Let me introduce (or re-introduce) you to some classic marketing concepts that will help you think through how you should be going about your job of marketing. The first is called Marketing Mix. This is a concept that first began being used by James Culliton in the 1940s and later, by Neil Borden, throughout the 1950s and 1960s to describe the job of a marketing manager as a mixer of ideas that generated a plan to sell your products and services. The marketing mix included such items as planning, branding, the pricing of a product, distribution channels, advertising, promotions, selling, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, fact finding and analysis. Back in 1960, Michigan State professor Jerome McCarthy took this Marketing Mix concept and simplified it. He first described the Four P approach to marketing mix in his classic book Basic Marketing. A Managerial Approach. The four Ps are Product, Price, Promotion and Place. These Four Ps were used to formulate a marketing plan. Where the four intersected each other defined what and how you would market your business. Let's take a look at each of the Ps.

Product. This can be either tangible goods that you produce or a service that is provided. It does not matter if you are a for-profit or nonprofit company. The key to product is that it is driven by a demand in the marketplace. In your business, you are marketing one or more products that someone wants to purchase. All products have life cycles that they go through. If your product is new, you would want to include some sort of research into the product mix in order to test the demand for it. If your product has been around for a while and demand is waning, you may want to include expanded functions or a new target market. For instance, just a few years ago mobile phones were just that - they were wireless devices used to make phone calls. Along came a new functionality-texting-and a new target market-teenagers-and the mobile phone world was turned upside down. Next came Smart Phones, and cameras, and Apps-all of the sudden the product that it was became obsolete and the new product stormed the marketplace. What is your product? Where is it in its lifecycle? Is the demand for your product increasing or decreasing? Are there enhancements you need to make? Are there other target markets you should consider?

Price is critical to the survival of your company. It is a balancing act. Price your product too low and you are giving away profits. Price it too high and your target market will not purchase it. Price is a tricky equation. It first has to take into consideration the perceived value and quality of your product. What will the market bear? What does the marketing think of your quality? Think of it this way. You pull into a parking lot and two cars are sitting side by side. Both are Chevrolet autos. One is a Malibu. The other is a Volt. They are about the same size, look to have about the same amount of amenities. The Volt sells for over $17,000 more than the Malibu. Why? The Volt is an electric car and the Malibu runs on gasoline. Is there a perceived value in the marketplace that electric cars are more valuable than gas-powered cars? If so, is it worth $17,000 more for a vehicle that does the same as the other, essentially gets you from point A to point B? The market will dictate this. The Malibu outsold the Volt 9-to-1 in 2012. On the surface it would appear that most people do not value the Volt more than they do the Malibu. However, into the pricing mix add this fact. Over half of the Volts that were sold in the U.S. in 2012 were sold in California. It appears that Californians put a high degree of value on the electric car, but that sentiment is not shared by the rest of the country. Marketing has to take this market segmentation into consideration as well. So you would market your product very differently in California than you would in Nebraska.

There is a competitive component to pricing. The other driving force is the price point of the competition for the same or similar products. Price is very important in the way you market your products against your competition's. For instance, if you are selling below your competition's prices, you would position your marketing message much differently than if you were selling above their prices. If Nissan dropped the price of their electric car, the Leaf, well below that of the Volt, Chevy would need to adjust the price to stay competitive or come up with a compelling reason the Volt was worth the extra money. It all plays out in the marketing mix.

Promotion is where most people connect with marketing. It is the advertising message and method used to make your target market aware of your product, entices them to purchase it, and encourages them to purchase again after the first sale.  Promotion includes all of the communications surrounding your product. In today's market, you may tweet about your product. You may have brochures, web sites and golf tournaments all centered around your product. Whereas the development of product and price are initially internal functions of the marking mix, promotion is actively engaging your target market in external activities to get them to the point of making a sale. In today's competitive environment, it is important to monitor the effectiveness of your promotions. Because there are so many marketing messages that the average person hears in a day, it is important that you are communicating well with your target market. Do they know what you are selling? Do they recognize your brand? This is a function of Promotion.

Place refers to the location where the customer finds your products for sale. It is the distribution center where customers go to purchase your products. We are all familiar with retail stores. However place need not be a physical location per se. You may not be selling a product that can be sold in a retail store. The place may be your web site. It could be at the customer's home or in an office. It could be on a brochure on the hood of a truck at a construction site. In today's virtual environment, the place is becoming increasingly online and diverse. Remember the California Volt target market? You may find that a tweet on Twitter would work as an effective place to engage the Californians, but not work with the Nebraskan Malibu drivers. Take the market segment into consideration when you are looking for the effective place.

If you have scaled back your marketing mix to just one P - Promotion - you may want to consider restarting your marketing plan to include all four Ps. Especially in a tight market, those who plan well are better prepared to gain the sale.

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The Concept of the Marketing Mix, article by Neil H. Borden

 Basic Marketing. A Managerial Approach. by McCarthy, Jerome E. 1960,  Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.

Chevrolet Malibu Sales Figures, by Timothy Cain, Good Car Bad Car