A Social Media interpretation of the 4 P's

A colleague of mine is studying for his upcoming marketing exams and while sharing his notes with me, it got me creatively thinking of a social media interpretation to the 4 P's of marketing.

The fundamentals of marketing typically identify the four Ps of a marketing mix as referring to: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. So I'd like to have fun with this and try to adapt the 4 P's and view them with my social media hat on…! I mean, if we consider social media as the marketplace, what would the 4 P's of the marketing mix represent now?

Product: the product sold in the social media marketplace would be the content we create or promote on various social media sites. The product mass produced in the social media landscape is content in the form of posts, articles, stories, videos or images. Like snack media or snack marketing, social media content needs to be packaged well, short and appealing, to magnetically engage readers with a fairly short attention span.

Price: the basic marketing definition describes the price as "the amount a customer pays for the product", so putting this in social media marketing terms, the price for content consumption should be absolutely free. In other words, social media users should have a free pass to the content you provide; without registration blocks or forms to fill before entering, but rather directly accessible, easy, short and only one click away from reaching your product.

Place: the place represents the locations where the product can be purchased, or rather where the content can be viewed – social media sites, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, YouTube… Choosing the right location to pitch your product is an essential component in social media marketing, because as Matt McGee put it, "you can create the most amazing content, but if you present it to the wrong crowd, it'll fail miserably".

Promotion: the promotion manner in the social media landscape is essentially communicative. For your content to be read, your product sold, communicating with the community is a key factor for success. Submitting to social sites or writing posts in your blog, without friends to back you up, comment, trackback, link, and relate to you, merely deems your content worthless. In the social media world, putting your product out on display is not enough for passing spectators to stop and pay attention to it. Don't expect users to invest their time, if you don't do the same. Remember, personally joining social media activities is necessary, your contribution to the community counts, and reciprocating gestures matter.

What is your take on this? How would you define the 4 P's of social media marketing?

Comments

[Josh Klein]

I think "price" should reflect the cost of the time it takes to pay attention to your social media content. People are busier than ever, and have more crap flying at them from all directions than ever.

It costs something to pay attention!

[Tal]

Thanks Josh for your comment! I agree with you, content consumption is time consuming, and we pay with out time to read, comment, vote or view... so true.

Also worth mentioning is the amount of time we put into creating the content. There needs to be a balance between quality and quantity. I mean, to waist a huge budget on producing a mega video and then uploading it to YouTube to have only a mere few view you, is not very cost effective. It seems wiser to produce 5 videos under the same budget and gain a better chance of social media exposure than from only one. Quality should be weighed against the time, energy and resources invested. Still, quality control and standards need not be ignored, and so balancing the two is the key effort.