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. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many specific details.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your business will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every 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 principle that can be applied to almost any corporation 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 an expression that is used to express 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 delicate balance of different elements of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.

The term was later built upon to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the essential 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 organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly form a tailored and effective marketing strategy.

Marketing is a global business idea which may get carried out on conferences or any number of different products and services.

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 business 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 make it through.

Several people do not think that marketing has any place 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 opposite way around – your manufacturing 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 established brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

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 more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent 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 recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix cake.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product currently 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 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.

As part of our individual promotion strategy, our business very carefully researched what made our goods stand out from the masses.

To maintain a standard corporate image a business ought to redesign their website to reflect colors, text and graphics associated with their branding.Our conference production company website is being redesigned at the moment.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns 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 pay (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 specific targets your business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out 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 do not always consider the lowest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your competitors are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this approach deliver excellent financial benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.

This pricing technique is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the release of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Makers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own cash flow.

Penetration pricing

Penetration pricing is at the other 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 employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still essential 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 revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to produce or undertake. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

To optimize our web site for search engine visibility we chose semi integrated washing machine for a targeted key phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

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

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and alter your distribution network appropriately. This is the primary application of this part of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods 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 channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers.

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 merely one branch of a more complete 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. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will improve sales.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically 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 arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your 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 choose your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned every company is different 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 plan.