4C’s-Marketing-Model-For-Business

What is 4C’s Marketing Model for Business?

In today’s business realm, consumer needs are the yardstick for developing a successful marketing strategy. And running away from them can make you out of business. That’s why you need to add the 4C’s of marketing into your marketing mix.

What killed the trillion-dollar retail industry in the world? Is it Amazon or the bad customer experience associated with retail? Amazon and Shopify indeed played on the problems customers were facing.

They just turned customer needs and desires into a business. That’s how marketing works today. You need to shift your focus from product to customer to market your products or services.

This article will help you understand the 4C’s of marketing and how you can use them in your marketing mix.

Why is it Time to Shift from the 4 Ps to the 4C’s of Marketing

Marketing is not a single discipline. It is more than just a few techniques to promote your business. Also, it isn’t static. That means the devices and techniques you used 50 years ago don’t apply now.

Therefore, it evolves and goes through major overhauls. With time your once effective promotional tactics become worthy of dumping into the trash because the changing times bring changing needs.

That’s why you need to shift from the 4Ps of the marketing mix to the 4C’s of marketing. Back in the 1940’s marketers developed a marketing mix- a one size fits all formula to prioritize your promotional campaigns.

It was more focused on the product side of things. At that time, the seller’s point of view was more important in marketing. As customers had to come to sellers to buy the required products or services, businesses narrowed their efforts to product-oriented marketing.

The rules of the marketing game have drastically changed. Now businesses fetch their customers instead of consumers finding them. Plus, buyers have become more informed than ever. So, to cut through the deal, sellers must bring some USP of their products that resonate with their customers.

Also, the intense competition in the market caused businesses to focus more on customers’ wants and needs. Thus, nowadays, the most appropriate marketing mix is the 4C’s.

What are the 4C’s of the Marketing Mix?

4C’s-of-the-Marketing

There are as many marketing models available as there are types of businesses. But, the relevant one is none other than 4Cs. Let’s find out what they are and how they suit your business. Each C is a word related to customer/buyer/consumer.

A marketer named Lauterborn came up with a new marketing model. He empirically researched the older 4P model and concluded that it doesn’t meet the growing demands of marketing.

Therefore, he purported to replace the 4P with the 4C of marketing and described each essential of the marketing mix.

1. Customer

The first thing that springs into the mind of every new marketer is the market research and competitive advantage of their product. The research pertains to the wants and needs of the customers. So, before developing a product, it’s good to find what people feel is missing in competitors’ products and what they need to find in a new product.

When you know their pain points, you can create solutions to resolve them. Not knowing what your customers need is like selling VCRs to those who already watch Netflix.

The same happened with Nokia. It ruled the cellphone market for a good number of decades. But, when people got more features with iPhone and Samsung, they missed out on this customer needs shift. As a result, it failed to retain its customers because it turned its face from customers’ wants and needs.

Many businesses fail to make a mark and fail because of bad market research. To make a robust marketing campaign, you must focus on your customers’ needs to gain their attention.

2. Cost

It’s a bitter truth that not every prospective buyer will buy your products and services. It becomes frustrating for most businesses. Even after setting their prices to the lowest, they can’t bring in the number of customers they want.

That’s because they are focusing on the wrong side of things. In marketing, the price is just a small factor. The real metric should be the Cost to satisfy. Talking about costs, you must know your customers’ real costs in the long run. The material costs they may include are the gas costs, time, and energy costs while traveling from your store to their house.

If the product needs to be assembled, then there is an assembly cost because joining all parts may take hours. Also, while joining, you may get injured or break any piece of product.

Similarly, there are various hidden costs involved in your buyer journey. Your goal is to minimize these costs to satisfy your customers. When selling some product or service, you need to find the optimum Cost where you can earn considerable ROI and satisfy your customers’ needs.

