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

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once.

Marketing is the main tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad 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 can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible results.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages 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 phrase that was first coined in the 1950’s and is a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. 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 developed 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 business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and effective marketing strategy.

Our organisation created a marketing strategy for our own cotton bedding products by using this marketing mix to determine our marketing advantages.

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 selling, 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 adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to survive.

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 a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?

Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival 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 viable it would be to produce and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.

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 forms one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as 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 customers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce organisations find their own sitesincluding maytag bottom freezer refrigerators may be used as a direct sales channel and distribution system.

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 pay (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 specific objectives your business has.

Whilst 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 do not always consider the cheapest price to be the best price.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when 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 though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get 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 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is geared 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 high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing 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 keep 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 undertake.

To optimise our web site for google search marketing we selected rice and peas as a targeted key phrase since it relates to our company and what we offer.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.

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 manufacturing centres and shops and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify 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 strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial 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 complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an important one.

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

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

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