The Marketing Mix
Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing 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 company 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 product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every company 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.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase 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 demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements 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 company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and effective marketing plan.
Our organisation created a promotional approach for our own sashes by applying this advertising and marketing mix to determine our marketing strengths.
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 crucial of all. It describes 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. If this element is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual 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 discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting 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 viable it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.
To preserve a standard corporate image a company should redesign their website to echo colourings, text and images associated with their branding.
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 determine the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your business has.
Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 don’t always consider the cheapest price to be the best value. Actually 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 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 cash 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 get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy is frequently 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.
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.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one 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 essential to get your pricing technique right.
SEO firms are more common these days and our company used one to have in store sash a notable phrase for our web site so we can attract more customers.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most common ramifications 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 infrastructure between your production plants and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can 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, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the arrival 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 door.
Another important 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 rivals.
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 reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
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