The activities in your Marketing and Sales Cycle that align with the buyer’s journey are only part of the Marketing Mix. What are the other variables in the mix? How do your Sales Cycle activities fit into the larger mix?
The idea of the Marketing Mix was first used by Neil Borden in 1949. Then in 1960 Jerome McCarthy classified the four P’s as the primary variables in the marketing mix: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
A year later Albert Frey suggested a division of the mix that maps well to the model of the Buyer’s Journey. He divided the variables into two groups, the Offering and the Process.
According to Wikipedia,
“The “offering” consists of the product, service, packaging, brand, and price. The “process” or “method” variables included advertising, promotion, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity, distribution channels, marketing research, strategy formation, and new product development.”
To create the Offering requires understanding your resources and your market. You make strategic decisions about which markets to target and how to deploy your financial and operational resources. The variables interact with each other – choices about product affect your pricing, decisions about brand image impact your packaging and product design. Once you have made decisions about the mix in the Offering, your flexibility to make changes is limited.
Marketing Mix - The Offering
The variables in the mix for the Process are more like tools in your tool chest. At each stage of the buyer’s journey you use the tools that will best communicate, educate, and create value for the buyer at that stage. You measure the results from the use of your tools and have a lot of flexibility to make changes.
Marketing Mix - The Process
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