A Guide To Marketing
Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced 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. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible results.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.
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 clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and efficient marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our organisation has risen to be a leader in providing a white orchid bouquet after employing customised marketing concepts across our entire range of offerings.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual 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 opposite 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?
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 market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating an operating system and then trying 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 sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why 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 extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car 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.
We do not have a distinct promotion team in our new xbox 360 steering wheel and pedals operation although several of our own administrators have been able to adopt marketing as part of their work role.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out 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 particular goals your business has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting 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 do not always 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 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.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector 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. Not only can this approach deliver excellent financial advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy 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. Makers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 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.
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 produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimize our web site for google search marketing we selected presents women for a targeted key phrase since it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical 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 or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to take into account 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 large pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most 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 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.
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 distributing 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 simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every business is unique 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.