The Fundamentals Of Marketing
Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually 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 where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business 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 competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practise that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every 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 framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a term 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 reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects 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 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 company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a personalised and effective marketing system.
Nearly every segment in the modern market is reasonably competitive, particularly Ruddington chiropractor, in which proper promotional judgements 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 don’t think that marketing has any role 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 job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?
Consider 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 market already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly 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 take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful 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 designed and created it is still a vital 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’.
A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
To maintain a standard corporate image a company ought to redesign their portal an example would be stockings and heels that reflect colourings, text and graphics associated with their branding.
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 determine the highest price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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.
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 boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and 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 premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver excellent financial advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is very often 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 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 financial benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
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.
Before our corporation started researching online promotion relating to heated body warmers there didn’t seem to be the obvious choice of keyword to use as our primary target.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when applied appropriately.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver 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 large pool of potential 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 only one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will improve sales.
Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential buyers. With the coming 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.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
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