What is the Importance of Marketing Mix and why are the 4 P’s important?

here are many Marketing mix articles here on marketing 91 and we keep analyzing more and more. We also encourage all small business owners and strategy makers to start planning their strategy with a look at the Marketing mix of brands. There are many reasons that justify the importance of marketing mix.

Marketing mix constitutes of the 4 P’s in case of products – Product, price, place and promotion. In case of services it constitutes of 3 more P’s – People, process and Physical evidence. Furthermore, in recent years, Packaging is also considered as an important P and is said to be the 5th P of the Marketing mix.

The following points explain the importance of marketing mix.

1) It helps in a clean mix creation – Your marketing mix should have all the P’s compatible with each other. The price should be compatible with the placement of the product. The product should be compatible with the promotions. In general, all the P’s are intrinsically linked to each other.

As a result, when you are making a marketing mix, it becomes a chain of strong bonds. And these bonds then guide you forward in making the chain longer. Whenever you are considering adding a new feature or changing existing things, you have to look at the overall picture, which helps in creating a clean marketing mix for the product.

2) Marketing mix helps in New product development – While designing an existing product, there are any number of ideas which can come up for a related product that can be designed by the company. The pricing, place and promotions might be different for such a product. Nonetheless, it can be classified as a new product and hence while designing the marketing mix, the company can come up with good ideas for NPD as well.

3) Marketing mix helps increase the product portfolio – Whenever you want to increase the product depth or product line and length, you have to make minor changes to the product. In essence, you are making minor changes in the marketing mix itself. You are making changes to the product features, to its pricing and possible to its promotions. As a result, by altering the marketing mix and certain features within it, you can end up with an enlarged product portfolio.

4) It is a guide to improve a business – Physical evidence was an important P in the service marketing mix. If a restaurant or an interior design business realises its important, then naturally they can act on it and improve the physical evidence of their business thereby bringing in more business.

The importance of marketing mix is evident in more then a single P. People and process are important to the organization too and optimizing both can improve the overall working of the organization. Hence, marketing mix is an excellent guide if someone wants to improve their business and is doing gap analysis.

5) It helps in differentiation – When you analyse the marketing mix of Competitors, there are many different ways that you can differentiate yourself from the competitor. The competitor might have poor promotions and by analysing them, you can create better promotions of your own product.

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The competitor might have poor placement of products or he might have the wrong process or the wrong people in place. All this can be improved upon giving you a better marketing mix and therefore a competitive advantage in the market.

6) Finally, it helps you in being dynamic – A company which is well prepared is also prepared when disaster strikes. During recession or during a poor business environment, a company should be ready to respond. At such times, the company needs to be dynamic in nature. Such a company needs to understand its product, processes, people, promotions and all other P’s better. If it understands them, it will respond with a better agility.

Thus, there are many ways that marketing mix may be important to an organization. The best part is, analysing and understanding the marketing mix is not a lengthy procedure and the ROI on the time spent is much higher.