Nearly 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, although it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages 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 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 an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. 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.
The term was later built upon to include the idea 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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and efficient marketing system.
Almost every segment in the modern marketplace is reasonably competitive, particularly conference production, where proper marketing decisions could mean the success or failing of the company.
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 crucial of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers 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 physical 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 always the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on the market already, and since 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 circumstance?
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 far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods 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’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
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. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car industry uses this technique 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 extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our own promotion method, our business very carefully studied what made our products stand out from the crowd.
One of the most recent forms of promotional marketing is via websites that offer flexible and accessible means to reach potential customersOur website is at www.rostrum.eu .
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 figure out the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the key factors that customers 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 price.
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 clients, 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 main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics market 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.
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 monetary benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one 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 create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
SEO companies are more common nowadays and our organisation employed one to make play the blues a dominant key phrase for our website so we can attract more customers.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary use of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 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 large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many 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 can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential 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 just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.