Product, price, place and promotion

Product

In voluntary sector marketing, your 'product' may well be a service which is provided for free, such as counselling for refugees, an advice bureau, a hospice or a community arts project.

Price

If you are selling second-hand clothes or training manuals, your products will have a price tag. Services are different. Take a youth club café: what's the price? Is it the £50,000 annual grant from the council or the 50p you charge for a sandwich? It's both. Youngsters visit the cafe to buy food and drink: you need to get the price right to keep them coming. But you are also providing a drop-in service to local youth, paid for by the council. You need to price this service right, too, so the council feels it is getting good value for money.

Place

Think of 'place' as the bridge connecting buyers and sellers. If you get your place right, you ensure that product and customer are brought together, thus creating an opportunity for a purchase. You need to consider how to get users to your service. Is your advice centre on a bus route? Are collecting tins in the right places?

Promotion

There are myriad ways of promoting your service and your work: advertising, annual reports, leaflets, brochures, posters, editorial coverage in newspapers, newsletters, direct mail, give-aways (pens, balloons), bill boards and videos.

Try the marketing mix exercise for your own organisation.

For more detailed definitions of the various elements of marketing,
see the glossary.

Find out more about other marketing issues and examples in the In more depth section.