The 4 P's of Marketing Online

When Neil H. Borden came up with the Marketing Mix and Professor E. Jerome McCarthy grouped the Mix into “the 4 Ps” they were probably not considering 21st century marketing and promotion channels on the Internet.

After all, this was in the middle of the 20^th century and Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.com search engines and Internet Social Networks did not exist at that point. Still, this enduring and universal marketing concept applies to the web.

I’m always focused on how the 4 P’s of Marketing apply to Internet Marketing. So how do the 4 P’s apply to the Internet?

The first P in Marketing: Product

Product can be an actual product or service that you are delivering to you the market weather direct to consumer (B2C) or to businesses (B2B). On the web, it’s crucial to show your product on your website. If you are a retailer with an E-Commerce site, make sure you spend the money to show your products up close and in detail. Spend the money to get good photos of your products and make a great design on your site. It doesn’t need to be flashy (or Flash!), but make sure that a potential customer can come to your site and see the main products that you offer and see them in detail. Take the time, spend the money effort and resources to accurately describe your products and services.

If you are selling a service, this is something that a customer cannot touch or feel, so make sure you have some case studies on hand. Show your case studies, trials or demos on a website and please make sure you do all of the above in a search engine friendly manner. If you leave out the search engines in the equation, you losing a big opportunity on Placement and Promotion; P’s 3 and 4.

The second P in Marketing: Price

Don’t be afraid to show your prices online and in your Internet advertising. In most cases, displaying a price on an ad, whether a PPC, Contextual, Banner, or even in your organically listed search links in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you’ll get better click through rates and likely more inquiries and conversions if you come right out and display your pricing.

In high-end service businesses this can be a bit tricky, but even there, to grab a potential customer’s attention, it can be valuable to display your price. Who cares if the competition sees your pricing. If you have a high quality product or service you can stand by…your going to win. Further, in a high end service business, by displaying your price, you can thwart contact from unwanted customers who don’t fit into your requisite budget ranges.

The third P in Marketing: Place and Placement

Placement on Major Search engines – Google, Yahoo, Live etc…Placement from a discovery perspective is controlled on the web really through search. When someone uses the web, it’s critical to make sure you show up in search for relevant terms. If you are not on the major search engines for terms related to your business, you are not taking care of placement and you’re likely to not be found or discovered in this important pull-marketing channel.

Placement on vertical search engines / guides and Local Search – finding the right vertical search engines like a business.com can make or break your placement. Trade and business directories and vertical search is one of the most important channels. Don’t miss this. Localized search submissions to places like www.local.google.com can make all the difference in being found and being successful as well.

Placement through affiliates - working with affiliates and developing a large and profitable network can be tremendously productive for many businesses.

Promotion through Display Advertising – Media buying for display, banners on CPM or CPC basis and email drops can be tremendously effective if properly placed and designed with the user and target audience in mind. Create outstanding design, powerful and unique copy-writing and make sure you have effective landing pages (tested with a group) to handle your display or “push” types of Internet advertising.

The fourth P in Marketing: Promotion

I don’t care if your business is retail B2C or B2B, you need to leverage nearly every promotion channel and strategy online.

Promotion on topical, industry and trade sites – seeking out the right industry sites is ever more important as the web user becomes more and more specific with their bookmarks and areas of the Internet that want to visit over and over. Get in front of the target audience in an effective way.

Promotion through Search Marketing - Put a big focus on search weather SEO, or SEM / PPC, it’s crucial to have strong search engine promotion and placement (full disclosure – we do SEO). On the organic side, Strategic Link building and high quality directory and article submissions can go a long way.

Promotion through Social Media – levering groups on the major social sites, promoting viral content and developing and strong following in social media is critical to long term success and properly placing your product or service in front of the right people.

Promotion through Public Relations – PR and reputation management is important. Don’t be shy to get out in the media and blogs and be mentioned for what you do and the quality of your products. Leverage the newest and best available channels. Make sure you are paying attention to the most influential corners of the Internet. As a side note, Steve Rubel did a fun post about the 4 P’s of Blogging which is worth a read.

Nowadays marketers are considering 7 P’s, but I figure if you tend to the “original” 4 P’s, it’s a good start.

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