Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
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. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although 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 genuinely unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your enterprise will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to make money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once.
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 broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that could make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.
So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, each situation is different, and every business 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 corporation 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 a phrase that is used to describe 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 delicate balance of different elements of business functions. It got its name since it is similar to the ingredients list 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 easy 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 customised and effective marketing system. The four P’s are; Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
This marketing style is not limited to tangible goods, other services such as balloon in a box wholesale may benefit from fresh marketing ideas or a new point of view.
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 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.
Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the actual product that your company 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 production department creates a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system and 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”. So how can the principles of the marketing mix help in this situation?
Rather than developing 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 feasible it would be to produce 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 time.
Once your products have been fashioned and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer would 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 lengthen the lifecycle of a product already 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 motor industry uses this technique very effectively by offering various 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.
We do not have a defined promotion team in our company although many of our own administrators have been able to take up marketing as part of their job role.
Price
Another important 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 highest price that your customers would pay (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 targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly substantial!
Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and probably always will be, one of the crucial 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 value.
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 rivals are doing and how can pricing boost your own profits. From a strategy point of view though, 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 willing to spend a large amount of money to receive a product or service early on. Not only can this approach yield excellent financial advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your item.
This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics market 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 core of customers that would pay it.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite 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 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.
Another thing to keep 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 carry out.
Following using on-line tools to compare keyword lookup frequency we identified party sashes to direct our strategy for on-line promotion as well as off-line marketing materials.
Place
Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often overlooked by companies, but it is still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them. It can be a great marketing technique when applied correctly.
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 includes the distribution network between your production centres and retailers or other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately.
With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of possible customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore yield impressive economic 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 merely 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 a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary 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, creating 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 simply as targeted advertising materials posted through your front door.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but goes back to one of the initial functions of marketing; getting customers to pick your product over those of your competitors. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that swings a customer’s choice.
Putting it into Practice
As previously mentioned every company is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take an effective view of your own marketing plan.
