Business Marketing

Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of making money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.

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 provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations 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 number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 platform.

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 reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions.

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 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 form a personalised and effective marketing system.

Our company has risen to be a forerunner for commercial floor cleaning after employing customised marketing and advertising concepts across our entire range of products.

Product

Although 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 company will be selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.

Several 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 production department creates a product for sale and then it is the task 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 and software application products on the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival 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.

Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise 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 typically used to either extend the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.

The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various 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. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

We do not have a distinct marketing division within our spiked running shoes enterprise although several of our own managers have been able to take up marketing as part of their work function.

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 spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular targets your company 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 shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers 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 clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The main 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 willing to spend a large amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver excellent financial benefits, but it can also promote 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. Makers 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 tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary 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.

Yet 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 carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.

To optimise our web site for google search marketing we chose rice and peas as an aimed key phrase because it relates to our company and what we offer.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied correctly.

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 includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal use of this part of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods 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 complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic 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 merely one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.

Advertising is one of the most common 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 witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned every company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.