Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually 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 intricate details.
First of all, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your enterprise 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. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main 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 affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice 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 begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each company 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 framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different elements 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 company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Marketing is a worldwide business idea and could be applied to conferences as well as any number of other products and services. See our website here.
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 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 customers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.
Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your business 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.
Take 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 because 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 assist in this situation?
Rather than developing 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 types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various 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. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all companies.
As part of our own marketing method, our business carefully researched what exactly made our goods stand out from the crowd.
It is incredibly common to discover a large amount of conference production companies that plan for manufacturing and sales but not properly for marketing.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 goals your business has.
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting 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 always consider the cheapest price to be the best value. 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 strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary 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 large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver great financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
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 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing 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 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 carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.
When promoting your corporate web site it’s important to choose an appropriate keyphrase. DVD recorder HDD fitted our organisation best and we have made the appropriate marketing changes.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when used appropriately.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres and retailers or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately.
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 distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will improve sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing 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 materials posted through your front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will 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 pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s decision.
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 an effective view of your own marketing plan.