Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
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Practically 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.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the one business practice that can make or break a company.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and weak points 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 platform.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and effective marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our company already sells a prosperous range of wheelchair hoist products yet we still use fresh marketing ideas to improve our sales figures.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 buyers 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 don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company is selling. In fact, the common 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 task of the marketing department to find 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 on the marketplace already, and since 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 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 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.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and is 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 extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your 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 technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
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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 handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific goals your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably 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 value. In fact a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors 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.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield great economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release 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 core 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 money 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 high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate income for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out.
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Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network accordingly. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 point of contact (or even as a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an important one.
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 buyers. With the arrival 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
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 a good view of your own marketing strategy.
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