What is the marketing mix?

The marketing mix consists of actions or strategies that a company uses to make itself or its products better known and, for example, to promote sales. The classic marketing mix consists of the 4P model: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Over the course of time, the 4P model has been expanded again and again, so there is also the 7P model with the additional areas of People, Process and Physical Evidence.

The 4 Ps in the marketing mix

In general, the marketing mix can be defined as the combination of the marketing instruments that the company uses to achieve its marketing objectives in the target market. The decision about the use of a marketing instrument cannot take place in isolation; every single marketing instrument must be aligned with the defined marketing objective. It must also be noted that the individual instruments exhibit interdependencies.

The goal of strategic marketing planning is to develop the optimal marketing mix, which means the combination of the marketing measures should be such that it is optimally aligned with the achievement of the marketing objective.

The 4 P model has been expanded in numerous publications, namely to the 5 P and 7 P model. We first present the classic 4 P model and then go into the extensions afterwards.

Marketing mix 4-P model — The 4 Ps in the marketing mix

Product policy (Product)

Product policy encompasses the development and design of the offered services. The product or service should be aligned with the needs of the target group. Important points:

Product development
Product innovation
Naming
Services
Assortment planning
Packaging

Pricing policy (Price)

Pricing policy determines the conditions under which the customer can acquire the products and services.

Price determination
Payment and financing options
Payment terms
Discounts
Cash discounts

Distribution policy (Place)

Distribution policy includes all measures that are necessary to distribute the products and/or services from the manufacturer to the consumer.

Availability
Transport
Storage
Locations
IT infrastructure
Website and content

Communication policy (Promotion)

Communication policy encompasses “the planning, implementation, coordination and control of all of the company's communication measures with regard to all target groups, in order to achieve the communication objectives and thus the subordinate marketing and corporate objectives.” (Heribert Meffert, Christoph Burmann, Marketing: Grundlagen marktorientierter Unternehmensführung, 2018, p. 633).

Classic advertising (TV, print, radio)
Public Relations
Personal selling
Telephone marketing
Employee communication
Event marketing
Trade fairs and exhibitions
Online marketing
SEA
SEO
Emails
Social Media
Content Marketing
and more…

The classic 4-P model goes back to E. Jerome McCarthy (1960), and the expansion to the 7-P model to Booms & Bitner (1981).

Each instrument can be illustrated with brand or industry examples: Apple or IKEA for Product (design/assortment), penetration versus skimming pricing for Price, brick-and-mortar retail versus online shop for Place, as well as influencer or search engine advertising for Promotion.

Classifying SEO in the marketing mix of the 4 P model

In order to classify SEO in the marketing mix, the individual areas of SEO first have to be defined. Here is an excerpt of important SEO elements.

Strategy

OnPage

Meta tags (title tag and meta description)
Loading times
Structured data
Indexing management
Information architecture
Internal linking
Mobile

Content

Content formats
Headings
Structure
Text length
Content
Frequently asked questions (W-questions)

OffPage

Link building
Seeding
Link management
Reputation building
Brand awareness

Monitoring

Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Trackers for rankings
Tools for visibility

This description of the individual SEO tasks makes it clear that SEO is to be assigned to the areas of “Promotion” and “Place” within the 4 Ps.

SEO in “Place”

Distribution policy must ensure an optimal provision of the products. In the digital area, this means that products and services must be found in the online shop or on the company website. The “transport” of the visitors to the online shop or to the company website takes place via the channel of the search engines.

Since several million search results are often displayed in a search, a product must appear among the first search results if possible, so that it does not get lost in the mass of search results. To achieve the top placements, certain prerequisites must in turn be created for the algorithms of the search engines. For this, the following SEO measures are used:

Optimization of:

Website
Loading times
Internal linking

SEO in “Promotion”

In order to align the online communication measures optimally with the user, it must first be analyzed what the user is searching for, and what problems and needs they have.

The task of SEO is the analysis of the search queries relating to the respective product or service area and, based on this, the development of a keyword strategy

Once the keyword strategy has been developed, content must be created; this should be developed primarily for the users. Since Google is a full-text search engine, texts should also be created in a search-engine-friendly way.

The task of SEO in Promotion:

Ensuring that all content-related important points on the respective topic are covered, so that Google classifies the text as relevant for the user.
Creation of the meta title and description in accordance with the Google guidelines and in such a way that the user immediately recognizes the services and an incentive arises to click on the website in the SERPs
Integration of rich snippets to increase attention and the incentive to click
Marking up texts such as, for example, an FAQ in order to take up as much space as possible in the SERPs.
The content must also be made visible to the target group, which means it must be actively distributed.
Distribution of content within the target group through seeding measures

A further assessment of what place SEO has in the 4 P marketing mix can be found here by Olaf Kopp.

What is the 7 P model?

The 4-P model was developed above all for physical products. Since intangible services have different requirements, it was expanded to the 7-P model in 1981 by Booms & Bitner.

Marketing mix 7-P model — The three further Ps in the marketing mix according to the 7-P model

Personnel policy (People/Personnel)

Personnel policy as the fifth “P” is of great importance especially in services marketing. The reason for this is that, in contrast to products, services are intangible. Since services are provided by employees, customers mainly come into contact with the company's staff. The staff is thus an important indicator for the customer of the quality of a service. Their qualification, demeanor, motivation and appearance are therefore an important task for personnel policy.

