Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.
First of all, 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 competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations 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 practise that could make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? 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 rule that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term 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 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 idea of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and efficient marketing strategy.
The “product” element of the four P’s could pertain to any product, just like chiropractic Nottingham, or even any kind of intangible asset being provided for sale by a business.
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 describes 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.
Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business 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 a product for sale and then it is the job 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 products on 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 assist in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on 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 viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
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 already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce companies see their own sites, for instance small plastic animals might be used for a direct sales channel and distribution system.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out 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 specific objectives your business has.
Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting that price has always been, and probably 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 constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key among 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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach 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 base 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 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 establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only 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 undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
Following using on-line tools to compare key phrase search frequency we identified chicken cooking to guide our campaign for on-line promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant 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 collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied appropriately.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the main application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people instantly 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 tool, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.
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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your 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 preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
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