Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody 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. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations 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 number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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 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 describe 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.
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 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 create a tailored and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
The “product” aspect of the four P’s could refer to a service, such as sports injuries Nottingham, or even any intangible asset being provided for sale by a business.
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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 make it through.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company 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 job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application products 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 circumstance?
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware 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 recognise the reasons why a customer should 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.
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 currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
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. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce businesses see their sitesincluding small plastic animals could be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution network.
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 pay (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific goals your company has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers do not always consider the lowest price to be the best value. 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 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 segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is very often 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 nearly 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 cash 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 critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet 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. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
When our business was performing market research before a new product launch we discovered that get a boyfriend was the key phrase that promoted the most “value for money” image.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way 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 products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this element of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic 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 only one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can be a costly 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. 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.