Many businesses today use the
internet to manage 20% to 100% of their business operations. In fact
not to have a website marketing strategy at all is considered to be a
major disadvantage for any business who wants to communicate a strong
confident brand.
Generally accepted
as the use and specification of the Four P's describing the strategic
position of a product in the market place; the marketing mix was
originally defined and popularized by Philip Kotler in his Marketing
Management book.
Although the
concept of marketing mix can be considered ‘old’ dating
back to the 1960s when it was first introduced. This concept still has
significance to marketing strategy today, although it has been
developed and adapted
McCarthy identified the four P's of the marketing mix: Product, price, place and promotion
Product Defining the characteristics of your product or service to meet the customers' needs.
Price: Deciding on
a pricing strategy. Even if you decide not to charge for a service, it
is useful to realise that this is still a pricing strategy. Identifying
the total cost to the user (which is likely to be higher than the
charge you make) is a part of the price element.
Promotion This
includes advertising, personal selling (eg attending exhibitions),
sales promotions (eg special offers), and atmospherics (creating the
right impression through the working environment). Public Relations is
included within Promotion by many marketing people (though PR people
tend to see it as a separate discipline).
Place or
distribution. Looking at location (eg of a library) and where a service
is delivered (eg are search results delivered to the user's desktop,
office, pigeonhole - or do they have to collect them).
There are two useful additions for services and information products, they are:
People Good information services are not likely to be delivered by people who are unskilled or demotivated;
- Process The way in which the user gets hold of the service (eg the way in which a document or a search can be ordered).
source: (Strategic Marketing Resources - e-book - Guide to Marketing strategies and products)
Simply put! – in order to
guarantee your marketing success, we believe that you should be aiming
to find the right group of people who share a common problem that you
can offer a solution to in the form of product or service.
And then offering the right
products to the people at the location using the right marketing
channels, packaging and promotional techniques to appeal to the target
audience and then asking for an economic benefit in return (sales).
This simple to framework can be
applied by any customer driven business that wants to use the Internet
as a marketing tool to get a major cost advantage compared to their
competitors.
