Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.

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 anyone else. This means that your business will be contesting 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.

Marketing is the primary 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 single business practise that could make or break a corporation.

So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each business will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 platform.

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 simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.

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 swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

This marketing style is not limited to physical items, services such as headache treatment Ruddington may profit via new marketing ideas or a new point of view.

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 describes 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.

Several people do not think that marketing has any role 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 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?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established 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 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 take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being aware 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 designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

To maintain a standard corporate image a company should redesign their own portal an example we found was gas electricity price comparison who reflect colours, fonts and graphics associated with their branding.

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 figure out the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers 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 price.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

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.

This pricing strategy is frequently 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 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 earned 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 establishing a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a bad 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 undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

To optimise our website for search engine visibility we selected buying sunny plants as a targeted key phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres 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 modify your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 a complete 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 mention 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 complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can 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, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 materials posted through your door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practise

As previously mentioned every business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.

Family May 15th, 2010