Marketing is anything you do in your business to make sales happen. It’s inherently creative—there are countless ways to promote your products or services, even if you have little or no budget. To make sense of all your marketing efforts, a helpful framework is the marketing mix, also called the 4 Ps of marketing.

Here’s what the 4 Ps mean for your business:

1. Product (or Service):
This is what you are selling. Think about the mix of products or services you offer, the benefits they provide, and how they stand out from the competition. Consider things like packaging, branding, after-sale services, delivery, returns policies, and whether products are bundled or sold separately. Every choice here affects how customers perceive value.

2. Price:
This is what you charge for your product or service. Pricing involves strategy (do you set a premium price, match competitors, or aim for lower prices to attract customers?), structure (do prices vary by customer type, time, or form of payment?), and tactics (discounts, promotions, or special deals). Your pricing should reflect the value of your offering and support your overall business goals.

3. Promotion:
This is how you communicate with your customers. Promotion includes advertising, personal selling, social media, public relations, and sales promotions. The goal is to craft messages that convince customers to buy while staying consistent with your product, price, and place.

4. Place (Distribution):
This is how your product or service reaches your customers. Consider where and how your customers can buy from you—your physical location, online store, other retail partners, or wholesale channels. Timing and accessibility are key factors here.

The important point is consistency. Every element—product, price, promotion, and place—should work together to reinforce your brand and message. For example, a premium product should not have a low-price discounting strategy that confuses customers. By reviewing all four areas and ensuring they support each other, you can approach marketing strategically and maximize the value you deliver to your customers.

Learn more about the Marketing Mix through the following reading:

📖 Reading: Organizing Your Company’s Marketing Efforts: Understanding and Using the 4 Ps

Video: Marketing Mix - Fashion Jeans Example

The key to marketing success is to think strategically and creatively. This means looking at the decisions you are making in each area of the marketing mix collectively, or in terms of how they affect one another. You want to achieve consistency across these four areas so that your company conveys a clear message regarding how you are positioned in the minds of customers.  Customers get confused when your price is saying that your are low end/value for the money, but your product of service quality is high end or very superior, and the promotional message is targeting mid-range customers who are not that price sensitive.

Consider an example of a well-formulated and consistent marketing mix.  Blue jeans have been around for over 150 years. This is a mature product that has a well-entrenched image in the mind of customers. Blue jeans have long been perceived as tough, durable, everyday clothing in which one can cut the grass, go to school, play flag football, change the oil in their car, and thousands of other everyday activities. At the time of this story, let’s assume the average price of a pair of blue jeans was $15.  Then, an entrepreneur comes along in the 1970s with a crazy idea.  Let’s slightly change the cut of the jeans, put some colorful stitching on the seam, and write our name on the rear end of the jeans. We will charge $75 for a pair.  His name was Calvin Klein, and he was the first to display these jeans on a high fashion runway.

Why did this idea work? How was he able to achieve big success? The key is a well-designed marketing mix.  This is illustrated below:

PRODUCT – we are going to position the product as “fashion” rather than everyday durable wear for all kinds of activities. As a fashion item, they can be worn to a fancier events and places.

PRICE – to convey an image of fashion, the price must be a perceived as a premium price. If the going price is $15, then $75 is high enough to convey a distinct image of fashion.

PROMOTION – assume our original target audience is upscale women between the ages of 20 and 35.  In 1976, an effective way to communicate to them is to advertise Calvin Klein designer label jeans in upscale fashion magazines whose principal is audience is well-to-do women.

PLACE:  Initially, we decide to only make the product available in selective sales channels. In this case, that means high end department stores, and specialty clothing boutiques.

Here we see decisions in each of the 4 Ps or marketing mix that are consistent with and reinforce the others.  This is what the entrepreneur should be striving for.

What is the good or service we provide to the customer?

The Product (or Service) includes the mix of products and services be sold, the attributes and benefits of those items, how they are positioned and differentiated, how they are augmented (e.g., aftersale service, delivery, returns policies, etc), how they are packaged, branding and brand identity, and ways in which they are bundled or unbundled, and more.

