What is the marketing mix?

Imagine trying to bake a cake without knowing the ingredients. You might get close, but chances are, something will be missing. Marketing is no different. The marketing mix is your recipe: a strategic blend of elements that, when combined just right, creates something irresistible.

Whether you're promoting a product or launching a new service, mastering the balance between product, price, place and promotion is the secret to baking up success in today's competitive landscape. So, how do these four ingredients come together to form the perfect marketing mix? Let’s find out.

The original four Ps of marketing

E. Jerome McCarthy introduced the four Ps concept in his 1960's book "Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach." The four Ps of marketing (product, price, place and promotion) serve as a framework for developing marketing strategies and tactics.

This model was later popularized and widely adopted in marketing theory and practice, becoming a foundational concept for marketers around the world.

Even if you don't know the four Ps, you probably use them in your marketing mix. Otherwise, you'd have an extremely difficult time influencing your target audience. Want to reach a higher level of brand salience? This is the path to a successful marketing strategy.

What are the four components of the marketing mix? Let's dig into it.

1. Product

The product is... well, it's the thing a company sells. Of course, it isn't necessarily a physical item like a jacket or a sandwich. It could just as easily be a service like dog-walking or a streaming app.

When considering your product, pinpoint what differentiates it from other options in the market. Why would someone choose this product over its competitors?

2. Price

How much do you charge for your product? Your pricing strategy is critical in whether people want to purchase a product.

There are a lot of things to think about when choosing a product pricing strategy, such as:

• The minimum amount you must charge to earn a profit
• The real and perceived value of your product
• Whether other companies sell similar products at lower or higher prices

3. Promotion

Promotion includes all the advertising and marketing assets you use to reach your target customers.

In McCarthy's day, a good promotional mix might include television commercials, newspaper advertisements and sponsorships. Today, you might want to include aspects of:

• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Direct marketing
• Customer loyalty campaigns
• Influencer marketing
• Sales promotion an Discount codes

In other words, you'll need to add digital marketing assets to the basic marketing efforts McCarthy would have chosen.

4. Place

This fourth P is a funny one because the actual term should be "distribution." McCarthy probably chose to call it place, though, because he wanted a succinct concept that was easy to remember.

"Three P's and a D" isn't as sticky as "the Four Ps." As a marketing expert, stickiness would have appealed to McCarthy.

Place is about the distribution channels you use. It's where and how customers can buy products. For example, you might sell products through brick-and-mortar stores or an e-commerce platform.

Don't restrict your thinking about place to where people spend their money, though. It's important to consider where they'll encounter other aspects of your brand, such as on social media accounts and your website.

Further reading: The art and science of marketing channel strategy

Unofficial Ps worth thinking about

The marketing strategy that worked yesterday might not yield the same results today. Your goal is always a moving target, which is why some people recommend updating the four Ps.

After all, McCarthy's book came out more than two decades before the beginning of search engine marketing and social media marketing. He couldn't have foreseen the influence digital marketing channels would have on brands and consumers. 

At the same time, marketing works as it has always worked. So take these unofficial P's with a grain of salt:

People

Your marketing plan can't dictate every aspect of a customer's experience. That's why organizations must focus on having the right people in place to create exceptional customer experiences throughout their relationships.

Consider the impact an angry customer service representative can have on your marketing efforts. That person can ruin your team's hard work in an instant. Perhaps even worse, unhappy customers can now air grievances on sites like Yelp and Google Reviews.

Physical evidence

Physical evidence involves anything that might add to or detract from someone's brand experience. In retail stores, physical evidence includes package design. In online stores, you could also consider website design as physical evidence.

Process

Process defines how you get your product or service to the customer. Today's consumers expect a seamless process regardless of where they buy your offerings. Even seemingly small barriers, like an online payment processor that times out, could damage your brand's reputation.

Ideally, marketing and sales teams should work together to discover any challenge that interferes with the buying experience.

Marketing is more than the Ps

The four Ps of the marketing mix are tactical marketing tools teams can use to promote products. Before entering tactical territory, though, you need to perform a thorough diagnosis and create a marketing strategy.

Don't think about the four Ps until you've completed thorough market research and created a well-defined marketing strategy. These steps might feel like a lot of work, but they will save you time and effort in the long run.

Market research

Market research can include any task performed to learn more about the market, your target audience, and how the product fills a need. Common aspects of market research involve:

• Researching the buyer persona to determine who would be interested in buying your product and how you can effectively market to them
• Reviewing similar brands and products to see what prices they charge
• Performing a competitive analysis to see what marketing mix your competitors use
• Interviewing or surveying individuals to see how they respond to your product and preliminary marketing ideas

Marketing strategy

Most marketing strategy options have some components in common. That's okay! Today's marketing mix needs several distribution channels to meet people where they are. As long as you take a data-driven approach, you can quantify the results and make adjustments as needed.

