Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing 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.

Marketing is the main 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 deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of advantages and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950’s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects 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 because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.

The term was later built upon to include the idea 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 companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and efficient marketing strategy.

Our business already sells a prosperous collection of industrial floor paints but we still use new marketing suggestions 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 critical 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 make it through.

Many people don’t think that marketing has any role 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 production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover 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 on the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly 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 situation?

Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital 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’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand 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 sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.

An example of one of the most recent forms of public marketing is our own fish cooking site that provides versatile and accessible means to target potential customers.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the highest 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 weapon designed to achieve any particular targets your business has.

Although it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting that price has always been, and probably 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 always consider the lowest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key amongst 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 main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

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 are going to be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent economic benefits, 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. Manufacturers 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet another thing to bear 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 create or carry out.

SEO companies are more common nowadays and our company employed them to have cooking times a notable key phrase on our web site to attract more shoppers.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies 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 a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.

Promotion

When you say 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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it may 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 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.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial 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 could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

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