BACK TO SCHOOL: A MARKETING 101 REFRESHER FOR HOSPITALITY PROS (PART 3/4)
As part of our back-to-school September blogging series, here’s another lesson that’s worth taking from the classroom to the workplace.
Today’s lesson is about the infamous 4 P’s of marketing, also known as the marketing mix. It’s a useful way to think of your marketing campaign in a more comprehensive way.
The 4 Ps a.k.a. “the Marketing Mix”
The 4 Ps of marketing are something every marketing student has had to memorize at one point in their academic career. In no particular order the 4 Ps are as follows: Product, Price Place and Promotion.
While it’s easy to get caught up in the “promotion” side of marketing, the 4Ps help you keep everything else in view. Product, price and place are all-important aspects of a marketing strategy as well and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Hospitality Example
For a hotel, walking through the 4Ps is a great way to make sure all your bases are covered in terms of marketing strategy. Here’s an example to help you get a feel for how this framework could be applied to a real world hotel marketing scenario.
You’re the general manager of an independent, boutique hotel in Chicago. When thinking about your marketing strategy you might jump to questions like “Do we have rack cards? Are our brochures up to date, what does our website look like?” But that line of thinking only deals with the “promotion” part of marketing. Marketing is about everything that influences how a guest feels about your hotel. The 4Ps help you get back on track and understand the bigger picture.
The 4 Ps Applied
Alright, let’s go step-by-step and apply the 4Ps to our example hotel.
Product – What are you selling? Can it be better? What type of consumer does it appeal to?
Our product is a boutique hotel in Chicago. To think about this as a marketer, you’d ask questions like: Can anything about our product be changed to appeal more effectively to our audience? Are our rooms and guest experience consistent with what we’re portraying in promotional material? Does our brand and positioning make sense for our target market?
Place – Actually refers to “distribution” but “3 Ps and a D” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “the 4 Ps”. Place is about how the consumer actually gets your product. What channels are involved, is there a middleman or distributor etc. ?
Though we can’t change our “place”, it’s important to think about the role that location plays in our marketing strategy. What attractions are nearby? Is our property easy to access? Involving location in the marketing process can help us develop a more effective marketing plan that uses location to our advantage.
Price – What’s the price range? does it make sense for the target market we are trying to attract?
As revenue managers and GMs know, pricing strategy is critical to a hotel’s profitability. There are a lot of complexities to pricing, but as it relates to marketing, the biggest concern is its relationship to positioning.
As a boutique property, are we positioning ourselves as a more interesting alternative to a standard franchise hotel, or are we sending a message of bespoke luxury? Pricing should be consistent with whatever position we’re trying to get across. Too high and we’ll alienate a lot of potential customers but too cheap and we could damage our perceived value. Again, this is a simplified pricing model for a hotel, but the overall message is this: price and marketing are linked.
Promotion – This one is pretty self-explanatory and is what most people think of when they hear the term“marketing.”
How do our guests find out about the hotel? Are we advertising, using direct marketing, social media or some other promotional tool? Are our promotional tools effective or should we adopt a different tactic?
The big takeaway with the 4ps is awareness, it’s having an understanding of all of the parts of your product that could potentially create value for a customer. Understanding how all of the pieces fit together will help you make more intelligent decisions when it comes to overall marketing strategy.
Hope you learned something! Be sure to check out parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t already! And stay tuned for part 4.
