I’ve become a big fan of a relatively new high-tech company called Hubspot, specializing in “inbound marketing” software to help companies attract more visitors using SEO, social media and blogs as well as capture more leads with landing pages, lead intelligence and analytics.  

I discovered Hubspot through a Facebook advertisement about 1 year ago.  Since that time, I continue to be more and more impressed with their collective passion for all things related to inbound marketing — specifically, their ability to publish content, content, and more valuable content.  

One such example is an article that appeared on Hubspot’s blog entitled, “Are the Four Ps of Marketing Dead?“, which makes a convincing case that the traditional marketing four Ps, while still relevant, are becoming overshadowed by the new four Ps: 

• Personas – According to Adele Revella, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and expert on Buyer Personas, a persona is “a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents the real audience – an archetype of the target buyer.  Marketers can use buyer personas to clarify the goals, concerns, preferences and decision process that are most relevant to their customers.  Imagine how effective marketers could be if we would all stop making stuff up and start aligning our messages and programs with the way real people think“.  In my opinion, documented personas are the cornerstone of all outbound and inbound marketing tasks. 
• Participation – Businesses must be active participants in today’s social web by monitoring RSS feeds, commenting on blogs, using social networking, connecting and sharing ideas through Twitter.  This active and genuine participation can yield fantastic things, such as increased brand transparency (wow, real people like me work for that company!) and a stethoscope on the pulse of what’s being said about your company (good, bad and indifferent).  
• Publishing – Content is the new currency of the web – videos, blogs, microblogs, news releases (optimized for buyers), eBooks, etc.  All businesses should create a content publishing strategy that is focused on what their buyers like/value.  David Meerman Scott, in his poignant article entitled, “Don’t Trust An Ad Agency to Build Your Website“, said it best:  ”The best Web sites are designed by marketers who have learned to think more like successful publishers:  It is important to make a book or magazine readable, but not at the expense of providing something good to read.  One of the most important things that publishers do is start with a content strategy and then focus on the mechanics and design of delivering that content.  Publishers carefully identify and define target audiences and consider what content is required in order to meet their needs.  Publishers consider questions like: Who are my readers? How do I reach them? What are their motivations?  What are the problems I can help them solve? How can I entertain them and inform them at the same time? What content will compel them to purchase what I have to offer?“
• PageRank – Google’s secret sauce.  As they put it, “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’“

David Meerman Scott, in his excellent book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR“, states that standard marketing education still talks about the traditional four Ps, but “[is] nonsense”.  ”In order to succeed on the Web under the new rules of marketing and PR, you need to consider your organizational goals and then focus on your buyer first” (p.114).

In the end, I don’t believe that the traditional four Ps is dead.  However, I do believe that businesses are risking their very livelihood if they do not adopt the new four Ps of inbound marketing.