The 7 Ps extended marketing mix is a popular tool used by marketers. The 7Ps are used when planning marketing strategies. Find out how to use the 7 Ps extended marketing mix when building a digital marketing strategy. The 7 Ps are price, product, place, promotion, people, processes, and physical evidence. Source: https://strategyst.co.uk/blog/7-ps-extended-marketing-mix-the-ultimate-guide/

1. 7 Ps extended
marketing mix
By Daniel Lee
Founder of Strategyst

2. What are the 7 Ps?
The 7 Ps Marketing Mix is a popular
tool used for analysing an
organisation’s key marketing strategy
components. The 7 Ps are actually an
extended list of marketing factors,
building upon the original 4 Ps of price,
product, place, and promotion.
Edmund Jerome McCarthy originally
proposed the 4 Ps in his book Basic
Marketing: A Managerial Approach,
which was published in 1960. Booms
and Bitner updated the 4 Ps to the 7
Ps in 1981, adding physical evidence,
people, and processes.
The 7 Ps are:
• Price
• Product
• Place
• Promotion
• People
• Processes
• Physical evidence

3. Price - explained
Price refers to how much you are
charging for your products and
services. You will want to conduct an
analysis of your competitors’ pricing
strategies and determine where your
pricing sits within the wider market.
You want to find out whether your
prices are higher than the market
average, lower than the average, or
just in the middle.
You can use tools like the Price Quality
Matrix and the Pricing Strategies
Matrix to better understand where
your products and services fit within
your market and also the potential
pricing strategies available to you to
achieve your objectives.
Questions to ask:
• How much do our products and
services cost to provide/produce?
• What are our target profit margins?
• How much do we charge for our
products and services?
• How much do our competitors
charge for the same products and
services that we provide?
• Are our prices higher, the same as,
or below the market average?
• What pricing strategy do we
currently use, and does it align with
how we want to market our products
and services?
• Do we offer discounts on our prices?

4. Product - explained
Product refers to the product or service
that you are selling. Compare your
offering to similar products and
services in the market. Is what you
provide premium or budget?
Understanding your product is
important, as you need to determine if
it actually fulfils your audience’s needs
and wants. Analysis of your product in
comparison to the wider market and
customer needs will provide valuable
insight into further development of
what you offer. Do your competitors
offer an in-demand feature that your
product lacks? Perhaps it would be
important to invest in developing your
product further to include this feature.
Questions to ask:
• What are our audience’s needs?
• What problems are our audience
trying to solve?
• What are the features of our
products and services?
• What are the features of our
competitors’ products and services?
• Are we missing any features that our
competitors’ products and services
provide?
• Are our products and services
considered high quality or low quality
relative to our competitors?

5. Place - explained
Place refers to where you actually sell
your products and provide your
services. Do you have a brick and
mortar store, your own eCommerce
website, or perhaps your sell on
market places like Amazon?
You want to ensure that you make the
process of purchasing your product or
service as easy as possible for your
audience. To do this, you need to really
understand your target market and
how they like to shop. For example, a
high-end jewellery retailer, make
require a physical store in addition to
selling online, as many of the
customers may want to see the
products, feel the quality and try on
the pieces before actually making a
purchase.
Questions to ask:
• Do you sell our products and services
in brick and mortar stores?
• Do we sell our products and services
through our own online store?
• Do we sell our products and services
through third-party online stores,
e.g. Amazon and eBay?
• Do we sell our products and services
through third-party brick and mortar
stores, e.g. department stores?
• Do resellers sell our products and
services?

6. Promotion - explained
Promotion refers to how you promote
your products and services. There are
many different digital marketing
channels, such as organic search, paid
search, social media, email marketing,
and content marketing.
The best channels for your marketing
campaign really comes down to
understanding your audience. Where
do they hang out online and how do
they typically look for what you are
offering? For example, a B2B service
may have a better chance of reaching
their target market advertising on
LinkedIn rather than Facebook.
Questions to ask:
• Do we promote our products and
services offline?
• Do we promote our products and
services online?
• What channels do we use to promote
our products and services?
• Do we run any promotional offers?
• Which promotion is owned, earned
and paid?
• Do we run and competitions?
• Do we partner with any other
organisations to promote our
products and services?

7. Physical evidence - explained
Physical evidence refers to the
environment within which an
organisation interacts with a customer.
This physical evidence is used by
customers to confirm that an
organisation is in fact a legitimate
business and can provide the service
they claim. The evidence should equal
or surpass customers’ expectations.
Physical evidence can include things
such as offices, staff attire, printed
marketing materials such as
brochures, and also digital assets such
as the website, PDFs and online
reviews.
Questions to ask:
• Do our customers visit our premises
and are our premises on-brand in
terms of design, quality and
experience?
• Do we produce physical brochures
and other printed materials?
• Do we produce digital brochures and
other digital assets?
• Does our product packaging reflect
the same quality of our products?
• Are our staff presented in a way that
reflects our brand?
• Are our reviews positive?
• Do we have positive testimonials?

8. People - explained
People refers to your internal teams
and any agencies that you may use,
who are responsible for sales,
marketing, and providing your product
or service.
In this element of the 7 Ps, you want
to assess how many people you need,
and which skills these people require,
to achieve your business’ objectives. In
fact, it isn’t just skills that are
important, but you need to make sure
that the team are aligned with your
vision for the business. If your team
lacks the skills or size to achieve your
goals, then you will either need to hire
more people, train the team you
currently have, or you will need to hire
an agency.
Questions to ask:
• What skills and experience do we
require to execute our marketing
strategy?
• Do we have people with the relevant
skills to execute our marketing
strategy?
• Do we have enough people to
execute our marketing strategy?
• Can we train our existing team so
they have the relevant skills
required? If not, can we recruit new
staff or hire an agency?
• Does our company culture support
our marketing strategy?

9. Processes - explained
The processes of the 7 Ps marketing
mix are the stages required to provide
your products or services to your
customers. Document as many
processes as possible, for example,
this could include the process the
customer is required to take on your
website to purchase a product, the
product delivery process, the returns
process, and could also include
marketing processes.
Writing down your processes in this
way will allow you to analyse them and
identify areas for improvement, as well
as allowing these process to be clearly
communicated to other members of
your team so that the processes can
be replicated.
Questions to ask:
• Which processes are used by my
organisation?
• Which processes affect our
customers purchasing or using my
products and services?
• Are our processes effective at
achieving the desired results?
• Are our processes efficient?
• How could our processes be
improved?

10. Wrapping up
Now you should have a clearer
understanding of each element of the
7 Ps Marketing Mix. Once you have
been through each of the 7 Ps
elements for your own business, you
can apply your findings to product and
service design, as well as your
marketing strategy.
If you have any questions about the 7
Ps Marketing Mix or would like
Strategyst to help you with your
marketing strategy, then you can
contact us on 020 3239 7960 or email
us hello@strategyst.co.uk.
Visit: https://strategyst.co.uk/
Original article:
https://strategyst.co.uk/blog/7-ps-
extended-marketing-mix-the-ultimate-
guide/