Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing platform. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations.
The term was later built upon to include the concept of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear for company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy.
Our company created a marketing approach for our tax investigation insurance policy for businesses concepts by applying this marketing mix to identify our marketing strengths
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.
Many people do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around - your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
Marketing plays a critical role in our DVD for children company strategy and should not get treated like an afterthought.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific targets your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best value. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Manufacturers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
To optimise our website for google search visibility we chose buying sunny plants for a targeted key phrase because it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
