Business Marketing

Posted by tfsguru on July 28th, 2010 | tags:

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

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 anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting 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 businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external factors, 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 benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses 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.

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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements 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 idea of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly relate 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.

Our company excels in supplying duvet bedding and while we thought our marketing strategy was adequate we have seen improvements since using marketing mix concepts.

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 crucial 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 buyers are going to spend money with you. If this part is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.

Several people do not think that marketing has any role 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around - your manufacturing department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your products have been designed 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’. The skill is called product differentiation and is one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.

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 already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.

The car industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

To maintain a standard corporate image a business ought to redesign their web presence an example we found was travel surfboard bag which reflect colourings, fonts and images associated with their branding.

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 figure out the highest 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 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 crucial 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.

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 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 main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the release 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. By using 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.

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 create or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

Our company has modified its company webpage so presents men appears more frequently so more people can find us through search engines.

Place

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

The most typical implications 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 infrastructure between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential 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 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 good.

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 pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practice

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

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