Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your business will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item 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 primary tool used by modern organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of strengths 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 platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
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 describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate 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 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 create a tailored and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are; Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Nearly every segment in the modern marketplace is reasonably competitive, especially fire rated glazed partitions in which proper promotional judgements could mean the success or failure of the company.
Product
Whilst 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers 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 company 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 a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Take 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”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting 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 sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical 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’.
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 brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
One of the most recent forms of public marketing is via websites which provide flexible and accessible means to reach potential consumers.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top 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 specific goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price.
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 customers, what your rivals 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.
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 large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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 core of customers that would pay it.
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. When establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to bear 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 undertake.
Our organisation has tweaked its company website so commercial builder occurs more frequently and more people can locate us via search engines.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed 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 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 locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place 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 potential customers.
Promotion
When you say 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will boost sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out 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 materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.