Business Blog

Nearly every company 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 customers money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied 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 customers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive 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 company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each business 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 platform.

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 system. 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. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

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 relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and efficient marketing system.

There are multiple sales routes for event planning so our organisation used marketing ideas to open new routes to our customers.

Product

Although every aspect 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 business 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 element is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical 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 manufacturing 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 necessarily the case.

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions in the market 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 help in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on 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 produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise 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 extend 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 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 great effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

As part of our own marketing method, our business very carefully studied exactly what made our products stand out from the crowd.

One of the newest forms of promotional marketing is by means of websites which offer versatile and accessible means to target potential customersOur website is at www.rostrum.eu .

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 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 weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has.

Although 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 customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key among 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 however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal 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 willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique yield great economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing technique 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. Makers could set nearly 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 other 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad 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. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

Grabbing some of the on-line search market is extremely beneficial, so pick a phrase, just like become a doctor then assess if that phrase has an ample search marketplace for your purposes.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used appropriately.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your production plants and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.

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 deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional side 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 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 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 materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.

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

Putting it into Practice

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