Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business 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 product 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 increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary 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 influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practise that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every 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 company to be used as a marketing platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations. 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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Marketing is a global business idea which may be applied to floor maintenance as well as almost any amount of different products and services.
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 critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 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 typical 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 task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the market already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise 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 brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Again, this method 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is this cages parrot site that offers versatile and accessible means to target 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 carrying out market research to determine the top price that your customers would spend (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 business has.
Although 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 value. Actually a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, 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 also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the launch 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 using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own cash flow.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite 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 high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
To optimise our web site for Google marketing we chose DVD for Children as an aimed key phrase since it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s 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 consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied correctly.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a whole 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 deliver impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely 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 a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will increase sales.
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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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 door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
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