Determining your four ps of marketing can greatly boost your marketing. But many small business owners don’t know how to start analyzing their four ps of marketing.

This article provides 20 questions. If you take the time to think about them and answer them in as much detail as possible, your answers will stimulate your business and help you avoid marketing mistakes.

The four ps of marketing are product, package, price and promotion.

Four Ps Of Marketing
1. Your Product Influences
Your Marketing Decisions

Creating or selecting your product is one of the most important decisions that you’ll make in your business. It’s dictates the type and amount of marketing that you’ll need to make sales.

Because it is so important, there are twice as many questions about your product than about the other three ps.

1. Who is the target market for your product?
2. How well does its features provide target market members’ desired benefits?
3. How does your product compare with competing products?
4. How does your product compare with buying trends, experiences?
5. How intense is the desire for your product?
6. How much volume of product will it take to meet demands?
7. What is the time period that the desire will be expressed?
8. How much product needs to be in place at any time to meet the desire?

Once you’ve answered all the product questions, you’re ready to consider the package questions.

Four Ps Of Marketing
2. Your Package Can Help
Sell Your Products

How much thought do you put into packaging your product? Do you realize that your package can give your product a competitive advantage or disadvantage.

It also contributes to cost. The right package can save you money in distribution and eliminate having to replace damaged products.

So give your package some thought by answering the next four questions.

9. Does your package offer a distinguishing characteristic?
10. Is your package weight and size appropriate for your product?
11. Does your package provide enough protection for your product?
12. Is your packaging excessive, requiring increased handling?

Consider your answers about your product and package before you finalize the price for your product.

Four Ps Of Marketing
3. Your Price Must Match
Your Market And Product

You’ll also need to answer four price questions before making a final price decision.

13. What price do the forces of supply and demand dictate?
14. How does the cost of producing each unit decrease as volume increases?
15. How does your price decrease as volume increases?
16. At what point does volume costs and volume discounts combine to set the most profitable price?

Only after you’ve answered all the questions on product, package and price are you ready to consider what many small business owners consider “marketing.”

Four Ps Of Marketing
4. Your Promotion Builds From
Product, Package and Price

Promoting or marketing your product will be much easier after you’ve succeeded in answering the first 16 questions. They form the base of your marketing.

The remaining four questions will then leverage your marketing strategy and tactics.

17. What percentage of your promotion budget should be advertising, sales, and other promotion tactics?
18. How well does your promotion mix match your business’ other marketing practices?
19. How well does your promotion mix match your product, and its stage in the product life cycle?
20. How well does your promotion mix match your target market?

After you’ve answered these last four questions, you’ll be ready to develop a marketing plan.

Four Ps Of Marketing:
Conclusion

Your answers to all 20 questions ground your marketing and maximize your ability to create a strategic marketing plan. Just going through the process of answering them enables you to diagnose potential problems, to see opportunities, and to develop a marketing goal.

Your answers establish your marketing budget, generate your marketing strategy, and reveal the best marketing tactics to jump start your marketing efforts.

You can get more information on budgeting at How To Allocate Start-up Funds For A New Business.

You can get more information on each of the 20 questions at 4 P’s of Marketing.

Would you like to learn marketing from one of the biggest names in marketing, Dan Kennedy? Dan’s offering loads of marketing tools in his Magnetic Marketing System.

If you like this post and would like weekly summaries of new posts, just complete the form below:

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20 Questions to Determine Your Four Ps Of Marketing

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The 4 p’s of marketing include promotion. I’ve covered the other 3 p’s in prior posts this series. Today’s post explains four questions about promotion. By answering these questions, you, as a small business owner, can improve your marketing.

How well does the promotion mix match the target market?

4 P’s Of Marketing Promotion
What Percentage Of  Your Promotion Budget Should Be Advertising, Sales, And Other Promotion Tactics?

Answering the following three questions on promotion will aid you in answering this question. Your past marketing experience and knowledge of what has worked for your business influences how to spend your promotion budget.

The life cycle stage that your product is in, your target market, and your product itself also affect how you can most effectively spend your promotion budget.

How much money you have to spend also influences your promotion choices. Advertising can be expensive and eat a chunk from your budget quickly. Other tactics are less expensive but more labor intensive. So you have to consider the ratio of time and monetary resources you have to spend in your answer to this question.

