Originally published at CMO.com November 14, 2014
Whatever happened to the “4 Ps” of the marketing mix? Though still popular on college syllabi, they’re becoming less and less relevant for professional marketers.
That’s because in a real-time, digital world, the intersection of the 4 Ps–price, product, promotion, and place–is constantly changing. New technologies allow (and even require) marketers and advertisers to understand consumer preferences and environment in real time to get the media exposure they desire. Although the core concepts of the 4 Ps are still essential, it’s clear that the marketing industry needs a new guide to develop strategy and measure outcomes in the digital world.
In fact, relevancy, not reach, is the new name of the game. Yet marketers have the same need that the original 4 Ps addressed: identifying the core elements and principles that must be managed and optimized in order to drive a core success factor: relevancy.
With that in mind, I’d like to suggest an upgrade to the 4 Ps–version 2.0, if you will.
1. Preference: Modern marketing practices are founded on the belief that preferences matter–that what a consumer cares about has a noticeable impact on their attitude and activities. Only by understanding and acting on these preferences will it become possible to ensure relevancy for any given viewer. For instance, if I learn that Consumer A prefers to view videos rather than read email, is primarily active at night versus the day, likes electronic products, and enjoys visiting stores over purchasing online, I’ve developed a dataset that will allow me to communicate with A in the right way, at the right time, about the right product, and help guide them toward his desired purchasing method.
2. Programmatic: If preference speaks to why relevancy equals results, programmatic speaks to how relevancy can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner. Designing individual campaigns for individual customers one at a time would be crushingly expensive and time-consuming–which is why no one had previously been able to pursue true one-to-one customer relationships on a large scale. Now programmatic technologies allow each impression to be evaluated and delivered based on consumer relevancy. Algorithms combine data about frequency, the user, the user’s environment, and the content itself in real time to select the best ad to play. This not only benefits the advertiser by reducing media waste and exposures to irrelevant users, but also increases the user’s ad experience by showing him products and services he is really interested in.
3. Pervasiveness: When it comes to how we speak with target customers, invasiveness is a very bad thing, but pervasiveness is a very good thing. Keep in mind that our goal here has always been about relevancy–which means being able to send the right message to the right user when and where it will be most effective. It means truly understanding a consumer across all of the media they consume and keeping interactions with these consumers consistent to their preferences no matter where or how they come into contact with your brand.
4. Post-impression activity: Finally, we can only know if our content was truly relevant if we know its ultimate result. The biggest disparity between traditional and digital advertising is in measurement. Where TV and other traditional media advertisers have to “back in” to advertising performance using offline surveys and disconnected market research, digital can look at the entirety of the customer’s journey, all the way to the brand’s site and, ultimately, to purchase behavior.
As an industry that is becoming hyperdependent on real-time technology and data-driven solutions, marketing can be challenging. The New 4 Ps is meant to give marketers a simple mnemonic device to evaluate whether a marketing strategy is really leveraging the capabilities of digital and creating campaigns relevant to the consumer.
When choosing platforms, tools, partners, and processes, marketers who can say their strategy has “ticked” these four boxes will be well on the way to more effective advertising and better consumer experiences.
