Marketing Strategies
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The four Ps of marketing is used to define the basic framework that a marketing plan should follow. Its goal is to simplify marketing features to focus on the essential topics so that individuals who use them. The four Ps are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Marketing is all about providing value to the customer. The concept of the four P’s has been around since the late 1800s when David Ogilvy, a famous advertising man, coined the phrase in The Man with the Yellow Hat. Through the years, this theory has become a significant marketing theory that is still used today (Kareh, 2018). According to Porter’s five forces model, the market is primarily influenced by industry competition, consumer buying behavior, and overall economic conditions.
A product’s value equals the customer’s willingness to pay for it. The product component of the 4 Ps addresses the company’s product or service. This involves packaging, knowing your product’s life cycle, product development, product bundles (particularly for services), and so on. This section also impacts how much the firm may and should charge for their product or service, based on manufacturing costs and other expenditures associated with the product or service. When it comes to goods, competing with other firms might entail various things. When it comes to a product, there are several components that you can adjust or tweak to provide you an advantage over the competition, such as product size, technical assistance availability, warranties, package discounts, and many more.
The product/service subscription is a variant of the product model in retail. It can also be useful in marketing services. For instance, if your business offers a service such as landscaping or housekeeping, you can likely develop a subscription model to provide additional service at discounted rates for those who opt for it (Kareh, 2018). In the case of some products, there are some regulations and laws the firm must follow. For instance, pharmaceutical companies are commonly required to adhere to drug testing and licensing standards from their country’s medicine authority (such as the United States Food and Drug Administration), which may need to meet for them to conduct business in that country.
The price (cost) is how much money the customer has to pay for the product. Price refers to the cost of the goods or service and the amount that the firm should charge for it. When it comes to determining the price, several aspects or expenses must be considered. If you buy goods online, you must pay shipping fees, commission to third-party websites such as Amazon and eBay, card processing fees from banks, and other expenses. The cost of your goods involves a lot more than most people realize. While you must give competitive pricing to the other firms in the market for your product or service, you must also stay profitable. To increase the price, you must find a way to increase profits. Cost considerations include all of the following: The cost of goods, freight charges, commission/handling fees, royalties, taxes, and other expenses (Rajath & Santhoshkumar, 2020).
Another cost consideration is how much the customer is willing to pay. Not everyone that walks in your front door will be willing to buy your product or service. Some may think they are too expensive, while others are not adequately educated about why they should buy them. A firm must determine how much the consumer is willing and able to pay for their product or service. A firm’s ability to set a price low enough for consumers requires that the firm has some control over its costs as well as a good understanding of its competitors’ costs and pricing strategies. Porter’s five forces model, a market structure model, helps determine how much industry will be affected by market changes. These include the power of customer, suppliers, power of substitutes, threat from new entrants, and bargaining power of buyers.
Place is represented by the third P. The place refers to where the product will be sold; an example would be a market or store. Many businesses are now using the internet to contact clients they would not have been able to reach in the past. While some businesses do not sell online, others operate completely online and nowhere else. Using both in-store and online availability may be beneficial to your business. Place also refers to where your product is in relation to the shop or internet. If your product is hidden away in a corner of the shop that no one ever visits, it is evident that it will not be noticed by as many eyes as it would if it was positioned among the other popular things (Rajath, & Santhoshkumar, 2020). The same outcomes apply if your product or service is posted on a website in a difficult-to-find location.
For instance, if you have a discount on your product, it will be much more effective if you put it at the end of the brochure. If you want to sell a service online or on a website, then ensure that the service is presented in an attractive manner so that customers will want to buy it. As much as it is important to be able to track sales, the marketer must not forget that customers are the ones doing these actions. It is vital to start tracking customer information and where they come from, as this can give you a lot of information about what you are doing right and wrong in your marketing strategy.
The place component is how the company will market their product. This includes how it will be presented and transported to the customer. The location of the firm’s production facilities may be a significant factor in this component. If your firm uses a manufacturing-based strategy—a typical business model production system—then your firms’ place would be at your factories or plants overseas (Rajath, & Santhoshkumar, 2020). However, if you use a marketing strategy to sell your products or services, then you would want to set yourself up as close to your customers as possible.
