Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally 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.
Firstly, 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 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 money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practise that can 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 each 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 corporation to be used as a marketing platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
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 clear for business managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and effective marketing system.
This marketing style is not restricted to tangible items, services like headache treatment Ruddington could profit via fresh marketing ideas or a new perspective.
Product
Whilst every aspect 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 selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other 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 always the case.
Consider 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 fairly 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 take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical 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 fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
To preserve a standard corporate image a company should redesign their website an example would be how to make curry which echo colours, fonts and also graphics 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 carrying out market research to figure out the highest 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 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 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.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry 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.
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 monetary benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.
Yet another thing to keep 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 create or undertake.
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Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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 an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically 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 coming 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.