For instance, the Cost you set per product is $20, and your competitors are selling the same type of product for $40. You may feel an advantage over your competitors for low costs. But satisfaction comes from the efficiency of the product. If your low-cost product doesn’t provide value to the user, you won’t be able to compete in the market.

Therefore, the Cost to satisfy can change and even be greater than others. It doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is that your product justified the Cost.

3. Convenience

The next C is convenience. Is it convenient for the business owner? It’s convenient for customers. What kind of convenience do customers want? The first thing is buying convenience.

Customers need to feel at home when they choose to buy. In this consumer-driven world, things have shifted toward the consumers. Gone are the days when buyers had to reach your outlets to buy products or services in 9 to 5 hours. Also, they had to wait for hours in the waiting queue to reach the cashier. For instance, in supermarkets, you must wait for your time in the queue to pay for the products.

On the flip side, now customers can purchase anything from the comfort of their home, lying in bed or sitting on the sofa. That’s the convenience you should provide to your customers.

There are different consumer-driven products companies provide to help them in purchasing items. You can see credit cards, coupons, mobile payment apps, home delivery facilities, and more. All of these tools make sales easier for you. So, they, in turn, help your business grow. Consumer convenience is directly connected to the sales of your products.

Thus, your goal is to identify where your customers can find problems regarding convenience. Then you should devise ways to fill out the purchase gaps and promote convenience.

4. Communication

There are all sorts of people on your prospective buyers’ list. Each of them has different reasons to buy from you. Also, they all are in different stages of awareness.

The main reason why most advertising campaigns fail badly is they don’t grab the attention of all customers. The older method to advertise content was through print media and TV. Both promotional mediums don’t allow two-way communication or communication at all. Such ads are based on the concept that if your ads, you will turn those people into buyers.

In reality, people get annoyed with such type of marketing. No one likes being interrupted by an annoying ad while watching their favorite show. To change this business communication perspective, you should adopt a two-way communication mechanism. For that purpose, you have to research deeply into what your customers want from you. After comprehensive research, you can create videos or written content aiming at the customers’ pain points.

This way, they will resonate with the content and feel like it’s their story. With the proper emotional appeal, they can lure them into buying your products or services.

Never has communication been a medium to provide value to the users. With the advent of digital marketing, advertising becomes more than just your sales message. Now, marketing content is designed in such a way as to provide some value to the users.

For example, you churned out blog posts for your audience. Those blog posts help your readers get information about their problems. The written content, infographics, and videos provide them with some value. Thus, you are selling without selling. 

Once a customer enters your sales funnel and happens to read your blog, you must bring them closer to your sales– through valuable content.

Why Are Marketing Models Important for Businesses?

Marketing-Models-Important

Different marketing models focus on different aspects of your business. Some pinpoint the problems related to sellers and try to execute the marketing efforts on them. At the same time, others focus on the customer side.

What’s important is you must know why you need a marketing mix to kickstart your efforts without looking at these models if someone asks how you would do the marketing for a certain product. You may subconsciously give most of the steps present in these models.

Because inside your mind, you already know what customers’ pain points are and can satisfy them. So, why do you need these models? You need to get in touch with a set pattern that helps you prioritize your marketing efforts.

Instead of trial and error and wasting money to find the most important step, you can follow a single marketing model. It helps you streamline your efforts and keep them on the right track.

With that said, no marketing model is universal or complete. The current niche marketing has become so individualistic that you may need to break some rules. That’s how marketing works today. 

Final Words

Marketing is the driving force that keeps the business wheel turning. It identifies who you want to sell your product/service to and what’s the targeted audience. In simple words, it helps you hunt for customers.

No customers mean no business. So, you must know the growing marketing trends and add them to your business arsenal. That’s why we provided a new marketing model called the 4Cs of marketing.

It is more relevant than other models, such as 4Ps, because it hits the sore spots of customers and creates a complete marketing structure around them. Know the deep insights about this marketing model in this article. Let us know about your feedback in the comments.