Practically every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

First of all, 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 enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once.

Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses 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 framework.

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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.

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 quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing plan.

The “product” aspect of the four P’s can refer to any service, like conference production company, or any non-physical service being offered for sale by a company.

Product

Whilst every aspect 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 describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 element is not correctly managed then your company 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 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 manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find 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 and software application solutions in the market already, and since the market is relatively 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 circumstance?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be 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 avoid business dead-ends at a later time.

Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why 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 typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.

As part of our own promotion method, our business thoroughly researched exactly what made our goods stand out from the crowd.

Marketing plays a crucial role in any business plan and it should not get treated like an afterthought.

Price

Another important 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 figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 business has.

Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the key factors that customers 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 value.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your customers, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing boost 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 main idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a large amount of money to get 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 almost 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 high risk 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 figure.

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 undertake.

Following using on-line tools to compare key phrase lookup frequency we identified whale hermanus to lead our campaign for online promotion as well as off-line.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently 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 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 identify your own priorities and modify 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 prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point 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 potential customers.

Promotion

When you mention 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will increase sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically 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 simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door.

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

Putting it into Practice

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

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