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The Fundamentals Of Marketing

Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally 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 where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your company will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the main tool used by modern firms 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 practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time efficiently can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions.

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 easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy.

The “product” aspect of the four P’s could refer to a service, just like sports injuries Nottingham, or any kind of non-physical service being offered for sale by a business.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, 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 company will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you.

Several people do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the physical 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 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 well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

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

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer would 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 prolong the lifecycle of a product currently 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 motor 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 products in an extremely competitive marketplace.

An example of one of the newest forms of promotional advertising is the new fish cooking site which provides versatile and accessible means to reach potential consumers.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing 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 weapon designed to achieve any specific goals your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!

Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 don’t always consider the cheapest price to be the best value.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving 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 get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver excellent economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing technique is frequently 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 almost 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that financial rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.

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 undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.

When promoting your corporate website it’s important to select the right keyphrase. Beef cooking matched our company the best and we have made the appropriate marketing modifications.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when used correctly.

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 centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this part of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a complete distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional side 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 may be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the coming of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your front door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will 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 rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practise

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

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