Almost 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 people money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great number 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 benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in 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 subtle balance of different aspects of business operations.
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 company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and efficient marketing system.
Almost every segment in the modern marketplace is competitive, especially Nottingham chiropractor, in which good marketing decisions can mean the success or failure of the company.
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 actual 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 manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions 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”.
Rather than creating 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 viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
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 that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
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 already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car 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 good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
As part of our individual promotion strategy, our how to make cake company very carefully researched what made our goods stand out from the masses.
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 top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any particular goals your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan 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 key factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your competitors 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.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy 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. Makers could set almost 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 firm can help to smooth its own money 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 financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to keep 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 undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
Before our corporation started studying on-line promotion regarding fleece body warmers there didn’t seem an obvious choice of keyword to use as our main target.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account 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 possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.
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 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an important 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. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out 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 materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may 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 rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
