Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a company.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each 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 company 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 a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and efficient marketing system.
Marketing is a worldwide business concept and may be carried out on conferences or almost any amount of other products and services. See our website here.
Product
Although every aspect 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 other way around - your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job 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 in the marketplace already, and since 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 assist in this situation?
Rather than creating 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 sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital 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’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either lengthen 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 method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this technique 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 products in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual promotion strategy, our business carefully studied exactly what made our products stand out from the masses.
It is incredibly common to find a large number of conference production companies who budget for manufacturing and product sales but not adequately for marketing.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to determine the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of 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 substantial!
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 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 price.
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 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 main 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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is very often 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 nearly 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk 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 one 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 create or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
SEO firms are more common these days and our organisation employed one to have fully integrated washing machine a prominent key phrase on our website so we can attract more customers.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production 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 modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly 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 tool, and whilst it can be an expensive 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 common forms of promotion. Typically 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.