Business Marketing
Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary 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. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn 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 competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and weak points that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations.
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 clear 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 efficient marketing system.
Marketing is a worldwide business idea and could get carried out on floor resin services or any number of different products and services.
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 critical of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your company will be offering, 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 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 manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Take 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 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 and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture 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 recognise the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms 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 brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various 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. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
An example of one of the newest forms of promotional advertising is the new fish cooking site which offers flexible and accessible means to target potential consumers.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 objectives your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors 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 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 willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique is very often 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 almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By using 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 tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky 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 figure.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only 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 create or undertake.
To optimise our website for Google search marketing we selected bean chairs and childrens bean bags as a targeted phrase because it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal use of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques 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 whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many 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 tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.
Advertising is one of the most typical 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material 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 functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
