Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
Almost every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is generally done by manufacturing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental theory is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.
Firstly, it is a very rare case where a company can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be supplied 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.
Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great deal of internal and external variables, but when done well it can be the one business practice that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every company will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any company 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 an expression that is used to express 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 aspects of business functions. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.
The term was later developed 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 easy for business managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly create a tailored and efficient marketing plan.The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Our company created a promotional approach for our development and planning conultants products by applying this marketing mix to determine our marketing advantages.
Product
Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most critical of all. It identifies 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. If this part is not adequately managed then your company will find it hard to survive.
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 typical train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your manufacturing 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.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application products on the market already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft and Apple, it would be far 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 aware of the marketing mix early on in your product development cycle you can avoid business dead-ends at a later time.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why 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 typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your new product attractive to as many consumers as possible. Once again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.
The motor 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 great effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Although these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.
As part of our individual business promotion system, our business very carefully researched exactly what made our products stand out from the crowd.
Price
Another key factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of performing market research to figure out the highest 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 weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!
Although it may seem obvious, it’s still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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 while 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.
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 will be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get 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 launch 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 base of customers that would pay it.
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 rewards 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 establishing a price for penetration it is still essential to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a number.
Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 produce or carry out. So it is even more vital to get your pricing strategy right.
Following using on-line tools to compare key word lookup frequency we chose schizandra plus to lead the strategy for online promotion as well as off-line marketing materials.
Place
Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed 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 customer, and consequently how you collect money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing approach when applied correctly.
The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production plants and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to identify your own priorities and alter your distribution network accordingly. This is the main use of this part of the marketing mix.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing methods have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute 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) firms are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective positioning of your product or service can therefore yield impressive financial results.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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 an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will increase 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 distributing 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 simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door.
Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but relates back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that sways a customer’s choice.
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 plan.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 3:45 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.