Markets thrive on a sustainable culture of buying and selling which should be in tune with delivering a healthy customer relationship. Communication has come to play a pivotal role streamlining market forces and align with a new media culture. With digitalization of communication media, a trend has been set to reach your audiences spread far and wide, at the hit of a post or send button. Things have become simpler for many but difficult for some.

Marketing mix in the digital arena has spaced in the need to celebrate a better paradigm to facilitate Marcom as a whole. The highly accepted business model of 4Ps - Product (what product to sell?), Price (at what price?), Placement (where and whom to sell) and Promotion (with what communication strategy?) has been the tenets for various marketing moguls for decades. However, the trend has seen a paradigm shift. Marketers has always valued their end goal of higher selling and more profits more than any other facet of business management. The major shift has been seen in the brand positioning strategy.

Before the advent of sophisticated communication networks and strategies, the product was created depending on the user demands and product's market knowledge. Price was settled depending on the market competition, product placement and distributive pattern depended on the product presence on the market shelves and promotion was done at with a perspective of regular sales. Today the world has changed and dynamically so.

Customer is the new God-

Companies and market forces pay most designated attention to the communication strategies as a part of promotional tactics for better visibility and higher product promotion based on a stronger and more steady customer network, both  current and prospective. This goes on to show how the priorities have changed, not superficially but diagonally. The most valued facet and asset in business management is now the Customer more than profits, as customers are the harbingers of profit to a company. The entire marketing focus has been drifted and positively shifted to caring for and catering to a customer and not let go of him without a satisfied experience.  

Client and its choices create the products, customers' pockets and demands decides the cost for ownership and service patterns, customers' convenience matters even more, facilitation of malls, super and hyper markets are valid proofs of the same and interacting with the customers and consumers decides the promotional plans. While everything is justified from the customer or consumer's outlook, we have surely arrived a junction where the riding factors for running business are not measured in profits alone but customer satisfaction first.

Continuity and change formula vis. Social networking-

The concept of continuity and change is a synonym for marketing mix, Marcom agencies are hired across the various business channels for better reception of the brand and more exposure of the same to the target audience. Just when we were adapting to a critical semantic change of business logic of shift from profits to customers, the world was introduced to virtual reality of 'Marcom-ing' over the social networking sites and user friendly landscape of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. These changes are not sporadic, they have been seen in all other factors like relational and environmental scenes for running a successful marketing communication. Customers are sole runners of the show simply because they facilitate more business.

Online business, purchase and sales- a progeny to the past-

Marcom agencies in India have seen a turning point with frequent and now sole use of social media to reach to its customers. Not that other media of communication have take a backseat, but all have been found to submerge on social platforms. You can stream videos of your television commercial, share pictures of your newspaper or magazine ads, invite people directly to join an event, make purchases online, thereby, reducing the need for people to get out to shop more. However, this changing trend has also not drastically changed the scenario for people who love to make personal purchase in person.

Virtual reality is not an anomaly now but something that has taken centre stage for business developers and several other market forces. Marcom agencies have pulled their socks and invest more in ideas that grab more eye balls and generate more traffic towards a brand and accelerate business process.

The advent of Vs in marketing mix- value, validity, virtual place and virality-

Difference of opinion about one single product has caused ripples in the market value of a brand. With better informed and demanding customers, companies involved in marketing their products or services better are grappling with issues that entail value to the product than its price. Answering why their product is required and is better than any other in the market has always been the challenge, but now it is not a diabolic fight of two different brands but it is about attracting the customer based on the value your product holds. Giving them value for their money is what all the buyers and consumers seek.

By validity, the new business model refers to details. Adapting to new formats, better costing and better functionality of the product or the service offered. Planning big and out of the ordinary is what customers seek while thinking of the validity of a product.  

In the scheme of Marcom for marketing mix, it is essential to talk about changing shopping places. Like discussed above, virtual is the new reality. People like buying over internet for obvious reasons, easy to choose, no need to spare time door to door searching, easy cart shopping system and best of all its cashless also.

With virality, the communicator is enable to extend its hands to form new and more engaging groups to interact and support business and trade. It becomes so much more enterprising when you make random people out online for shopping, information or just procrastination, a part of your customer base. It becomes your Hooray! moment.

These are the trends that have been brought about the drastic change in forming a marketing mix for the new generation of trade vendors and buyers. This trend also looks like the one here to stay. Companies and us as seller and buyers respectively, have to mold ourselves to these changing times to stay abreast of the changes and be a part of the new market communication paradigm.