Trends and Insights

Holistic Marketing: Updating the Four Ps

Today’s complex and increasingly digital marketplace has fundamentally changed the approach to marketing, powering a shift from the Four Ps model of marketing to a new model – Holistic Marketing.

The Four Ps were introduced more than 60 years ago in Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, in which author E. Jerome McCarthy classified various marketing activities into four broad components: product, price, promotion and place. The Four Ps represent the main (but not the only) elements marketers can leverage in varying combinations to create programs to meet their marketing goals.

Focus on Solutions

The Four Ps can seem narrowly focused on product sales instead of the solutions marketplace. Technology, globalization and social responsibility are now prevalent and must be considered in the marketing mix. Thanks to the internet and social media, prospective clients research and decide for themselves if they want to pursue engaging a firm. Geographical boundaries no longer stand in the way of entering new markets and new decision criteria, such as social responsibility, influence purchase behaviors.

In their textbook, Marketing Management, Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller define holistic marketing as “the development, design, and implementation of marketing programs, processes, and activities that recognize their breadth and interdependencies. Holistic marketing acknowledges that everything matters in marketing – and that a broad, integrated perspective is often necessary.”

Holistic marketing encompasses four “dimensions”: internal marketing, integrated marketing, relationship marketing and performance marketing.

Holistic Marketing

Internal marketing can be more important than external marketing for growing firms. It involves communicating the firm’s brand promise to all employees and telling them how to deliver “on-brand” experiences.

Integrated marketing requires marketers to create programs and activities to communicate and deliver value for clients. Each activity takes all the other activities the marketing department implements into consideration. Relationship marketing builds mutually satisfying long-term relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers/ distributors and the community) to earn and retain their business. Performance marketing focuses on financial and non-financial metrics that deliver a return on marketing programs.

Expanding the Four Ps

Although the original Four Ps can be used as a foundation to build a strategic marketing program, firms must consider other variables. Kotler and Keller, as well as others, suggest the Four Ps are expanded to incorporate the concept of holistic marketing. The new “Five Ps” — people, processes, programs, performance and productivity — were introduced to embrace the realities of modern marketing.

The original Four Ps are not irrelevant. They are still an important part of the marketing mix. Yet, the new Five Ps are broader and more inclusive. They apply to all disciplines within the firm. They help to center marketing initiatives on the firm’s brand, values and mission instead of catchy slogans. The Five Ps involve the entire firm in the marketing mix to achieve better outcomes by focusing on building stronger client relationships.

The New Five Ps

• People addresses the needs of the firm’s clients, employees and stakeholders.

• Processes are the creativity, discipline and structure of marketing programs as a whole instead of individual activities.

• Programs include all the firm’s clientdirected activities, as well as the original Four Ps.

• Performance captures the range of outcomes from a financial and non-financial perspective. This includes metrics such as profitability, brand and client equity and implications beyond the firm like social, legal, ethical and environmental responsibilities.

• Productivity includes production, deliverables, quality control and other programs that deliver value to clients.

Eileen Monesson, CPA, MBA, principal, PRCounts. Contact her at emonesson@PRCounts.com. accountingmarketing.org