A Guide To Marketing
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning 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 intricate details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be contesting 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 main tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths 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 framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
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 reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business operations. It got its name because 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 clear for business managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and efficient marketing strategy.
Our company has risen to be a leader in conference production services after using customised marketing concepts across our complete range of products. To see our website click here.
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 crucial of all. It describes 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 correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Several 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 typical 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 job 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 solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival 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 mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate 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 typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual marketing plan, our business very carefully studied what exactly made our products stand out from the masses.
We do not have a distinct marketing division in our conference production company though several of our administrators have been able to take up marketing as part of their job function.
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 figure out the top price that your customers would spend (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 business has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting 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 cheapest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can often turn customers away.
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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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. 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 company can help to smooth its own money 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 monetary benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
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.
We were able to use our past marketplace analysis regarding integrated washing machines to launch all on-line keyword optimisation we were undertaking.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
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 includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing 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 point of contact (or even as a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect 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 tool, and whilst it may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will boost sales.
Advertising is one of the most common 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 customers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will 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 competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practice
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 an effective view of your own marketing plan.
