Pride Of The Web –

Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by producing 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 intricate 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 enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once.

Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective 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 factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and weak points 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. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

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 technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.

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 organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and effective marketing plan.

Our organisation specialises at providing childerens bed linen and while we all believed our marketing strategy was adequate we have seen advancements after using marketing mix concepts, see our website at http://childrensbedlinen.org/.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps 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. If this part is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the task 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 well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products on 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 rival 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 viable it would be to produce and sell them.

Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.

A different 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 already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.

With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce companies see that their sites such as lace tablecloths might be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution network.

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 determine the highest price that your customers would pay (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 particular goals your business has.

Although it may seem obvious, it’s 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can often turn customers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst 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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector 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.

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. Manufacturers could set almost 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 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 employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet another thing to keep 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 produce or undertake.

When our business was doing market research before a new product release I identified get a boyfriend was the key word that promoted the best “value for money” impression.

Place

Place is the part 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 customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used appropriately.

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 involves the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies 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 say 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive 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, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned every business is unique 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.

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