Price is the most neglected P by marketers. Which is another reason to celebrate Marketing Week’s readers voting for Pret’s price increase email as their campaign of the year. A beautifully transparent communication of an increasingly common situation.
The Pret marketing team were clearly involved in this piece of writing, but how many of us are also involved in the conversation about where to set prices in the first place?
Whilst it is often led by the sales team, it’s a marketer’s duty to be the voice of the consumer within the business and to bring facts to what can become an opinion-based debate.
Our job is to *know* what premium our brand can command, to understand what an acceptable price is, when it becomes too cheap or too expensive. That sounds complicated, but it’s not really that tricky. There’s a thing called a Van Westendorp pricing model (Google it), and you can run it yourself with minimal investment.
But the magic really happens when we consciously combine the Ps to maximise results. Big Black Door, recently had the pleasure of working with Spoon Cereals (incredibly tasty if you haven’t already tried them!). Together we tested some targeted digital advertising combined with a price promotion in Tesco. We saw a 72% higher rate of sale in the areas we ran the combination of advertising and price promotion. Get in touch with me if you want to see the case study.
So, what does all this mean for scale-up brands?
It’s important to consider ALL four Ps. Yes, all of them, even the less glamorous ones or ones where you feel less comfy. Bring some consumer data to support your points, it needn’t be expensive. Don’t forget that maximising your visibility in store, is a massive driver of brand awareness. And finally, if you want to turbo-charge your marketing, combine a couple of the Ps.
So, far from being an outdated concept, the 4 Ps are a fundamental tool for modern marketers to make sure we have considered the full marketing mix, and not been blinded by a shiny new tactic.
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