With the ubiquity of the Internet these days, this allows your business to reach out to customers in a way previous generations could never have imagined. A whole new world of possibilities exists with this software, and with a bit of work and imagination, it can be harnessed to create profs and success for your budding business. As defined in the website business www.dictionary.com, marketing is an activity or process conducted by management in which services and goods are transferred from the concept stage to the hands of the customers. This process includes managing 4 crucial elements of marketing
, also known as the 4 Ps. These are product, price, place and promotion.
What is Product Marketing?
In marketing terms, product refers to identifying selecting and developing a service or a good that will be sold to customers. To come up with very good products that will sell, business owners and managers must learn to see their business’ products from the point of view of an outsider; which takes into consideration their planned or current products’ ability to meet their target market‘s needs and wants as well as the available competing products in the market.
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To do this successfully business owners and managers would do well to be skilled in putting themselves in someone else’s shoes in order to make an informed and objective choice on what product they might be able to sell well. They also must be able to scope out and analyze their competition- a duplicate, or superior product being sold by a competitor for a similar or better price is a surefire way to ensure your own product’s failure. Since anyone marketing their product needs to optimize their potential sales, ensuring you offer products with better quality, prices, or convenience can be vital in ensuring that you overtake your competition, instead of the other way around.
Marketing Plan around Price
When talking of price, we refer to the value at which you’ll sell your services or goods. Of all the important features of your services and products, price is probably the most competitive one. What this means is many businesses often compete for customers by trying to lower prices. When it comes to business, there are situations where prices must be lowered in order to remain competitive and survive. There are situations too, when raising prices is perfectly acceptable, even recommended. If your business happens to be in a very competitive industry, you’re most likely marketing strategy is keeping prices low. If your business is in an industry with very little or virtually no competition, you may enjoy the luxury of increasing your goods or services’ prices.
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Keep in mind the price of your products or services isn’t just about the monetary value but also takes into consideration the overall value, which includes flexible and easy payment terms and flee items, among others. Special promotions, be it rebates, coupons, or other temporary sales, can help to ensure your customers that they are getting the best value for their money. Everyone loves a discount, so marking something down to a lower price, provided you ensure you charge enough to make a healthy profit, can really put your clients excited about making their purchase and raise the odds that they’ll recommend buying from you to their friends and family, thus gaining you further customers.
What Place to focus inside your Business Plan?
Place means selecting a distribution channel for making sure that your services or products reach your customers’ place or where they’re actually sold. As a business owner you should regularly evaluate your sales people and customers meeting points. There are situations where you need to change the location of your business in order to experience significant growth in sales. The primary consideration in terms of choosing a place from which to distribute your services or goods is your customers’ convenience. It doesn’t matter if your product or service is the cheapest on Earth, if the customer has to go through so much inconvenience in order to buy or avail these. Think of it this way, would you buy a brand, spanking new iPhone 7 for only $100 if the store is located in Bermuda Triangle? I don’t think so. Of course, selling from a prime location usually comes with higher costs for you, but people will pay quietly the premium to avoid a time-consuming or unpleasant trip. We are familiar with the old sayings: That’s the price is of convenience’ and Time is money’, and when it comes to place, these sayings will be proven true time and again. It is usually well worth the greater initial investment for the benefit of getting away with increasing your prices over the less convenient shops.
Additionally, if you are located in an ideal location, you will be visible to more potential clients. Thereby raising awareness of your business without needing to spend so much on advertising to do so. As we move ever more into the digital age, physical location is no longer as essential as it once was. There is so much we can accomplish online, enabling us to cater to even people on the other side of the planet. Additionally, with the advent of handheld technology, including advanced phones, touch pads, and tablets, people can access information and shops stored online no matter where they roam or what they are doing.
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Promotion
When we talk about promotion, we refer to the activity of formulating strategies and implementing them in order to make people aware of your products or services. Promotion basically includes all the different ways you can tell your current and prospective buyers about your services or products. And an important part of promotion is positioning which is the art of placing your service or product on top — or near the top — of your target and current markets’ minds. Promotional changes — regardless of the size and scope — can significantly affect the level of your sales. Promotions lets you ensure sales at higher margins value by giving leverage around the slow sale products, so you can create a compendium of products and cross-sell similar/affiliate products while liquidating poorly performing products that had been weighing down the inventory days.
An example of this is how copywriters can significantly influence or affect a product or service’s sales simply by chanting one or two words in the headline of their advertisements. As a business owner, you should regularly experiment in terms of various approaches in promoting your services and products. And keep in mind that while many approaches can work for your business, all of them don’t work forever. If you experiment on a regular basis, you can enjoy the benefit of having several promotional alternatives ready on hand to replace your current promotional approach the moment it becomes stale. Even small changes, if well applied, can cause prospective customers to notice your business while overlooking the businesses of those around you, leading you to become the dominant supplier in your area with just a bit of clever marketing.
