The Four P’s

Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of making money. This is usually done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging customers money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.

First of all, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody 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 money once.

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern businesses to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very extensive topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practise that can make or break a company.

So where should you start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and each 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 corporation to be used as a marketing platform. 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 express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing strategy. 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 since 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 clear 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 create a personalised and efficient marketing plan. The four P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

The “product” aspect of the four P’s could pertain to any product, like bad back treatment Ruddington, or even any kind of non-physical service being provided for sale by a company.

Product

Whilst every element 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 company 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 correctly managed then your company will find it hard to survive.

Many people do not think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your company 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 production department creates a product for sale and then it is the job of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system as well as software application products in the market already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be very 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 trying 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 desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to manufacture and sell them.

Once your goods have been designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively evaluate your own products to recognise the reasons that a customer would buy your product rather than a competitors’. The technique is called product differentiation and forms one of the fundamental 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 generally used to either lengthen the lifecycle of a product currently in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible. Again, this method can be applied at all stages of product development.

The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own products in an extremely competitive marketplace. Whilst these companies may have substantial marketing budgets, the same concepts can be applied to all businesses.

“Product is paramount” is one of the main slogans used in wooden storage organisation which aims to emphasise to all staff that we expect top quality manufacturing.

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 highest 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 targets your company has. The potential advantages of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Although it may seem obvious, it is 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 do not constantly consider the lowest 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 when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your customers, 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 primary principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The principal idea driving price skimming is to make as much cash as possible from the sector of the market which is price-insensitive and will be prepared to spend a large amount of money to receive 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 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 other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be earned long into the future. It can be a high risk 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 revenue for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing technique right.

Following using on-line tools to compare key word lookup frequency we chose underwater cameras disposable to steer the strategy for online promotion as well as off-line advertising materials.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that is often not addressed by companies, but it’s still a significant part of selling your product effectively. In short, 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 fantastic marketing technique when used correctly.

The most common ramifications of place-based marketing are the physical venues in which your products are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this includes the distribution network between your manufacturing 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 adapt your distribution network appropriately. This is the main application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your prospective 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 point of contact (or even as a complete distribution channel 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 mention the word “marketing”, most people immediately think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only 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 might be an expensive undertaking it is often an essential one.

Advertising is one of the most common 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 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 front door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so great.

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.

Putting it into Practise

As previously mentioned every business is unique and will have different marketing needs. 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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