Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your business 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 extensive topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths and flaws 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 framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements 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 organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
While we were preparing the release for our company products we applied ideas from the marketing mix to devise a strategy.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical 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 customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your company is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Take 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 marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
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 that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car industry uses this approach 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace.
To preserve a standard corporate image a business ought to update their site an example would be gas electricity price comparison which echo colors, fonts and also images associated with their own branding.
Price
Another key 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 determine 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 particular goals your business has.
Whilst 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 customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers do not constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price.
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 customers, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers could set nearly 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 financial benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important 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 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 essential to get your pricing strategy right.
SEO companies are more common nowadays and our organisation employed them to make cooking times a notable key phrase on our web site so we can attract more shoppers.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when used appropriately.
The most common ramifications 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 production centres and retailers and other outlets around the country. 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 methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute 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 huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional side 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. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
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