4 P’s Of Marketing Promotion
How Well Does Your Promotion Mix Match
Your Business’ Other Marketing Practices?

How you’ve marketed similar products in the past can provide you with valuable information and experiences for determining your promotion or marketing mix.

For example, maybe you have regularly advertised in a particular medium that reaches your target market, and it has provided you with good return on your advertising investment in the past. Perhaps you have a good relationship with a sales person at that medium who often offers you exceptional value on your advertising. Then it’s a good idea to at least test that medium for marketing your new product.

So look at what you’ve done in the past, determine if you can reach the target market for your new product doing the same things. Then base your decisions on how effective what you’ve done before has worked.

You do keep records on your marketing investments and return, don’t you? Records specific to your business can guide you better than almost any generic information that I can give you. Of course, you still need to test it with your new product and marketing campaign.

4 P’s Of Marketing Promotion
How Well Does Your Promotion Mix Match
Your Product, And Its Stage In The Product Life Cycle?

Promotion tactics work better for some industries and products than for others. So part of your marketing mix decisions rely on what works best in your industry and for products like yours.

Now this doesn’t mean that you should do just what everybody else is doing. That’s the path to mediocrity. But you should use it as a guide and add more innovative and unique ideas to it. Of course you should test the results of every tactic you use.

If you’ve read my posts on product life stages, you know that you have to invest the most in marketing for the introductory stage. If you haven’t read them, click on the link below:

http://strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/birth-and-growth-through-your-marketing-product-life-cycle/

It will take you to one of my articles on the introductory and growth stages. It also links to my two posts on the mature and decline stages.

4 P’s Of Marketing Promotion
How Well Does Your Promotion Mix Match
Your Target Market?

Answering this question requires that you have already identified your target market and know its members’ information needs and media preferences. For example, older Americans read newspapers and will likely see a newspaper advertisement, but twenty-something Americans can be better reached by word of mouth.

Traditional advertising reaches some markets well and fails measurable with other markets. Selling directly in person or over the telephone works well with Latinos if you speak Spanish, but doesn’t work as well with Caucasians.

So you need to decide where to put your promotion investments according to your target market.

You can get 20 Questions to Determine Your Four Ps Of Marketing. Just click the link.

Would you like to learn marketing from one of the biggest names in marketing, Dan Kennedy? Dan’s offering loads of marketing tools in his Magnetic Marketing System.

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Posted 6-11-08:
4 P’s Of Marketing:
Promotion

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The 4 p’s of marketing is the subject of this series of posts. Prior posts on 4 p’s of marketing include: the first four questions about your product, another four questions on product, and four questions on packaging.

Today’s post answers four questions about pricing. Answering these questions will help you, as a small business owner, to improve your marketing.

• What price do the forces of supply and demand dictate?
• How does the cost of producing each unit decrease as volume increases?
• How does the price decrease as volume increases?
• At what point do marginal costs and marginal revenue combine to set the most profitable price?

4 P’s of MarketingPrice
What Price Do The Forces Of
Supply And Demand Dictate?

Do you know how supply and demand come together to determine price?

If there is a small demand, and you produce your product just for that demand, the price can be high. People that really want a product are willing to pay more to get it if the supply is limited.

But there maybe other people who would buy the product at a lower price.

4 P’s of MarketingPrice
How Does The Cost Of Producing
Each Unit Decrease As Volume Increases?

The more units of a product that you produce, the cheaper each individual unit becomes. Yet your overall production costs goes up because you are producing more units.

Marketers often refer to “marginal costs”. It’s the amount that production costs go up by increments of units produced. For example, say you can produce 1,000 units for $10.00 each, and 2,000 units for $8.00 each. The 1,000 units will cost you $10,000, but you can get 2,000 units for $18,000. So adding the additional increment of another 1,000 units costs you an additional $8,000 or 80 percent of the first 1,000.

So the more units that you produce, the cheaper you can sell your product.

4 P’s of Marketing Price
How Does The Price Decrease
As Volume Increases?

The catch to producing more units is that you have to price the product to sell the additional units. So for each increment of units produced, you have to decrease your price. Marketers refer to “marginal revenue” as the amount that you have to decrease your price for each unit, as you add an increment of units.

In other words, the more units you have to sell, the cheaper you have to price your product.

