Nearly every company 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 customers money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company 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 money 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 broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, 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 rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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 platform. It is called 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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates 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 critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly 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 system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

When we were preparing the release of some of our tax investigation insurance policy for individuals products we applied concepts from the marketing mix to create a strategy.

Product

Whilst 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your business 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 task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products 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”.

Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

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 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. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

It is incredibly difficult to discover a large amount of novelty aprons distributors that budget for production and sales as well as adequately for marketing.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to determine the top 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 objectives your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!

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. Actually a price that is too low can often turn buyers 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 boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The main 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 prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive 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. 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 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 made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet 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 produce or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

We were able to use our previous marketplace research regarding lamb cooking to kick off all online keyword optimisation we were undertaking.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical ramifications 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 network between your manufacturing centres and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods 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 a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically 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 arrival 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 front door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

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