Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by producing 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their money 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 extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a company.
So where should you begin 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 weak points that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations.
The term was later developed 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 quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
There are multiple income avenues for epoxy coatings so our own business used marketing ideas to open new paths to our buyers.
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 critical 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 buyers are going to spend money with you.
Several people do not 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 job 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 products on the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts 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 designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
To preserve a standard corporate image a company should update their own website an example is childrens bean bags that reflect colours, fonts and also graphics associated with their own branding.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any particular objectives your business has.
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 shoppers 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 value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money 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 get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimise our website for Google search marketing we chose buying sunny plants as an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to consider 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 large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many 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 might be a costly undertaking it is often an important 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 coming of the information age we have witnessed 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 will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.