4 P’s of Marketing Price
At What Point Do Marginal Costs
And Marginal Revenue Combine
To Set The Most Profitable Price?

To make the most profit from your product, you have to discover the best combination of units produced with price. In other words, you find the place where marginal costs and marginal revenue meet to provide the best profit return. This place is what marketers call “optimum price.”

4 P’s of MarketingPrice
Conclusion

You have much to consider in pricing your product. How many people want your product enough to pay a premium price for it? How many will buy it at different price points? Which quantity and price point will net you the most profit?

By answering these questions, you will determine the most profitable price for your product. Then you will have analyzed three of the 4 p’s of marketing.

To learn about the fourth p, you can access the next post at 4 P’s Of Marketing: Promotion.

Learn more about pricing strategies with  46 tactics that can fatten your bank account from the clients you already have. Just click the following link:

How To Raise Prices Without Losing Sales

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Posted 6-11-08:
4 P’s Of Marketing: Price

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The 4 p’s of marketing includes packaging. This post considers four questions that you need to answer about your packaging.

• Does the package offer a distinguishing characteristic?
• Is the package weight and size appropriate for the product?
• Does the package provide enough protection for the product?
• Is the packaging excessive, requiring increased handling?

You can read my two prior posts on the 4 p’s of marketing by clicking on the links below:

4 P’s Of Marketing: Product 1

4 P’s Of Marketing: Product 2

4 P’s Of Marketing Packaging
Does The Package Offer
A Distinguishing Characteristic?

If you create a package that offers something unique and provides value to your product, your packaging can become a distinguishing characteristic. I recently wrote a post about Dutch Boy’s paint plastic container with a spout and screw-on lid. At the time Dutch Boy came out with this package, no other paint companies offered the design. SO Dutch Boy built a marketing campaign around it and increased their sales just because of the paint can design.

4 P’s Of MarketingPackaging
Is The Package Weight And Size
Appropriate For The Product?

Your packaging needs to be strong enough to keep your product from getting damaged during distribution. It needs to be shaped so that it stacks well for distribution and storage.

Yet, you don’t want to select a package that weighs more than necessary to do the job. Your distribution costs are partially determined by weight. So the less your packaging weighs, the cheaper you can get your product delivered.

You also want to avoid a package that is larger than it needs to be. For example, I take Acidophilus for my Candida, a type of yeast infection. My husband recently bought me three bottles of Acidophilus, but each 6 inch tall bottle contained only 30 pills. They barely took up a 1/2 inch in each large bottle. Plus each bottle was in a comparable size box.

What a waste. I’m sure the manufacturer could have sold it cheaper and/or made more profit it it had eliminated that waste.

4 P’s Of Marketing Packaging
Does The Package Provide Enough
Protection For The Product?

Using the above example, a bottle is necessary to hold pills. A wrap wouldn’t provide enough protection so the pills could get damaged. A box might let the pills escape. But was a box and a bottle necessary? The bottles would need a box for distribution and storage, but putting several bottles in one box that could also be used to display the bottles would have worked as well as boxing every bottle.

So the lesson from this example is provide enough packaging to protect your product, but don’t overdo it, increasing your costs unnecessarily.

4 P’s Of Marketing  Packaging
Is The Packaging Excessive,
Requiring Increased Handling?

The pill example is one of excessive packaging. It only required increased handling for the manufacturer to package and for the consumer to open, but some packaging requires additional handling during distribution and storage as well.

All that additional handling further increases costs. And, as you know, when costs increase you either have to raise the price or cut into your profits. So select packaging that requires as little handling as possible from manufacturer through consumer.

4 P’s Of Marketing
Packaging Conclusion

By considering the four questions on packaging, you can save expenses while still protecting your product. Taking the time to make the best packaging decision can increase your profit.

Plus, if you provide unique packaging that enhances use of your product, your packaging can become a distinguishing characteristic, enhance your marketing, and improve your sales.

Packaging is the second of the 4 p’s of marketing covered on this blog. My next two posts will cover pricing and promotion as the final two 4 p’s of marketing.

You can access the next post at 4 P’s Of Marketing: Price.

Would you like to learn marketing from one of the biggest names in marketing, Dan Kennedy? Dan’s offering loads of marketing tools in his Magnetic Marketing System.

