Why The 4 Ps Aren’t Enough To Deliver Sustainable Business Growth And What We Can Do About It

By Kelly Lawrence, Founder & CEO, Lawrence Innovation

The 4 Ps of marketing have bothered me for a long time. I’m wondering if this classically taught marketing philosophy is also bothering any of you.

For Example:

• Product – what I sell

• Price  - how much I sell it for

• Place – where I sell it

• Promotion – how I talk about it

There are a lot of “I”s in those statements.  Where in the 4 Ps do we talk about our customers? Their unmet needs? Their problems to be solved? Where do we talk about the importance and impact of solving our customers’ problems – their why? Where do we talk about the profit to be made?

Let’s look at it another way. Pretend we’re selling a new metallic black paint for a sports car. What makes this product desirable? How much should I sell it for? What should be my channel to market? How should I communicate it? Who is my target audience? All common questions associated with the 4 Ps, but how do I know the answers if I don’t understand the problem and why it matters – ie the value proposition? And, it fails to answer the question every boss will ask... "How much money will we make by when?"

We all know that to have a sustainable, for-profit business, we must make money. To make money, we have to solve problems our customers care about. To solve a problem, we must first understand the problem to be solved. To understand, we must listen, observe and develop insights. The 4 Ps completely ignore these critical aspects of new business development.

For those of you who are bothered as much by this as I am, I invite you to join me in creating a world that truly serves customers and goes well beyond the 4Ps. My friend Dave Loomis does a beautiful job of facilitating this conversation in his newly released book Marketing Is Everything We Do. How Serving Others Brings Success In Business And In Life. Dave challenges that while the 4 Ps are still relevant, they do not address the front-end-of-innovation work commonly done by the true marketer. I wholeheartedly agree.

True marketers distinguish themselves by deeply understanding customer unmet needs and their jobs to be done (as Tony Ulwick and Scott Burleson would say). Marketers go deeper to understand the impact for solving these problems, who else in the supply chain might be affected, how the solution adds value versus the next best alternative and is the opportunity big enough to matter – to the customer and to our internal bottom line. True marketers work tirelessly with their teams to then solve these problems, test prototypes, tweak and finally launch solutions that matter, that customers want and will pay for. Dare I say, marketers are passionate innovators and the life blood of every for profit business. Where is that in the 4 Ps?

How well is your organization serving customers? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Contact us .