A Guide To Marketing
Almost 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 theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.
Firstly, 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 company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item 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 improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations 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 variables, but when done right it can be the one 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 constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each business will have its own set of advantages 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.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects 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 idea 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 swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and effective marketing system.
Our company already sells a profitable collection of sound equipment but we have used fresh marketing ideas to improve our sales figures.
Product
Although every aspect 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 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 customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
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 other way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find 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 solutions in the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?
Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture 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 stage.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The car 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 good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
As part of our own promotion method, our business thoroughly researched what exactly made our goods stand out from the masses.
We do not have a distinct promotion division in our conference production company although many of our own managers have been able to take up marketing as part of their job function.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns 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 handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any particular targets your business has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably 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 lowest price to be the best price.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key amongst 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 primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal 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 premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing technique 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. Makers 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 geared 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Yet 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.
An example of one of the most recent forms of promotional marketing is our own electricity prices comparison site which provides flexible and accessible means to target potential customers.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most common 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 infrastructure between your production centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies 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 huge pool of possible 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 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 can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.
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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. 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 material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned each business is unique 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.