Your detailed guide to explaining the 7Ps marketing mix...
The term was first mentioned in 1953 by Neil Borden: The 7Ps of Marketing Mix is your integrated marketing program and the essential factor to achieve and develop your goals by mixing its elements to achieve audience response. “The 7Ps of Marketing Mix are all the elements that help managers meet market and customer needs” says McCarthy.
What is the definition of the 7Ps of marketing?
It is the mix that allows marketers to decide on the product and its characteristics, set the price, where to display it, how to promote it and manage the entire process of building a presence and choosing people. From here, we can describe the 7 Ps of marketing as the marketer’s view of the target audience.
What is the importance of the 7Ps of marketing?
The 7Ps of marketing are the first factors on which the entire marketing process of your company is based, the importance of which lies in its ability to influence and improve the company’s performance, facilitate the identification of marketing channels, achieve sales, including profits, create value for the product, and know where your customers are and the most efficient ways to reach them.
What are the elements of the 7Ps of marketing?
- Product: Since your product is the foundation on which your company is based, before introducing it, you should ask yourself three questions: why? How do I do it? What should I do? Why do you present your product? How will it be presented? And what will you offer? The role of marketers here is to make the product unique and relevant to the target audience. This distinction can be applied according to:
- Physical differences: such as properties, performance, consistency, expiration date, design, style, packaging, etc.
- Differences in the method of accessing the product or service, such as shops, telephone, mail, fax, etc.
- Differences in the service provided, such as delivery, installation, training, consultation, maintenance, etc.
- Price differences.
- Mental image differences.
Among the most effective features are:
- Characteristics: these provide a quick and visual way to clarify the added benefit of the product or service provided.
- Design: which gives visual distinction to the product or service.
- The last feature, which is sometimes neglected, is to constantly search for other features to add to your product.
- Price: The price differs from all elements of the 7Ps of marketing because it is the primary determinant of the company’s profitability, but the rest of the elements determine the cost. Companies always strive to achieve the highest return, which, when costs are deducted from it, results in more profits. When determining the price, a profit margin is added to the estimated costs. This process is known as cost-based pricing, where the maximum that can be paid for the service or product is calculated. The most skilled marketers combine the product and its benefits and set an appropriate price for the total offer. If the customer has the need and desire, they must provide the right price for their category and for their brand at the same time to achieve the right profit.
- Place: After providing the product or service and determining the price, it is the role of choosing how to sell in the target market, whether it is direct sales or through intermediaries, and sometimes it is possible to sell through them together. You must bear in mind that your customer makes the purchase decision based on several reasons, such as ease of access to the product, the cost of the delivery service, the delivery period, and the presence of competitors closer to it, which makes your site an important part of the marketing process.
- Promotion: Its importance lies in enhancing the desire of potential customers and pushing them to make a decision, in addition to its ability to create a new desire for potential customers, which includes all communication tools that can deliver a message to the target audience, which is divided into five types:
- Advertising: It is one of the most powerful tools for creating awareness about the company, product, or service, which is difficult to outperform in its quality and power of access to the public, especially if it is innovative, which enables it to build a mental image among customers and a measure of preference and acceptance for the brand.
- Sales promotion: ads mostly affect minds and not behavior. Sales promotion relies mainly on a wide range of incentives, such as discounts and special gifts, to motivate merchants and individuals to make a purchase decision, including the growth of the customer base.
- Public relations: Marketing public relations consists of several tools that can be classified in the PENCILS model:
- Publications: such as company magazines, annual reports, brochures that help clients, etc.
- Events: For example, special events, art events, trade fairs, etc.
- News: It is the news that supports the company, its products, and its audience.
- Community involvement activities, which means sharing time and money to meet the needs of the local community,.
- Identity media means anything that bears the name and address of the company, such as business cards or employee uniforms.
- Lobbying activity: attempts to influence supportive legislation or cancel legislation that is not supportive of the company’s business and activity.
- Social responsibility activities: It means building a good reputation for the company in terms of social responsibility.
- Salesforce: It is the most expensive and most effective marketing tool because it communicates with the customer directly and answers his questions and objections, and it is the only element capable of tempting the customer to prefer one brand over another, so the cost of the salesman is not important, but what is important is his cost compared to his sales volume.
- Direct Marketing: Large markets are made up of small markets, which has led to the emergence of more specialized media, and individual segments are more accessible. This is a result of marketing in the database, which allowed companies to sort customers, divide them into segments, and target the appropriate segment through direct marketing.
7P's Vs 4P's:
The 7Ps of marketing remained composed of four elements and were known as the 4Ps marketing mix until the other three elements were added by Booms and Mary Jo Bitner with the development of manufacturing techniques and the emergence of new software and methods, which are:
- Process: It aims to study the entire process of marketing a product, starting from its manufacture and ending with after-sales service. So the company is interested in studying all the problems that customers face in the arrival of the product or service in the best image and quality, as well as in the fastest time.
- Physical Evidence: What you see, you can trust; Accordingly, the presence of your company on the ground has an impact on your customer, makes him feel safe when dealing with you and your services, and makes sure that your product or service performs its purpose.
- People: human power is the first base on which the company is built and through which services or products reach customers. Therefore, caring for and choosing your work team is as important as choosing your product or service.
7ps of marketing example:
Product: The iPhone was made in a way that guarantees the consumer a high level of security with the quality of the front and back cameras, the speed of the device’s performance, and a large storage space, with updates available from time to time.
- Price: Apple follows a pricing strategy based on the cost of the device and the features the product is made with.
- Place: There are many stores of the company itself, in addition to many outlets worldwide.
- Promotion: The company relies mainly on the advantages offered through the product in its promotional campaigns.
Conclusion:
In the end, we know that the 7Ps of marketing are of the utmost importance in any marketing process because they help the company create an effective strategy, focus on the target audience, know how to promote, study competitors to adapt to the target market, improve the company’s internal and external relations, and finally develop strengths and reduce weaknesses.
