This might come off as a little too fundamental for any gurus in the audience, but remember that this is Marketing 101, not 421. The Four Ps, as they have come to be known, are the basic building blocks of marketing. They make perfect intuitive sense and they seem like something you may know already, but far too many people focus on only one or two aspects of the marketing cycle, largely ignoring the other, equally important components. What are the Four Ps, you might be asking? Well, I’ll tell you.

According to E. Jerome McCarthy, there are four main activities or components to the marketing cycle. As you can probably guess, they all start with a P.

1. Product: This always comes first. This is the actual good or service that you are looking to sell, and what you should be focusing on is how it best suits the needs of your potential customers. Is your product actually useful? Easy-to-use? How is it better than what your competitor is offering?
2. Pricing: What is your product worth in the marketplace? We all know that the price of any given item can sway customers one way or another, and at the same time, you have to find that delicate balance between supply and demand so that you can arrive at the price that brings in the most profit. Set the price too high and you’ll get fewer customers. Set the price too low and your margin becomes negligible. It’s all about balance (and attractiveness).
3. Promotion: This is the “traditional” part of marketing that most people think of when the term comes up. This includes everything from advertising and publicity down to the one-on-one interaction between a salesperson and a potential client. Contests, for example, are a form of promotion.
4. Placement: Also referring to distribution, this is how you get the product to the customer. Are you going to have a strictly online store wherein you ship the product to your customers, or are you going to set up a brick-and-mortar storefront where customers can come and physically visit you? When it comes to a physical store, this also refers to where you place a particular item relative to other items. Top shelf? Bottom shelf? Its own table? Etc.

Only by addressing all four Ps can you successfully market (and profit from) your product, whether it be a good (like a music player) or a service (like web hosting).