Nearly 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 where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your company 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 money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses 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 variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths 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 platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase 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 delicate balance of different elements of business operations.
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 clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and efficient marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our company already sells a successful variety of sound equipment yet we still use new promotional suggestions to improve our revenue numbers.
Product
Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.
Many people don’t 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 a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are desired 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 cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate 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 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 technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car 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 good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.
As part of our individual marketing plan, our business very carefully studied what made our goods stand out from the masses.
To preserve a standard corporate image a business should redesign their website to echo colors, fonts and also images associated with their branding.Our conference production company website is being redesigned at the moment.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the highest price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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 value.
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 clients, 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 also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
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 large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics market 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. 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk 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 earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
SEO firms are more common these days and our organisation used them to make Spanish DVD for children a dominant key phrase on our web site to attract more shoppers.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your production plants and retailers 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. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.
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 route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might 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, producing 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 material posted through your front door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
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