Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning 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 that 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 customers, who only want to spend their cash once.

Marketing is the main tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. 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 single business practice that can make or break a corporation.

So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages 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 platform.

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 reflects the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business tool, 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 essential elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P's made it very clear for company managers and marketers to quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and effective marketing plan.

When we were preparing the launch of some of our printed sashes we applied concepts in the marketing mix to devise a strategy.

Product

Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the "product" element mentioned as one of the four P's is possibly the most crucial of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your business 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 don't think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your business is selling. In fact, the common 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 task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the market already, and since the market is relatively 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 take on the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what types of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to produce and sell them.

Once your goods 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 would buy your product rather than a competitors'. The technique 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 generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The car 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 great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

It is incredibly common to find a significant number of companies who plan for production and sales but not adequately for marketing.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn't a simple case of performing market research to determine the top price that your customers would pay (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 targets your business has.

Although 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 don't constantly consider the cheapest price to be the best price. Actually a price that is too low can often turn buyers away.
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 maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment 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 yield excellent financial benefits, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing strategy is very often used in the consumer electronics industry where customers will often eagerly await the launch 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.

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 financial rewards can be earned 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.

Yet another thing to keep in mind is that "price" is the only 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 create or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.

Following using on-line tools to compare key word lookup frequency we identified trade balloons to direct our strategy for on-line promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.

Place

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

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing plants 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 alter your distribution network accordingly.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies 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 an entire distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers.

Promotion

When you say the word "marketing", most 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 employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. 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 materials posted through your front door.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer's choice.

Putting it into Practice

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