Business Strategy: Marketing

Published by Frank on October 22, 2010

Nearly every company 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 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 provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?

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 influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, 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 results.

So where should you begin 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 corporation to be used as a marketing framework.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined during the 1950′s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

The term was later built upon 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 company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Our organisation has risen to become a forerunner for providing anger management courses after using tailored marketing and advertising concepts across our entire range of offerings.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 business 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 correctly managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company 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 production 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 necessarily the case.

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products 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”.

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 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.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms 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 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 motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

An example of one of the most recent forms of promotional advertising is our own company site which offers versatile and accessible means to target potential customers.

To preserve a standard corporate image a business should redesign their web presence an example we found was childerens bean bags which reflect colourings, text and also images associated with their branding, you can see their website here.

With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce companies see their own sites, for instance www.horsegamesforgirls.net may be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution system.

With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce companies see that their sites, for instance www.maytagrefrigerator.net may be utilised as a direct sales channel and distribution network.

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 top price that your customers would pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific targets your business has.

Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best value.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise 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 sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent economic benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

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 nearly 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 used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet another thing to bear 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 carry out.

To optimize our website for google search visibility we selected DVD for Children for an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked 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 consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when applied correctly.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly.

With the increasing 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 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 possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic 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 merely one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will increase 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 distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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 material posted through your 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 goes back to one of the preliminary functions 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 swings a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

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