A Guide To Marketing

Almost every business 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 customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.

First of all, 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 business will be competing 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. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external variables, 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 start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every 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 corporation to be used as a marketing framework.

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 describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.

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 clear for company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Our company already sells a successful range of cotton bed linen products however we still use new promotional ideas to improve our sales numbers.

Product

Although every aspect 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 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 buyers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common 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 job of the marketing department to discover 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 on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after 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 time.

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 why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically 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 motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various 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.

An example of one of the most recent forms of promotional advertising is this maytag side by side refrigerators site which offers flexible and accessible means to reach potential customers.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to figure out the highest price that your customers would spend (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 goals your company has.

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best price.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also 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 premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique yield excellent economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing strategy 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. 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 opposite 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 employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical 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 only part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out.

Our organisation has modified its company web page so helium balloons wholesale occurs more frequently and more people can locate us through search engines.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and retailers and 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 complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you mention 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.

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 arrival of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions 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.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.