The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements

The marketing mix section of your small business marketing plan concentrates on the tactics used to achieve the marketing and business plan. Those tactics can be categorized as the four 'P's' of marketing: product, price, promotion and place(also known as the distribution channel).

A common analogy used in describing marketing mix is relating the mix (in marketing mix) as being the ingredients in a recipe: you need to get the quantities of each element right or the result will not be what you need or expect.

Consider the following questions carefully when you build your marketing plan:

* When developing your marketing tactics for the product, you must consider the features, advantages and benefits of the product. Define all the characteristics of your product. Define and rank which are most valuable to your target market? Why are they valuable to your market? Define what is unique about your product and why it has a competitive advantage (something that is not easily duplicated). Consider conducting a marketing research survey to test your assumptions. You may be surprised to find out that what you thought was important to your market is not. Make sure you can address all these questions in your marketing plan.

* Pricing your product sounds like a straightforward process but the reality is that it is a very complex process. At what stage in the life cycle is the product? Product life cycle stages will influence price. Are you the high cost, high value provider? Or the low cost, high volume provider? Does your product have unique attributes that can not be easily duplicated? Does your product have a competitive advantage not easily overcome? Are you trying to buy your way into the market? Be very careful with this 'buy-in' strategy --it is often very challenging to move a low price up. Is this product a loss leader for your sales of another, more profitable product? There are still more questions to consider when developing your price and you must analyze each answer carefully before determining the price for your product. Typically it is a good idea to plot your price attributes on a grid - you can visually see where you are on a grid and better assess if that is the right place to be.

* Promotion includes a number of marketing communications tactics. Should you build a direct mail program (is your product conducive to a printed description; do you have a good targeted mail list)? Can you market your product online? Are traditional advertising methods (print, radio, television) the most appropriate? What kind of budget do you have? Does your product have a strong enough brand? If not focus on building a stronger identity and brand. How can public relations efforts help you promote your product? Can you successfully participate in trade shows and industry events to sell your product? How will you craft your sales story: from sales letters to sales pitches? Have you build measurements into each of your promotional vehicles? Do you truly understand your market and your audience? Recognize that you will need to use more than one of these tactics to launch a successful marketing campaign.

* Place is how your product moves to market. What distribution channel will you use? Will it be a business-to-business channel or a business-to-consumer channel? Will you sell using your own sales staff, or will you outsource sales and use distributors or sales agents? Can you sell your product online or must it be offline and in-person? Is your market geography wide or narrow? What are the implications of the answers to these questions on your marketing mix?

When building and creating your marketing plan you must consider these elements of your marketing mix because they will have a significant impact (positive if well planned and managed; negative if poorly planned and not managed) on your product's success or failure.

All small business owners go into business expecting success; not all plan for success. Ensure that your small business enjoys success by developing a strong strategic marketing plan that includes a comprehensive marketing mix.

About the Author

Kris Bovay owns Voice Marketing Inc, the business and marketing services company. Kris has worked for, and with, a range of small, medium and large businesses and has been able to help business owners focus on their challenges and improve their business results. Kris has a masters degree in business administration, with a specialty in marketing, operations, planning and strategy. For more business advice, visit http://www.more-for-small-business.com/ and for more on marketing go to http://www.more-for-small-business.com/marketing-mix.html

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How To Market In A Bad Economy

Does this sound like you... the economy is going south, and youre starting to panic. Youre worried about the financial health of your small business. You think about slashing your prices to stimulate your sales. You assume you need to cut back on your marketing activities to save on expenses.

If that sounds like you, youre not alone. A lot of the small business owners I consult with have those exact feelings. They want to discuss lowering prices and reducing marketing. There are a myriad of reasons why I disagree with both of these ideas, but rather than bore you with a dissertation on my politics, I admonition Id share a few tactics that you should be hiring as an alternative.

Originally and cardinal, you should certainly be focusing on your innovative customers. Novel customers are lighter to advertise to and promote it to, because they already know, reminiscent of and consider you. Relatively than cutting down back on your advertisement activities, now is a extreme epoch to claim or yet increase your sales promotion. A couple of of your contenders are inhibiting their pushing and advertisement, making it a lot of more leisurely for you to stage out.

