Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main 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 number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a corporation.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 platform. 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 a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.
The term was later developed 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and effective marketing plan.
This marketing style is not restricted to physical goods, other services like combi microwave oven services could gain via fresh marketing ideas or a new point of view.
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 company 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 typical 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 discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired 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 vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your 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 approach 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to redesign their own website an example is stockings and heels that reflect colourings, fonts and images associated with their branding.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 objectives your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Although 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 shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price. Actually 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 plan, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main 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 large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver excellent economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy 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. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own money flow.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared 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 high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.
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 create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
Our organisation has tweaked its company web page so French DVD for children appears very regularly so more people can find us via search engines.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still a significant 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 common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production plants and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal use of this part of the marketing mix.
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 complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing 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 material posted through your door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick 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 reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
