The Marketing Mix

SMEs need to worry about the marketing mix as much as large businesses if not more in order to create a powerful campaign while spending the least amount of money. The mix is a rather intuitive set of tools that allow business marketers to visualize what’s going on the market. The mix consists of four tools named product, price, place and promotion; a business blends these produce the response it wants in the target market:

The Four P’s of the Marketing Mix

Product

A tangible product or an intangible service, as services may be called products we can tangible and intangible products. Intangible products are often service based like the tourism industry & the hotel industry. Typical examples of tangible products include cars, disposable razor, and greeting cards. Intangible products may include a haircut or a spa visit. Product is important in the marketing mix different products require different levels of marketing expenditure to generate a sale. Therefore, choosing your product wisely is an important step in making your sales a success.

Price

The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. It is determined by a number of factors including market share, competition, material costs, product identity and the customer’s perceived value of the product. The business may increase or decrease the price of product if other stores have the same product. Price can also affect the perception of values and quality of a product, therefore it is very important that significant effort be put into pricing a product in a an integrative strategy for either profit or growth.

Place

Place represents the location where a product can be purchased. It is often referred to as the distribution channel. It can include any physical store as well as virtual stores on the Internet. Place is important because traffic offers free promotion. If the product is well placed naturally, then you don’t have to spend additional resources to place it where your customers will see it.

Promotion

Promotion represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. Promotion has four distinct elements - advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale. A certain amount of crossover occurs when promotion uses the four principal elements together, which is common in film promotion.

Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from television and cinema commercials, radio and Internet adverts through print media and billboards. One of the most notable means of promotion today is the Promotional Product, as in useful items distributed to targeted audiences with no obligation attached. This category has grown each year for the past decade while most other forms have suffered. It is the only form of advertising that targets all five senses and has the recipient thanking the giver.

Public relations are where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word of mouth is any apparently informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals, satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum. Sales staff often plays an important role in word of mouth and Public Relations (see Product above).

Responsibility

Broadly defined, optimizing the marketing mix is the primary responsibility of marketing. By offering the product with the right combination of the four Ps marketers can improve their results and marketing effectiveness. Making small changes in the marketing mix is typically considered to be a tactical change. Making large changes in any of the four Ps can be considered strategic. For example, a large change in the price, say from $19.00 to $39.00 would be considered a strategic change in the position of the product. However a change of $131 to $130.99 would be considered a tactical change, potentially related to a promotional offer.

The term “Marketing Mix” however, does not imply that the 4P elements represent options. They are not trade-offs but are fundamental marketing issues that always need to be addressed. They are the fundamental actions that marketing requires whether determined explicitly or by default.