Are the 4Ps dead?
According to University Business magazine, Don Schultz recently announced at a conference for Higher Ed marketing types that the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, place) are dead because they are product-centric, not customer-centric. Meaning, basically, that the 4Ps are focused on how to sell more stuff and aren’t focused on how to make customers happy.
Saying the 4Ps are dead is a little extreme, but he makes a good point. The “push” paradigm of companies speaking out to whoever will listen is quickly shifting to the “pull” paradigm of customers who want access to information at their convenience. Actually, I think customers have always felt that way, but until relatively recently they haven’t had viable options to accomplish this goal, so they’ve had to adjust their behavior to match how marketers worked. Now that world has flipped, and marketers are having to adjust their strategy and tactics to match how customers behave.
I imagine that some folks will say that there’s nothing wrong with the 4Ps and that the “promotion” and/or “place” aspects cover things like blogs, RSS, podcasts, etc. There’s a measure of truth to that argument, but at the same time, those two “Ps” are still marketer-centric and not customer-centric. With Promotion, the marketers are offering deals or advertising to customers, but the genesis of Promotion lies with the marketer. With Place, the marketers are determining (based on demographics or other customer data) where the product, advertising or deals ought to be offered. Those will always be relevant considerations, but how do you classify “buzz” for a product that occurs organically on blogs? A marketer might classify it as Promotion, but I’d refute that since, if the buzz really is organic, the marketer didn’t originate the buzz. Sure it’s a kind of promotion and it’s one that marketers love, but it’s originating with happy customers of their own volition.
So where’s that leave us regarding whether the 4Ps are dead? I think we’ve established that they aren’t dead, but they are now augmented by new rules that are focused on getting customers the information they need, when they want it, rather than the raw practice of selling more stuff.
Brendon, this is interesting to me. I’m not hugely “up” on what’s going on in the business world, so your blog is one that keeps me from being totally in the dark. This post is spurring some thoughts about connections with the church, away from the old “attractional” model (”push” in the sense that you conform to my way in my building at my time and buy my product) and toward a missional model (”pull” in the sense that I go to you, build a relationship, and let your needs guide how we speak and live Christ.)
Might be a post of my own brewing…
A link from Gregg K’s blog brought me here. I agree that our marketing and publicity models are shifting, though awareness is coming very slowly.
I was involved in some internet buzz-creation about two years ago and had a fairly unique situation that let me see it unfold. My paying work was in a niche Quaker bookstore and its related websites; in the evenings I wrote a prominent Quaker blog. A great pamphlet was published, one that was pretty sure to fall into obscurity, but which I loved and which was only available through our bookstore. I posted about it on my blog but there were no immediate orders. A few weeks later another blogger was writing about a related issue and I commented about how this pamphlet addressed it in a fresh way, providing a link to my post. A few days later the blogger ordered it and within a few weeks he blogged about it. He brought it to a visioning committee he was involved with and I was able to see each committee-member order it in turn. Two months later they decided that every Quaker meeting in their region should get two copies and a mass order went out.
Did I create the buzz? Yes, but it wasn’t a publicity campaign. I genuinely liked the pamphlet and talked it up on my personal blog. There would have been only one sale if the pamphlet hadn’t been any good. I was coming to the conversation as a fellow customer that likes this niche so much that I had figured out a way to be gainfully employed in it. I wouldn’t be able to sell some randomly-selected book that way (or I might be able to see one once before my audience saw I was selling-out!).
I feel that I should say that I was dismissed from this job a few weeks ago. Although I was constantly busy, my new supervisor kept asking me what I did with my time; I think he was suspicious of my after-hours blogging (he’s the kind who can barely navigate email). I think my most important work is relational and I think its more important to empower those I worked with than to produce the most perfect product. I’m not selling something so much as creating an audience for sales. I wonder if these paradigm differences are part of the reason I’m sitting in my pajamas on a Monday afternoon surfing blogs and Craigslist postings…
You mean he didn’t come out with something catchy like, “The 4 Ps are about PRODUCT, so what we need to focus more on now are the 4 Cs about CUSTOMERS!”
Things, I would guess, like Capture their attention, show them Courtesy, handle their account with Competence, and Cultivate a long-term relationship. Just sayin’.