Marketing has a lot of history behind it. From the world of copywriting and the evolution from printed letters and door-knocking campaigns to email marketing and social media work, the world of marketing has been changed by the people and the processes that arise from the world. One of the most significant themes that still has a massive impact on marketing from the 1990s is the ‘Marketing Mix’ coined by Neli H. Borden.
Borden was a professor at Harvard with a degree in business administration, and during the 1940s, he found himself building a model for the marketing mix. In 2023 it is still being used and likely will continue to be used in the future. Let’s take a look at the marketing mix and see why it has stuck around alongside some of the other marketing tools.
What is the marketing mix?
In Neil Borden’s article The Concept of the Marketing Mix, twelve different ‘ingredients’ make up marketing. Eventually, they were grouped into what is now called the 4 Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. All of these are constraints.
Now, all of these are things you can control and also things that are affected by the internal and external aspects of marketing. The goal is to take all four of these aspects and place them on your target market. If you can make all four of these perfect for your target market, they can start making purchases.
Changing the price, how the product is shared and promoted, and where and how you are marketing the product are all things that will make your product more enticing for your customers. If you can control all four of the different aspects of the marketing mix, you will find that you can get your product to the perfect customers who will make a purchase.
How has the marketing mix evolved?
Like everything else, plenty of different variations of the marketing mix have been made and changed. Plenty of different approaches have been created for different types of marketing, such as the Seven Ps for service marketing, and the 4 Cs for niche marketing. You can throw a rock and hit a different evolution that has been done for all types of the marketing mix, so don’t be afraid to find one that works for your business as long as you understand the marketing mix itself.
All of these still focus on the basic movements of the 4 Ps, but they make changes based on the type of marketing they are looking at. With all the different types of marketing, countless different marketing mixes go with them.
If you want to get really specific, you can look for the version of the marketing mix that will work for your business. It might just be the one that you and your business stick with to find some serious success.
Of course, the most common type of marketing mix perfect for the digital age is the “Digital Marketing Mix.” This is the same as the marketing mix, but it also changes the four Ps to be applicable to the world of digital marketing.
For example, Product is designed to focus on the digital product vs. something physical. Place focuses on promotion of the goods themselves and reaching out and building relationships with customers. Promotion focuses on using both traditional marketing tools, as well as digital marketing tools.
It’s all the same, but the wording has been changed to fit with the updated versions of digital marketing.
Is the Borden Marketing Mix still useful today?
The Borden Marketing Mix was around in the 1940s, and while it is still used today, how useful is it? It is actually quite useful in doing one major thing, which is producing a desired response from the target market. If a business understands Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, it can manipulate these circumstances to get certain responses from its customers.
Changing the price of the product, the ways that the product is shared and promoted, and the marketing around the product and how it can help the customers can increase the demand for the product.
At the end of the day, all marketing is about getting your customers to buy the products you are selling. The four Ps of the marketing mix will be the guidelines to ensure that your products are getting into the hands of the customers who need them.
The four Ps and the four Cs
Additionally, the four Ps can be interpreted as the four Cs. The four Cs are Customer Solutions, Customer Cost, Convenience, and Communication. The main difference between the four Ps and the four Cs for the marketing mix is that the four Cs are designed to put the customer’s interests ahead of the marketer’s.
Focusing on the solutions that your product is providing the customer, the cost (value) that they will get out of using your product, the convenience of getting the item, and two-way communication between buyers and sellers are all great ingredients of the marketing mix that businesses can focus on.
How to learn about marketing and the four Ps
Suppose you want to put the four Ps into action in your company, a company you are working for, or want to hop into the marketing business yourself. In that case, you need to get an MBA Marketing degree from a reputable institution like Walsh University, which has online and in-person courses that you can take to develop your skills and gain a qualification.
The Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing program will help give you the management, leadership, critical thinking, and communication skills to make sure you can use the four Ps and other marketing tools to increase the sales of your business products.
The MBA Marketing programs will teach you how to communicate and integrate marketing into your communication, showing you how to research techniques about marketing and manage the problems in your business and marketing that can happen in the business world.
Focus on the older methods because they work
While you might want to disregard older marketing methods because they were developed in the past and were responses to the previous way of doing things, most have stuck around because they work. Sure, they have been changed and manipulated over the years to account for the various changes that keep growing in marketing, but the older methods worked and will continue to work.
The 1940s legacy of the marketing mix, the four Ps, and Neil H. Borden is still around and will continue. Because it works and sticks with the basics of marketing that will always work and continue to work don’t be afraid to give it a go and add your legacy to the legacy of the marketing mix.
Also Read: 6 Tried and Tested Strategies to Grow Your Ecommerce Business