The notion of a marketing mix was first mentioned by E. Jerome McCarthy in his 1960 book Basic Marketing, A Managerial Approach. McCarthy’s marketing mix was limited to product, price, place, and promotion – otherwise known as the 4 Ps of marketing. The 7 Ps of marketing is a model incorporating seven elements into the ideal marketing mix. Indeed, researchers Mary Jo Bitner and Bernard H. Booms added a further three elements to the original model: people, processes, and physical evidence.
Understanding the 7 Ps of marketing
The 4 Ps of marketing were created at a time when businesses were more likely to sell products than services.
What’s more, the role of customer service in branding was less well understood.
As the business landscape began to evolve, researchers Mary Jo Bitner and Bernard H.
Booms added a further three elements to the original model: people, processes, and physical evidence.
Though instituted in 1981, the 7 Ps of marketing is still widely taught today.
Businesses use the model to review and define issues likely to affect the marketing of their products and services.
In so doing, they are better able to satisfy the needs and wants of customers in their target market.
The 7 Ps of marketing
Let’s now take a look at each of the seven elements in more detail:
Product
Above all, the product should live up to its expectations.
Does it do what the customer wants it to do?
Product marketing should incorporate the benefits customers will receive when buying goods or services.
These are most often tied to features such as design, quality, warranty, and accessories.
Price
The marketing team must also identify how much the target audience is willing to pay for something.
At the same time, they must also be sensitive to company profit margins, overheads, and other associated costs.
Discounts and seasonal pricing may attract and retain customers.
Place
The product must be located where the consumer finds it easiest to purchase.
This may be in a brick-and-mortar store, or it may be online.
Promotion
This includes advertising, direct marketing, in-store promotions, and of course digital marketing in all its shapes and forms.
Understanding consumer purchasing patterns and targeting them at the correct stage of their buying cycle is paramount.
Physical evidence
This takes two forms.
The first is physical evidence that a transaction took place and may include receipts, invoices, packaging, and postal tracking information.
The second form of physical evidence refers to the branding a consumer is likely to interact with before making a purchase.
This includes websites, logos, company headquarters, social media accounts, and business cards.
People
Who are those directly or indirectly involved in selling the product or service?
Here, it’s important to realize that a brand is only as good as the people selling it.
Employees must be adequately trained. For example, customer service representatives must display some degree of empathy toward others.
Managerial staff must be visionaries who drive the company forward with respect for its values.
Process
This refers to the process of delivering a product or service.
For consumers, it describes how easy a company is to do business with.
Seamless delivery processes save time and money for the business. If a high standard of service can be maintained, this also builds brand loyalty.
7 Ps of marketing examples
Let’s now take a more comprehensive look at two 7 Ps of marketing case studies for Tesla and McDonald’s.
Tesla is vertically integrated. Therefore, the company runs and operates the Tesla’s plants where cars are manufactured and the Gigafactory which produces the battery packs and stationary storage systems for its electric vehicles, which are sold via direct channels like the Tesla online store and the Tesla physical stores.
Product
Everyone knows about Tesla’s assortment of electric vehicles, but the company also sells energy generation and storage products that are sustainable and scalable.
These include solar infrastructure for residential and commercial purposes, energy storage solutions, batteries, and other related products.
Tesla’s EVs are in a class of their own and dominate the industry in terms of quality, product aesthetics, features, and durability.
Place
The way Tesla sells its vehicles is radically different from existing models. The company does not have dealerships in the traditional sense, instead utilizing stores that can often be found in malls with busy foot traffic.
There, the consumer can learn about EVs more broadly and get a sense of what it would be like to own one.
Note that at present, Tesla vehicles can only be ordered online. Brick-and-mortar stores can facilitate the sale, but there is no need for a consumer to visit one before ordering.
Price
While the price of a Model 3 is lower than it once was, Tesla’s most popular vehicle is still more expensive than similar ICE models from other manufacturers.
As the company continues to innovate and the EV revolution takes hold, the price of Tesla’s products will likely continue to decrease.
Unlike most other car companies, the price one sees on a Tesla vehicle is the price one should expect to pay.
There are no hidden fees added on and since Tesla Store staff earn salaries, there are no discounts or aggressive tactics one normally associates with commission-driven salespeople.
Promotion
Tesla does not tend to use traditional advertising channels such as television, magazine, radio, or even YouTube (at least not directly).
Instead, the company relies on a masterful public relations strategy.
