Well known 4P is uttered by every marketing college student at least 800 times. If marketing student knows anything, it’s PRODUCT, PLACE, PRICE AND PROMOTION- parts of marketing mix.
Anyway, tried theoretical models often cannot be applied in practice. Even those with years of marketing experience the fourth p- promotion often identify with marketing. That’s not right because only by knowing and co-ordinating all four elements of marketing mix can you achieve results in the market.
The best company in the world, whose brand messages reach targeted groups, can even with the lowest budget and highest creativity reach great number of people. That still doesn’t mean that sales or use of their services will rise, despite the fact that their marketing agency won all the awards of the trade.
If competition has better product at the same price, if certain product is currently out of stock at your local store, if we have our own store, but the staff is rude, and customers only like to buy when something’s on discount- sales doesn’t necessarily grow. That is what all companies want- the sales to grow.
Because of that, we decided to visually show our way of thinking. We called it the V process because knowing all the steps and firm actions from your (and possibly our) team brings victory on the market.
First is the phase where people are dreaming. Ever since you were a kid you did that, and now you run businesses and wish everyone would buy your products and services. Sometimes that phase is strongly emotional to you, and you tell everyone about your new project. You investigate, search the web, and suddenly it brings you extreme joy to find out that similar thing has been done in Portugal, but no one has yet done it in Croatia and it just might succeed.
After dreaming, you should do a detailed market research. Who might be buying your product, is there something similar already existing. If there is, what is financial strength of your competitors and what might be their next actions. Also, you have to check what you need to carry out your plan, how many team members, funds, time is required. In the end, the most important is evaluation- is it worth it to start such project if it simply won’t pay off.
When we think of the product, the quality of performance must be satisfying, it must have an attractive design since that is what customers see first. If it’s food, product should be tested and tried multiple times. Name is also very important. It should be easily pronounced and associable to its use and purpose. It’s good to have your product (brand) name copyrighted.
The price someone is willing to pay is crucial for our financial success and how customers perceive the quality of the product. The higher the price, higher the quality, or at least that’s what customers believe.
Is it even possible to create a new expensive premium brand (higher prices that the competitor’s) in current conditions on Croatian market, when most of products are sold on discounts? While forming and deciding on the prices, besides taking costs and margin into consideration, we should look into customers’ habits regarding how much are they willing to pay for similar products. Traders’ interest perhaps even more because with expensive listings, they have to make much more profit off of your product than the ones competitors has to offer. A product without good sales frequency is the most expensive product for both traders and manufacturers.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is to sell. To be exactly where your customers shop, you need to define sales goals you wish to achieve and means to get there. Achieving sales strategies and goals is much easier with your strong and motivated team, who will charmingly and reasonably increase sales possibilities by pointing out product’s advantages and opportunities to bring additional profit for traders.
Promotion is favourite part of marketing mix for many people in the marketing industries. After defining communicational goals and setting funds to deliver key brand messages to targeted groups, there comes the part to create those messages for press, television, radio, web, outdoor advertising, etc. For small and medium companies, it’s important to stay focused on only one or two media (besides promotional materials on actual points of sale) to continuously communicate with their customers. Digital marketing is, as we believe, the best for small and medium companies. It enables them, with relatively low costs, to be in touch with their customers every day. Everything is countable and it’s easy to know exactly who saw the content of information delivered.
And that’s it! We hope that you will be able to say at the end of the year that you achieved your goals and profit thanks to entire team’s dedicated everyday work. To new dreams and new interesting projects!
“It all comes down to 4P. We can talk about 6P or whatever, but if we know that, it’s all we really need to know.”
Do you think the same way?
I.V.