Decisions in this area include what mix or products and services to offer, the features and options available with these products or services, any customization that you are willing to do for a given customer, sizes, colors, brand names, packaging, labeling, aftersale service, delivery, installation, returns policies, and guarantees/warrantees.

Video: Marketing Mix - Product

How much does the customer pay for our product or service?

Pricing decision include the list price, any price negotiation the entrepreneur is willing to engage in, whether a deposit is required when the product is ordered, the offering of rebates or special prices promotions (e.g., buy one, get one half off), discounts for bulk orders, price bundling (where the customer saves if they buy two or more different products or services sold by the entrepreneur), price unbundling (where the entrepreneur charges for different components of the product or service, such as an airline that charges for the flight, but also a fee for bags, for a seat assignment, and so forth) and decisions on whether the price will vary depending on the customer or market segment being sold to, the time of year (or time of day) that the customer purchases, whether the customer pays by credit card or cash, among other possibilities.

This is what you charge for your product or service. Pricing involves three major layers:

• Strategy – Decide whether you set a premium price, match competitors, or aim for lower prices to attract customers.

• Structure – Determine how your prices vary by customer type, time of purchase, or form of payment.

• Tactics – Use discounts, rebates, special offers, or bundle deals.

Your pricing should reflect the value your product or service delivers, and support your overall business goals.

How to build a pricing number you can trust

When setting your price, you’ll often use simple formulas. Here are two clear examples:

1. Cost‑plus formula

Price=Cost per unit+(Cost per unit×Desired profit margin)

Example: If your cost per product is $4 and you want a 50% profit margin, then:

Price=$4+($4×0.50)=$6

2. Value‑based formula

Price=Perceived value to the customer–Cost savings they get+Unique benefits

Example: If your product helps the customer save $20 compared to a lesser alternative, and you provide added benefits they value at $10, you might set:

Price=$20+$10=$30

Use conservative assumptions. Don’t overestimate value; use numbers you can back up.

Click here to learn more about how to approach pricing as an entrepreneur.

Here is an example of the pricing strategy of Mia and Melani Crafted, a handmade products business in the U.S.

Video: Marketing Mix - Pricing

📖 Reading: The Pricing Secrets of Market Shapers

How does the customer become aware of and learn about our product or service?

Promotion includes all the ways in which the firm communicates with customers.  As there are so many possibilities here, we talk about the promotional mix (which is a mix within a mix). The promotional mix includes:

Advertising – where you pay to place ads in a particular media outlet (e.g., radio, outdoor (billboards, buses, bus stops, etc.), television, newspapers, magazines, online (websites, social media sites, podcasts), and so forth)

Personal selling – where you personally call on prospective customers in person or via the phone or interactively online --- so it is a one-to-one interaction.

Sales promotion – a catch-all category of sales support activities, such as samples your give customers, gifts you give customers, point of purchase displays, contests, calendars with your names on them, and brochures.

Publicity/public relations and social media – where you place messages in media for which you don’t pay, such as a publicity release picked up by the local newspaper or radio station, or social media posts on your Facebook account.

The mix of things you do across these four areas is called your promotional mix or promotional blend.  Your are typically using different promotional tools to move a customer through their buying process. This means certain promotional tools are likely to be more effective at creating awareness of your company or brand name, other ones might be better at education customers, others might be good at creating preference among prospective customers, others might be better at closing the sales, and still others might be most useful in following up after the sale. 

Click here to see an example of a promotional mix for a business that provides microblading services that enhance the appearance of a person’s eyebrows.

Here is a simple guide to creating an effective brochure.

Video: Marketing Mix - Promotion and Place

When and where does the customer receive the product or service?

The Place (or Distribution) Approach refers to the different channels through which products or services are made available to customers and the timing of that availability, whether from one’s own premises, online, or through retail or wholesale outlets. Place, also called distribution, focuses on where the customer obtains the product and therefore involves decisions about sales channels—an area covered in a separate document on this site. For example, consider an entrepreneur who produces his own brand of coffee: he uses four sales channels to reach customers—direct sales by calling on corporations and universities with dining facilities that agree to feature his coffee, sales through grocery stores, sales at farmers’ markets and public markets, and sales through his website.

For more details about different sales channels, check out the section “Sales Channels” on this site.