Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely 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 make money from the same shoppers, 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 firms to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal 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 correctly can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you begin 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 principle that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term 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 functions.
The term was later built upon to include the concept of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing strategy.
This marketing style is not limited to tangible items, services such as conference production may gain via new marketing ideas or a new perspective.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your company 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 role 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 other way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively 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 and 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 manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should 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 pie.
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 brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different 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 extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual marketing system, our business thoroughly researched exactly what made our products stand out from the masses.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to update their website to reflect colourings, fonts and also graphics associated with their own branding.Our conference production company website is being redesigned at the moment.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the top 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 specific goals your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers 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. Actually a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two main 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 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 release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 opposite 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 employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still important 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 income for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
We were able to make use of our past market research about digital DVD recorder HDD to start all online key phrase optimisation we were doing.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing 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 point of contact (or even as a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed 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 boost sales.
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 buyers. With the coming 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 may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. 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 every company is different 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.