Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing 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 specific details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item 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 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 extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practise that could make or break a corporation.
So where should you start 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 rule that can be applied to almost any corporation 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 an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle 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 easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a personalised and efficient marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
The “product” aspect of the four P’s could refer to a service, like chiropractic Nottingham, or any non-physical asset being offered for sale by a business.
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 crucial of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.
Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business 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 production 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 always the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting 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 desired in the current marketplace, and how viable 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 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 would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
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 good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
Marketing plays a crucial role within our xbox 360 steering wheels reseller plan and it shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.
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 useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular objectives your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best price. 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 strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your rivals 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 penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea behind 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 premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy 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 nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
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.
After using on-line tools to compare key phrase lookup popularity we identified underwater cameras disposable to direct the campaign for on-line promotion as well as off-line marketing materials.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide 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 goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing 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 modify your distribution network accordingly.
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 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 potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional aspect 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 can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will improve sales.
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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.