Rewind to your days in that high school or college Marketing101 class. Presumably you spent a good deal of the semester getting introduce to marketing with the four Ps – Product, Price, Promotion, Placement, and if you are a Seth Godin fanatic – the Purple Cow. This success of this marketin system has been proven over and over again by many MegaCorporations like Proctor and Gamble, Campbells, GE, Wal*Mart, and the list continues.

Rewind again in your mind to the days that you sat in your Intro. to Marketing class. Did the four Ps ever seem a bit stodgy, stuffy, boring, and rather non-inclusive to marketing strategies overall? That is probably because they are. Each of the principles in the four P marketing mix are valuable, but their value is heavily diminished by their classic presentation. Business is changing, and startups are at the forefront of new and innovative marketing strategies. Here is the new marketing mix the way I see it.

Product

Obviously, this one must remain the same as in the table above. A killer (Purple Cow) product is completely necessary. Besides the fact that excellent products market themselves, nobody wants to buy crap stuff. Generally speaking, products that solve common problems (Picks and Shovels) are most easy to market – yet products that are innovative, revolutionary, novel, or crazy still have their place. It is also a good idea to believe in your product 1000%. If you wouldn’t use it, why are you selling it?

Transparency

…which is not to be confused with authenticity. Authenticity retains the potential to still set up walls between you and your customer base. Transparency carries the air of complete honesty and disclosure – like you are living in a fishbowl. A lack of transparency has caused many companies a bit of grief in recent times (Kluster being the most recent startup examples – let it also be known that they have ramped up the transparency factor a bit on their newest offering Quirky), on the other hand being completely up front and admitting fault, explaining glitches, addressing customer or user needs, and sharing general news via a short video, email blast, or blog post adds significant firepower to your damage control arsenal. Customers like honesty. Customers also like to think that they have “insider” knowledge. Complete transparency provides both.

Storytelling

Book and box office sales topped $35,000,000,000 in 2008 (in the US) alone. Essentially, this means that people like stories. Humans are raised on stories. Stories trigger emotions and feelings. A well crafted and well told story can work marketing wonders. Stories offer customers/users a point of personal connection. Those who can make a personal connection to you and your product will end up being among your most loyal and most likely to toss around some word of mouth advertising support. Take a lesson from Apple and RedBull, both companies that tell excellent stories, and are well rewarded for it.

CARE

John C. Maxwell puts it like this:

“People never care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Maybe this quote is a bit overused, but that certainly does not diminish the truth that it speaks. Caring should be the foundation of your startup marketing efforts. Care about your current customer/user base, care about your prospects, and care about the prospects that get away. Care by keeping all of these people informed. Care by personally connecting with as many people as you can. Care, but care honestly (check out This*, a webhosting service who care enough to fix broken code for their customers). Caring is power.