Marketing Mix: 4 P's of Marketing

The building blocks for every successful marketing campaign consists of four key elements. These four elements are called the 4 P’s of Marketing. It consists of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. In my Essentials of Marketing course we used these four elements to design our marketing plan for a made-up product of our creation. Through the course of the class I grew more interested in the marketing mix as a tool for communication between customers and expansion of the product. Furthermore, the Marketing Mix can be adapted for a variety of industries that may not deal directly with business. For example, the Church Ministry relies on Marketing. While the Church does not have a price tag for attendance or advertisements equal to businesses, failure to understand the building blocks of Marketing will result in an ineffective ministry for the audience the Church is called to reach.?

A short definition for each of the four P’s in the Marketing Mix is as follows: Production includes the variety, design, packaging, quality, features, and positioning of the product (Kareh, 2018). Production is important because consumers are more knowledgeable and critical of their purchases. With millions of products available at the push of a button. Price is the amount customers are willing to pay for a product or service (Kareh 2018). The price also communicates value based on the strategy used. For example, constantly having a discount based strategy or running constant sales and clearances means customers may not buy a certain product at full price. Place is how accessible a product is to potential customers (Kareh, 2018). Understanding the target audience determines the channel that would work best for the product. Lastly, Promotion involves advertising, sales promotion, and Public Relations (Kareh, 2018). With the growing accessibility of digital platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, the way of promoting a product has changed drastically (Kareh, 2018). Promotion is all about meeting consumers where they are at and “capturing their attention through meaningful and motivating content” (Dr. Kevin Kelly, BYU, 2018).

In Church Ministry this mix may look slightly different, as the ministry is not selling a specific product. However, choosing to ignore the four P’s will diminish the effectiveness of your ministry overtime. So what does the Marketing Mix look like in a Ministry context? Recently, I attended a breakout session all about Church Marketing and learned quite a few things about what Marketing looks like for the Church. First and foremost look at your target audience, who has God called you to reach? Do research about the area your ministry is in and what are the problems specific to your area??

Production is not about how many coffee shops are in your church, or how expensive your light systems are. Rather, production is simply what makes your ministry standout. Is your church situated in the inner city or rural areas? Are you reaching those of a specific cultural or economic background? Do you have a food pantry or conduct weekly outreaches? At the very least, your church has a Sunday morning service each week. How do you let people know about these opportunities? Furthermore, what makes your church standout as a place where people want to go? Knowing your target audience here is important! In the breakout session I attended, the speaker said “if your ministry is located in an extremely poor area than having million dollar sound and light equipment might actually be turning people away from the church.” What are people’s first impressions regarding your ministry??

Secondly, price in a ministry context regards what are people willing to give up to attend? What is the value in participating in your ministry and what are the costs of not attending? Third, place might refer to actual location relative to the audience you are called to minister to as well as the time of your Sunday services, when and if you will run mid-week services and how you will make video messages available. Lastly, promotion is simply what do you want your audience to feel and what do you want them to do? Like in the business world, Promotion is one of THE most important aspects of the marketing mix. Everything in our world communicates and vies for our attention. The Church Ministry cannot stand on the back burner of our world’s attention. Rather, what is the ministry doing and communicating to its audience??

I am not an expert in any sense of the word. In fact, I just completed my Essentials Marketing class, but learning about the Marketing Mix inspired me to see how we as a church can make a bigger and better impact in our world. Our world has done a great job at creating distractions in people’s lives and drawing their attention. How is the church going to counteract that?

Kareh, A. (2018, January 8). Council Post: Evolution Of The Four Ps: Revisiting The Marketing Mix. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/01/03/evolution-of-the-four-ps-revisiting-the-marketing-mix/