Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main 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. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details. Firstly, it is a very rare case [...]
Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main 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. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business 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. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary 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 number of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practise that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business 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 corporation to be used as a marketing framework.
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 reflects 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 because 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 essential 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 rapidly form a personalised and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our organisation specialises in supplying the ability to efficiently paint concrete products and although we all believed our marketing plan was adequate we have seen improvements after using marketing mix concepts.
Product
Whilst 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 identifies 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 place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common 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 task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on the marketplace already, and since 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 attempting 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 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 critical 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’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently 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 car 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 goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to redesign their web presence an example we found was 1TB hard drives that reflect colourings, text and also graphics associated with their branding.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the highest 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 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 is still worth noting that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the crucial factors that customers 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 price. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers 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 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 penetration pricing.
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. Not only can this approach yield excellent financial benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is frequently used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release 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 monetary 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 essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only 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.
After using on-line tools to compare key word lookup popularity we chose helium balloons wholesale to lead the campaign for online 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 method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied correctly.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing 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 complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be used 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. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every company is unique 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.
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