Almost 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 theory is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product 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 potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. 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 practice that can make or break a company.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages 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.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to express 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 functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

The term was later developed 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 clear for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing plan.

Almost every sector in the modern market is competitive, particularly conference production, in which good promotional decisions could mean the success or failure of the business.

Product

Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps 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 buyers are going to spend money with you.

Several people do not 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 precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the marketplace 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 help in this situation?

Rather than creating an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far 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. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.

Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The skill is called product differentiation and forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. 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 great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.

As part of our individual marketing system, our business very carefully studied exactly what made our goods stand out from the crowd.

It is incredibly common to find a significant amount of conference production companies who budget for production and product sales but not properly for marketing.

Price

Another key 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 figure out the top price that your customers would pay (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 objectives your business has.

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and likely 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 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 among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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.

Price skimming

The main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great financial advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.

This pricing strategy is frequently used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release 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 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 high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.

We do not have a specific marketing team within our new xbox 360 steering wheel and pedals enterprise though several of our own administrators have been able to take up marketing as part of their work function.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. 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 technique when used correctly.

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 involves 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 important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, most 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 important one.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing 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 simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.

Filed under: General Interest

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