Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific 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 contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make 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 main 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 factors, but when done right 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 efficiently can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each company 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 company to be used as a marketing platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in 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 simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
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 clear for business managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a tailored and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our organisation has grown to become a forerunner for Nottingham commercial floor cleaning since employing tailored marketing concepts across our entire range of offerings.
Product
Whilst every element 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be selling, 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 organisation will find it hard to survive.
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 manufacturing department creates a product 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.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating 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. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either prolong 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 approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
An example of one of the most recent forms of promotional marketing is the new electric ukulele website which offers versatile and accessible means to target potential customers.
Price
Another important 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 highest price that your customers would spend (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 specific targets your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 don’t constantly consider the cheapest 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 maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
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 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 economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the launch 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 money 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 rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed 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.
Another thing to bear 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 produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
SEO companies are more common nowadays and our company employed them to have cooking times a dominant key phrase for our web site to attract more shoppers.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used correctly.
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 or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you mention 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 comprehensive 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 essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will improve sales.
Advertising is one of the most common 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 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 sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every company is different 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.
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Building Blocks, Business Operations, Business Tool, Customers Money, Earning Money, Expression, External Factors, First Steps, Fundamental Principle, Marketing Mix, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tool, Money Marketing, Practise, Prospective Customers, Rare Case, Rewards, Shoppers, Spending Money, Subtle Balance