Instruments of personnel policy are:

Recruitment and personnel selection
Qualification
Incentive and reward systems
Further training
Motivation
Appearance and demeanor of the staff

Process management (Process)

This is about developing, optimizing and implementing customer-oriented business processes. The following questions are to be answered in the area of “Process”: what, when, how, with what and by whom the respective service is to be provided. The course of the service provision has a high influence on customer satisfaction. This concerns both the provision of a physical service for a customer and the processes in the online business.

If, for example, a user wants to use an app, various processes take place: first they have to download the app (this is to be seen as one process), then they have to register (a further self-contained process). Especially in online retail, the processes have to function flawlessly, starting with the clear product presentation, through user-friendly navigation, to the ordering procedures and the delivery to the customer. Planning and modeling of processes

Optimization of processes
Integration of the customer into the processes

Physical evidence policy (Physical Evidence)

Physical evidence policy concerns the design of the physical environment during the use of a service or when purchasing a product. Customers want to minimize their purchase risk as far as possible. Therefore, in a purchase situation they look for indicators that give them information about the quality of the service. The representative sales office of an insurance broker, an attractively designed hairdressing salon or a stylish shop signal to the buyer that they can expect good quality and give them confidence. In the digital world, the website is the “sales environment”, so it should be designed to be attractive and user-friendly for the respective target group.

Location
Building / premises
Vehicles
Business equipment
Web presence -> this also belongs to communication policy

What role does SEO play in the extended Ps?

SEO is not a direct instrument in the areas of People, Place or Process, but SEO can have an influence on these areas, or rather there are effects through SEO on these areas.

In personnel policy: good placements in the organic search results of job postings can help to find trained and motivated skilled staff.

In process management: through keyword research, it can be found out what is important to the user. This information can in turn help to improve process management.

Physical evidence policy: this instrument is classically meant to highlight the positive image of a company through business premises, retail outlets and so on, both offline and online. If an online shop is designed in such a way that the dwell time is high and the bounce rates are low, this leads to positive user signals and thereby to positive effects on the rankings.

SEO 7P model — The role of SEO in the 7-P model

The reference to the digital world is partly missing in the classic models

The 4-P model emerged in 1960, and the extensions before the development of online marketing. Therefore, although many instruments can be partly transferred to digital marketing, some factors are not taken into account.

Thus, in many articles process management is only dealt with in relation to classic channels. Process management for online shops – often with impatient customers and high technical requirements – is frequently not listed.

The customer-oriented 4-C model by Robert Lauterborn (1990) translates the provider-centered 4 Ps into a customer-oriented perspective: Product → Consumer (customer need), Price → Cost (total cost for the customer), Place → Convenience (convenience of procurement) and Promotion → Communication (dialogue instead of one-sided advertising). It is among the most important further developments of the marketing mix.

Conclusion: why SEO success depends on the marketing mix

SEO is an instrument of communication and distribution policy, which in turn are embedded in the overall marketing mix. In order to achieve the marketing objectives, every single instrument should be optimally aligned with them.

If SEO measures are carried out perfectly, but the marketing objectives are nevertheless not achieved, it is important to check how things look in the other marketing mix areas.

For example, if a deficient or unattractive product was developed in the area of product policy, this can only be compensated for to a limited extent by other instruments. Suppose a joinery sells a table in its online shop. The URL with the table is optimized in terms of SEO in such a way that it is among the first three search results in the Google ranking. The product is therefore found optimally, the communication policy and distribution policy are well positioned. The user clicks on the search result and sees the product photos.

In the photos it is immediately apparent that the table design (product policy) is completely outdated. In addition, the price is relatively high compared to similar products from other providers. In this case, the product and pricing policy are not optimally designed. This shows: although traffic can be generated through SEO measures, whether a conversion then takes place depends, among other things, on whether everything has been well worked out in the other areas.

In the described example, this can even have negative effects on SEO, because: if the dwell time on the product is only short, because the user immediately recognizes that the price-performance ratio is not right, this sends negative signals to Google.

All company areas relevant to SEO must be integrated into the SEO process.

SEO affects many different functions and departments within companies, for example the IT department, analytics, social media, the marketing and PR department as well as the editorial team. A decisive success factor for effective search engine optimization is therefore that all areas are involved in the SEO planning from the very beginning.

SEOs work together with the various company areas on these points:

Marketing department

This develops the overarching communication strategy for offline and online measures and provides strategic information such as, for example, target group analysis and purchasing behavior; these are, among other things, important for working out the customer journey. The marketing department in turn benefits from SEO analyses such as the search behavior of the users or competitor analyses.

The continuous coordination between PPC and SEO increases the performance of these measures. With PPC, it can be quickly tested which keywords bring traffic, and these can then be used for SEO.

IT department/developers

Close cooperation is important so that the technical SEO measures can be implemented in the code. Here it happens that, due to certain circumstances, technical SEO measures cannot be implemented – for this, SEOs and developers should try to find a viable solution. Both SEO and website maintenance are ongoing processes that should be closely coordinated with one another.

Editorial team

Since relevant content is an important ranking factor, texts are an important SEO building block. The copywriters need the most important keywords from the SEO team in order to then create content on this basis that is supposed to rank for these keywords.

Data management / Google Analytics

Google incorporates user signals into the rankings, so it is important for SEO to analyze user behavior. An important tool for this is Google Analytics. Here you can, for example, recognize how many of the searchers dwelt on the page and can then optimize poor URLs accordingly. The data from the in-page analysis helps with measures for internal linking.

Right at the beginning of the SEO marketing measures, all those involved should discuss in a workshop how the collaboration is to be organized in order to ensure a smooth process. Only in this way can SEO be successfully implemented within the company.

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