Almost every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product 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 organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.
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 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. It is known as 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 express 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 subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
The term was later developed 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 organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing system.
Our organisation has grown to be a forerunner for providing white orchids after employing tailored marketing ideas across our entire range of offerings.
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 critical of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual 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 opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this circumstance?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired 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 designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car 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. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
We do not have a distinct marketing team in our new how to make bread enterprise though several of our own administrators have been able to adopt marketing as part of their work role.
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 using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your business has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers away.
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 customers, what your competitors 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 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 are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is frequently 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 geared 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
Grabbing any of the on-line search market is extremely beneficial, so pick any term, like electric quad bikes then consider if that phrase has an adequate search marketplace for your needs.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production plants and retailers or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.
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 distribute 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 large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.
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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
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 plan.