Modern Marketing
Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided 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 earn 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 organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. 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 one business practice that could make or break a company.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every industry 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 company to be used as a marketing framework.
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 system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.
The term was later developed 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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing plan.
When we were preparing the unveiling of our custom printed balloons we used ideas from the marketing mix to devise a strategy.
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 crucial 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. 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 actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your manufacturing department creates an item 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 and software application solutions in the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise 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 lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. 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 goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all companies.
We do not have a defined marketing division in our company though several of our own managers have been able to take up marketing as part of their work function.
Price
Another key 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 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 business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!
Whilst 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 cheapest 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 plan, 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 main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main idea behind 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 get a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy is very often 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 used 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 keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.
To optimise our website for search engine marketing we selected balloon tree stand as an aimed phrase since it relates to our company and what we do.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common 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 infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect 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 might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.
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 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
