A Guide To Marketing

Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually 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 where 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 competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses 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 deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every company will have its own set of strengths and flaws 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. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects 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 easy for company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and efficient marketing system.

Nearly every sector in the modern market is reasonably competitive, particularly bed throws, in which good promotional decisions could mean the success or failure of the company.

Product

Whilst every element 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 identifies the physical product or intangible service that your company will be selling, 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 correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.

Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical 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 other 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 solutions on the market 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 trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique 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 known as product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

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 goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

With the rise of the Internet and ecommerce businesses see that their sites, for instance business electricity prices might be used as a direct sales channel and distribution network.

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 determine 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 weapon designed to achieve any particular objectives your business has. The potential benefits 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 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. 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 clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, 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 sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

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. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own money flow.

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 made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

Before our company began looking into online promoting for Greek worry beads there didn’t seem an clear choice of key phrase to use as our main focus.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied appropriately.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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 material posted through your door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

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