Almost every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody 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 customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses 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 factors, but when done well it can be the single business practise that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and flaws 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 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 strategy. 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 idea of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear for business managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and effective marketing strategy.
This marketing style is not limited to physical products, services such as headache Nottingham treatment may benefit via fresh marketing ideas or a new perspective.
Product
Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most crucial 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. If this part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.
Many 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 precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite 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?
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application products in the market already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?
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 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 critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons that 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.
A different 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 consumers as possible.
The motor 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 good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
To preserve a standard corporate image a company should update their own site an example we found was gas electricity price comparison which reflect colours, fonts and also graphics associated with their own branding.
Price
Another important 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 figure out 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 goals your company has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out 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 cheapest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst 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.
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 willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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. Makers could set almost 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 geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet 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 carry out.
Before our company began studying online promotion relating to heated body warmers there did not seem to be the obvious choice of keyword to use as our primary target.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when used correctly.
The most common implications 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 manufacturing plants 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 modify your distribution network accordingly.
With the growing 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 place 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 large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it may 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, creating 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.