Thinking through a growth framework (B2C version, using the 4Ps of marketing)
Opeyemi Awoyemi
Partner @ Fast Forward Venture Studio. DotCV evangelist. Prev founded Jobberman (#1 jobsite in Nigeria), Whogohost (#1 .ng domain registrar). Product @ Indeed. Wharton EMBA '25. MIT Legatum Fellow. AI will win.
If you are building a B2C digital product, especially in 2023, you definitely must be focusing on growing as fast as you can. Yet it's something most founders don't know how to do. Happy to help here, baby steps mode, with things to consider using a framework most of us have heard about - the 4Ps of marketing.
Surprise surprise. Yes, the 4Ps of marketing that you learnt about decades ago are not gone yet. They are sacrosanct to say the least when it comes to creating and extracting value in business.
?? Product: Creating a marketing campaign starts with an understanding of the product itself. Who needs it, and why? What does it do that no competitor's product can do? Perhaps it's a new thing altogether and is so compelling in its design or function that consumers will have to have it when they see it.
Offer a product that’s compelling and solves a problem for a user. Understand your product’s USP and let that come out in your marketing. The product grave is full of lots of products not well positioned in a way that speaks to your customers. Another mistake founders make is not separating investor communication from customer communication and end up not passing any clear message to customers.?
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?? Price is the amount that consumers will be willing to pay for a product. Price such a way that that makes sense for the pain and the scarcity of alternatives. Lastly price to give almost everyone in your persona a reason to try your product. For lots of B2C, this price is free. Free, because free lowers the barriers of usage.
??Place is the consideration of where the product should be available and how it will be displayed. With B2C digital products, UX plays a big role here. At what point in your flow does the customer experiences your value prop? Are there barriers to usage and first delight points, and are they necessary? There are some services behind login walls that shouldn’t be. For some services to convert, you may need throw a bone just before a paywall, and capture the customer’s attention.?Is it website, app, or embedded in other services, which display method is most relevant to your customer base and growth model. Lots of founders are crazy about apps today without knowing why, but apps work well for some services, and for others, it is secondary. Figuring that out is key.?
?? Promotion in digital products requires you understanding channels, which ones you are great at and which ones converts best for your customer persona. Partnerships, cold email, paid advertising, SEO, viral content or brand marketing, influencer marketing, offline marketing, freebies or hard core sales are all valid. Test wisely, iterate and learn quickly what gives you best ROI.
Clearly there’s a lot to consider that can’t be covered in one post. I will be writing a lot about growth channels going forward, sharing thoughts from my experience building products, advising founders and talking to sone of the best product brains. My goal is to help more founders and founding teams of startups think more about growth, act and see the growth emerge.
Solving Complex Problems and Creating Impact
2 年A great read, Thanks for sharing. I want to suggest that combining the 4 Cs of marketing with the 4 Ps of marketing, opens up new opportunities to gain insights to better deliver a product or service to a customer. The 4 Cs provide a more customer-centric view, though it has a very similar marketing mix to the 4 Ps. They both have overlaps, but they are different in their focus and orientation. Customer, costs, convenience, and communication are the four Cs. - Customer: Understanding the needs and wants of the target audience. - Cost: Determining the price of the product or service that is both competitive and covers costs. - Convenience: Making the product or service easily accessible and convenient to the customer. - Communication: Effectively communicating the value of the product or service to the customer. I think that this article is also in line with the elements of the four Cs. Because the Four Ps focus on the marketing elements from the perspective of the marketer, while the Four Cs focus on the elements from the perspective of the customer.? For example, in the cost element, the emphasis is on the customer's perceived value to determine price vs. the price set for competition and covering costs.
Global Head of Marketing Operations at Ford, ex-FB/Meta, ex-Evernote | SaaS | Fintech | Marketing Automation | GTM
2 年I would add that analytics plays a central role in parallel with the 4Ps. You have to understand how your potential customers engage with the product to optimize your campaigns on an ongoing basis for performance.
Global Startup Consultant | Strategy & Operations Specialist | Tech Ecosystem Analyst | Venture Funding Solutions
2 年In retrospect, life is really simple because it is the basic things that truly aggregate into the big success. The dietician will tell you that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as simple as this may seem, it works, it's very powerful. There is corporal punishment in the military formation for erring officers, which is to steady the head of the offender under a continuously dripping water - at the same spot - for hours. That officer can develop serious medical conditions from that simple punishment. So, the basics of hacking market growth still comes back to the fundamentals of the 4P's. The more we circle back to these marketing pillars, the better we are able to record good reports. Thank you for the refresher course.
Software engineer
2 年And physical evidence, people and processes inclusive for services