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

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your business will be competing 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 money 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 deal of internal and external factors, but when done well 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 extraordinary outcomes.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? 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 during the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions.

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 business managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very rapidly create a tailored and effective marketing strategy.

Almost every sector in the modern marketplace is reasonably competitive, particularly carony seat Derby services, where good marketing choices could mean the success or failure of the business.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most crucial 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 customers are going to spend money with you.

Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the precise 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? This is not necessarily the case.

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on 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 trying to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and 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. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development period you can avoid business dead-ends at a later stage.

Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible. 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 great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

An example of one of the newest forms of promotional marketing is our own how to make bread website that offers flexible and accessible means to target potential consumers.

Price

Another important 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 figure out 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 objectives your business has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s 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 do not always consider the lowest 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 among 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be willing to spend a large amount of money to get 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 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 geared towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can setup 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 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 technique right.

To optimize our website for search engine marketing we selected DVD for Children as a targeted phrase since it relates to our business and what we do.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing centres and retailers 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 appropriately.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver 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) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

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 only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication instrument, and whilst it can 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, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each 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 strategy.

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