Clinging to the traditional 4 Ps — Product, Price, Place, and Promotion — is like navigating a city with an old map. Yes, these principles are the cornerstone of marketing, much like cherished Thanksgiving traditions. But just as we’ve seen with the rise of Friendsgiving, turkey trots, and Black Friday, it’s time for a bold evolution in our marketing approach.
Welcome to the era of the 10 Ps of digital marketing, where innovation meets tradition.
Gone are the days when basic strategies sufficed. Today, your marketing playbook demands more than the fundamentals. It calls for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of your audience, authentic engagement, and a seamless blend of technology and human insight.
In this blog, we cover the 10 Ps of digital marketing, detailing how to leverage these principles to create a nuanced and tailored marketing strategy. One that will better help you meet your revenue goals.
The 10 Ps of Digital Marketing
Persona
Understanding the human characteristics of your brand remains crucial. It comes down to having a deep understanding of your target audience. This goes beyond demographic data and into your ideal clients' motivations, pain points, goals, and behavior patterns.
By researching and creating detailed buyer personas, marketing strategies, content, and messaging can be developed for specific audience segments. Personalization enhances the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, leading to higher engagement, better lead generation, and improved conversion rates.
Some questions you’ll want to answer as you look to build out your buyer personas include:
- What are the human characteristics of your brand?
- If your brand were a person, what kind of person would it be?
Once you know your brand's persona, use it throughout your marketing content and touchpoints. To learn more about the process and how to get started, read our blog “Buyer Personas, the Key to Revenue Growth.”
Participation
In the digital era, it’s not just about creating engagement. It’s about giving users greater access to your brand. That means meeting your customers where they are and being authentic.
Engaging with your customers on their preferred channels is crucial to starting a relationship. Ensure clients can access your brand by email, phone, in person, or social media.
According to Gallup, fully engaged customers represent a 23% premium in share of wallet, profitability, and revenue over the average customer. And those customers are more likely to provide referrals, case studies, or testimonials, further adding to the trust of your brand.
One way to determine if you are engaging your audience appropriately is to answer these two questions:
- Are you creating conversations that give users greater access?
- Are you using multi-channel communications to engage customers and prospects where they are and in ways they prefer?
Personalization
Who wouldn’t want to patronize Cheers – where everybody knows your name and what you drink (start humming now). According to Salesforce, nearly 90% of B2B buyers say they are more likely to engage with a brand that offers personalized experiences. And McKinsey, in their Next in Personalization report, states that “personalization drives performance and better customer outcomes. Companies that grow faster drive 40% more revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.”
Personalization has become critical. Ensure your messages are tailored to specific buyers, reaching them at the right time and through their preferred channels. Data-driven insights can help you achieve this; ask yourself if the right message is going to the right person, at the right time, and in the right manner.
People
Attracting the right audience remains essential. Leverage data and analytics to identify and target your ideal clients. Then, align your sales efforts accordingly.
Part of the exercise is determining if there is a catalyst for change, that your ideal client is ready to solve the problem, and, fingers crossed, that there is a champion in the organization. This allows you to be laser-focused on your marketing campaigns and allows for efficient resource allocation. All leading to higher ROI. But remember, even though you are selling to businesses, real humans are behind those decisions.
Ask yourself if you are attracting the right people to connect to and engage. Likewise, ensure you are focused on those you want as customers.
Presence
Establishing a digital presence starts with a well-designed website. It’s your MVP – Most Valuable Property. It is your organic (owned) lead generation tool if built properly.
Gartner’s research shows that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and suppliers will occur in digital channels. It all starts with a solid CMS and analytics and includes content that converts across the buyer journey. It should be intuitive, clean, and properly search engine optimized. Need some tips for higher website conversions? Read this blog.
Fun fact: A goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds; people generally lose concentration after 8 seconds. The point? Goldfish have longer attention spans than humans online.
Prevalence
Be frequent, not forgotten. Ensure your brand is omnipresent where it needs to be, and be ready to adjust to changing trends and platforms to maintain your relevance. Ask yourself if you are everywhere you need to be and have the flexibility to adapt and adjust.
When starting, use marketing automation to integrate web, email, social, and sales plays. Campaigns integrating four or more digital channels outperform single or dual-channel campaigns by 300%, according to Gartner Research.
Publication
Content marketing will continue to be important. AI won’t lead this but will play a supporting role in helping generate ideas, define outlines, provide inspiration, and make content more targeted and personal. But authenticity will be crucial, and human-written content will be vital for connection and conversion.
Additionally, you can showcase your expertise and build trust by answering key persona questions that will also provide a foundation for Search Generative Experience (SGE), which is Google’s new approach to search results. Right now, it’s experimental but uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to provide users with quick and clear overviews of search topics without having to click on a webpage.
Placement
Getting discovered online is required. It’s thought that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, mainly Google. You're missing out on potential clients if you’re not showing up in search engine results for relevant keywords in your business.
Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to enhance your online discoverability. And, if the top keywords are hard to attain, paid Google ads would be an appropriate way to deliver highly targeted traffic and leads.
Also, don’t forget backlinks when you think about placement. Although it’s not easy, it’s an important component for SERP rankings and domain authority, which all contribute to getting found online. When analyzing your SEO efforts, understand how you’re getting found.
Positioning
In a crowded digital marketplace, how your brand is perceived makes a difference. Regularly evaluate and adapt your brand’s positioning to stay ahead of the competition. Incorporating competitive analysis into your strategy provides valuable insight and helps you stay on top.
A SWOT analysis where you determine strengths and weaknesses helps you develop strategies and messaging that will differentiate you from the market. It also gives insight into the best channels to be involved with. If none of your competitors are on TikTok, there might be a better place for you.
It’s important to be positioned well. A Bain & Co survey showed that 80%-90% of B2B buyers have a set of vendors in mind and almost always choose from that day-one list. Experience matters, and case studies are the foundation to showcase that.
Performance
Measurement and optimization are fundamental. Define clear objectives, set targets, and leverage reporting tools to track your performance and ensure a strong return on investment. In today’s digital world, data-driven decision-making is not optional.
McKinsey Global Institute reports that companies that leverage data and analytics extensively are 23 times more likely to outperform their peers from an acquisition standpoint and nine times more likely to exceed profitability goals. Data not only informs personalization efforts but also helps optimize your marketing strategy.
Making the 10Ps of Digital Marketing Work for You
It’s clear that the landscape of B2B marketing continues to evolve. Technologies keep getting added, generative AI being the latest. We’ve seen that inbound marketing alone isn’t as effective, and outbound marketing needs to be added to the mix. Account Based Marketing continues to gain traction as personalized marketing becomes more critical.
These changes mean companies must develop value-driven content and continue establishing thought leadership in the market. In all these changes, we all need to focus on agility and resilience.
By embracing these principles, you’re not just adding to your marketing toolkit – but also transforming it. This includes flexible planning, rapid experimentation, and the ability to pivot quickly. Thriving in a digital world that values personalization, engagement, and data-driven insights requires tools and strategy.
Marsden Marketing is here to help you navigate these challenges. With our expertise in integrated, multi-channel B2B campaigns, we are your strategic partner in this ever-changing digital landscape. Let’s collaborate to turn these principles into practice and drive growth.
Your digital marketing evolution begins now. Are you ready?
Contact Us to Get Started.
