Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting 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 cash once.

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 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 could make or break a corporation.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages 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 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 describe 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 since it is similar to the ingredients list 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 company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and effective marketing system.

Our company created a promotional strategy for our own development and planning conultants products by using this marketing mix to determine our marketing strengths.

Product

Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 business will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the typical 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 discover ways to sell it, right? This is not always 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 very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could 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 take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far 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.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill 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 called product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers 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 sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

It is very common to discover a large number of companies that plan for manufacturing and sales but not properly for marketing.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing 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 weapon designed to achieve any specific goals your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out 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 do not constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.

This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers 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 monetary rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used 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 earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake.

Grabbing any of the on-line search market is very beneficial, so choose any term, like how to PDF, then assess if the phrase has an ample search market for your needs.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute 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 potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.

Promotion

When you say 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will improve sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.

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

Putting it into Practice

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