Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting 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 primary tool used by modern businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
The term was later developed to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for business managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing plan.
Our organisation has grown to become a leader for combi microwave ovens since using customised marketing and advertising concepts across our complete range of offerings.
Product
Whilst every element 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 identifies the physical product or intangible service that your company 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 element is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to survive.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your manufacturing department creates a product 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.
Take 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 marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.
A different 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 brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering different 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.
One quick and simple way to recognise many stockists of great mod clothing that carry out promoting successfully is to simply think of brand names connected to a certain market.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific targets your company has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that customers 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 price.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy is frequently 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only part of the marketing mix that will generate income 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.
We were able to make use of our past market analysis relating to lamb cooking to start the online keyword optimisation we were undertaking.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
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 involves the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account 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 route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will boost sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
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