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Marketing is one of the most important aspects of business, yet it often gets a bad rap. I think marketing is very misunderstood because it is complicated.

So let?s look at it from a different perspective: 

If you are selling a product or service, then your marketing mix looks something like this: 

These P?s interact to create your whole marketing package. In other words, every part of your marketing mix has a direct impact on the end result of your product or service.

Let?s break this down for you in terms you can understand:

Product X = a good or service that you are selling

Price Y = how much you are charging for that good or service

Place Z = where you are selling that good or service (e.g., online, brick-and-mortar store)

Promotion A = how well and effectively you market your product through various channels such as advertising, online forums and events, social media sites and so on?all with the aim of reaching new customers.

The truth is that all these factors work together to create what we call ?market fit??that is to say, when enough people buy from your product vs any competitor who might offer similar goods and services for sale at the same price point (as long as all their other features match up well). 


This means there must be plenty of positive feedback around this new offering since it represents a significant improvement over existing options?though if it doesn?t meet customer needs in some way?well?it won't go anywhere! 


Why do businesses need to keep all these things in mind when thinking about marketing their products and services? 


Perhaps one reason is that all of these issues come into play when trying to understand what customers want from your offering (or perhaps not at all). If you?re not sure about any feature that you want to include in your product, it may be simpler just to make up an answer for each one. This can lead to ?one size fits all? approaches that don?t take into account customer preferences.


Doing this can result in poor design choices; worse still, if you have multiple competitors who also offer similar products but with different features, then your product choice becomes mere market positioning ? with little value added. 


So why bother asking yourself these questions before you buy your next product? 


Because by doing so you can make better decisions around features and pricing based upon customer needs rather than just following some arbitrary rulebook. 

For example:

  1. If customers want location-based reminders or reminders that go off automatically when they arrive home from work or school they will prefer an app like Google Calendar;
  2. If they want messaging-based reminders without having to schedule actions like taking phone calls every day at 5am then an app like WhatsApp might be more appealing; 
  3. If people only want an app that lets them read news feeds then maybe an online news aggregator would fit their needs better than a mobile app for breaking news updates would. 


???By asking yourself what customers want before we buy our next phone or computer we become more likely to build something that aligns with their needs rather than something which simply fits some arbitrary rulebook.


We often talk about these as the four Ps of a company, but it?s just as important to note that they are just four aspects of building a business?they do not necessarily comprise a single unit or process. By themselves the ?4Ps? are not enough to ensure success; you need some combination of them for your business to be successful.