Modern Marketing
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.
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 supplied by anyone 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 primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential 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 factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any corporation 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 a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations.
The term was later built upon to include the concept 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 quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a personalised and efficient marketing plan.
Our company already sells a profitable variety of handmade wooden jewellery box products but we have used new marketing suggestions to improve our sales figures.
Product
Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.
Several people don’t 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 a product 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 and software application products in the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
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 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 avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review 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 currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this approach 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
“Product is paramount” is one of the main slogans applied in xbox hard drive 360 organisation that aims to emphasise to all staff that we expect top quality production.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to determine the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has. The potential advantages 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 likely always will be, one of the key factors that customers 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 price. In fact a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.
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. These are outlined below.
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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield great economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers 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 firm 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 financial rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Another thing to keep 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.
To optimize our web site for google search visibility we selected rice and peas as an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes 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 important to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing 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 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key 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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
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 an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
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