Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing 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 anybody else. This means that your company will be competing 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 cash once.
Marketing is the main 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 factors, but when done well it can be the single business practise that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages 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 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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name since 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 critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear 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 form a personalised and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Nearly every segment in the modern market is reasonably competitive, particularly Nottingham chiropractor, in which proper promotional judgements could mean the success or failure of the company.
Product
Although 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 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. If this element is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical 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 opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover 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 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 help in this circumstance?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be 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 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’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual marketing strategy, our how to have a baby enterprise thoroughly studied 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 performing market research to figure out 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 targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can often turn customers away.
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 rivals are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving 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 willing to spend a large amount of money to receive 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 core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company 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 financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
Grabbing some of the on-line search market is extremely beneficial, so choose a key phrase, like wedding cameras disposable and evaluate if the phrase has an adequate search marketplace for your purposes.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when used correctly.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place 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 huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly 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 tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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 significant part of promotion involves branding, which may 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 competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.