DIY Wealth Creation

Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by manufacturing 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 business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar item 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 businesses to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very broad topic that is influenced by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could 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 constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and each 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 company to be used as a marketing platform.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.

The term was later built upon to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the essential 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 personalised and effective marketing system.

Marketing is a worldwide business concept and may be carried out on custom printed flags or any amount of other products and services.

Product

Although every element of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It describes 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 do not think that marketing has any role to play when it comes to the actual product that your company 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 job of the marketing department to discover 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 as well as software application solutions in the marketplace already, and since the market is fairly 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 take on the likes of Microsoft or 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 aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can prevent business dead-ends at a later stage.

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

A different 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 brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this method 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 good effect to sell their own goods in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

Marketing plays a key role in any promotional sash strategy and it shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.

Price

Another key 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 top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific objectives your business has.

Whilst it may seem obvious, it’s still worth noting 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 strategy, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, 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 main principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The main idea behind 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 prepared to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield great economic benefits, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.

This pricing technique 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. Makers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base 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 monetary rewards can be earned long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.

Another thing to bear 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 carry out.

To optimize our web site for search engine marketing we chose balloon stands as an aimed phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often disregarded 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 subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a great marketing approach when applied correctly.

The most typical ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production centres and shops or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point 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 large pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.

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 comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will improve sales.

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 coming of the information age we have witnessed 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 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 competitors.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each business is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s reviewed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.