The Power of the Marketing Mix

What is the Marketing Mix?

The marketing mix is the guideline every marketer must follow when planning a marketing strategy or a marketing campaign. The function of a marketing department is to demonstrate how the marketing role will fit into reaching each organisation's corporate objectives.

If you tick each of these off, you know you'll have covered as much as possible. There are some businesses that might ask for more detail, so if your boss shouts out you, please do not blame me.

You might have heard of the marketing mix before, but referred to as the five or seven 'P's of marketing. We are going to go through each one to help you understand how to improve your marketing efforts. Here are the seven 'P's:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place
• People
• Process
• Physical Evidence

Product

The product element of the marketing mix refers to the product or service you are selling as an organisation. When planning a campaign, you need to highlight which products are going to take centre stage. For instance, we are talking about the Rugby World Cup happening later this year, so naturally we get very excited talking about our rugby balls and other products they are bound to like.

However, don't just talk about your current products. Think about what would suit a customer's needs, and introduce a new range of products to fulfill them. It might not always be necessary but will ultimately go down well.  When thinking about this, it's important not to just think of something physical. Sell a service, a price back guarantee, something that will resonate with the customer.

Whilst it's important to think about which products to include, its important to think about which products to exclude. You don't want customers to be reading a promotion for your Wimbledon campaign only for it to start talking about baseballs rather than tennis balls.

Price

Think about the pricing strategy you might adopt. Are you going to offer a discount? Are you going to put a premium on it knowing that demand is going to be high? Have you thought about price skimming or any other pricing strategy? Think about external factors in the micro and macro environment that might contribute to how you price your product/service.

Promotion

When you begin thinking about where to promote your campaign, the first thing you need to ask yourself is who your target market is. By identifying who it is you are trying to reach out to, you can then decide on a few important factors.

The first is what message you are trying to communicate. Decide what message your target audience will respond to, what is it that they are wanting from these products.

Secondly, think about which promotional tools to use. Are you planning on using advertising? Sales promotion? Direct marketing? Are you going for the personal sell?

Lastly, think about frequency. Imagine tuning into the radio to hear the same advert every thirty seconds. Decide how often to stagger your messages and when. You might want to start slow but start increasing the levels of promotion closer to the event.

Place

Will email marketing work or is social media the way to go? Are the target market more TV watchers or radio listeners? If you start communicating on the wrong channel, how are they going to find out about this campaign? If you are looking to crate long lasting loyalty in a campaign, then something like promotional products are far more effective than TV advertising. Decide on something that will suit your target audience but also reach your campaign objectives.

Are you going to use one or a combination of these? Is this going to be cost-effective? More importantly, is it convenient for the customer as well?

People

If you are launching a new campaign, introducing new products, think about your staff. Do you need more people in order to get this done? Will more training be needed? This is particularly important if a new product is coming out and customer service have no idea how to fix an item they did not know they made. Just consider what your staff need to know.

Process

You want to introduce a discount code on all sales of t-shirts for this campaign. So, have you told the IT guys about it? Have you asked to get a promo code section done on the website? Have you given them the list of codes that should work in the text box? Make sure to have everything up and running from all aspects of the company. The last thing you want is a customer getting to their shopping basket, then abandoning because they cannot enter a discount code.

Physical Evidence

How are you going to ensure that our corporate image is appropriate for what you are trying to achieve? You need make sure that you are physically representative of what you envision your brand to be like. This encompasses many factors, from what your staff might wear, to the interior design of the store, even the location of where you might purchase the next commercial property.

There are a lot of factors here to think about - think outside the box, leave no stone unturned.