The Marketing Mix

Practically every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it.

First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anybody 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 customers, 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 organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each business will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing rule 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 a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business operations. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients checklist 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 easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly form a personalised and effective marketing system. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

While we were planning the release for some of our swivel seats products we used ideas in the marketing mix to devise a plan.

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 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.

Several people don’t 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 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? This is not always the case.

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products in the marketplace already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be very 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 and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts 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 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’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Once again, this technique 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 good effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

To maintain a standard corporate image a business ought to update their own website an example would be gas electricity price comparison that reflect colourings, text and graphics associated with their own branding.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the highest price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!

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 always consider the cheapest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key amongst which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The main 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 technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics industry 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 core 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 monetary benefits 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.

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 create or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.

To optimise our web site for search engine visibility we selected large childrens bean bags for an aimed key phrase because it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that is 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 consumer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when applied appropriately.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes 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 crucial to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 place of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic results.

Promotion

When you say 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Classically 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 front door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial 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 could be branding that sways a customer’s decision.

Putting it into Practice

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

The Marketing Mix

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