Elements Of A Successful Marketing Campaign
Saturday, August 7th, 2010Practically 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.
Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be supplied by anyone else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar item and you will both be trying to earn 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 main tool used by modern organisations 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 well it can be the single business practise that could make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap benefits, although spending this time efficiently can yield extraordinary outcomes.
So where should you begin when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every industry will have its own set of strengths and weak points 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 in the 1950’s and is an expression 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 aspects of business functions.
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 quickly relate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own organisations, and by doing so could very quickly form a customised and effective marketing plan.
Nearly every segment in the modern marketplace is competitive, particularly back treatment Ruddington, where good marketing decisions could mean the success or failing of the company.
Product
Whilst every element of the marketing mix is a requirement, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is possibly the most crucial of all. It describes 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. If this part is not adequately managed then your organisation will find it hard to make it through.
Several 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 precise opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other way around – your manufacturing department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right? This is not always the case.
Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions on the marketplace already, and because 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 assist in this situation?
Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or 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 produce and sell them.
Once your goods have been fashioned and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons that a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.
Another 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 brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.
The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering different engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all companies.
As part of our individual marketing plan, our baby giraffe company very carefully researched what exactly made our products stand out from the crowd.
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 pay (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any particular objectives your company has.
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 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.
There are many questions that you need to ask yourself while devising a good pricing strategy, key among 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 primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing.
Price skimming
The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to receive a product or service early on.
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 base of customers that would pay it.
Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing is at the opposite 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 earned long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can setup revenue streams for many years to come. When establishing a price for penetration it is still critical to not give a poor impression of your product by aiming for too low a figure.
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 create or undertake.
When promoting your company web site it’s important to pick the right keyphrase. Hot pink clothing fitted our company best and we have made the appropriate marketing modifications.
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 effectively. In a nutshell, it describes the way in which you deliver your product to your customer, and subsequently how you collect money from them.
The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your products are sold. For the majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your production plants and retailers and other outlets around the country. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is crucial to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately.
With the growing 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 place 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 large pool of possible customers.
Promotion
When you say the word “marketing”, most 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 used on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a particular message that will boost sales.
Advertising is one of the most typical forms of promotion. Typically it would be done by posting on billboards, producing short clips for TV and radio or by physically distributing 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 material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.
Another important part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more product sales directly, but goes 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 could be branding that swings a customer’s decision.
Putting it into Practise
As previously mentioned every company is different and will have different marketing requirements. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.
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