Bed Bedroom Furniture

Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.

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 provided 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?

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 affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the single business practice that could make or break a corporation.

So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry 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 company to be used as a marketing framework.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in 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 straightforward, blunt-edged business tool, but rather a subtle balance of different aspects of business functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

The term was later developed 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 business managers and marketers to swiftly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very rapidly create a customised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

There are several income avenues available to floor painters and our company applied marketing ideas to open new paths to our buyers.

Product

Although 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 selling, and at the end of the day it is the reason that customers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical 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 opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not necessarily the case.

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the market 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 rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.

Once your products have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is generally used to either extend the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.

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

With the rise of the Internet and ecommerce organisations find their sites, for instance lace tablecloths may be utilised for a direct sales channel and distribution network.

Price

Another key factor in the marketing mix relates to the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to figure out 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 weapon designed to achieve any particular goals your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth noting that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the key factors that shoppers 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. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn customers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 are going to be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get 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 item.

This pricing strategy is frequently 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 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 benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear 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.

Following using on-line tools to compare keyword lookup popularity we chose chicken cooking to lead our campaign for on-line promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.

Place

Place is the part of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your goods are sold. For the vast 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 important to determine your own priorities and adjust your distribution network accordingly. This is the main use of this element of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 point of contact (or even as a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive economic results.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people immediately think of the promotional side 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 instrument, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an important one.

Advertising is one of the most common 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 seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your front door.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing strategy.