And for your clients are previously doing business in addition to you, theyve previously passed off the "why elect you" platform of your commercial list, so following sales promotion performance are rapid and less pricey. Now is beyond doubt the period to further your relationships and your buyers, and here are a few ways to do it:

Write plus your shoppers on a ordinary grounds.
Be in contact your customers a private letter, slump each other an electronic message, decide on up the mobile phone and invite also creative announcement. Initiate an electronic mail marketing calendar. Send a familiar printed newsletter. Regardless of the national economy, your clients furthermore hunger to buy. They may waiting the acquiring vote a tender longer, nonetheless, and you inquired your remark to be top of briefing each time the choice is in the end intended.

Mature a back-end brand or facility.
Your clients before now suffer self assurance in your affair, and they glance to you for specific answers that they can count on. So now is a acute moment to bestow new goods or services that compliment your fresh presenting and present sure benefits to your customers. New merchandises and services moreover contribute you a severe opportunity to get back in meet plus times of yore clients and chances to confirm to each other of your new wareses.

Evoke simple charge plans.
I am a great opponent of always cutting prices, but thats a theme for another day. Save for, in hefty fiscal times, a number of of your buyers will undergo monetary requires. Fairly than mowing your prices, why not make it lighter for your clients to do affair and you Bestowing extended commission tongue or magazine payments can assist alleviate the accountability to your clientele bottom file. If youre in addition going through a monetary crunch, invite your customers to pay along furthermore a credit card. That way, youll get your currency by the book elsewhere, but your buyer will still be able to pay higher than age. New hire plans likewise contribute you a great opportunity to write as well as current and times of yore clients and prospects to indicate to each other of your new expressions.

Facility your wareses or services creatively.
Bundling your gratis goods or services into one facility allows you to grant "package pricing". This is a tremendous way to excepting your clients capital riches without promptly cutting your prices. New packages in addition add you a intense opening to keep in touch plus spanking new and past clientele and chances to show them of your bundles.

Give birth to strategic adhesions along furthermore at no cost businesses.
Measure out anything merchandises or services your buyers buy in conjunction plus yours and resolve strategic adhesions plus businesses that confer those goods. Is something called for before, all through or behind by way of your facility For case in point, a realtor can cause a strategic alliance in addition to a flowing service, a home stager, an interior decorator and grant those services to her customers. Yet again, a extreme opening to be in contact as well as brand new and times of yore shoppers and chances to enlighten one another of your new offerings.

Horde your services as well as your strategic couple services.
In a losing financial system, you want to type bits and pieces as effortless as possible on your clients. Heres how I use this plan in my own business: I at times hand off my clientele "less than appropriate" estimate to other designers, graphic artists or writers. As Some of these are self sufficient interest employees, they customarily required a deposit up front. I generally pay the deposit myself, act as the contact point for the defy, afterward invoice my customer when the project is whole. My clients fathom that they dont suffer to pay an initial deposit, they dont undergo to set up a new vendor in their accounting set of rules and they dont meet up with to pact along furthermore an totally new articulation creature. And as I by no means hire my buyers for this package, its a win-win-win surroundings. How can you quantity your services also variant providers goods to class objects more well-off on your clientele

Since your equals are trimming back on their advertising, a weak financial system is a serious phase to ramp up your own marketing program. The key is to reflect outside the box and do all you can to destination and preempt your customers financial entails.

Performance Object

Brainstorm a plan of back-end wareses or services you can award your spanking new and ancient times clients.
Abstract two numerous hire alternatives you can pop out offering your clientele.
Articulation at least three absolved businesses to comment on establishing strategic alliances.


On the subject of the Originator

Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis advertisement consultant who act also juvenile interest owners and entrepreneurs. She bequeaths countless whitepapers, without charge reports and checklists, as well as her Free Can-Unsolicited mail checklist and Free email pre-flight checklist to check that your emails get delivered, get uncovered and get examined. Download your copies at

Relaited Links:

• 21 Internet Marketing Success Steps
• Broadcast Your Message with Self Promotional Products
• Law Firm Marketing Strategies to Use after Securing the Client

21 Internet Marketing Success Steps

Like others in the upper echelons of Internet marketing and affiliate marketing, Im asked one question by Internet marketing and affiliate marketing newbies more often than any other:

"I cant seem to make money online - What am I doing wrong"

When my Internet marketing mentoring students ask me that, I can give them a detailed breakdown specific to their online operations - but theyre paying top dollars for my time investment, and I only mentor those who already have a viable presence online. So what about those new to Internet marketing - what advice can we offer them

Time constraints prevent anyone from checking into the current operations of everyone starting out in Internet marketing, and after 11 years of being online full time its easy to forget how frustrating even the simplest of Internet marketing activities can be to the neophyte.

