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Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually 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 company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, 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 prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible results.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every company 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 company to be used as a marketing framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.

The term was later built upon to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for business 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 customised and effective marketing plan.

Our company specialises in providing concrete removal and although we thought our marketing plan was adequate we have seen advancements after using marketing mix principles.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 business 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 job of the marketing department to find 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 solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival 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 manufacture and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.

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 that 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 prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.

As part of our own promotion plan, our business carefully studied exactly what made our goods stand out from the crowd.

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 determine the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific 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 crucial factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best value.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, 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 though, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price Skimming

The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on.

This pricing strategy 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. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own cash flow.

Penetration Pricing

Penetration pricing is at the other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 high risk 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.

Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake.

Before our corporation started looking into on-line promotion concrete removal did not seem to be an clear choice of key phrase to use as our primary focus.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when used appropriately.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and retailers 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.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms 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 aspect 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will boost sales.

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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your front door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates 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 every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.

Filed by neville1way at 7:55 pm under Uncategorized
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