Nearly every business 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective 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 well it can be the one business practice that could 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 company will have its own set of advantages and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
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 simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.
The term was later built upon to include the concept of “four P’s” that described the essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and efficient marketing system.
While we were planning the unveiling for some of our diamond grinding services we used ideas from the marketing mix to devise a strategy.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 business will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.
Several 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 production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover 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 on the market 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 help in this circumstance?
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your products have been fashioned 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 skill is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
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.
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. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
An example of one of the newest forms of promotional marketing is the new cages parrot website which offers flexible and accessible means to reach potential customers.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to 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 handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any particular targets your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out 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 constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea behind 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 receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique yield great financial advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the launch 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 core 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 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 setting a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out.
Our organisation has tweaked its business web page so pork cooking occurs more frequently so more people can find us via search engines.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked 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 customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.
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 only one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will increase sales.
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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the arrival of the information age we have witnessed 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 great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates 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 business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.