So in response I put together this list of 21 Internet Marketing success Steps to try and help guide both those new to Internet marketing and those with some Internet marketing experience who find their online marketing profits stalled or declining.

Pretty much ALL Internet Marketing success breaks down very similar to:

Basics:

1 Choose affiliate or your own products;
2 Build some type of web presence for it;
3 Get targeted eyeballs to that page or blog post;
4 Start building your list from those targeted visitors;
5 Use every free method to bring more people to the site;
6 Use your list to bring people back to the site and to new sites;

Intermediate:

7 Add related backend offers to your site;
8 Set up an affiliate program and get others pushing your site;
9 Put about 30 of whats coming in back into getting more visitors;
10 Participate in giveaways to build your list and visitor numbers;
11 Find related products for new sites and do 1 - 10 with them too;
12 Attend live IM events, for knowledge but mostly for networking;
13 Convert related PLR resources to unique products to put online;

Advanced:

14 Set up a backend linking all your sites together & automate the processes;
15 Build e-mail e-courses to make available in each niche/area you cover;
16 Outsource much of your visitor acquisition;
17 Do Joint Ventures with other advanced Internet Marketers;
18 Outsource your product creation;
19 Evaluate and improve your automated backend efforts;
20 Speak at industry events & seminars;
21 Give back - mentor others to help them achieve their dreams.

For most people starting out its safe to assume the following as averages other Internet marketing newbies have achieved...

First sale: 2 - 6 months.
First steady trickle of sales: 4 - 12 months.
Full Time Earnings: 2 - 5 years.

Those Internet marketing timelines can be influenced up or down by the amount of time and money you can put in, your background experience, your focus, and mostly by the amount of concentrated, continual effort you put into following your plan in a tightly-focused manner.

The 3 Biggest Biz-Killers...

1 Lack of focus too many different, unrelated activities.
2 Giving up too soon lack of perseverance.
3 Half-hearted effort It takes a lot of time and/or a lot of money - you have to be willing to invest one or the other or both on a constant basis for the first few years at least. Everyone Ive met at our level or above has a passionate commitment to their Internet marketing business.

Do an honest appraisal of your Internet marketing efforts to date. Are you following the above steps in order, or jumping around Starting at 1, how far into the list can you go, confident youre performing that task diligently

Re-evaluate your plans based on what that tells you, and use that current limitation as the guide to what you need to learn more about, to focus on more, to put more effort into - and to eliminate anything else youre doing that is straining your focus and your money and time constraints.

Decide what your goals are online. A few extra bucks A steady inflow to help with the mortgage or to get a new car or a cottage Enough to do this full time Or sustaining a level that lets you achieve all your dreams and desires

Each level is being achieved right now by people online - just know which youre after so you can gauge the amount of time and effort you have to commit to your desired level of Internet marketing success.

Dont be swayed by stories of meteorical rises online - while they do happen, theyre extremely rare. Usually they dont make all the details public - I know a lot of overnight successes who spent 3-5 or more years in the trenches first - just no one knows that. And others who put 6 or 7 figures into their Internet marketing businesses before you first heard of them.

And watch out for people who had one or two big launches 3, 5 or 10 years ago and are still teaching that same system - Internet marketing practices change too quickly and too drastically for that info to still be accurate. When evaluating advice you get on Internet marketing, always think to yourself:

"Yes, but what have they done lately"

If the answer is nothing new in the last 6 months, take the advice with a grain of salt and stay focused on your own path, only using the bits from it that fit in with your own Internet marketing strategy.

After all, only YOU know where YOUR biz is right now, and what YOUR end goals are, right

The best advice Ive seen in this biz is to focus on making your first buck. Not a lot, just your first buck. Achieving that shows it can be done. Then focus on making one more. That shows it wasnt a fluke - it can be repeated over and over successfully.

That eliminates one of the biggest stumbling blocks to building your own Internet marketing business by showing that a it can be done, and b YOU can do it. Then just use the 21 Internet marketing Success Steps above to build your business by continually repeating that process in larger volume for larger returns, and youre on your way


About the Author

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, author and speaker. Visit his PLR site to

Relaited Links:

• Market Segmentation Can Help You Grow, or Gain, Market Share
• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• What Makes You Different? Hone Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or Perish