Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

First of all, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing 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. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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.

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 describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects 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 business managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and efficient marketing plan.

When we were planning the unveiling of some of our floor scarifiers we employed ideas from the marketing mix to create a strategy.

Product

Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 company will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.

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 typical train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very 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 rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate 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 known as product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor industry uses this technique 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 extremely competitive marketplace.

Marketing plays a critical role within our own DVD for children business plan and it shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.

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 determine the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful 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 strategy are surprisingly large!

Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out 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 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 amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release 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 monetary rewards 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 setting a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a bad 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 revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake.

Our company has modified its corporate web page so French DVD for children shows up more frequently so more people can find us via search engines.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when applied correctly.

The most typical implications 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 production centres 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 modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing 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 point 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 huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

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 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will improve sales.

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 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 may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practice

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

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