The Marketing Mix

Practically every company on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning 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, though it contains many intricate details.

Firstly, it is a very rare case that a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your business will be contesting 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 boost the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern firms 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 deal of internal and external variables, but when done right it can be the one business practice that can 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 start when constructing a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, every situation is different, and every company will have its own set of advantages and weaknesses 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 an expression 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 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 associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly form a personalised and effective marketing plan.

Our organisation created a marketing approach for our own cotton bedding products by making use of this marketing mix to determine our marketing strengths.

Product

Although every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most crucial of all. It describes 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 organisation will find it hard to survive.

Many 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 common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the other 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 established brands of both operating system and software application solutions in the market already, and because the market is relatively well saturated it would be very tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

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 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 designed and created it is still a vital skill to be able to objectively review your own products to recognise the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is known as 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.

The motor industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they offer. They use the marketing mix to good effect to sell their own goods in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

It might seem evident that marketing is incredibly important for any physics text books seller like ours, but particular ideas still need to be put into practice, which is not always easy.

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 useful tool to use), but rather making use of the price of your products as a strategic weapon designed to achieve any specific objectives your business has.

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 customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t constantly 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 strategy, 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 however, pricing can be covered by two main principals; price skimming and penetration pricing.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment 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. Not only can this approach deliver great economic advantages, but it can also advertise an exclusive and high quality image of your product.

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. Makers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal core of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a firm can help to smooth its own money flow.

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 create revenue streams for many years to come.

Yet another thing to keep in mind is that “price” is the one 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 produce or undertake.

Grabbing any of the on-line search market is very beneficial, so pick a key phrase, just like become a doctor then assess if that phrase has an ample search marketplace for your needs.

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 way in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them.

The most typical implications of place-based marketing are the physical venues 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 important to identify your own priorities and modify your distribution network accordingly.

With the increasing use of the Internet by your potential customers, marketing strategies have had to take into account how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as an entire distribution channel 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”, many people immediately think of the promotional side of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is merely one branch of a more complete system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it can be an expensive undertaking it is often an important one.

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 buyers. With the arrival 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. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.

Another important part of promotion involves branding, which will not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary functions of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your rivals.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a mixture of the four P’s reviewed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.

Designing Customer Satisfaction Surveys that Work

Why bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With every satisfied customer your business is likely to go on and secure many more customers through recommendations and if you do not take proper care of your customers there is probably a competitor waiting in the wings that will.

A Customer Satisfaction survey will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Once the survey has been completed consider how you will analyze the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the likely volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to accept criticism.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What questions should you ask?

Although it is a given that each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – What do you do to make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If there are reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always a good measure, value for money is.

Are the products you sell or the services you provide considered by your customers to be value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details so that any problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the customer service is failing.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they made a positive contribution to the business and improved the customer service?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Do not squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing follow up surveys.

If you are concerned about customer satisfaction and would like to view a sample survey for a store that will demonstrate some of the above advice please view the Sample Customer Survey