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titleModern Marketing/titlecategory3/categoryNearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.

br /Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, 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 rivals. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each business will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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. It is called the Marketing Mix.

strongThe Marketing Mix/strong

The marketing mix was a phrase 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 demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business operations.

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 company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing plan.

Nearly every segment in the modern market is competitive, particularly a title=Planning href=http://www.heatonplanning.co.uk/our-services-planning-applications-environmental-impact-assessment-environmental-statemen/school-development-planning-service/planning/a services, where good promotional choices could mean the success or failing of the company.

strongProduct/strong

Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 business will be selling, 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 company will find it hard to survive.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any role 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find 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 because the market is fairly 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 feasible 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 review 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 known as 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 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 great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all companies.

With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce organisations find their a href=http://onepotrecipes.net/healthy-one-pot-recipeswebsite/a could be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution network.

strongPrice/strong

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular objectives your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out 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 do not constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers away.

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 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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

strongPrice skimming/strong

The principal idea driving 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 receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics market 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 base of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own cash flow.

strongPenetration pricing/strong

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 earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.

Another thing to keep 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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

When our business was doing market research before a new product launch we identified a title=Schizandra href=http://schizandra.org/schizandra/a was the key phrase that promoted the most value for money impression.

strongPlace/strong

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 effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied appropriately.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods 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 an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.

strongPromotion/strong

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 complete system. Promotion can be used 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.

Advertising is one of the most common 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 customers. With the arrival of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may 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. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s decision.

strongPutting it into Practice/strong

As previously mentioned every 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 strategy.

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