Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a company 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 money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential 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 well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each business will have its own set of advantages and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework.
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 describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.
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 quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and effective marketing plan.
There are multiple income channels for bed duvet cover products so our own organisation applied marketing ideas to open new routes to our customers.
Product
Although 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 offering, 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 company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around - your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively 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 far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your products 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 technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
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 already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers 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.
An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is our own horse games for girls website which offers flexible and accessible means to target potential consumers.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to determine the highest price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting 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 do not 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 amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, 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 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 market where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core 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 geared 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 technique right.
Our organisation has modified its corporate website so rising damp shows up more frequently and more people can find us via search engines.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way 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 venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes 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 adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.
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 distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more complete 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 important one. The primary 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, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
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 a good view of your own marketing plan.
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