Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
First of all, 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 company will be contesting 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. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses 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 deal of internal and external variables, but when done right 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 every industry 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 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 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 easy 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 tailored and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Nearly every segment in the modern market is reasonably competitive, particularly goose down duvets services, where good marketing judgements could mean the success or failure of the business.
Product
Whilst 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 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 place 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 other way around – your production department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application products on 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 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 rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
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 that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.
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 already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
Marketing plays a key function within our own DVD for children reseller strategy and shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular objectives your company has.
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial factors that customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best value.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when 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 though, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
This pricing strategy 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. Manufacturers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 money flow.
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 financial benefits can be made 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 keep in mind is that “price” is the only part of the marketing mix that will generate income 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 strategy right.
Before our company started researching on-line promotion regarding plumbing apprenticeships there did not appear an clear choice of keyword to use as our main focus.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that is often overlooked by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them.
The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network 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 modify your distribution network accordingly. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.
With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a whole 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 say the word “marketing”, most people immediately 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 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 customers. 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 will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick 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 each business is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
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