Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your business 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 boost 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 competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practise that could make or break a company.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths 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 framework. 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 an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
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 easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and effective marketing system.
Marketing is a worldwide business concept and could get adapted for Nottingham floor maintenance as well as any number of different products and services.
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 buyers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
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 common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application products on the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your products have been designed 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’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
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 goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to update their site an example we found was bar optics UK which echo colours, fonts and also graphics associated with their own branding.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the highest 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 goals your business has.
Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 do not constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value. 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 plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
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 will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver excellent financial benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is frequently 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 nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it.
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 rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate income for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out.
To optimise our web site for Google visibility we selected buy childrens bean bags for a targeted phrase because it relates to our company and what we do.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked 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 consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production plants and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies 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 a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it may be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will boost 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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the coming of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each business is unique 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.