Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally 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, although it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where 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 make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern firms 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 deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each 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 platform. It is known as 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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.
The term was later developed 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 clear for business managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy.
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Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial 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. If this part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.
Many people do not think that marketing has any place 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 opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far 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 goods have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently 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 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
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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 spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers 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 rivals 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 also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector 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 approach yield great financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing strategy is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release 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.
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 financial benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used 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 figure.
Yet another thing to keep 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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
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Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s 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. It can be a great marketing approach when used correctly.
The most typical 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 infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and retailers or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application 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 distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
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 only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may 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 parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.