As a business owner, one of your main jobs is to make your product or service look as attractive possible to your target market. The most basic and fundamental principles of marketing involve what is known as the marketing mix. The marketing mix contains the "four P's" of marketing, which business owners and marketers use to promote their product. The four P's are product, price, place and promotion. Although each one varies from product to product, all marketing strategies include these four components. To identify your own framework of the marketing mix, you need to break each major variable down and study it separately.
Instructions
1. Emphasize the features and benefits of the product. Features of the product are the prominent aspects or attributes, while benefits are the additional advantages the customer gains from using the product. Make sure to communicate the benefits in relation to the product features as strongly as possible when you are marketing your product through the advertising channels you choose for promotion.
2. Build brand equity in terms of the product's message. Brand equity is the added value that a given brand name gives to the product beyond the functional benefits provided, which provides a competitive advantage over competing products, and customers will be willing to pay a higher price for a product with brand equity. You can build brand equity by developing a logos, trademarks and slogans that serve to make your product unique in the eye of the consumer.
3. Invest in proper packaging and labeling of the product. This is an integral part of the product which typically identifies the product or brand, who made it, where and when it was made, how it is to be used, and the package contents and ingredients inside. Good packaging can help create competitive advantage by effectively telling consumers about the functional and perceptual benefits of the product.
4. Identify the distribution channels you will use to get the product to the customer. Determine how and from where your customers will be able to buy or receive the product. You may choose the sell the product as a wholesaler to a retailer or broker while you simply act as a middleman, or you can use direct marketing methods, such as franchising or opening a store in a specified location, to market the product to the consumer.
5. Establish promotional channels to get the word out about your product. Advertising the product may involve communicating your brand and product benefits through billboards, magazines, classified ads, online advertising, networking, trade shows and so on. Your channels of promotion will depend on aspects of the target market and your strategy for setting yourself apart from competing products on the market.
6. Identify pricing constraints so you can prepare to set the price. Pricing constraints may involve the demand for the product, brand equity, newness of the product, or the cost of producing and marketing the product. Estimate the price you need to set in order to break-even, which can be calculated by dividing the fixed cost of the product by the sum of the unit price minus the unit variable cost.
7. Set the price at a profitable level so that it is attractive to your target market. You can set a skimming price by setting the highest initial price that the customers really desiring the product are willing to pay, or you can set a penetration price by setting a low initial price on a new product to appeal immediately to the mass market.
Tags: your product, target market, benefits product, brand equity, brand equity