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

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential 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 one business practise that can make or break a company.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and every company will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses 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. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term 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 subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. 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 critical 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 quickly create a personalised and effective marketing strategy.

This marketing model is not restricted to tangible goods, services such as floor painting can profit from new marketing ideas or a new point of view.

Product

Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It describes 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 part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any role 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing department creates a product 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 well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the market already, and because 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 help in this circumstance?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far 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 products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to identify 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 generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers 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 offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.

As part of our individual promotion strategy, our BBQ Rotisserie business thoroughly researched what made our goods stand out from the masses.

Price

Another key 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 making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any particular goals your company has.

Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 lowest 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 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.

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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.

This pricing technique 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. Manufacturers could set almost 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 geared 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 high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out.

To optimise our web site for Google visibility we selected buy childrens bean bags as a targeted phrase because it relates to our business and what we do.

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 method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and consequently how you collect money from them.

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network appropriately.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account 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 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 mention the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional side 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 an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most common 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 buyers. With the coming of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes 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 choice.

Putting it into Practise

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