Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many intricate details.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your business will be competing 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 prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right 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 incredible outcomes.

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 weaknesses 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. 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 tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.

The term was later built upon 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 clear 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 four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

While we were planning the launch for our own event management services we used concepts from the marketing mix to create a strategy.

Product

Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be selling, 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 organisation 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 business is selling. In fact, the typical train of thought very often bears the exact 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 find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products on the market already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and 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 manufacture and sell them.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that 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 generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently 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 car 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 incredibly competitive marketplace.

As part of our individual marketing strategy, our business carefully studied what made our goods stand out from the masses.

To preserve a standard corporate image a company ought to update their website to echo colourings, fonts and also images associated with their branding.Our conference production company website is being redesigned at the moment.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!

Although it may seem obvious, it’s 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 don’t 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 when devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your rivals 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 also penetration pricing.

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 will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver 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 market where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Manufacturers could set almost 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 financial rewards can be earned 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.

Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

To optimize our web site for google search marketing we selected rice and peas as a targeted key phrase because it relates to our company and what we offer.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect 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 plants 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.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically 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 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 great.

Another important 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 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 balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.