The New '4Ps of Marketing'
Neil H. Borden, in 1964, gifted the world with the 4Ps of the Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. This concept has been a cornerstone of business marketing. However, there are new 4Ps of Marketing – just as powerful and just as game changing as Neil Borden’s.
We are experiencing a fundamental shift in the method of marketing, including,
- the continued decline in digital marketing response rates even with an exponential growth in digital marketing spend;
- a privacy revolution led by savvy customers who understand how their data is collected, used and benefits the brands and businesses they interact with;
- how profiling and resultant attempts at personalization have failed to meet customers’ requirements.
At autoGraph, we have been working with the customer centric CMOs, CIOs and brands and we have demonstrated the need for a new approach with customers that address their fundamental data, profiling and privacy needs.
We have summarized our learning into The New 4Ps of Marketing.
The New 4Ps of Marketing: PERMISSION
Permissions are the binary decisions about customers’ data collection and use. GDPR will affect permissions and there is guidance from the ICO regarding explicit consent for a specific purpose and how permission data is stored and reported in case a customer complains to the ICO.
Our advice for dealing with Permissions is two fold. First, build a RACI matrix before beginning your work on Permissions and mark Legal as “Consulted”. Marketing need to be “Responsible” and usability testing of plain English and clarity of customer actions is critical to have a robust permissions structure.
Second, brands must ask for permission at the right time. By using autoGraph and asking for permission after a “moment of trust” has been established, autoGraph delivers 93.4% OPT IN rates.
The New 4Ps of Marketing: PREFERENCES
Preferences let the customer control their marketing channel and cadence. We suggest having a “global opt in” and a “granular opt out”. By that we mean consider the following:
- Allow customers to “take a holiday” from a channel instead of opting out
- Be respectful of the personal nature of specific communication channels and use them appropriately (e.g. SMS versus email).
- Change the cadence on specific channels based on customer preferences. If your customer is a Foodie and you are a grocer, the customer might actually want to receive a recipe idea from you every day. Too many brands are missing opportunities to personalize their communications in exchange for “rules” and operational simplicity.
The New 4Ps of Marketing: PROFILE
How many stories do we have of brands getting profiling wrong? Charities fined by the ICO for their profiling practices; Target and teenage pregnancy; My TiVo thinks I’m Gay. The list goes on and on.
Profiling today is generally rubbish. Brands do not have a complete picture of the customer so they profile using just their slice of data or sniff the customer’s digital exhaust.
Our solution is simple: ASK THE CUSTOMER. Simply ask them. Do you like Ford? BMW? Mercedes? What about Pizza Hut, Pizza Express and Papa Johns? Ask in a fun, engaging and easy interface. Add a dollop of AI fuelled by billions of transactions and customer engagement points and that is autoGraph.
But customers won’t participate, I hear you say. WRONG!
Customers are desperate to tell you more about themselves! Over 90.4% of customers who have been presented with an autoGraph experience, go on to create an autoGraph profile. Plus, the autoGraph profile is a holistic view of the customer comprising of their brand affinities, behavioural demographics, interests and attitudes.
The New 4Ps of Marketing: PERSONA
A Persona is who the customer tells you they are.
Imagine a world where a customer comes to your e-commerce site and hands you a token. The customer will tell you “Use My Fashionista Persona”. The Persona allows the customer to tell you directly “I have three children, I’m female and 44 but when I come to your site, I want you to market to me as if I am a 20 year old fashionista. I have a small disposable income but will splurge for the right accessory – especially a handbag or pair of shoes. I value convenience over discount because I am time sensitive. My fashion icons are Olivia Palermo and Solange Knowles.”
This isn’t science fiction: at autoGraph, we enable this today. Imagine how your marketing would change if every customer gave you a Persona!