Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the primary 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.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing 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 cash once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each industry 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 corporation to be used as a marketing platform. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.

The term was later developed 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 swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and efficient marketing system.

Our business already sells a prosperous collection of Egyptian cotton duvet products however we still use fresh marketing ideas to improve our sales numbers.

Product

Whilst every aspect 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your company 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 physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates an item 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.

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the marketplace already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far 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. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.

Once your products have been designed 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’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.

The motor 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 good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

To maintain a standard corporate image a company should redesign their site an example is childrens bean bags that echo colors, text and graphics associated with their branding.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the top price that your customers would pay (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 company has. The potential benefits 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 do not always consider the cheapest price to be the best price. In fact 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 strategy, 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.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector 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. Not only can this approach deliver excellent economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.

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. 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

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Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked 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 customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the increasing 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 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 large 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will boost 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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes 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 mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.