Super Fitness Health BlogModern Marketing
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your business will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary 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 influenced by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase 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 reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions.
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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and efficient marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
When we were planning the launch for our cotton bedding products we used concepts from the marketing mix to create a plan.
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 adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.
Several people do not 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 find 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 solutions in 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 could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this circumstance?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting 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 sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor industry uses this approach 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 extremely competitive marketplace.
It is incredibly difficult to come across a large amount of novelty aprons stockists who budget for manufacturing and product sales as well as properly for marketing.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to determine the top price that your customers would pay (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 specific goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!
Although 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 value. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 main idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent financial 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. Makers 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 geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
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.
To optimise our website for google search visibility we selected large childrens bean bags for a targeted key phrase because it relates to our business and what we do.
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 successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when used appropriately.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques 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 a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional side 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 tool, and whilst it might 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, creating 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 just as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another important 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 company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
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