire is a need and not everything we need is a desire.
- To understand, requirements can be physical/basic, individual or social/belonging. Desire is a feeling, a quality when your market has a motivation, which can be due to internal or external factors. Finally, demand comes into existence when there is a need and desire together, supported by the market and opportunities for consumer experience.
Understanding the marketing mix as a tool for defining your company’s value proposition:
- Considering these aspects, knowing the Management and Marketing Composite, popularly known as Marketing Mix or 4P, is essential. The term was first coined in 1978 by Jerome McCarthy, an American author, and later adopted by Philip Kotler, known as the “father of marketing”.
- In theory, McCarthy’s marketing mix is structured around four pillars: product, place, price and promotion. Each of them is important in understanding the company’s value proposition, and it is essential to carry out this study initially to position yourself about the market competitors, considering internal and external factors.
- Marketing mix – Product: as the name suggests, the product in the marketing mix will bring together the characteristics of goods and services. It is in the effect that we will have access to the product’s features, its functionalities, design/interface, aroma, colours, packaging, flavours and other variables involved;
- Marketing mix – Place: the place in the marketing mix relates to the entire product distribution process (where it can be found, its physical and logistical location and other aspects for it to reach the consumer)
- Marketing mix – Price: price involves all the variables and elements that result in the cost of the product for its consumer. In addition to price, factors such as payment methods and conditions are also considered here;
- Marketing mix – Promotion: promotion is not strictly related to the popularly known concept of promotion, in the sense of “cheapening” the product. Of course, making the price of a good or service more accessible can be a form of promotion. Still, it is not the only one: promotion deals with the entire process of active communication of the product’s attributes and its campaigns, promotional actions and vehicles that will be used to advertise it, and this is where, for example, the work of advertising and digital marketing comes in.
Heineken – 4Ps:
- Using a real case study, we can illustrate an essential marketing mix for Heineken, a beer brand: Heineken’s product is beer, a consumer good that can be found in cans or long-neck bottles; the square (that is, the places where this product is sold) is at POS’s – Points of Sale, such as bars and supermarkets; the price usually varies between R$5.00 and R$10.00 and, finally, the promotion is carried out in on and off media, on the Internet, social networks, on posters, bus stops, street clocks, commercials TV, etc.
But is McCarthy’s marketing mix alone enough?
- Despite being extremely widespread over all these years, McCarthy’s marketing mix is no longer sufficient to meet the contemporary contexts of advertising and digital marketing. For a long time, companies and brands owned the most popular communication vehicles (TV and radio, in this case), and there was a monopoly. Today, with access to the Internet, the consumer’s role is more active than ever, so marketing guidelines must start from the outside in.
In addition to the 4P’s marketing mix, there are also others!
- McCarthy’s marketing mix, widely publicized by Kotler, began to receive criticism in the 1990s and was questioned by Robert F. Lauterborn, who proposed a contemporary marketing mix known as the 4C’s: Customer, Cost, Convenience and Communication.
- In 1993, Lauterborn already advocated looking at more active customer participation (what does the customer think of my product?), cost (what efforts should the customer make to acquire the product?), convenience (how Can my company or brand facilitate customer access to the product?) and communication (how can my company or brand adapt the product to my customer’s repertoire?).
- In practice, the succession of studies and theories after the 4Ps does not mean that McCarthy’s marketing mix has lost its value. Instead, it must be combined with other strategies and concepts to provide effective results in contemporary marketing.
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