Practically every company 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 people money for it.
Firstly, 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 company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practise that can make or break a company.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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 platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during 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 subtle balance of different aspects of business operations.
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 easy for business managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and effective marketing system.
Almost every segment in the modern market is competitive, especially back treatment Ruddington, where good promotional choices could mean the success or failure of the business.
Product
Whilst every element 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 selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise 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? 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 market already, and since 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 attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and 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 fashioned 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 skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
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 new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is this British television comedy site that offers flexible and accessible means to target potential consumers.
Price
Another important 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 top price that your customers would pay (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 particular targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving 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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique 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. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By using 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared 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 risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup 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 revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out.
SEO companies are more common these days and our company used one in order to have Spanish DVD for children a dominant phrase on our website to attract more shoppers.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and alter 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 a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly 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 tool, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will improve 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 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 material posted through your front door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary 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 sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
Subscribe Feed (RSS)
