Business Marketing
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main 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 theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw prospective 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 right it can be the one business practice that could 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 every company will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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 phrase that was first coined during the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to describe 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 elements of business operations. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
The term was later developed 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 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 effective marketing plan.
Nearly every sector in the modern market is reasonably competitive, particularly Egyptian cotton bedding, in which good promotional judgements could mean the success or failing of the business.
Product
Whilst every element 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 business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Many people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the physical 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 a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on the market already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than creating 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 designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already 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 motor 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to redesign their own portal an example we found was how to make curry which reflect colors, text and also graphics associated with their own branding.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your business has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the crucial 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 maximise 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 main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash 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 yield great economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
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 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 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 critical to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one 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 create or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
Before our corporation started researching online marketing relating to worry beads there did not seem an obvious choice of keyword to use as our primary focus.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often disregarded 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 customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied appropriately.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres and retailers 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 accordingly.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a whole distribution route 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 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 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 might be an expensive 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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
Filed under: General Interest