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

First of all, it is a very rare case where a business 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 product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practise that can make or break a company.

So where should you begin 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 flaws 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 known as 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 subtle balance of different aspects of business operations.

The term was later developed 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 easy 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 form a personalised and effective marketing plan.

Nearly every segment in the modern marketplace is reasonably competitive, particularly Nottingham shot blasting, where good promotional judgements can mean the success or failing of the business.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical 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.

Many people do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your business 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 a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily 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 solutions in the marketplace already, and since 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 rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be 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. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.

Once your goods 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 typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

Marketing plays a critical function in our xbox 360 steering wheels company strategy and shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t 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’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the cheapest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key amongst 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 main principals; price skimming and also 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 will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique 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. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 monetary rewards can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing 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 income for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.

To optimise our website for search engine marketing we selected buying sunny plants as a targeted phrase since it relates to our business and what we do.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is 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 subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used appropriately.

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 manufacturing plants and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can 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 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 good.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes 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 choice.

Putting it into Practise

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