Take A Bite : The Marketing Cake

photo credit: Rhinovirus

To be successful as an entrepreneur you must know some marketing basics. No matter what it is that you “sell”, be it your own product, your site, your blog, your business, your services, knowing how to wrap it in a nice package and make it desirable to the world is a skill that can take you far.

A famous term in marketing is the “marketing mix“. It’s like getting ready to make a cake and having all the ingredients, but not a precise recipe. So basically you know what goes in the cake, but not the proportions, so each person will judge how much of each should go in the mix in order to make a better cake.

The mix consists of the so-called 4 P’s , or:

• product
• price
• place
• promotion

There are a lot of other ingredients that can be added to the marketing mix, but these are considered the basics.

Product

Having a well-defined product to market is extremely important, so add as much of this as you can to your “cake”. Branding, making your product stand out from the others, deciding all the elements that will define it, concentrating on the quality, etc. If your “product” is a site, things like the design, the overall user experience, loading time, colors used, the quality and frequency of the articles written, all of these will have to work in your best interest if you want to be successful.

If your “product” is, let’s say, your small business, again you will need to look into what exactly are you trying to sell, and have a clear image of what that thing is. You are selling product X (Avon, hand made crafts, your photographer skills, etc.), so wrap it in a nice package, present it in an original way, brand it, make it be of quality. Only through having a well-defined product you can truly be succesful.

Price

Now that you have a product that’s looking good, you have to decide on the price you’ll ask for it. This is a tough decision, you are an entrepreneur because you want to make money, but at the same time you can’t overprice your product. Also asking less than what it’s worth and not making profits is not desirable, of course. So you’ll have to find a balance price, and take a few things into consideration: is your product new, just penetrating the market? Does your product have a huge demand or you will have to gradually buid a demand for it? etc.

In the example of a site/blog, you can ask a certain price for advertisement, reviews, links, etc. If you’re just starting out and don’t have many visitors, of course you won’t be able to ask a high price. If your site becomes popular, your price range has to change too, and you’ll be justified to ask more for your services.

If you are selling a product/service, it’s important to study the market and see what other people in your niche are charging. You might want to use different price strategies, to better place your product. If you’re just starting out, you can ask a price below the market, and combine this with a well-defined, branded product.

You have to look into the future of your business and determine where you want to be, what price do you want your product to eventually have on the market. If you’ll only think about the present, you might confuse customers in the future with a sudden change in price. So if you’re just entering the market, don’t decide on a low price and then, once you have customers, start asking for a higher price for no apparent reason. You can, for example, have a promotioal price for being a new business, and end the promotion once you gained clients. Or change the price to a higher one for a good reason, like “upgrading” the product/service.

The price is a powerful tool you have to use. The  99 c psichological prices, promotional/seasonal prices, special prices for returning customers, discounts, etc., make it work for you.

Place

This refers to the means through which you’re getting your product to the customers. This can be done by using transportation, warehouses, wholesalers, retailers, the Internet, etc.

You have to know your target audience pretty good to make the decision of the channel of distribution. The Internet is a cheap and effective way of doing that, reaching a wide audience. Once your business becomes well established, you might want to reconsider the places of distribution so you can better profit. Again, study the market and see if your product would be better off on the shelves of a store, in a local market, on the Internet, etc.

Promotion

There is so much to talk about promotion, that a post would not be enough. As important as the other 3 P’s are, without promotion a product would not become successful to it’s full potential. Promotion can be done by direct selling, paid advertisement, sponsoring events, participating in exhibitions, sales incentives, etc.

Reinvesting part of the profits for promotion can indeed prove to be a very successful strategy.

Conclusion

So here it is, the 4 P’s that make the marketing mix. You decide how your cake will look like, and improve little by little. Trial and error might bring you to a better recipe, so always play with the ingredients and use them to their full potential.

What are your thoughts about the marketing mix? In what proportion have you used the ingredients and which one is the most important to you?

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