Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally done by manufacturing 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 genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your business will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item 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 firms 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 variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 platform.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined in the 1950′s and is an expression 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 delicate balance of different aspects of business functions.

The term was later built upon 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 business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and efficient marketing plan.

While we were preparing the release for our Nottingham swivel seat products we applied ideas in the marketing mix to create a plan.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It identifies 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 part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.

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 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 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 solutions on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

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. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor industry uses this technique 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 incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.

Marketing plays a crucial function in our own chees graters reseller plan and shouldn’t get treated like an afterthought.

Price

Another important 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 top 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 tool 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 shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly 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 strategy, 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 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 segment 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 technique yield excellent economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry 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 base of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own cash flow.

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 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.

Yet another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the only 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.

To optimise our web site for search engine visibility we selected DVD for Children for an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when applied appropriately.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and retailers or other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques have had to consider 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 route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 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. 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 customers. With the coming of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.

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

Putting it into Practice

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