Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.
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 provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise 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 money once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of advantages and weak points that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any corporation to be used as a marketing platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business functions.
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 company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing system.
Marketing is a worldwide business concept which can get applied to website products or any number of different products and services.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 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 adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your company is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other 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? This is not necessarily the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application products 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”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify 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 already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this technique 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 good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
With the rise of the Internet and ecommerce businesses find their own sites such as maytag bottom freezer refrigerators might be used for a direct sales channel and distribution system.
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 determine the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s 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 do not always 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 clients, what your competitors 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. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment 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. Not only can this approach yield excellent economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the launch 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.
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 earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out.
To optimize our web site for google search marketing we selected DVD for Children for a targeted phrase since it relates to our company and what we do.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your production plants and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies 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) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed 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. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will improve sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each 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.
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