Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making 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, though it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company 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 money once.
Marketing is the main 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 variables, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business functions.
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 company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Nearly every segment in the modern market is competitive, especially bad back treatment, in which good marketing choices can mean the success or failing of the company.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers 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 a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover 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 as well as software application solutions on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly 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 circumstance?
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types 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 vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car 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 great effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
To preserve a standard corporate image a company should update their website an example would be gas electricity price comparison which reflect colourings, fonts and also graphics associated with their branding.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out 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 particular targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably 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 do not constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price.
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 clients, 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 penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy 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. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own cash flow.
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 financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad 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 create or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimise our website for Google search visibility we selected stop diarrhoea for a targeted phrase because it relates to our business and what we offer.
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 method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when used correctly.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves 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 crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point 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 huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention 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 complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might 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, producing 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 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 product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.