titleThe Marketing Mix/titlecategory3/category
Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally 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 business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that can make or break a company.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each business will have its own set of advantages 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.
strongThe Marketing Mix/strong
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 strategy. It demonstrates 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 checklist for a recipe.
The term was later developed to include the idea of four P’s that described the essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a tailored and effective marketing strategy.
The product aspect of the four P’s could refer to any product, just like a title=Cotton Sheets href=http://www.homecottons.co.uk/egyptian-cotton-bed-linen/platinum-egyptian-cotton-sateen.htmlcotton sheets/a, or even any kind of intangible service being provided for sale by a company.
strongProduct/strong
Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the product element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 part 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 company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover 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 as well as software application solutions on the market 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 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 sorts of product are desired 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 evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor 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 good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is this a title=Cordless Straighteners href=http://cordlessstraighteners.net/cordless straighteners/a website that offers versatile and accessible means to reach potential customers.
nbsp;
nbsp;
nbsp;
nbsp;
nbsp;
nbsp;
strongPrice/strong
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine 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 specific targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out 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 cheapest price to be the best price.
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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
strongPrice skimming/strong
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 large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver excellent economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique 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. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own cash flow.
strongPenetration pricing/strong
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 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 keep 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 produce or carry out.
When marketing your corporate website it’s important to select the right key phrase. a title=Beef cooking href=http://beefcooking.net/Beef cooking/a suited our business best and we have made the suitable marketing changes.
strongPlace/strong
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when used appropriately.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify 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 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 a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
strongPromotion/strong
When you mention the word marketing, most people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely 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 might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.
Advertising is one of the most common 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 arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply 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 purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick 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 decision.
strongPutting it into Practice/strong
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.