My Open Book

Nearly 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 people 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 provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in 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 technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist 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 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 rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing strategy.

Our organisation excels in offering black latex balloons and although we thought our marketing strategy was adequate we have seen advancements since using marketing mix principles.

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 selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.

Many people do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the marketplace already, and because 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 assist in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts 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 period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand 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 technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

It is incredibly common to come across a significant number of companies that budget for production and product sales but not adequately for marketing.

Price

Another important 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 determine the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your company has.

Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.
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 customers, 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 primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind 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 technique yield great economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

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. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear 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 create or carry out.

To optimise our website for google marketing we chose balloon tree stand for an aimed phrase because it relates to our business and what we do.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied correctly.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres 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 increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, many people immediately 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 instrument, and whilst it may be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically 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 arrival 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 door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may 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. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.

Forex Traders

Related posts:

1. Product, Price, Place & Promotion Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the...
2. The Four P’s Almost every business on the planet sets out with the...
3. Business Strategy: Marketing Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the...
4. The Marketing Mix Practically every company on the planet sets out with the...
5. channel marketing strategy, video marketing & sms mobile marketing Those companies such as accounting firms in los angeles ca...