Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting 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.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw potential 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 practice that can 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 begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every company will have its own set of strengths 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 framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in the 1950′s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.
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 easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and effective marketing strategy.
Our company has grown to be a leader for floor painting after employing tailored marketing concepts across our entire range of products.
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 identifies 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.
Many 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application products on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly 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 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 types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware 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 fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
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 brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this technique 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
To maintain a standard corporate image a business should redesign their own web presence an example we found was bank sort codes which echo colours, fonts and also images associated with their 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 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 specific targets your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
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 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 price. In fact 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 plan, key amongst 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 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 sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver excellent economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy 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. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own money 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.
Yet another thing to bear 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimise our website for search engine visibility we selected rice and peas as an aimed key phrase since it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive 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 involves 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 important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.
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 deliver 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 possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out 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 materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each 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.
