Nearly every business 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 customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary 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 variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a company.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business 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 company to be used as a marketing framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during 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 simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
The term was later built upon 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing strategy.
Our company already sells a prosperous variety of wheelchair accessable vehicles yet we still use new marketing ideas to improve our revenue numbers.
Product
Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the exact 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?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly 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 creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types 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 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 is one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called 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 technique 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.
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Price
Another key 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 spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your business 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 shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 primary 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 large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique yield excellent financial benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers 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 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 poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
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Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s 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 customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
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 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 important to determine 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 consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point 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 potential customers.
Promotion
When you say 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.
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 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 door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial 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 sways a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.