This is particularly obvious whenever a new model is released, with consumers flocking to social media to discuss test drives, vehicle tech, and various other geeky topics not unlike an Apple smartphone fan.
What’s more, many consumers are just proud to be Tesla owners and feel compelled to show off their vehicles in a video.
Elon Musk also contributes to promotion on occasion via the publicity he drums up on Twitter.
One tweet in 2018 featured a photo of a Tesla Roadster in orbit around the Earth attached to one of the company’s Falcon rockets.
Physical evidence
As the movement behind electric vehicles grows, so too must Tesla’s infrastructure.
Tesla’s aforementioned Stores and even the Model 3 also represent the company’s carefully curated branding, logo, and customer experience.
People
Elon Musk is undoubtedly the face of the Tesla brand, but many individuals work behind the scenes from assembly line personnel to more customer-facing roles in Tesla Stores.
Staff are trained at Tesla START, an intensive 14 to 16-week program where they develop technical expertise via various theoretical and practical exercises.
This devotion means the company can produce batteries more cheaply than it could by outsourcing to a third party.
Once a consumer takes delivery of their vehicle, Tesla also has well-established systems in place to ensure they get the most out of their purchase.
Topics include Tesla app setup, accessing the vehicle, charging the vehicle, learning the vehicle’s various proprietary features, and additional resources such as video tutorials and live education sessions.
McDonald’s is a heavy-franchised business model. In 2021, over 56% of the total revenues came from franchised restaurants. The long-term goal of the company is to transition toward 95% of franchised restaurants (in 2020 franchised restaurants were 93% of the total). The company generated over $23 billion in revenues in 2021, of which $9.78 billion from owned restaurants and $13 billion from franchised restaurants.
Now that we’ve taken a look at Tesla, let’s repeat the process for McDonald’s.
Product
McDonald’s is well known for its burgers, fries, wraps, shakes, children’s meals, desserts, and coffee.
Most of these products (and combinations thereof) are fast food items and the company retains many of its iconic meals today.
While the McDonald’s menu has evolved to include healthier items over recent years, the experience of visiting a restaurant – which could also be considered a product – has remained more or less the same.
More on this below!
Place
McDonald’s restaurants are beacons around the world with their distinctive Golden Arches which were incorporated into the company’s logo in 1962.
Each restaurant is adapted to the customs, cultures, food preferences, and laws of the region or country in which it operates.
The company has also released an app that allows consumers to order food across any one of five channels: front counter, kiosk, delivery, drive-thru, and the mobile app itself.
Price
McDonald’s is one of the cheapest retailers in the crowded fast-food market, with even its most “gourmet” products relatively affordable.
The prices of menu items in restaurants can differ based on unique characteristics such as product demand, customer traffic patterns, and the store’s trading hours.
Pricing is also influenced by services such as drive-thru and the presence of a McCafé.
Promotion
The company uses TV advertising to build its brand with campaigns designed to elicit an emotional connection and improve memory recall.
McDonald’s also utilizes out-of-home (OOH) advertising near stores such as bus stops, subways, and billboards. This targets consumers in places where they are more likely to be in the mood for fast food.
In-store promotions include the Saver Menu (known as the Loose Change Menu in some countries) where customers can purchase menu items for as little as a dollar or two.
Physical evidence
McDonald’s restaurants and their Golden Arches are found all over the world.
Many are found in odd locations such as within the naval base at Guantanamo Bay and the inside of a decommissioned aircraft in Taupo, New Zealand.
Brand colors are heavily repeated across the company’s food packaging and uniforms, with Happy Meal toys also serving as physical evidence that connects kids and adults to fond memories of eating in McDonald’s restaurants.
People
McDonald’s has a world-renowned training program that ensures employees embody and adhere to brand values.
These employees, which the company calls “crew members”, number around 2 million and are responsible for food preparation, customer service, and the maintenance of strict food and hygiene standards.
McDonald’s is a master of process and has developed numerous efficient procedures that dictate how food is ordered, prepared, served, and delivered.
These processes are supported by a vertically integrated supply chain, and, as we touched on above, methodical employee training.
Key takeaways
The 7 Ps of marketing describes the ideal marketing mix consisting of the following elements: product, price, place, promotion, physical evidence, people, and process.
The 7 Ps of marketing is a modern adaptation of the 4 Ps of marketing. The latter was developed in the 1960s when businesses were product-focused and devoted less time to customer service.
The 7 Ps of marketing enables businesses to meet the needs and wants of their target audience. The model remains relevant today as marketing trends shift predominantly online.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
