Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning 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 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 organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad 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 begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and flaws 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.
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 demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different elements 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 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 business 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 strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
There are multiple sales avenues for Nottingham floor painters so our company applied marketing ideas to open new routes 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 perhaps 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 company will find it hard to make it through.
Many people do not think that marketing has any role 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 opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would 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.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
Price
Another important 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 spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably 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 don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value.
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 rivals are doing and how can pricing boost 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 principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is frequently used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be made 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.
Another thing to keep 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 create or undertake.
SEO companies are more common nowadays and our organisation used them in order to have Spanish DVD for children a prominent phrase on our web site so we can attract more customers.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied appropriately.
The most common implications 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 network between your production centres and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing 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) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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 may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically 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 door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is unique 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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