Pillars of marketing are the foundational elements of an effective marketing strategy. The 4Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) are the most commonly recognized pillars of marketing. – And the 5th pillar is People.
These five pillars are the foundation of a successful marketing strategy and enable you to build on your existing efforts to reach potential customers and capture their attention. When marketing, it’s important to understand these 5 marketing pillars and how they help you create an effective marketing strategy.
Table of Contents
What is Product Pillar?
Product is the cornerstone of any successful marketing plan. It’s essential to identify what customers need and how your product or service can fulfill their needs. You must also determine how to differentiate your product from competitors and create an effective pricing strategy.
Product is the most significant pillar of marketing. Everything will be useless if you do have a product to offer. Products can be divided into two categories, like tangible products and intangible products or services. Tangible products are those products that can be tasted, seen, and touched.
Examples of tangible products are cars, mobile phones, laptops, chocolate, food items, etc. Tangible products sometimes required to be packed to protect them from damage during the transportation and selling process.
The other category of product is intangible products which can also be referred to as services. Services can only be felt and can’t be touched, and there is no need to pack them. The service industry is expanding at a rapid pace. The examples of intangible products are healthcare services, hospitality, beauty and spa services, household services, etc.
Take an example of Apple’s MacBook is a laptop loaded with the latest software and technology. This product is not only of supreme quality but also has features to fulfill the expectations of its buyers.
What is Place Pillar?
The place is the second pillar of Marketing. Place typically refers to where your product or service is sold. It can be a brick-and-mortar storefront, a website in digital marketing, an online marketplace, or even international distributors in a global buying process. Your goal is to make sure your product reaches the right people in the most convenient way possible.
Traditionally, the word place was only referred to as a physical place to sell products. A physical place should be a place where people can easily find the product. It could be a store in a mall, a store in a small town, or a small vendor stall. The placement of a product plays an important role in the sales of the product.
The sales of a product will automatically be high if it is placed in a central location of the town. Just because of this reason, people pay high rents to get the central location to sell their products. For example, in a trade fair, there is a different price for the different location of stalls. That means the location of placement of a product plays an important role in the sales of the product.
However, in modern times, the second pillar out of the five pillars of marketing also referred to a virtual place which is the place on the internet. The Internet has also entered every part of our lives, and it has modified the way things worked. Similar happened in the case of marketing also. The placement of products on the internet is equally important as the placement of products in a physical place.
People can compare and shop for products from the comfort of their homes or while traveling back home from work. Therefore, it is important that you make sure that it is easy for people to go through your website, and it takes the least time to see and place an order.
To make this happen you are required to take care of various factors such as the price of products, the design of your website, payment method, and delivery charges, delivery methods, etc. otherwise, people might leave their product in their shopping cart if they find the payment method complex. Therefore, a seller needs to choose the place for sale wisely as it can impact the sales of your product greatly.
What is Price Pillar?
The elements of the Price Pillar are related to the pricing strategy of the product/service. This includes setting up the right price for each product and deciding upon discounts. The elements of the Price Pillar are the discounts, payment methods, and other offers that you provide to your customers. The price must be decided in such a way that it is neither too high nor too low. It must be at a point where your product provides value to the customer and results in maximum profit for you.
Even you have an excellent product to offer, but you might fail to generate sales if you put a wrong price on the product. Other factors like place, packaging, and quality of a product are not the factor that a customer is consciously aware of, but the price is a factor that a customer consciously think about, and the success rate of your sales will highly depend on the price of the product.
The sales of substitute goods highly depend on the price factor. Substitute goods are those goods which serve the same purpose. Therefore, people tend to buy products with lower prices when it comes to choosing a product from substitute goods and on the other hand, you give any price to your product if you have a monopoly in the market.
Otherwise, products like face washes or toothpaste which have hundreds of alternatives in the market should be given a standard price if you don’t want to lose sales as people choose cheaper products over the expensive products if they serve the same purpose.
What is Promotion Pillar?
The promotion marketing pillar helps in informing people about the features and benefits of a particular product. It includes various activities, such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing, etc., which help to create awareness among customers about a particular product. Advertising is the most common technique used by companies to promote their products as it helps to reach out to a large number of potential customers.
Promotion is the 4th pillar of marketing, but it can leave behind all other pillars of marketing if used with planning and strategically. The meaning of promotion is to make people aware of the existence of your product.
There are various methods used by companies to promote their products such as mass media advertising, advertising on print media, advertising on social media, and other methods like discounts, coupons, giveaway, etc. to promote a product.
Because of the importance of promotion, companies spend millions of dollars on the promotion of their products. The sales of two similar products can vary a lot if one is promoted properly and other is not. You can hire an advertising agency to create content for your promotions, or you can prepare for your promotion campaigns on your own.
What is People Pillar?
In marketing, People Pillar is one of the latest, most important, and neglected pillars. It refers to your relationship with the customers and how well you understand their needs or wants. You should always consider customer feedback before launching any new products as it can help in creating a better user experience for the customers.
In the past, when the service market is not that popular in those times, there were only four pillars of marketing. But because of the increasing demand for the service industry, the 5th pillar is now included among the important pillars of marketing. The people pillar of marketing helps you to optimize your brand marketing efforts by appealing to the target audience through proper brand marketing tactics.
People become a critical part of the marketing process wherever there is involvement of people in the business. For example, in healthcare, hospitality, and food delivery industry people are required to provide services.
Therefore, they become an important part of the marketing process as they will be the ones who will face customers. Therefore, the actions and behavior of your staff can affect the purchasing decision of your customer and whether they want to do business with you in the future or not.
Let us understand this with an example. Consider you have opened a restaurant in your town and you have spent a great deal of money on getting perfect location, setting up a peaceful and attractive ambiance. But one thing that you ignored or didn’t pay attention to the training of our staff.
Your customer would never like to come back if they are not treated properly or at least with respect and modesty no matter how good your food is and how beautiful and attractive your restaurant is.
Considering this situation, the people pillar is used to ensure that the staff is properly trained and has all the necessary skills to fulfill the requirements of target customers. Ideally, your target customers expect you that the services provided by your staff are the best and they will get the desired results.
Conclusion!
This is all about the five pillars of marketing product, place, price, promotion, and people. These five pillars are very important and play an important role in the success of your business.
It is in your hand how you are going to ensure that all of these pillars work together and give you the highest return on investment.
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