Nearly every business 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 people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.
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 enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle 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 in the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.
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 relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are; Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Almost every sector in the modern marketplace is competitive, particularly in store sashes, in which good promotional decisions could mean the success or failure of the company.
Product
Whilst 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 business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers 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 common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products 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”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival 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 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 goods have been designed and created it is still a vital 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’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this technique 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
We do not have a defined birthday sashes marketing team in our company though several of our own administrators have been able to adopt marketing as part of their job role.
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 determine the highest 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 tool designed to achieve any particular objectives your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst 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 don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price.
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 clients, what your competitors 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. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield great financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing strategy 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 almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 cash flow.
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 risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.
Another thing to bear 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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
When marketing your company web site it’s important to choose an appropriate keyphrase. Marketing sashes fitted our company the best and we have made the suitable marketing changes.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic 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 used 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. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will increase sales.
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 customers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed 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 goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.