- What is marketing? A common definition is putting the right product in the right place at the right price at the right time. Sounds simple, no? Well, not always. There are so many factors you need to consider with marketing or product or service. And if you get just one element wrong, it can be a disaster for your whole campaign. This is where the Four P's of marketing are useful. They stand for product, place, price and promotion. To show you how effective they can be, let's imagine we want to market a new lamp. The lamp is special because it mimics the warmth and light of the sun. We'd start by asking key questions about the first P, the product itself. One important thing to ask is what do our customers want? The answer could be that they crave warm, natural light, especially on dark, winter days. We could also ask how it differs from competing products. Our lamp is of higher quality and its light is more like the sun than the others on the market. So let's look at the next P, which is place. Where would buyers look for this lamp? Will it be stocked in a store, sold by sales reps or advertised exclusively online? The next P is price. Will people think that the lamp is good value? Is our target customer price sensitive? How will the cost of our lamp compare with others on the market? The last P is promotion. This is where you'll define when, where and how you get your message out to your customers. So what's the best way to market your innovative sun lamp? One question you need to ask is about timing. For our product, the best time to market it would probably be in the fall or winter, when everyone is craving light and sunshine. Overall, the Four P's is a useful starting point for building a marketing campaign. The tool helps you to find what you want to say to your customers and how you want to say it. You can find out more about the Four P's, and the questions to ask for each of them, in the article that accompanies this video. © 2022 Mind Tools by Emerald Works Limited.