Where do we start? At the beginning!
To understand the marketing strategies of each company and analyze them later, let’s first look at what a marketing strategy means and what its components are.
The goal is to reach our customers (because we already have a good idea, we have noticed the market niche and we have the right tools).Here comes our essential and favorite system, marketing, and a well thought strategy for that. The first version of the marketing mix was expressed in 1948 by James Culliton that marketing decisions should be like a recipe.This was continued in 1953 by Neil Borden at the meeting of the president of the American Marketing Association, where he went one step further and called the phenomenon Marketing Mix.Finally, E. Jerome McCarthy, a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan (Michigan State University), described the term 4P in 1960 and linked it to the concept of the marketing mix.Today, the marketing mix is widespread in both marketing education and practice.
The marketing mix (4P, 7P for hardcore entrepreneurs) consists of the following elements:
1 PRODUCT
2 PRICE
3 PLACE
4 PROMOTION The 4P model was first proposed by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960 in his book “Basic Marketing - A Managerial Approach”.McCarthy says the 4 items are changeable in the long turn, but in the short turn, the product and sales channel are difficult to modify.By the time you get to the end of the post, you’ll understand exactly what the marketing guru was thinking.
A product can’t be only physical, but also a service (like consulting, interpreting).
Anything we sell is product. It is a central element because without a good quality product or service, even excellent advertising campaigns can’t bring market success.It is essential to determine what problem we are solving with our product or service, what features, benefits it has, and what its cycles are.(a webshop that sells specifically winter jackets will probably not produce the highest sales numbers in the middle of summer, so you might want to focus on summer/autumn jackets as well).The elements of the Product therefore include the life cycle, design, packaging, quality, warranty, selection, brand policy.
Here, we need to consider how much our customer pays for the product or service.
If the market value of the product does not match the value we offer it to the consumer, he will buy it elsewhere. So not only the price affects the entrepreneur’s production costs before it reaches the consumer, but also how consumers see it and how competitors price are. In all cases, create a PNL (Profit & Loss) because the numbers do not lie. Most entrepreneurs at the beginning of their work, when they are still up and happy to work in their own business and deal with their own products, forget to count. It wasn’t different with us, when the creative spirit starts, whether or not everything is free, let their customers think of you with satisfaction and come again next time, while you produced minus. Then you don’t understand what happened, when everyone is happy to work together.
Bad pricing, that is happened.With a “dry” but very important, simple Excel spreadsheet, you get the value you can start from (it’s worth it!) And then calculate the discounts from it, taking into account consumer price sensitivity as well.Good advice: Always count your own time.
There can be channels of sale (shop, webshop) or any channel where we reach our customers (even direct sales visits- door to door).There is often a sentence- we need to be at the right place in the right time with the right product - so it is very important to be on the right platforms where we can turn potential buyers into real buyers.
4 PROMOTIONPerhaps the most exciting „P”, is this communication policy.
Advertising, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Ads, PR, Direct Marketing - It is important that the difference between advertising and marketing is huge, as advertising is just a tool in our entire marketing activities.
Key questions:
What message, what advertising tools and when to deliver to consumers? How do we measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign?
Responsibilities:
Advertising, Public Relations, Promotion, Creative and Media Planning, Advertising Budgeting, Impact and Effectiveness Studies.
Be careful when choosing which channels to advertise on and how.It is not a question of choosing one where our target group is present.For example, if we wish to reach teenagers, we would target Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) if our target customers is the older generation we should notadvertise on these sites, we focus mostly on print ads.Plan the strategy, the communication, the channels, then create our message clearly.Then MEASURE, MEASURE, MEASURE.
Now you know the basics, you’ve embarked on the way that even the biggest ones are on.