You can get weekly announcements of my posts, by completing the form below:

Posted 6-11-08:
4 P’s Of Marketing:
Packaging

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This second post on the 4 p’s of marketing covers four more questions about your product:

• How intense is the desire for the product?
• How much volume of product will it take to meet demands?
• What is the time period that the desire will be expressed?
• How much product needs to be in place at any time to meet the desire?

If you want to access my first post on the 4 P’s Of Marketing: Product 1, click on the link in this sentence. You can access the next post at 4 P’s Of Marketing: Packaging.

4 P’s Of Marketing Product
How Intense Is The Desire
For Your Product?

A good indication of how well your product is your target markets’ desire for the product. If competitive products have been too expensive for your target market, potential customers may have a pent-up desire for it. They’ve wanted it but couldn’t afford it.

They may also want a product feature that isn’t presently offered by competitive products. This too can create unmet desires.

It’s important that your product meets a desire that’s already there. It takes a long time and lots of education to create a desire for a completely new product.

For instance, I recently had one of my readers, J. Taiwo Popoola, email me wanting a suggestion for marketing his bookkeeping service to small business owners in Nigeria. There only large companies see the need to keep good financial records. So he’ll have to educate his target market about the benefits of good bookkeeping. Because his target market presently doesn’t desire or even see the need for it, his got a tough marketing job.

I have to congratulate Taiwo for recognizing that, and asking for advice on how to create the desire. I made three suggestions that I believe will get him started. Taiwo is in much the same situation that I am, I’m also trying to educate small business owners to use techniques that presently are being used primarily by large companies and corporations.

Hopefully, in just a few years, it will seem as strange for USA small business owners not to using market segmentation and not to target a specific group of people, as it seems to us in the USA that small business owners in Nigeria don’t see the value of good bookkeeping. Their tax system is surely very different from that in the USA.

4 P’s Of Marketing: Product
How Much Volume Of Product
Will It Take To Meet Demands?

This question relates to the question 5. You have to know how much your product is desired in order to know how much to produce or purchase.

Then you have to adjust your amount of inventory as product desire increases or decreases. You don’t want to be caught without enough product to meet demands. Neither do you want to store product that isn’t moving, but just sets in storage, tying up your resources.

To illustrate that and to show that knowing something doesn’t always mean we implement it, let me tell you about one of my blunders that has lots of my resources tied up.

I have a textbook, Strategic Publications: Designing for Target Publics. I knew the need for the textbook in public relations publications classes because I taught such a class. Before I wrote the first edition, I did loads of research and knew exactly what the market was, printed a 1,000 copies and sold them all in less than three years. Did another printing and sold them in two years.

But for the second edition, I decided to branch out to graphic design classes. I talked to some graphic design professors, lurked on some graphic design education sites, and felt confident that I could break into that market. So I had 5000 copies of the second edition printed.

But I haven’t been successful in that market because graphic designers approach publication design more from an aesthetic approach while public relations practitioners and marketers approach it from a strategic approach. For us, aesthetics is strictly a byproduct and secondary to accomplishing the purpose, and a publication is only good if it accomplishes its purpose.

To make a long story short, I’m still storing more thousands of copies of the book. Don’t make that same mistake. It’ll cost you.

4 P’s Of Marketing: Product
What Is The Time Period
That The Desire Will Be Expressed?

This question also relates to inventory. You need the right size inventory for the demand as it varies over time. For instance, in the introductory and decline stages of a product, you usually sell fewer products than in the growth and mature stages. Your inventory should reflect the product life cycle.

I’ve done a series of posts on the Marketing Product Life Cycle. You can access the article through the link above. It links to the first post and then the first links to the second.

4 P’s Of MarketingProduct
How Much Product Needs
To Be In Place At Any Time
To Meet The Desire?

Your answers to questions 5 – 7 will help determine the answer to this question and will help you avoid inventory problems.

To get to my next post on the 4 P’s Of Marketing: Packaging, click the link in this sentence.

Would you like to learn marketing from one of the biggest names in marketing, Dan Kennedy? Dan’s offering loads of marketing tools in his Magnetic Marketing System.

Want to be one of the first to know when I post a new series? Just complete the form below to get week summaries of my posts.

Posted 6-10-08:
4 P’s Of Marketing:
Product 2

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