Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make 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 rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of advantages 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 platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950′s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, 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 clear for company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and efficient marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our company created a marketing plan for our own combi microwave products by making use of this advertising and marketing mix to identify our marketing strengths.
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 describes 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.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find 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 marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could 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 take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should 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 typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
To maintain a standard corporate image a business ought to update their own portal an example would be how to make curry that reflect colours, fonts and images associated with their own branding, you can see their website here.
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 highest price that your customers would pay (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 business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
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 customers 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 amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
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 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared 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 used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.
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.
When promoting your company web site it’s important to select a suitable keyphrase. Beef cooking fitted our business the best and we have made the appropriate marketing changes.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing 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 point of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers.
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 merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used 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 particular message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically 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 customers. 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 material posted through your front door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
