By integrating the 7Ps, media and AI at the heart of its strategy, a business effectively leverages a range of marketing instruments to elicit the desired response from its target audience. These tools, which constitute the heart of the marketing mix, play an essential role in developing product demand. The seven essential elements of this expanded marketing framework include:
- Product: Address the “What” and the “How” – What are you offering and how does it meet the needs of your target demographic?
- Price: The cost factor – What pricing strategy will be implemented for your product or service?
- Place: Distribution Strategy – Where will your product or service be accessible to the consumer?
- Promotion: Use Media for Visibility – How will you use various media channels to improve visibility and awareness of your product or service?
- People: Marketing Human Resources – Who are the key personnel involved in marketing your product or service?
- Process: Delivery Methodology, Incorporating AI – How will the product or service be delivered and in what ways can AI streamline this process?
- Physical evidence: Prove your claims – What concrete evidence will be provided to support the claims about your product or service?
As buyer and seller behaviors have changed, so has the marketing mix, with digital marketing playing a crucial role in this evolution. The advent of the Internet has fundamentally changed the way consumers gather product information and make purchases. This shift has empowered customers, forcing companies to develop new strategies to engage them. Digital marketing methods including social media, email marketing, marketing automation, and content marketing have revolutionized business practices.
How do the 7Ps, media, AI and the marketing mix fit together?
More recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key instrument, enabling new advances in the marketing mix. Integrating AI into the 7Ps can significantly improve a company’s marketing strategy in several ways:
Product
AI plays a key role in product development, especially when integrated into 7Ps and media strategies. AI capabilities enable the creation of personalized products that more deeply meet customer wants and needs. Additionally, AI-based products are being developed to be more intuitive and user-friendly.
This aspect is particularly important in the field of digital applications, where AI helps make products more engaging and interactive. Additionally, AI’s responsiveness to customer feedback enables the development of products that continually evolve and improve based on user feedback.
Price
Moving to the pricing aspect of the marketing mix, AI’s contribution is equally transformative. It enables vigilant monitoring of competitor prices, thereby allowing businesses to effectively adjust their pricing strategies. AI also facilitates the creation of dynamic pricing models that can adapt to fluctuations in demand in real time.
This technology helps identify customer segments most likely to pay more, thereby enabling targeted pricing strategies. AI plays a crucial role in optimizing pricing strategies to maximize profits, ensuring a balance between competitiveness and profitability. Integrating AI into these aspects of product and pricing demonstrates its critical role in improving the 7Ps and media strategies.
Promotion
In the promotion aspect of the 7Ps, the role of AI is increasingly crucial, especially when linked to media strategies. AI helps create highly targeted marketing campaigns, ensuring the right customers are reached with messages tailored specifically to them. This personalization extends to individual customers, allowing marketing messages to be personalized, improving engagement and effectiveness. Additionally, AI’s content creation capabilities are significant. It can create compelling marketing content, such as email subject lines or ad copy, tailored to resonate with the intended audience. AI optimizes marketing spend, efficiently allocating budgets to the most effective channels, maximizing ROI.
Place
When it comes to place in the marketing mix, the integration of AI is transformative. It identifies the most effective channels to market and sell a product, ensuring optimal reach and engagement. AI also helps create a seamless omnichannel experience, allowing potential customers to interact consistently with a brand across various platforms.
This technology plays a crucial role in inventory management, optimizing stock levels in real time, thereby reducing waste and improving availability. Finally, AI improves the efficiency of product distribution and delivery, ensuring that products reach consumers quickly and in the most cost-effective manner possible.
People
Integrating AI into the people aspect of the 7Ps has brought significant improvements in workforce management and development. AI systems are now being used to screen candidates efficiently, helping to identify high-quality candidates more effectively. This technology extends its usefulness to employee training, where it can convey company procedures and best practices in a more engaging and personalized way. Additionally, AI tools are used to monitor employee performance and identify areas that need improvement. Added to this is AI’s ability to coach employees, providing real-time feedback that promotes professional growth and improves overall performance.
Process
The impact of AI is also transformative in refining processes, a crucial element of the 7Ps. AI technology is used to automate various marketing processes and tasks, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of human error. In sales, AI streamlines processes, enabling faster deal closes and more efficient customer interactions. Customer service and support are also areas where AI has made significant progress, improving response times and the quality of support provided. The role of AI in supply chain management cannot be overstated; it plays a key role in monitoring and managing supply chains, ensuring optimal operation and reducing potential disruptions.
Physical evidence
AI’s role in improving physical evidence, a critical part of the 7Ps, is revolutionary, particularly in the way companies present and validate their products to customers. AI technology has enabled the creation of virtual showrooms and product demonstrations, giving customers a new, immersive way to experience products before purchasing.
It also excels in generating realistic images and product simulations, essential for customers unable to physically interact with products. Additionally, AI significantly contributes to packaging design, enabling personalization and innovation that matches brand identity and consumer preferences. Finally, AI is essential for developing interactive and engaging digital experiences, thereby improving customer engagement and satisfaction.
Amazon’s Perspective: 7Ps, Media, AI and Marketing Mix Modeling
Amazon’s application of artificial intelligence across the entire marketing mix includes:
Product:
- Development of Alexa, an AI voice assistant.
- Built into devices like Echo and Fire TV Stick.
- Allows you to order products, listen to music and much more.
Place:
- Powers Amazon Go cashless stores.
- Allows customers to choose products and be automatically billed upon exit.
Price:
- Uses AI for competitive product pricing.
- Analyzes price data, demand and other factors for optimal pricing.
Promotion:
- Personalizes content on websites and apps using AI.
- Shows customers content that matches their interests.
People:
- Uses AI in Amazon Web Services for Developers.
- Provides tools for building AI-based applications.
- Employs a team of Developer Advocates to promote AWS AI capabilities.
Process:
- Streamline internal operations with AI.
- Automates supply chain and logistics for greater efficiency.
Physical evidence:
- Implements AI in warehouses for efficient order fulfillment.
- Uses robots and automated technologies for fast and accurate order processing.
How Social Media Created Barbenheimer a great marketing success?
Integrate AI into the 7Ps for better media visibility
The marketing mix is constantly evolving, with AI being a key enabler of these changes. By integrating AI into the 7Ps, businesses can develop more personalized, targeted and effective marketing strategies. AI capabilities extend to automating marketing activities, improving customer service, and optimizing supply chains. As AI technology continues to advance, it opens up myriad possibilities for improving the marketing mix. Businesses that leverage AI can expect significant improvements in their marketing effectiveness, customer engagement, and overall business performance.
Featured image credit: Fab Lentz/Unsplash