Pride Of The Web –

Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.

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

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 framework.

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 demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

The term was later developed 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 clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a personalised and efficient marketing strategy.

There are multiple income avenues for event planning so our own business applied marketing ideas to open new paths to our customers.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite 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 always the case.

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products in the market already, and because the market is fairly 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 take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your goods 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’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently 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 approach 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.

As part of our individual marketing system, our business thoroughly studied what made our products stand out from the masses.

It is very common to come across a large number of conference production companies who plan for manufacturing and product sales but not properly 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 highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!

Whilst 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 do not always consider the cheapest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers 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 clients, 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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment 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 technique deliver excellent economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

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. 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 benefits 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 keep 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 undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

Our company wanted to appeal to a broader market and targeting learn to play the blues helped improve our visibility in the international business network.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical ramifications 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 centres and shops and other outlets around the world. 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 principal application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, 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 increase sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

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

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