The Marketing Mix (The 4 Ps) for the Internet

The marketing mix is a simple and very effective framework for developing a marketing strategy, but is unfortunately hardly mentioned today. Many internet marketers today would much rather talk about social media tactics, and infographics, but you're here. So, we'll get on with it.

There are some important steps that need to be taken before developing your marketing mix.

1. Perform any research needed to ensure that you know your customer.
2. Clearly define your target market.
3. Analyze and understand your the position of your competitors.

The Basic Components

• Product
• Price
• Distribution (Place)
• Promotion

The goal here is to tune each element in order to deliver maximum value to your target customer.

The Traditional Marketing Mix

The standard textbook definitions of each element of the marketing mix are:

• Product: The decisions made about the design, branding, trademarks, life cycle and functionality of the product or website.
• Pricing: The methods of setting fair and justifiable prices.
• Distribution: The physical flow of your product from the point of origin to the point of consumption.
• Promotion: Personal selling, advertising and sales promotion tools utilized by the firm to communicate with customers.

Online Applications

The online version of the marketing mix is basically the same, but is applied differently. Here are some of the twists and turns encountered when applying the marketing mix to online situations:

The Product Element Online

: The key question you must ask here is whether the website is the product or the promotion. If your website is simply promoting your product you can skip this element of the marketing mix when thinking about your website. For example, if you have a local flower shop, and your website is only there to promote your off-line product - your website is not part of the product. On the other hand, if you've built an application on your site that helps users find the flower that is right for them, then your web site has just become part of the product element of the marketing mix.

For companies that already have great offline products, adding interesting functionality above and beyond your core product is not necessary, but can certainly help. If your offline product is about average, turning your website into part of the product may be essential to long term survival. Introducing how-to content, instructional videos, social media functionality and other applications may provide just enough uniqueness to steal clients from me-too competitors.

A key question that helps to determine the difference is: What value would be left on my site if I quit selling my offline product?

The Distribution Element Online

The primary considerations for traditional, off-line business-to-consumer organizations involve consumer convenience (a la gas stations) and image. Where your business is located will have a lot to do with how your brand is perceived. The Sharper Image is a whole different business when you stick it in the wrong part of town.

Business to business organizations have a whole other set of considerations and must consider their place in the value chain and how they can pass value down to the end consumer.

Distribution online is becoming a lot more interesting today. Web content was once limited to simple reading or online purchases. Today, online distribution can become convoluted quickly. You can choose from widgets, iframes, RSS, XML, downloads, RDF, and off-line combinations. What is best? What does you user want? What do the webmasters in your vertical prefer? What channels do you want your product to be seen in? As more technology is developed for distributing content, these decisions will only become more difficult.

Lead generation sites need to pay special attention to this. Many lead generation sites are 2 and 3 steps away from the ultimate buyer and lose a lot of money. How can they move farther down the value chain and boost their margins?

The Pricing Element Online

Do you charge anything for your "product?" No? Don't be so sure. Even if your product is "free" your user target market may give up their time to consume your content, and your fellow webmasters are giving up real estate to link to you. Put your self in their shoes. How can you save users time? Most importantly, does the time your users need to spend on your site equal the amount of value you provide.

There are also opportunity costs. If users spend their time interacting with your website are they better off than if they spent the same amount of time on another website.

The Promotion Element Online

This element is most like the off line counterpart. However, a lot of online marketers are missing a lot of the tools traditional marketers use. I see these as the biggest issues with online marketing campaigns:

• Lack of a Core Message: If you have a clear competitive advantage then you are in luck here. You just need to develop an interesting and compelling way of telling people what your advantage is. I think Oracle said it best with, "Runs Faster, Costs Less, and Never Breaks." If you do not have a clear competitive advantage you are still OK, but need to be more creative. Take Bud Light and Coca Cola. There isn't a spec of difference between them and their competitors, but they HAVE TOLD YOU THERE IS, so you buy it. Just make sure you are telling people why you are different and stay on message.
• Inconsistency: Once you have your core message establish you need to beat it into people's heads over and over and over and over again. Many online messages are piecemeal and fragmented. As much as I dislike them, think Karl Rove and George Bush. They are always on message. Bush will keep you safe. Bush will keep you safe. Bush will keep you sage. They never wavered and managed to get GB elected....twice!
• Communications Strategy: AIDA! Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Longer term campaigns need to follow this sequence. In the beginning communication should be bold, loud and attention grabbing, and messages should be short and punchy. Farther into the campaign, messages should be geared towards creating interest and desire. A third strategy and set of messages should be used to close the deal. The message should change depending on where your prospects are in the buying cycle. Most marketing messages are random and disorganized.
• No Database Marketing Strategy: Whether you are running an ecommerce or lead gen site, you need to be gathering all of your customer information. Once you have this customer information you need to develop a strategy to build relationships, loyalty and additional profits from those customers. This could involve simply deploying basic RFM Analysis or a more sophisticated strategy involving tens or hundreds of granular marketing segments.