Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.
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 business 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 money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations 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 number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages and weak points that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.
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 easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
The “product” aspect of the four P’s can refer to any service, like combi microwave ovens, or even any intangible asset being offered for sale by a business, see our website here.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car industry uses this technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is this company site which offers flexible and accessible means to reach potential customers.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company should update their own portal an example is childerens bean bags that echo colourings, text and also images associated with their branding, you can see their website here.
With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce organisations see that their sitesincluding www.horsegamesforgirls.net may be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution system.
With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce companies see their own sites, for instance www.maytagrefrigerator.net may be used as a direct sales channel and distribution system.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out 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 weapon designed to achieve any particular targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and likely 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 constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal 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 willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive 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 almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed 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 figure.
Yet 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 vital to get your pricing technique right.
After using on-line tools to compare key word lookup frequency we chose chicken cooking to direct our strategy for on-line promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when used correctly.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and alter 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 distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing 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 material posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
