Business Marketing
Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once.
Marketing is the primary 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 affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the one business practise that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every business 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 corporation to be used as a marketing platform. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
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 tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations.
The term was later built upon to include the idea 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 swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and effective marketing system.
This marketing style is not limited to tangible goods, other services like floor painting could benefit from fresh marketing ideas or a new point of view.
Product
Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It identifies the physical product or intangible service that your company 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 element is not correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any role 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 precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around - your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the task 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 well-known brands of both operating system and software application products on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
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 more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should 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 pie.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong 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 technique 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 good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.
As part of our own promotion system, our how to make icing enterprise carefully studied what exactly made our goods stand out from the masses.
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 highest price that your customers would spend (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 company has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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 do not constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value.
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 customers, what your competitors 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 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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great financial benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing strategy 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 core of customers that would pay it.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the only 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 produce or carry out.
Grabbing some of the on-line search market is extremely beneficial, so choose any term, just like foil helium balloons then assess if the phrase has an adequate search market for your needs.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when applied correctly.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 place of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible 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 merely 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 might be a costly undertaking it is often an essential 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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply 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 initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.
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