Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign

Almost every company on the planet sets out with the main 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 principle is fairly straight-forward, though it contains many intricate details.

First of all, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is genuinely unique and cannot be provided by anyone else. This means that your business will be contesting with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their money once. So how can you boost 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 broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the one business practise that could make or break a company.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own business? Well, every situation is different, and each industry will have its own set of advantages 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 framework. It is called the “Marketing Mix”.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a phrase 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 elements of business operations.

The term was later built upon 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 company managers and marketers to swiftly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and efficient marketing strategy. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Our company excels in offering the ability to efficiently paint concrete surfaces and whilst we all believed our marketing strategy was adequate we have seen advancements since using marketing mix principles.

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 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 buyers are going to spend money with you. If this element is not correctly 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 typical train of thought very often bears the precise 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?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many well-known brands of both operating system as well as software application solutions on the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”. So how could the principles of the marketing mix help in this circumstance?

Rather than creating an operating system and then trying 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 sought after in the current marketplace, and how feasible it would be to manufacture and sell them. By being mindful 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 designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and is one of the basic skills of the product part of the marketing mix pie.

Another form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many consumers as possible.

The car industry uses this technique very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have huge marketing budgets, the same principles can be applied to all businesses.

To maintain a standard corporate image a company should update their website an example is Maytag refrigerators who reflect colours, fonts and images associated with their branding.

Price

Another key 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 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 business has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly large!

Although 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 customers 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. Actually a price that is too low can often turn customers away.

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 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 main idea behind price skimming is to make as much cash 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 receive 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 core of customers that would pay it. By making use of this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own cash flow.

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 financial benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when employed correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet 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 create or undertake.

To optimise our website for Google marketing we selected large childrens bean bags for a targeted key phrase since it relates to our business and what we offer.

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 successfully. In short, it describes the method in which you deliver your product to your consumer, and consequently how you collect money from them.

The most typical ramifications 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 manufacturing plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to determine your own priorities and adapt your distribution network appropriately.

With the growing use of the Internet by your potential 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 place 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 large pool of potential customers.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it may be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a certain message that will improve 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 coming 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 will 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 rivals. When all other parts of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practise

As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing requirements. By using a mixture of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing plan.

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