Business Marketing
Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, 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 firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each 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 rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
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 describe 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 delicate 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 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 relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our organisation created a marketing plan for our own tax investigation insurance policy for individuals products by making use of this advertising and marketing mix to determine our marketing advantages
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 crucial of all. It identifies 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.
Many people don’t 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 manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application products in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
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 far more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical 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’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically 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.
The motor 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 incredibly competitive marketplace.
“Product is paramount” is one of the slogans applied in xbox hard drive 360 organisation that aims to emphasise to all staff that we expect high quality production.
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 figure out the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your business has.
Whilst 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 customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value.
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 customers, 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 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 segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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 nearly 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 used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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.
To optimize our web site for google search marketing we selected bean chairs and childrens bean bags as a targeted phrase because it relates to our business and what we offer.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques 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 channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say 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 complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it might 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, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out 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 product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose 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 choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
