Pride Of The Web –

Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.

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 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. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations 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 deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently 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 industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 framework.

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 delicate balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name since 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 clear for business managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and effective marketing system.

Our business already sells a successful collection of environmentally friendly flags but we have used new marketing ideas to improve our revenue figures.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical of all. It describes 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. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any role 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 precise 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 find ways to sell it, right?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very 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 far more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.

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

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically 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 technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor 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. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

To preserve a standard corporate image a business should update their own website to echo colourings, text and also graphics associated with their branding.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of 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 crucial factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers do not constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value. In fact 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 rivals are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two primary 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 willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release 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.

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 made 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 only 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

Before our corporation began researching online promotion political sashes didn’t seem to be the clear choice of key phrase to use as our primary focus.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production centres 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 alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application 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 distribute 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) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly 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 can be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically 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 simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practice

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

Related posts:

1. The First Steps Of Marketing Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the...
2. Business Marketing Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the...
3. Marketing On The Internet Finally Defined Marketing on the Internet, also known as Internet Marketing, is...
4. The Four P’s Practically every business on the planet sets out with the...
5. digital internet marketing & making money from blogging There are so many things that web business proprietors need...