Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
Nearly every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is usually done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company 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 product and you will both be trying to make money from the same shoppers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you improve the chances of them spending money with you?
Marketing is the primary 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 affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practice that could make or break a company.
So where should you begin when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of strengths and flaws that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any corporation 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 a phrase that is used to describe the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It demonstrates the fact that marketing is not a simple, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients checklist for a recipe.
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 business managers and marketers to swiftly 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 plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
The “product” aspect of the four P’s can refer to any product, just like tax investigation insurance services, or any kind of intangible service being offered for sale by a company
Product
Although 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 identifies the physical product or intangible service that your business will be offering, 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 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 exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around - your manufacturing department creates an item 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 solutions on 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 attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.
Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the fundamental skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.
A different 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 new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The motor industry uses this technique 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 goods in an extremely competitive marketplace.
“Product is paramount” is one of the mottos used within our xbox 360 steering wheel company that tries to remind all staff that we expect high quality manufacturing.
Price
Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the highest 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 tool designed to achieve any particular goals 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 key factors that shoppers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best price.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, 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 though, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.
Price skimming
The main idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector 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 strategy 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 almost 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 financial benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a risky strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When setting a price for penetration it is still important 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 one 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 produce or undertake. So it is even more vital to get your pricing technique right.
To optimize our website for search engine visibility we selected rice and peas 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 is often disregarded by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing centres and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing strategies have had to consider how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel in download-based markets such as MP3s) firms are now able to reach out to a large pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you mention the word “marketing”, many people instantly 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 can be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.
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 buyers. With the arrival of the information age we have witnessed a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or just as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another significant 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 choose your product over those of your competitors.
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 discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.
