Practically every company 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise 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 cash once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses 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 well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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. 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 an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
The term was later developed 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 company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Almost every segment in the modern market is reasonably competitive, especially cot bed bedding, in which good marketing judgements could mean the success or failing of the business.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly 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 customers are going to spend money with you.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find 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 and software application solutions on 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 can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this circumstance?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic 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 prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand 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 great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all companies.
With the rise of the Internet and ecommerce organisations find their own sites, for instance plastic planters may be used for a direct sales channel and distribution system.
Price
Another important 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 highest 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 particular objectives your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
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 shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the cheapest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key among 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 though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent economic benefits, 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 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.
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 earned long into the future. It can be a high risk 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.
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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
Our organisation has tweaked its company web page so how to make curtains appears more regularly so more people can locate us via search engines.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, 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 fantastic marketing approach when used appropriately.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you mention 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 materials 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 preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.