The 7 Ps of marketing with examples: three businesses filled in, P by P

The 7 Ps of marketing are Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence. The first four come from the classic marketing mix organised by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960; People, Process and Physical evidence were added by Booms and Bitner in 1981 to cover services, where the experience of being served is part of what the customer buys. The three worked examples below fill all seven in for a dental clinic, a city gym and a business software company, with the decisions written out rather than described, so you can copy the shape. The examples are illustrations built to show the method.

This page is the examples. For where the model comes from, the decisions inside each P and a blank template, see the marketing mix explained. For examples of the original four on their own, see the 4 Ps with examples.

What each P asks

• Product. What are we selling, to whom, and what do we deliberately leave out?
• Price. What do we charge, in what structure, and what does the number signal?
• Place. Where and how does the customer get it?
• Promotion. How do they hear about it and what convinces them?
• People. Who delivers it, and how are they hired, trained and empowered?
• Process. What are the steps the customer goes through, and where do they wait?
• Physical evidence. What tangible things make an intangible promise believable?

Example one: a dental clinic in a mid sized city

P	The decisions, written out
Product	General dentistry plus two specialisms, implants and clear aligners, with hygienist appointments as the recurring base. No cosmetic surgery and no walk in emergency service. A membership plan covering two check ups, two hygienist visits and a treatment discount
Price	Published price list for routine items, treatment plans quoted in writing before work starts, finance above an agreed value, membership billed monthly. Prices sit above the cheapest clinic in town, because the positioning is calm, unhurried appointments
Place	One practice near paid parking with evening slots twice a week and Saturday mornings. Online booking for check ups and hygienist visits, phone for treatment. A five mile catchment is the realistic market
Promotion	Google Business Profile with current photographs and replied to reviews, a page per treatment with real prices, recall reminders by text, a referral card, local sponsorship. No discount advertising, because it conflicts with the positioning
People	Two dentists, a hygienist, a treatment coordinator and a front desk team trained to handle nervous patients. The coordinator is the decision that matters most: one named person owns the conversation between the quote and the appointment
Process	Online booking, a text confirmation, a form completed before arrival, under ten minutes in the waiting room, the plan explained on screen with the price visible, a follow up call the day after any procedure, recall at the clinician interval
Physical evidence	A quiet reception, clinician photographs and registration numbers on the wall and the website, the written treatment plan, before and after images with consent, the aftercare leaflet, an itemised invoice

Example two: a city gym and fitness studio

P	The decisions, written out
Product	Gym floor access, forty classes a week, and small group personal training sold separately. Deliberately no pool, no sauna and no creche, which keeps the rent and the staffing model simple
Price	Three tiers: off peak, full, and full plus one personal training session a month. Rolling monthly contract with no joining fee, a day pass, and a corporate rate for the two office blocks nearby. No contract is the headline of the pricing
Place	One site within a ten minute walk of the main station, open from before the first commuter train until late evening. The app is also Place: booking a class is where the member interacts with the business most often
Promotion	A seven day trial with no card, member stories told with consent, instructor led social accounts, a referral month for both parties, partnerships with the two nearest offices, and local search, because demand is people looking for a gym near where they already are
People	Instructors are the product here. Hired for how they run a room rather than for qualifications alone, paid per class with a retention bonus, and named on the timetable so members choose the person as much as the class
Process	Trial sign up in under two minutes, an induction booked at sign up rather than offered, a six week check in, class booking that opens at a fixed time, and cancellation in one click, which is what makes the no contract position credible
Physical evidence	Clean changing rooms, equipment that is visibly maintained, a timetable that is always current, the app, the membership card, the written member agreement with the cancellation terms in plain words

Example three: a business software company

P	The decisions, written out
Product	One product for one job, sold to operations teams in mid sized companies. Three plan tiers by volume, an API on every tier, named integrations with the two systems these buyers already run. No custom development and no on premise option
Price	Published per seat pricing for the first two tiers and a quoted enterprise tier. Annual billing with a discount, a free tier limited by volume rather than features, no implementation fee. Publishing the price removes a step from the buying process
Place	Self serve sign up on the website, a sales assisted route above a threshold, and two reseller partners in markets with no local team. The documentation site is part of Place, because that is where buyers evaluate
Promotion	Pages answering the questions buyers ask before they commit, a comparison page against the two alternatives, a listing in each integration marketplace, presence at the two events their peers attend, and customer stories with approved numbers
People	Support engineers who can read logs, not a script reading tier one. A named onboarding specialist for every new account above a threshold. Sales engineers in pre sales conversations, because buying is technical
Process	Free account in under a minute, a first useful result inside the first session, a thirty minute onboarding call, a documented migration path, a status page, published support hours and response targets, a renewal review a month early
Physical evidence	The documentation, the status page and uptime history, the security and compliance page, the signed service agreement, the invoice, an audit log the customer can export

The consistency test

The 7 Ps earn their keep as a check rather than a planning ritual. Read the seven rows together and ask whether they tell the same story. Mismatches are where money leaks, and they are easy to spot once the mix is written down.

• Price above Product. Premium pricing with a basic service experience produces complaints and refunds rather than margin.
• Promotion above Process. Advertising a fast response while the process takes four days creates your own bad reviews.
• People below Price. Charging for expertise and then staffing with the cheapest available team is the most common failure in professional services.
• Place against Product. A considered purchase sold only through a self serve checkout, or a simple product wrapped in a six week sales cycle.
• Physical evidence missing. A credible promise with nothing tangible behind it. This is why documentation, status pages and written plans matter more than they look.

How to use it in a plan

Fill one table per segment, not one per company, and keep each row to decisions rather than descriptions. A sentence that could be true of any competitor is not a decision. For how this section reads inside a formal plan document, see the marketing mix in a business plan.

7 Ps of marketing with examples: what readers write in to ask

When should I use the 7 Ps instead of the 4 Ps?

Use the seven whenever the customer experiences the delivery, which covers services, hospitality, healthcare, education, software and retail. Use the four when you sell a physical product through somebody else and have no contact with the buyer.

Who created the 7 Ps of marketing?

The four Ps were organised by E. Jerome McCarthy in his 1960 textbook, building on Neil Borden idea of a marketing mix. Booms and Bitner added People, Process and Physical evidence in 1981 for services marketing.

What is the difference between Process and Place?

Place is where the customer can get it: the channels and locations. Process is what happens step by step once they engage: booking, waiting, handovers and follow up. Most service complaints are process complaints rather than place complaints.

Can Physical evidence apply to an online business?

Yes, and it is often the most undervalued P online. The documentation, the status page, the contract, the invoice, the confirmation email and the review profile are all tangible proof of an intangible promise.

An eighth question worth adding to the mix

Promotion used to mean the channels you buy and the words you publish. A new part of it is not bought at all. Buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews which clinic, gym or supplier to use, and read back a short answer naming two or three businesses with the sources it drew on. Those five answer differently from each other, and what they say is built from your own pages plus directories, review sites and trade publications. So the Physical evidence you publish, the prices, the process, the named people, is now also the raw material for an answer you did not write. AI Knows Us measures which businesses those answers name in your category and which sources they cite. See how it works.