Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
Almost every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making 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 where a company can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
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 extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practise that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each 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 company to be used as a marketing framework. It is known as the “Marketing Mix”.
The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix was a phrase that was first coined during the 1950′s and is a phrase that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business operations.
The term was later built upon to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and efficient marketing system.
The “product” element of the four P’s could refer to a product, such as resin flooring, or any kind of non-physical asset being offered for sale by a business.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, 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 customers are going to spend money with you.
Several people don’t 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 other way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as 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”.
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 desired 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 recognise the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another form of this part of the marketing mix is known as product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.
The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
We do not have a specific marketing department in our new xbox hard drive price operation although many of our own administrators have been able to adopt marketing as part of their work role.
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 top 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 tool designed to achieve any specific goals your company 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 likely 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 while 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 however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.
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 will be willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this technique deliver great financial benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.
This pricing technique is frequently 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 nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By using 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 other 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 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 produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimise our web site for search engine visibility we selected buying sunny plants for a targeted key phrase because it relates to our company and what we do.
Place
Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when used correctly.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing techniques have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a place of contact (or even as a whole distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of potential customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be a costly 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, creating 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.
Another significant 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 pick your product over those of your competitors.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
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