The Death of Marketing? Mix it up.

Here is the deal – the 4 P’s “are what they are”, but perhaps they need a little revitalizing. The emergence of later market realities across industries are resulting in a need for a different approach. On the extreme, some have predicted the demise of marketing – specifically Piers Fawkes:

Certainly the conditions are right. I mean, if “marketing” were a brand, we would have redesigned and [tag]relaunched[/tag] it a long time ago. As it is, the idea stands for an extraordinary bundle of things. It is a very messy concept indeed, and the practice…well, the practice is even messier.

So I thought about it death? Probably not but it could be something else.  I centered on the following questions “is it a relaunch or brand extension?” So perhaps Marketing, as a discipline, is just a late stage market and requires a different approach.

So as with any late stage market, or in this case, a discipline, the first step is to look for innovation – find an emerging P. Various folks have indicated [tag]web 2.0[/tag] could be considered an innovation fulcrum, but continues to demonstrate an emergence of new channels which is changing the effort to impact change. These new channels require a portfolio based approach which focuses on optimizing revenue by channel and is effectively product agnostic and segment focused.

So we have the [tag]4 P’s[/tag] of today:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Placement (as a geographer I can’t use place, it’s too specific)
  • Promotion

The Marketing Mix

So if the 4 P’s represent the market mix, the 5 P is managing the mix against multiple channels – legacy, emerging and under development.   Marketing teams continue to be challenged with only so much capacity and budget.   With limited resources a ROI based strategy is required. To that end, the 5th P, portfolio management, requires you balance investment, expectations and the ability to execute in such a way that you don’t end up over invested in a channel which isn’t delivering the optimal return.

Not all products are good for all channels and not all channels perform the same for like/similar products so a detailed set of instrumented processes and metrics are required to drive a successful portfolio management strategy. So is the 5th P, Portfolio, is effectively a brand extension of marketing or is it more of an assortment extension?

 

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2 Comments

  • Reply spatially relevant » Blog Archive » It’s official! I suck April 16, 2008 at 10:02 pm

    […] The Death of Marketing? Mix it up. […]

  • Reply spatially relevant » Blog Archive » Marketing is Geography June 8, 2008 at 7:52 pm

    […] Let’s face it – some patches have higher transaction rates than others and you can only effectively cover N% of the market at any given time based on resource capacity so it might not be that much of a stretch that sales execution/focus is often geographic.  Anecdotally, that’s probably why most businesses carry a geographic sales orientation, which Marketers need to be able to understand and how to best support tactical execution in focused geographies.  Another way to link geography is that Place(ment) is one of the 4 P’s of the Marketing Mix? […]

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