Magic Of A Marketing Mix: Best Practice Guide

This Marketing Mix: Best Practice guide explains what the Magic of a Marketing Mix is all about!  It will help you understand its potential and explain how it adds value to your business. The Marketing Mix is part of going that extra mile that could save you many late nights and runny mascara. The marketing mix forms the foundation on which top brands are built. We can’t all afford splashing out on marketing department, but we can dedicate time to understanding the marketing mix!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s important to understand your target market! When it come to business or marketing, it always comes back to the basics of understanding your target market. You need to know them better than your Seattle Coffee Co order.

DIGITAL REVOLUTION!

Thanks to the digital world – understanding our target market has never been easier! What once took marketing teams countless hours of study groups, questionnaires and case studies can now be obtained easily. How? A good amount of Facebook stalking, a dash of Google My Business and a good dose of Google Analytics. For the record, I am not saying that those countless hours completed by a marketing team are no longer required! I am saying that there are alternative ways for business owners themselves, to get a deeper understanding of their consumers!

All of this said… let’s take a look at the magic of a marketing mix. If you enjoy reading this blog post, remember to let us know. Don’t have the time to let us know? A simple share on social media would go a long way, we’d love to keep the conversation going!

7 P’s of your Marketing Mix

| PRODUCT

A product is the item you sell in exchange for cash. Remember though, it can be a service or a physical product! You have to know everything there is to know about your product. Be a product expert. Research every angle you can possibly imagine. Don’t assume you know it all and make sure you know what your competitors angle on this product is! The key to selling volumes of your product, is knowing how your product solves a consumer need. When marketing your product tap into a need and tell your target market how your product addresses their needs!

| PLACE

Part of having a product is knowing where and how you are going to sell it. Will you distribute from a warehouse? Sell within a shopping mall? Focus all of your efforts with online sales and e-commerce? Or will you do a combination of all of the above? Whatever you choose, it is important to make sure that it is accessible to your target market. The way in which consumers obtain your product should feel natural. If you get this wrong, you risk sinking your boat before you leave the harbour. If your target market is not tech savvy and prefer keeping life old school, forcing them to download an app and purchase online exclusively might not be the ideal way to start!

| PRICE

Price is extremely important and relates directly to your target market. Over or under pricing your product is an easy mistake to make and when it comes to your target market it’s generally a make or break when it comes to pricing. It’s pointless trying to sell a high end (for the plane Janes… crap expensive) product to a price savvy saver who would be more interested in value for money than high fashion brands. Find the sweet spot between price and purchase and you have won half the battle!

| PROMOTION

Now that you have a solid understanding of your product, it’s price and the place your are going to sell through – we get to have some fun with promotion! As you can guess, this is our favourite part so be sure to check out our portfolio. This is the part where you can let your creative juices flow like the rivers of Babylon!

The aim of the game is to create a marketing message that delivers your product at the right time, to the right person, telling them exactly what they need to hear, and then offering it to them at a price that they are willing to pay.

I could write an entire blog post dedicated to promotion (note to self… ha ha) but for the purposes of understanding the marketing mix, let’s just stick to the overview in the hope that you will better understand all of the elements and how they work together holistically.

| PEOPLE

It takes a village to raise a child! It is vital that you have a team of people who understand your brand and can resonate with what you hope to achieve. You cannot be everything to everybody!

At first, most business owners DIY the shit out of things – think creating your own logo, watching way too many online videos on how to create a website, making up a few random posts for Facebook – we know, we have all been there and like to admit it or not we have all done it! It is however important to know that this is a temporary do or die situation and it helps tremendously with getting the business off the ground. It is however not, and I repeat – NOT – sustainable. Find people who can be the best and get excited by the task assigned to them and you will start to create that special magic that makes your business unique!

| PROCESS

Focusing all of your efforts on making a sale is as important as the experience that consumer has when purchasing from you. From the minute they engage with your first Facebook advert or searching for you on Google, to the enquiry they make via WhatsApp or the email they send through and the actually checking out and paying for an item (in store or online) – it all affects the next purchase. If the sales process is a super special experience, you’re almost guaranteed a follow up purchase! Mess your sales process up completely and you have lost a consumer for good. Spend times perfecting every client touch point and you will be greatly rewarded for your efforts!

| PHYSICAL

If the digital age has shown us, as business owners and marketers one thing… it’s that consumers have a need to connect. Simply existing is not enough! Physical evidence refers to everything your customers sees or hears when interacting with your brand/business. This includes your branding, packaging, the actual studio/office/store as well as the way your staff act and dress. It’s one thing to market but another to deliver so make sure that your fancy marketing brochure is a true reflection of the physical evidence on ground level. Be careful of those super fancy stock images and a staff introduction using profile pictures taken 30 years ago!

Marketing Mix – In a nutshell

If you spend a little time working on your Marketing Mix, you will reap the rewards! It’s that simple – promise. Don’t let this be just another blog post you read that gets added to your one day list. Take action, even if it’s something as small as sitting with good old pen and paper during your next coffee break. Work out a few of your P’s and start seeing which areas of your business need a little rethinking.

Here to stay?

If you’d like to continue reading reading more blog posts like this one, remember to join our mailing list. You will be first to know when we share more awesome resources. Simply complete the signup located on the right of this blog post! Please don’t worry too much – we hate spam as much as the next bloke so we promise not to show up unannounced.