The original Marketing Mix was introduced sixty five years ago. It was a framework for considering how to grow a business and gain market share. The mix consisted of four Ps, price, product, promotion, and place, a list of ingredients that every marketer must pay attention to in order to ensure that their product succeeded in the market.

Over the years extra Ps were added. Ries and Trout gave us positioning at a time when more and more products were being brought to market. Positioning started with the product, but it wasn’t what you did to the product that mattered. Positioning was all about what you did to the “mind of the prospect”. Advertisers looked for positions their clients could own or “holes in the marketplace”.

“The basic approach to positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind.”
—Ries & Trout

And it helped for a little while, in a pre-digital age when people regarded adverts as information and they chose from limited ranges that local retailers stocked. But in a world where customers have infinite choices and they get to control the conversation we need to consider four different Ps in a new marketing mix.

THE NEW MARKETING MIX

PURPOSE
Not what you do, but why you do it. What’s the reason your company exists?
Bringing a product to market isn’t enough.

PEOPLE
Who you serve not what you sell.
Crafting your intention around the difference your product or service will make in the lives and stories of your customers.

PERSONAL
Becoming more relevant and significant to those people.
How you make them feel about themselves in the presence of your brand is what matters, more than how they feel about your product.

PERCEPTION
Being believed and believed in, not just noticed.
What your customers believe about you far outweighs anything you tell them to think.
Don’t just seek to find holes in the market or to gain mind share, set out to fill a void in people’s lives.

Sixty five years ago the focus was dominance. More was the shortcut to becoming an unbeatable Goliath in the marketplace. Today the shortcut to more is to matter.

Image by Dave Wild.