The R Us Group

Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the main 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.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that 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 competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you increase the chances of them spending money with you?

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 broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield extraordinary results.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each company 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 company 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different elements of business operations.

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 swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and effective marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

The “product” element of the four P’s can pertain to a product, like wheelchair accessable vehicles, or any intangible asset being offered for sale by a company, see our website here.

Product

Whilst every aspect 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 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. If this part is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.

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 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 task of the marketing department to discover 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 products on the market already, and because the market is fairly well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix assist in this situation?

Rather than developing an operating system and then trying to craft a marketing strategy to take on 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 viable it would be to produce 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 identify the reasons why 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 prolong the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

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

An example of one of the newest forms of promotional marketing is the new company site which provides versatile and accessible means to reach potential consumers.

Price

Another important 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 pay (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific targets your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 don’t constantly consider the lowest price to be the best price.

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 competitors are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The main 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 prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive 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 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 risky strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important to not give a bad impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.

Another thing to bear 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 essential to get your pricing technique right.

To optimise our website for google search visibility we chose large childrens bean bags as a targeted phrase since it relates to our company and what we offer.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often disregarded by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your manufacturing plants and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge 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 only 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 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 handing out 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 just 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 goes back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to pick 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 discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.

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