Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise 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. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses 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 variables, but when done well it can be the one business practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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 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 a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
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 relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a tailored and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our organisation has grown to become a forerunner in marble floor maintenance since employing tailored marketing and advertising ideas across our entire range of products.
Product
Whilst every element 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.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any role 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products 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 could 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 or Apple, it would be far 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 products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor 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 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.
As part of our own marketing strategy, our how to make cake enterprise very carefully researched what made our goods stand out from the masses.
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 determine the highest price that your customers would pay (although that can be a handy 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 pointing out that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the cheapest 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 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 penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry 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. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own money flow.
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 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 establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to bear 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 create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
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Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive 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 includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adapt 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 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) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 instrument, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing 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 just 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 product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is different 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.