The 4 P’s and Why You Should Know All of Them

The second view of marketing we’ll talk about is the 4 P’s of Marketing.

This is the model Michael Porter is famous for popularizing.  Once again, the four Ps are product, price, place, and promotion.

As we discuss in the last post, often marketing is limited to only focus on one of the P’s.  Frequently, promotion is the main area of responsibility for marketing while the other P’s are managed or co-managed by sales, product management, business development, or the leadership team.

With the 4 P marketing structure however, the marketing leader (often a VP of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer) is responsible for all of the four P’s.

The value of this model is that, because you have one person or group overseeing all four aspects, you can eliminate confusion and misalignment that often occurs with different owners.  Therefore, ideally, y0ur go-to-market strategy should be more effective and your execution of your plan more efficient.

One big caveat though.  This structure requires a marketing leader with sufficient knowledge of each of the 4 disciplines.  That can be a difficult role to fill.  More commonly, marketing professionals have a background in one or two of the four, but less frequently all of them.

The alternative is to find a marketing leaders who is very skilled at managing others with more domain expertise in each of those areas.

Ideally, you’d like some who has a little bit of both – the ability to delegate to specialists within their department and enough experience in broader marketing concepts to know when their team is on the right path or off-target.

If you are marketing leader or a professional with ambitions to be in leadership, expanding your knowledge to understand the basics of each of the four P’s can go a long way in furthering your career.

Check out the next post another type of marketing structure:  SMP.