The marketing mix is something taught as a basic foundation for all business courses. However, if one is new to the business world – especially if one is starting a small company and has no formal training – then a brief overview of the marketing mix, brought to you by EFG Marketing Solutions, is essential. It was a term coined over fifty years ago that not only still has relevance today, but is one of the major pillars of all businesses and business decisions.
The marketing mix is simply these four elements: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. They are commonly known as the four P’s. Packaging is the debated fifth P. The product is what you sell. The price is how much you charge for it. The place is where you sell it. The promotion is how you let people find out about it.
One must start with the product. You’ve got to find something that no one else is selling and then figure out how to get started. Is there something you think would be useful that you can’t find anywhere? There is your product. Products are difficult because they’re always evolving and competition is stiff.
Price is where things get really complicated because there is so much to think about. How much does it cost you to make or provide the product? If you’re going to make a profit, you have to charge more than what it costs you. But how much is too much? If there is competition, do you sell your product cheaper than there’s? How does that reflect on the quality of your product? How do consumer expectations fit in? Are there cheaper alternatives for customers?
The placement of your product is important to the customer. If you’re selling something geared toward Senior Citizens, would you sell it at an arcade or at the mall? You must figure out first who you are selling it to and then figure out where they go and where they look when they’re shopping.
Promotion involves advertisements for the product. It also means getting people talking about it. Viral advertisement is often worth more than any TV commercial could be. Once again, one must think of their target market and how they will learn about the product in the first place.
The new wave of business teachers is starting to use the four Cs: consume, cost, convenience, and communication. Cost and communication are not any better alternatives for price and promotion; they’re just alliterative with the other two Cs, which ARE better definitions. Consumer focuses more on who is buying and what you can give to them, rather than looking at the product alone.
Convenience is a terribly important part of the marketing mix –one that was not addressed in the four P’s. It is even more important than place because placement of a product is only one part of the convenience of an item. Yes, the customer has to have easy access to a product in order for it to sell well. Products should be placed in areas where the types of residents will be likely to buy them. But one must also consider how convenient a product is to someone. In India, for example, the mindset is that smaller sized food packages are more convenient. They would rather pay more for a smaller bag of chips that they could eat in one sitting than pay less in the long run for a large bag that would last them several days.
EFG Marketing provides unmatched experience, maturity, professionalism, integrity, and commitment when it comes to their clients’ marketing needs. Since 2005, EFG Marketing Solutions has provided professional and reliable results for their Fortune 500 customers’ bottom line.
