Marketing Plan Template

Understanding the Four Ps

Before you can successfully create and sell a product, you should decide on your marketing plan, also known as the four Ps. First, you need to decide on your product. This is really anything relating directly to the product. This is including packaging, presentation, or services included along with the product. Anything that a customer or consumer might want to know about the product, you should have an answer to their question.

You should know that information before they ask for it. Anything that might need to be known about the product, you need to know about, and it needs to be included in the packaging, presentation, and extra services included along with it or within the actual product. Product is the product itself plus everything that goes with it. Next, we have to figure out the price. Price is going to calculate the cost of production, distribution, advertising, etc.

The cost of actually making the product, advertising, for distributing, how much money the producer is going to have to put out in making and getting this product to where it can be sold, as well as the desired profit. How much does the producer want to make from selling this product? They use this information to determine what to charge for the product. If you charge too much, people aren’t going to buy it.

If you charge too little, you may not make the profit that you wanted, so you may have to tweak the formula a little, adjust how much you want to make in profit, or adjust what you’re going to charge to figure out the final price and get it to where you’re making what you want to make as far as a profit is concerned, but you are also not charging so much that people aren’t buying your product. Next, you have to figure out place. This has changed a lot in the last few years. What outlets will be used to sell the product? Traditional outlets, such as stores in actual buildings where you can walk in and buy something? Direct mail, where people are going to send you something that you order it through the mail or order through a catalog? Internet marketing, where you just order right online? You’ve got door-to-door sales, and you’ve got people selling stuff outside of stores. There are lots of different venues, but especially the Internet marketing has grown rapidly over the last several years.

There are lots of different outlets to consider whenever you’re considering the place. If you’re investing in actual buildings, you’re going to have to think about the overhead of selling your products out of that store. With internet, you only have to pay for a warehouse, and then you ship your things from there. You have to balance that out. Place can refer to actual places where people can walk into, or it can refer to outlets such as the mail or Internet marketing. Place refers to the market in which your product will be sold.

Our last P is promotion. How are you going to get the word out about your product? This is “ways to let consumers (your possible customers) know the product is available” through advertising and other means. You want to let them know what’s available. You want to let them know why they need this product; why it would be useful to them. Promotion is basically that: promoting your product so people will want to either go out and buy it, get online and buy it, or send off so that it comes in the mail for them.

Once these elements have been established, the producer can start producing and distributing the product. You could try to do this without actually thinking about all of this, but without a marketing plan, it’s less likely that your product is going to sell successfully. If you are thinking about a new product, keep in mind that a marketing plan is very beneficial. You will have to know the product, price, place, and promotion.

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by Mometrix Test Preparation | This Page Last Updated: February 13, 2024