Almost 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business 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 cash once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practise that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each industry 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 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 in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions.
The term was later developed to include the concept of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
There are multiple income avenues available to epoxy coatings and our own organisation used marketing ideas to open new paths to our buyers.
Product
Whilst every aspect 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 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 element is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.
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 common train of thought very often bears the precise 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 always the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and 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 developing 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 sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers 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 extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
An example of one of the newest forms of promotional marketing is our own electric ukulele website that provides flexible and accessible means to target potential customers.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to determine the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful 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 benefits 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 crucial factors that customers 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 often turn buyers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also 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 will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get 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 core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm 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 made 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 critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
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 carry out.
To optimise our web site for Google marketing we chose buying sunny plants as a targeted phrase since it relates to our business and what we do.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when used correctly.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your production centres 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 modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly 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 instrument, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific 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 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
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 reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
