Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main objective of earning money. This is generally 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 that a company can offer a product or service that is truly 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 shoppers, who only want to spend their cash once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms to draw potential customers to do business with them and not with their rivals. It is a very extensive topic that is influenced by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done right it can be the single business practice that can make or break a company. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and each company will have its own set of advantages and weak points 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 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 subtle 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 built upon 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 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 form a personalised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Marketing is a global business concept which may be applied to conferences as well as almost any number of other products and services.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly 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 buyers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not correctly managed then your company will find it hard to make it through.

Several people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical 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 a product for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to discover ways to sell it, right?

Take the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application products on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to take on the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be far more effective to look at what types of product are sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them.

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 typically 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. Again, this technique can be applied at all stages of product development.

The car 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 goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

As part of our individual promotion strategy, our business thoroughly studied exactly what made our goods stand out from the crowd.

It is incredibly common to find a large amount of conference production companies who plan for manufacturing and product sales but not properly for marketing.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This isn’t a simple case of performing market research to figure out the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a handy tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific goals your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing strategy are surprisingly large!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely 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 always consider the cheapest price to be the best value. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers away.

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 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.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and are going to be prepared to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on.

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. Manufacturers could set nearly any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By making use of 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 opposite end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored 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 employed correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear 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 technique right.

SEO companies are more common these days and our company employed one to make ladies croc sandals a notable key phrase for our web site so we can attract more customers.

Place

Place is the component of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it is still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your consumer, and subsequently how you receive money from them. It can be a fantastic marketing technique when applied appropriately.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution infrastructure between your production centres and shops and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing methods have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help deliver their products. By using the Internet as a place 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.

Promotion

When you mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be a costly undertaking it is often an essential one. The primary concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will increase sales.

Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically 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 coming of the information age we have seen 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 pick your product over those of your rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it can be branding that swings a customer’s decision.

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 reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.

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