Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the main 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. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective 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 corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.
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 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 in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.
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 easy for company 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 customised and efficient marketing plan.
Nearly every segment in the modern market is reasonably competitive, especially planning services, in which proper marketing decisions could mean the success or failure of the business.
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 offering, 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 organisation will find it hard to make it through.
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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly 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 sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental 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 generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all companies.
As part of our own business marketing plan, our business carefully researched exactly 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 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 making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
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 lowest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector 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. Not only can this approach deliver excellent economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing strategy is frequently 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 nearly 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk 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 number.
Another thing to bear 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
After using on-line tools to compare key phrase lookup frequency we chose buy jagermeister shot glasses to direct our campaign for on-line promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked 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 consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when applied correctly.
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 includes the distribution infrastructure between your production 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 alter your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 point of contact (or even as a whole 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 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 can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will increase 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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.