Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 framework.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
The term was later built upon 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 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 create a tailored and effective marketing plan.
There are multiple sales routes for promotional flag products and our own organisation applied marketing ideas to open new paths to our buyers.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 company will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around - your manufacturing department creates an item 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 as well as software application solutions on the market already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be very 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 or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify 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 typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different 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.
We do not have a distinct balloon manufacturer UK marketing team within our company although many of our managers have been able to adopt marketing as part of their work function.
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 spend (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 advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers 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 value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key amongst 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The main 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 get a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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 nearly 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 rewards 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. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one 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 produce or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
When marketing your corporate web site it’s important to pick an appropriate keyphrase. Imprinted balloons matched our organisation the best and we have made the suitable marketing changes.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.
The most typical implications 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 network 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 appropriately. This is the principal use of this element of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people instantly 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will increase sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically 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 coming 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. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.