Here are some marketing strategy options to consider:

• Full-funnel marketing: Create a funnel that moves every lead closer to conversion
• Lifecycle marketing: Pay close attention to prospects so you can reach them with the right message at the right time
• Omnichannel marketing: Take a customer-centric approach that incorporates diverse distribution channels, including email, social media, landing pages and advertisements

Further reading: Ad campaign optimization: six strategies for success

Researching the market

Let's imagine you undertake market research to understand which audience would most likely pay for a premium yoga app that offers videos and exercise instructions.

This portion of your marketing campaign gives you an in-depth look at the existing market, allowing you to start understanding potential customers and competitors.

Think of this as your diagnosis. It's where you make sure you understand the market.

From here, you can plan a marketing mix strategy that takes advantage of the opportunities and overcomes the barriers you discovered during your research.

Choosing a target market and positioning yourself

You find out that young moms and dads are most enthusiastic about this kind of app. That makes sense. With small kids at home, these parents can't easily go to gyms and yoga studios. Since they're going through stressful periods of life, though, they need a convenient way to prioritize exercise, mental health and general well-being.

While this group probably can't spend a lot of money on well-being, your app offers a low price point they can afford. That's one way you can position your product to stand out in the marketplace.

You decide to target this group and position your app as the best alternative to an expensive gym membership.

You also select some goals. For example, over the next year, you want to reach 10% of the women on your prospect list and convert 1% of them to a paid membership.

Marketing mix

After you've done your research, identified your target market and positioning and written down your goals, it's finally time to focus on the four Ps of marketing.

If you haven't fully grasped these individual aspects of the marketing mix, the following sections should solidify the concept for you.

The product

Here, your product is a yoga app that lets people access instructional videos, images and articles.

Since you plan to target busy parents, the product should offer a broad range of options. Perhaps you have the product team:

• Organize on-demand classes by length, skill level and objective (reducing stress, getting stronger, growing resilience and the like)
• Make a category specifically for pregnant people and people recovering from childbirth
• Create a straightforward, intuitive user interface
• Give users exercises they can perform anywhere, including at work, in their living rooms and outdoors

The price

You're going to position the app as an affordable alternative to gyms that charge higher monthly fees. That part's pretty simple. A yoga studio could easily charge $100 per month for unlimited classes. Depending on location and amenities, individual classes might cost $25 or more.

You can probably charge considerably less for your yoga app. You might even have a free introductory tier supported by ads.

Importantly, you need to research what similar apps charge. You're not just competing against gyms. There are hundreds of apps out there trying to attract busy people's attention.

Find a competitive price for the value you offer.

Additional opportunities include:

• Reduced rates for couples
• Partnerships with employers and health insurance providers

The promotion

Determine what social platforms and apps this audience uses, so you can run online marketing. In this case, the audience uses Instagram and Pinterest. Since these apps allow specific audience targeting, you can create campaigns that reach the people you want to entice. Placing targeted ads on these apps should help boost brand awareness and stoke interest in your product.

Your promotion strategy might also include ad creatives that show new parents benefitting from the app's yoga lessons. An ad might feature a stressed-out mom handing the baby to her partner, doing 10 minutes of yoga and returning with a peaceful look on her face.

When other parents inevitably compare their struggles to this couple's well-being, they'll want to learn more about how they can benefit from your app.

The place

Since this is a digital product, your customers will buy it and interact with it through their devices.

Try to broaden the place by developing versions for Android and iPhone users. Depending on your goals, you might also create apps for TV streaming platforms, personal computers and similar electronics.

Don't take a scattershot approach to this, though. Building a different version of your app takes time and money. Revamping the yoga app only makes sense when you have compelling evidence that users want to access content in other places.

FAQ

What is Marketing Mix Modeling?

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is a statistical tool that helps companies measure the impact of different marketing activities on sales and other key business results. While it’s often used to analyze the effectiveness of promotions (such as advertising campaigns), MMM can also assess the influence of other parts of the marketing mix, like place and price.

At its core, MMM is designed to help companies optimize their advertising budgets. By analyzing historical data, it reveals which marketing channels deliver the best results, enabling businesses to strategically allocate their budget for maximum ROI. Since MMM relies heavily on data, having a central, reliable source of marketing data is crucial for accurate measurement and insights.

How does Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) relate to the four Ps?

MMM allows businesses to see how well different aspects of their marketing mix are working, particularly Promotions. It analyzes which promotional activities drive the most sales. Additionally, it can measure how Price changes impact revenue, giving companies a clearer picture of their most effective strategies.

What companies can benefit from advanced marketing measurement, like MMM?

Most companies running online ads can benefit from methodologies like Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) or incrementality testing to understand which channels perform best. But for larger advertisers—especially those spending over $1 million annually on ads—Marketing Mix Modeling is invaluable.

MMM is also ideal for companies using offline advertising, such as TV or out-of-home (OOH) ads, as it evaluates the combined impact of both online and offline efforts. Additionally, companies with physical retail locations can benefit from MMM, as it helps determine how marketing activities affect in-store sales, providing a comprehensive view of overall marketing performance.