Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing 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 supplied by anyone else. This means that your company 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 money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main 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 affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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 in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
The term was later built upon 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 business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
There are several income avenues for event planning and our own organisation used marketing ideas to open new routes to our buyers.
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, 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 business 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 a product 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.
Take 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 marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your products 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 would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
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 great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual marketing system, our business very carefully researched what exactly made our products stand out from the crowd.
To preserve a standard corporate image a business ought to update their website to reflect colors, fonts and graphics associated with their branding.Our conference production company website is being redesigned at the moment.
Price
Another important 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 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 specific objectives your business has.
Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price. 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 amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors 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 driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great financial advantages, 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 market where customers will often eagerly await the release 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.
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 financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
Grabbing any of the on-line search market is extremely beneficial, so pick a key phrase, just like become a doctor and consider if the phrase has an ample search market for your needs.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s 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 receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used correctly.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the 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 accordingly. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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 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 coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may 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 competitors. When all other pieces 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 reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
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