Finally, promotion determines how the product is presented and advertised in order to reach
customers who may be ready and willing to purchase that particular product. It also can refer to the amount of marketing that should be spent on a given item or service in a given time period. Promotion involves all of the communication from a firm to its market. Promotional activities should be connected with all aspects of the marketing plan. The goal of promotional activities is twofold (Rajath, & Santhoshkumar, 2020).
The first part of promotion refers to non-personal means such as TV, Radio commercials and newspapers. These types of advertisements are usually known as mass media or ‘push’ strategy. The advantage of this type of advertising is that you can reach a large market, however, the disadvantage is that you cannot directly target your targeted customer group. The other type of promotion is the ‘pull’ strategies. These strategies are usually done by contacting customers directly, such as a salesperson speaking to a customer face-to-face or through phone calls. This can allow businesses to more effectively reach target customers and help them more efficiently by putting direct emphasis on individual requirements and needs.
Aspects of promotion also include ways to combine personal and mass communication methods to ensure your advertising reaches not only your target audience but also those who are likely to spread word-of-mouth about the goods or services for which you are marketing. Any marketer should have an awareness of the external environment and its impact on their business. The external environment is made up of all the social, economic, legal and political factors that affect a firm’s operations. Some of the more important factors include:
On the other hand, some of these factors are beyond your control and you may or may not be able to do something about them. For example, if there is an economic crisis, your decisions may be affected because customers will not have money to spend on your products or services, which means that you will make a loss. An example of this would be during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) which took place in 2008 when banks lost billions of dollars (Akpa, Awode, Okwu, & Oseni, 2021). The purpose of product promotion is to show customers why they need it and why they should pay a given price for it. It’s pointless to bring your goods in front of your target audience if they’re not going to purchase it. The aim of marketing is to make the value of the product more appealing to its target audience. There are a variety of strategies used to promote a business’s products or services.
The four Ps of marketing are critical components of a successful marketing plan. These four marketing strategies are very beneficial to HITT Contracting Inc and the HITT Contracting group of companies and will help them continue to prosper in all aspects, including the clients they serve. There are several benefits to marketing a business: As these four principles apply to all businesses, one might wonder why companies have success using only one principle, instead of all four (Rust, 2020). Some companies do not use all four aspects as the primary marketing strategies, but this does not mean that they are not doing good marketing.
The core principles of marketing can be broken down into two aspects: Product and Paid media. When a company chooses a product or service to sell, the company attempts to present an appealing product through various forms of advertising, such as television commercials and internet advertisements. Social media has proved to be of great importance in the current digital world. HITT Contracting company will be able to advertise its law firms, corporate interiors, hospitality, financial institutions, healthcare construction, and government construction projects through social media. The above services can be provided on the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The advertising can take place in printed media (pamphlets and interviews) and online (advertising on websites), such as: internet, radio, TV or press publicity. This service is also possible. For example, if HITT Contracting company is the contractor of a construction project in a foreign country where advertising is allowed, then they may need to provide advertising materials to their customers so that they may have their own websites which will be linked to HITT Contracting company’s website. Paid media involves paying a sponsor money in exchange for advertising their product on a specific channel.
Financials are directly related to marketing. Marketing requires funds to undertake. HITT Contracting Company will have to set aside funds for marketing expenditures. Marketing and financials are very much related. Marketing is an important aspect to any company and money should be set aside for marketing in the budgeting process. Marketing is the act of making the customer aware of what a product or service can offer them without physically telling them how it’s going to bring them satisfaction and fulfillment. Financials are not just numbers, they relate to all aspects of running a business, including personnel, supplies, expenses, assets, liabilities, income, and balance sheet items. The amount of financials in the company will determine the channels used to advertise their services.
References
Akpa, E. O., Awode, S. S., Okwu, A. T., & Oseni, I. O. (2021). The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and remittances received in Africa: any lessons for COVID-19? South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, 18(2).
Kareh, A. (2018). Evolution of the four Ps: Revisiting the marketing mix.
Rajath, K., & Santhoshkumar, N. (2020). Effectiveness of marketing strategy of ‘neera health drink with reference to the 4P’s of marketing. IJ360MR, 7(4), 2320-7132.
Rust, R. T. (2020). The future of marketing and the four p’s. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 37(1), 15-26.
Jermaine Byrant
Nicole Johnson
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