Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.

First of all, it is a very rare case that a business 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each 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 framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.

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 system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list 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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a personalised and effective marketing strategy.

While we were preparing the launch for our printed sashes we applied ideas in the marketing mix to create a strategy.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical 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.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common 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 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 established brands of both operating system and software application products in the market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your goods have been designed 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 known as product variation and is typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers 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 great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

One of the newest forms of promotional marketing is via websites that provide versatile and accessible means to reach potential consumers.

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 highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your company 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 customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money 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 get a product or service early on.

This pricing strategy is frequently 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 core of customers that would pay it.

Penetration pricing

Penetration pricing is at the other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial benefits can be made 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.

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 create or carry out.

Following using on-line tools to compare key word search popularity we identified trade balloons to guide the campaign for online promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.

Place

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

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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.

Advertising is one of the most typical 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 arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will 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 competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

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