Use the right marketing mix for your business

Marketing is all the activities you undertake to promote and sell your products or services. There are four key elements to the marketing mix - product, price, place and promotion (the four Ps). Determining the relative importance of each to you is critical to the success of your business...

What’s in it for you?

Keeping customers happy and making money means you’ve got to come up with a winning formula that works time and time again.

It's not just a matter of having a brilliant product and hoping it will sell itself. And being the cheapest may not be enough either. Even with a world-beating product at just the right price, if people do not know about it and can't get hold of it you'll never be able to turn a healthy profit.

Getting your marketing mix right - ensuring that the four main components complement and support one another - is the only proven route to long-term business success.

Where do you start?

Begin by looking at your business and deciding which of the four Ps matters most to you:

Product

Getting the product right is obviously critical. A product or service that really meets customer demands and is both different and better than the existing competition could be a winner. Identify the unique and special benefits that only you can offer. Why should customers move from an existing supplier to you? Will the product meet the promise and the expectation?

It’s important to know how your customers tick and what elements influence their buying behaviour. Think about cars, for example. Any make can get you from A to B and they all look pretty much the same: four wheels, engine under the bonnet, windscreen, etc. So why do customers opt for luxury models that often cost so much more than the bottom of the range cars? The answer is that they are buying status as well.

Depending on the service or product you are offering and the market that you are operating in, often customers presume that cost is directly proportional to quality, i.e. more expensive means higher quality and vice versa.

Price

Assuming that you do have a good product, you need to think through how much you will charge for it. Remember, though, that your customer has no interest in how much it costs you to make or buy or how much profit you want. They are only concerned with what they think it is worth to them. In other words, what value they put on it.

You also need to consider how much your competitors are charging for the same or similar products or services. If you intend to charge more, ask yourself why customers should buy from you. Maybe you have a better location or perhaps you offer stronger after-sales support. Low pricing is not always a route to success. In the car market for example, people will pay more to drive a particular brand of vehicle.

The same goes for designer perfumes or even beer brands. However, price-cutting doesn't necessarily guarantee success either. Just because you're cheap may not mean that people will buy, if they think quality is compromised. But if your working methods or overheads are much leaner than your competitors, you could enjoy a real price advantage.

Place

Place is not just about distribution, it's about convenience too. If the product is not available where and when people need it, you could end up with a warehouse full of unsold stock. You may choose to sell through established retailers or wholesalers, or you might sell by direct mail, on the telephone, or sell direct through your website.

The salient point is that you need to provide access to your customers in a way that suits their habits and choices. In a 24/7 world, customers are no longer prepared to be restricted to your choice of opening hours.

Promotion

This component refers to promotion or communication. It can be absolutely crucial to making your business a success, but you have to ensure that the other three Ps are in place first.

Get these right and then think about how to get your message across using the best media to reach your target market. There are a wide range of channels to consider: advertising, direct mail, telesales, PR and so on.