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Almost 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.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly 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 earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms 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 single business practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible results.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle 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 during 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 technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because 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 essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear for company managers and marketers to quickly 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 strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Nearly every segment in the modern market is competitive, especially Nottingham chiropractor, where proper marketing choices can mean the success or failure of the company.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical 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 correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.

Many people do not think that marketing has any role 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 opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on 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 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 desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review 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 called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.

The car 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

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Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 goals your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!

Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 cheapest price to be the best value.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also 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 premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company 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 financial 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 keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.

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Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is 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 receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied appropriately.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to consider 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 channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically 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 customers. With the arrival 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.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practise

As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.

Filed under: General Interest