Practically every business on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.

First of all, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once.

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 affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? 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 company to be used as a marketing framework.

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 tool, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist 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 easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and efficient marketing plan.

Our company already sells a successful collection of EIA products yet we have used fresh marketing ideas to improve our revenue figures.

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 selling, 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 organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many people don’t 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 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 find ways to sell it, right?

Consider 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 since 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 attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft and 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. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period 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 review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would 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 pie.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The car industry uses this approach 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

It might seem evident that marketing is vitally significant for any company similar to ours, but the ideas still need to be put into practice, which is not always simple.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out 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 objectives your business has.

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably 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 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 when devising a good pricing strategy, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors 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.

Price skimming

The principal 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 prepared to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on.

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. Manufacturers could set nearly 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 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.

Another thing to keep 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 create or undertake.

Following using on-line tools to compare keyword search popularity we chose designer electric radiators to lead our campaign for online promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast 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 crucial to identify your own priorities and adapt 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 distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel 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 financial results.

Promotion

When you say 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will boost sales.

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 handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed 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 good.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.