A Guide To Marketing
Posted September 24th, 2010 by adminNearly every business 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 customers money for it.
First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of advantages and flaws 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 framework.
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 strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations. 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 essential 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 effective marketing system.
When we were planning the launch of our own cardboard recycling products we employed ideas from the marketing mix to create a strategy.
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 critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.
Many people do not think that marketing has any place 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around - your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application products on the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly 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 sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your goods 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 should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.
A different 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 already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace.Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.}
To maintain a standard corporate image a business should update their paper recycling website to reflect colourings, fonts and images associated with their branding.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to determine the top price that your customers would spend (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 specific objectives your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out 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 do not always 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 amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing strategy is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own money 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 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. When establishing a price for penetration it is still critical 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 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 vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimize our website for search engine marketing we selected waste as a targeted key phrase because it relates to our company and what we offer.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic 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 vast 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 adapt your distribution network accordingly. This is the primary use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 channel 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 only 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 might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival 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.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may 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. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.