The Marketing Mix

Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing 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. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and flaws 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 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 an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. 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.

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 quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and efficient marketing plan.

Our organisation has risen to be a forerunner in providing the white orchids after employing tailored marketing and advertising ideas across our entire range of products.

Product

Whilst every aspect 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 company 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 element is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Many people don’t think that marketing has any place 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 precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates a product 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 established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively 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 developing 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 sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should 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 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 great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

It is very difficult to discover a significant number of novelty aprons distributors that budget for production and sales as well as adequately for marketing.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using 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 pointing out 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. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while 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 though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money 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 receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver excellent economic benefits, 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 launch 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. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own money flow.

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 risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.

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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

To optimise our website for google search marketing we selected buy childrens bean bags as a targeted phrase since it relates to our company and what we do.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when used correctly.

The most typical 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 infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops 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. This is the main application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies 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 channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.

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 a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Typically 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material 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 product sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company 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.

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