Recently, I was involved in a deep discussion about Social Media being the most important tool in marketing. It is a whole new revolution that opens up many locked doors to reach marketing effectiveness. My colleague was convinced that social media is the 5th P as participation in the marketing mix model.
I found this extremely interesting and debated the possibility of a change in one of the most powerful marketing model ever devised.
The 4Ps Marketing Mix
Marketing mix is a depiction of all marketing activities that have to be carried out. Product, place, price and promotions, a.k.a 4Ps, have been marked as the base for designing any marketing strategy. All 4Ps will have to be mapped out which will finally lead to a holistic strategy for the company.
5P Marketing Mix
There’s a new move. A move to include social media as another P – Participation. Here are my thoughts on why social media does not really find place among the 4Ps.
The 4P model forms the basis for developing marketing strategies. This is valid for all products. Including social media as a 5th P will not work for all products. It sure helps while launching a new phone or even FMCG. But, what about a heavy product purchase like a truck?
Yet, social media is getting too big to ignore. It sure is powerful enough to be included in the marketing mix. But not among the 4Ps. Translating social media into a 5thP will limit its power. To tap into entire social media landscape and gain real-time insight, here’s what I think can be done:
- Add social media along with market research in the 4Ps model.
- Social media application must form an important component of Promotions.
Social Media + Market Research
Today, the power of SM extends beyond marketing. Many new product development decisions are based on research conducted via social media. Here is an opportunity to find out exactly what people have got to say. Do they like it or not. What can be done to make the product more useful. Decisions that was once based on the judgment of a marketing head/product developer is now rooted on first-hand information from the users. This is where all social media consultants come into the picture. Social business strategy is in.
Social media application
Under the 4thP – Promotions, social applications play a major role. Mind mapping of the target audience will lead to the applications to be used.
What do you think? Is social media a 5th P or not.
Excellent article Abhinaya. As you mentioned the value of social media cannot be discarded and perhaps over time I think the back end of promotions and participation will be SM.
Nice blog posts.
Au contraire, you’re limiting the power and scope of social networking if you restrict it to a tool that lets you derive insights about your TG, around which you can structure your promotions.
Consider AIDA – [Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action] – the element of ‘Participation’ or ‘Engagement’ with the brand allows the Brand Manager to _track_ this thought process.
Participation not only minimizes the drop-off between stages by providing immediate & clear calls-to-action of the user ["Join the Nike Fan Page"], but also allows the Brand manager to quantitatively _track_ the stage at which marketing activity would have the maximum effect on final conversions.
Since the internet is currently the biggest functional medium of engaging consumers with a brand, let me give give you an example of how ‘Participation’ accomplishes things that no other P does.
—————
IKEA was operating on a shoestring online budget. All they did was create a fan page for themselves on facebook, uploaded pictures of furniture. The person who first joined the fan page and tagged a particular piece of furniture got it for free. The most noteworthy aspects of this campaign were:
1. To tag a piece of furniture, a user had to join the IKEA Fan Page.
[This act opens the doors for IKEA to expose him to any and all future promotions - none of the other P's address repeat purchases or the reach of the brand]
2. Due to its very nature, the news of the existence of this campaign spread to friends and friends-of-friends of the people who initially discovered this campaign
[Now is the time I point out that this is the _closest ever_ that anyone has ever come to replicating the word-of-mouth effect in marketing]
3. It cost almost nothing, and contributed towards top-of-the-mind recall !
—————–
There are a few obvious limitations to participation. Yes, it does no cover all products – buyers of heavy products would not look for purchase advice on a social network. Internet penetration and usage is another [for lack of other viable participatory media].
My assertion is that 4P is just a framework, and that it is not exhaustive – it might have been, in the pre-digital, pre-social era, but the 5th P is too big (and too effective) to ignore.
[And that ends my stream-of-consciousness on this topic, was writing a little essay for the folks here, your post got me thinking]