The 4 Ps of Marketing and Product-Market Fit

The path to Product-Market Fit (PMF) can be an arduous one. When you are blazing a new trail, being directionally off by even one degree can place you miles off course over the journey. Because of this, it is important to not just venture off in the direction you "feel" is best. In my experience, many of my most well reasoned assumptions end up being completely wrong when it comes to the actual demands of users in the market.

You need a compass to guide you and a science behind validating that you are on the right path.

One such guiding principal is the 4 Ps of Marketing:

• Product - the goods and/or services that you are offering
• Price - the cost the customer must pay for the product, directly or indirectly
• Place - how the product is made accessible to the customer, including distribution channels
• Promotion - the communication of the products value proposition to the prospective customer

As a hypothetical, let's assume that we are trying to bring a SaaS accounting application to the market. Here are how each of the 4 Ps would apply in that scenario.

Product

The product, of course, refers to the SaaS accounting application itself. It does not end there, however. The product may also include any support or service-level agreements, API integrations, professional services, help documentation, etc. Developers will often think of a product just in terms of the lines of code in the IDE, but it is more than that. The product is the totality of the offering, encompassing its features, overall benefits and quality.

From a product perspective, we would want to make sure that our accounting app has feature parity with the other players in the space. For this type of application, this would likely include integrations with ERPs, requisition systems, etc. We would also want to clearly define our differentiators. A good place to start with this is to seek out users of the competition and begin to understand what they do and do not like about current offerings in the space and what features or benefits would compel them to make a switch.

Price

A good is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. In our case, most of our competitors are operating off of a monthly fee pricing structure. We could choose to mimic existing pricing that is expected in the market, or we could choose to lean into pricing as a differentiator by going with a usage-based scheme instead.

When considering price, it is important to consider your total costs and make sure your costs will be covered. This means understanding the total cost of production and maintenance on the product as well as the target LTV:CAC (Life Time Value to Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio.

If you're going to have outlier pricing, make sure it is a differentiator.

• If you are priced high compared to market, make sure you are offering a luxury service
• If you are using a different scheme, be able to articulate why this scheme is beneficial to the customer

Place

This refers to how the product gets from the manufacturer to the customer. It includes distribution channels, store placement, and accessibility for the target market. For our SaaS application, the place is largely the website and/or app stores where the product is attainable by the user.

Just like when you walk into a store, you're more likely to buy if the store feels clean and well taken care of, the place where you are hosting your product should feel: inviting, professional and cared-about. Remember, the product is not just the lines of code in the IDE, but is also the material on the website, the support/chat system, available integrations, etc. All of this should feel like one cohesive experience in the "place."

For our SaaS app, we will have a website that has an easy sign up process. There will be guided tours for the product available, as well as chat-based help directly in the application. There will also be a help system with up-to-date documentation that is linked from within the app as well as on the website.

Promotion

Often founders, especially technical ones, will make the mistake of thinking that building the product is the obstacle to overcome. It is very hubristic to assume that you will hang the "for sale" sign up and instantly there will be a line around the block of people waiting to get in. In reality, if you launch without a plan for promotion, you will be met with crickets and disappointment.

There are various methods of promotion that should be used for different phases and businesses.

Here are a few broad categories of promoting:

• Paid Advertisements / Listings - There are various places where you can pay to list your product. This includes ads on search engines and social media sites, sponsorships of podcasts or newsletters, listings on third party review sites, etc. It is my recommendation that you do not start with paid advertisements as you can burn through quite a bit of money before first validating that you are approaching PMF.

• Search Engine Optimization - Search engines using various rankings and algorithms to decide what "ten blue links" to serve for a given keyword. These may include metadata, backlink profile, and various other health metrics. Since these rules are changing like the weather in the age of AI-authored-content, I would advise that you look for the most current authoritative source for advice on how to optimize SEO.

• Direct Engagement - Reaching out and engaging with many strangers can be a little intimidating, but if you're going to play this game you will need to get used to it. This includes cold outreach via social media, email, or phone as well as attending events and shows where you can promote your product to likely users.

• Leveraging Network - You will most likely find your first users by leveraging your direct network, if you have the right people in your network. If you do not, you will need to use other methods of engagement to build out a network that is more aligned with the product you are offering.

By considering all four Ps of marketing, businesses can create a well-rounded marketing strategy that increases their chances of success. It's important to remember that the 4 Ps are interconnected. For instance, a change in price might necessitate changes to your promotion strategy.

Everything here is a mix of facts plus my opinion based on my experience in leveraging these philosophies in my own business. Your mileage may vary, but I hope this has been a helpful read that assists you on your journey to PMF.

---

Sheridan Bulger
Co-Founder essembi.com