Rewrite the marketing dictionary. There are no more 4Ps in marketing. Just to refresh your memory: 4Ps stand for Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. With the advent of Twitter, Facebook and other social media distribution channels, Marketing has become just centered around the 1st P: Product. Build a great product and customers will follow. Google had it right – users are GOD. Price is no more important, especially in consumer software, primarily due to the advertising business model. Placement and Promotion may aid in direct marketing but the age of direct marketing is over – It is more about mass marketing. In Seth Godin’s word, be “Good at Doing vs Good at Talking”.
Some critics might say it is applicable to software, but we see more and more trends in hardware products as well. Look at Apple – yes they spend a zillion dollars in advertisement but customers buy their product because they love it – not because some salesperson makes a cold call, drop in a 10% discount and voila: closes the deal. The same trend is somewhat applicable even to products sold in the enterprise sphere – most of the tech nerds in the enterprise companies go “ga ga” (yes you guessed it right, that’s how Lady Gaga got her name) over a switch or a storage product or an on-demand software and the product takes off.
I am not diminishing the other 3 Ps. (Though, I am kind of in a denial mode being a tech marketer myself). In some regions and some areas it might be still important.For example, retail or emerging markets.
But, Technology Marketing profs need to rewrite some of the marketing text books in this new era. The first “P” is becoming more and more important.
Marketing = Product
Filed under: marketing, technology
