What are marketing mix 4 Ps?

If you have ever read a book to a child, you know they love reading the same books over and over again. It’s great for their brain development and provides comfort and familiarity through repetition. For the adult reading the book, however, it can be…frustrating. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to read this book instead?!?!?…PLEASE?”

I’ve read certain children’s books so many times I have them memorized. “Horn went beep, engine purred, friendliest sounds you ever heard.” This is from Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, in case you aren’t up on your children’s literature!

When you read (or watch) stories over and over again, you begin to see connections to other parts of life. Consider marketing lessons from SpongeBob SquarePants, for example. 

But today, I want to talk about Corduroy, a classic originally published in 1968 by Don Freeman,  and it’s connection to marketing resources and the marketing mix 4Ps:

“Corduroy is a bear who once lived in the toy department of a big store. Day after day he waited with all the other animals and dolls for somebody to come along and take him home.” – Page 1 of Corduroy by Don Freeman

The story continues as a little girl wants to buy the bear but her mom says no because she’s already spent too much money. Plus, he’s missing a button. Corduroy hears the conversation and then sets off to find his missing button after the store closes. Adventure ensues. By the end of the book, the little girl comes back the next day and uses her own piggy bank money to buy the bear. She sews on a new button to his overalls and both the little girl and Corduroy are happy to have each other.

What are the 4Ps of marketing?

The 4Ps of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. Let’s look at these from the lens of Corduroy, now that you know the gist of the story: 

• From the first page of the children’s story, quoted and summarized above, we learn that the product is a teddy bear with green overalls and a missing button. 
• We don’t know the exact price of the bear, but we find out it’s more than the mom wants to spend, but low enough that a little girl could have it saved in her piggy bank. 
• The place the bear is being sold is the toy department of a big store (perhaps a JCPenney). 
• And the promotion of this product is a point of purchase display. Corduroy is sitting on a shelf, waiting to go home with a child. 

This is a very simple example of the 4Ps in action. Below, let’s look at how we could improve on some of the 4Ps to help those other animals and dolls on the shelf with Corduroy find a new home.

What are the 4Ps of marketing with examples?

Let’s say that Corduroy lives in 2024 (not 1968 when the book was written) and that after hearing about the 4Ps of marketing, Corduroy’s department store decides to run a specific toy campaign to increase toy sales.

To prepare for the campaign, they take each of the 4Ps, step-by-step:

1. Product – Sitting on a shelf beside Corduroy are 4 other toys: a clown, a bunny, a doll, and a giraffe. In order to reach a more targeted audience, it’s decided that each toy needs its own campaign in order to tell a more customized story. So, there will be 4 segments of the campaigns, not just one general campaign.
2. Price – After doing a competitive and market analysis, the price of each of the toys is priced according to what others have purchased in the past and what is currently selling well in the market. 
3. Place – The store decides to not just sell its toys in store, but also online via their website and through local business partners that see alignment in customer needs and opportunities.
4. Promotion –  A point of purchase display is great, but a targeted campaign warrants running specific advertisements for each product. The clown, for example, will be advertised next to the daily ad in the local newspaper for the circus that is in town. The bunny will have its very own Google Ad. The giraffe will be featured as an adopt-a-giraffe stuffie at the local zoo, and the doll is the sponsor of an annual tea party being hosted next month.

By making these changes, the toys sitting on the shelf find a new home within a day! The importance of marketing mix 4Ps is evident when you see how making small changes can change the direction of a campaign and drastically boost sales.

What is a marketing mix with an example?

Jumping off of a children’s page and back into the real world, here is a marketing mix example from a Crafted Voice client:

Crafted Voice partnered with Callosum and Colorado Parks & Wildlife Department to work on a campaign to reduce the amount of human-bear conflicts in three Colorado counties. We began by developing four customer personas, one for each county and one for the Hispanic population. Providing a clear message with instructions for how to reduce bear conflict in their home and places of work would be tricky given the diverse age and lifestyle range among the personas. A creative marketing mix was the only solution, so incorporated a variety of resources, platforms, and tools into our strategy. The marketing mix included trail head signs, dumpster stickers, social media posts, direct mail flyers, email campaigns, and an ambassador program. 

Without diving into the details of the audience we were trying to reach, we would have been shooting in the dark in regards to their pain points, motivators, fears, and goals. By beginning with a data-driven approach and setting the customer personas as our north star, it made creating an effective strategy much easier. 

What is a real life example of the 4Ps?

There are marketing mix success stories all around us: Coca Cola and Apple are two of the most famous examples of successfully utilizing elements of a marketing mix. They have established a reliable, desired product, set a price that matches their brand, and sell it in places that make sense (for Coca Cola, that’s everywhere. For Apple, it’s more exclusive). For the promotion, they’ve done experiments that are fascinating to watch and dissect into their tactics. They both rely heavily on emotional appeal. Do some research and study these two companies and their marketing tactics to see if you can outline their 4P strategy. Doing this will help you understand the process and how to build it out for your own business.