Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a company.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business operations.
The term was later developed 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and efficient marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
The “product” element of the four P’s could refer to a product, such as our website click here, or even any kind of non-physical asset being provided for sale by a company.
Product
Whilst every aspect 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 describes 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.
Several people don’t 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 other 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 well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different 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 approach 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 incredibly competitive marketplace.
We do not have a defined marketing department in our how to make bread service although many of our administrators have been able to adopt marketing as part of their work function.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to determine 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 tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting that price has always been, and probably 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 do not always consider the cheapest price to be the best price.
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 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 penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy 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. Manufacturers could set nearly 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 create revenue streams for many years to come.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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.
To optimise our website for Google search marketing we chose waterproof cameras disposable as an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we do.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied appropriately.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production plants and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 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 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 instrument, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will boost sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
