So it’s that time of the week again to bring you another Jargon Busting blog post, and today’s blog is going to enlighten you all about an industry buzz word “Marketing Mix”.
The marketing mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market. The term “marketing-mix,” was first coined by Neil Borden, the president of the American Marketing Association in 1953. It is still used today to make important decisions that lead to the execution of a marketing plan.
When marketing your products or services your company needs to create a successful mix of:
- the right products or services
- sold at the right price
- in the right place
- using the most suitable promotion
The 4Ps make up a typical marketing mix – Price, Product, Promotion and Place.
Price refers to the value that is put to your products. This will depend on cost of production, ability of the market to pay and a host of other direct and indirect factors. There are many types of pricing strategies, one very popular on the web is subscription based. Pricing can also be used as a demarcation, to differentiate and enhance the image of a product.
Product refers to the item actually being sold. Your product or service must deliver a minimum level of performance otherwise even the best work on the other elements of the marketing mix won’t do any good.
Place refers to the point of sale. In every industry, catching the eye of the consumer and making it easy for customers to buy is the main aim of a good distribution or ‘place’ strategy. Retailers pay a premium for the right location.
Promotion refers to all the activities undertaken to make the product or service known to the customer. This can include programmatic advertising, word of mouth, press reports, affiliates and things like social media and industry awards. It can also include consumer schemes, direct marketing, contests and prizes.
All these elements of the marketing mix influence each other. They make up the business plan for a company and handled right, can give it great success.
The marketing mix helps you define the marketing elements for successfully positioning your market offer. Use the model when you are planning a new venture, or evaluating an existing offer, to optimize the impact with your target market.
We hope you found this post useful and if you need help with your marketing mix we’d love to hear from you. We look forward to seeing you next week for our next installment of jargon busting.