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Example of a Marketing Mix
Use Marketing Mix Models to Build Your Plan
Marketing mix is key to your marketing plan. Use this example of a marketing mix and marketing mix models (such as a permission-based email marketing sample) to understand the most important elements of the marketing mix and to develop best-fit tactics and strategies for your business.
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Marketing mix is the balancing and managing of product, price, promotion and distribution or place decisions, tactics and strategies.
Planning your mix requires thorough research and development of an approach that will be strong enough to sustain competitive activity.
You need to develop your marketing plan with a clear understanding that the mix is a key element of your plan; developing a successful marketing mix is necessary to your small business growth and success.
Use Marketing Mix Models:
Example of a Marketing Mix:
Note: It is important to recognize that marketing is not an exact science.
It is as much art, as science.
Each business will have different needs and different targets.
This example is to provide you with an overview of how marketing mix fits into your marketing plan and how to build your own marketing mix program.
Company Profile:
Law firm; $5 million in annual sales; business to business services company.
Law Firm Marketing Plan:
Focused on gaining new business (specifically in the small business B2B category) while retaining existing clients.
The primary goal is business-to-business sales growth of 10 percent in year one of a three year plan and an increase of 8% profitability.
Elements of the Marketing Mix:
Define the Service(s): a services features list
- Management legal services
- Employment problem prevention
- Wrongful dismissal
- Severance proposals/packages
- Management and union relations and negotiation
- Human rights
- Workers safety, health, environment, and more
Define the Service(s): a benefits list
- High success rate in management-union negotiations
- Excellent reputation
- Timeliness: quick action and available outside of the regular hours
- Practical and cost effective advice
- Lean firm structure: easy and direct access your lawyer
- Strong understanding of business environment
- Comprehensive database to research similar cases
- Answers to your questions: solutions to your problems
Unique Advantages:
- Skills of highly trained and experienced staff
- Reputation as a highly successful negotiations firm
- Focus on industry-specific planning and implementation
- Focus on business to business environments
Price:
- Focus on bundle pricing strategies: for example - monthly retainer; annual retainer; all services bundled for a set rate; certain services bundled together for better pricing, e.g. employee problem prevention, wrongful dismissal and severance proposals/packages.
- Prices/billings compared and analyzed annually against top three competitors
- Costs analyzed monthly; cost containment and reduction a key strategy for competitive pricing
Promotion:
- Advertising programs: local newspapers, local radio, local magazines, business trade journals
- Personal selling: Sales and Marketing staff; face-to-face
- Direct marketing campaigns to targeted and existing clients; including permission-based email marketing
- Educational programs to existing clients and delivered to new clients
- Participation in business and trade associations: networking with clients
- Website: search engine optimized
- Newsletter: hot topics
- Local radio: weekly legal talk show (15 to 30 minutes)
Place or Distribution:
- Direct sales to business clients (this is also an advantage; you are close to your customers and will better understand their changing needs). Keep in regular contact (don't wait for them to call you).
- Selling via ecommerce through the company website; e.g. forms and counselling, etc.
- Another advantage of direct sales is that you control your pricing, although the market will dictate what it pays. Services are considered value added (for example,a value add is 24 hours a day call-in service).
Use this example of a marketing mix to build your own plan. Marketing mix models are extremely useful in building your marketing plan and actions; your business plan and actions; and strategy plan and actions.
You need to develop your plan with strong and effective tactics and strategies. Yes, it is a challenge to commit the time and resources but it is also a core activity for a successful small business strategy and business plan. Also, remember that your planning process is evolutionary (not static); you need to keep updating, adapting and changing with new and changing customers, services, competitors, suppliers and the environment you operate in (your marketplace).
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Additional Reading:
Understand Competition Analysis and how to manage your competitive tactics.
Conduct an Industry Analysis to learn more about your marketplace.
Build strong Market Strategies to win more market share.
Or for more on how understanding market share will help your business compete, return from Define Market Share, Part 1 to What is Market Share? Part 2.
Why is Product Differentiation a necessity to your Marketing Plan?
Find out the Importance and Definition of Marketing.
Return from Example of a Marketing Mix to Define Marketing Mix (Part 2 of two parts on overall marketing mix).
Marketing mix planning is key to your strategy and needs to include: product, price, promotion, and the 4th P of Marketing: Place.
Or return to More For Small Business Home Page.
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Marketing and Life–Cycle
Marketing is a requirement for all businesses: without marketing strategies and tactics your business will struggle to survive.
Not all marketing activities are planned: you might be building your brand recognition through a social media campaign (that's marketing); you might be conducting market research to analyze your competitors and/or segment and target your potential market or to develop the most desirable features, advantages and benefits of your products or services (that's all marketing).
Marketing is pretty all–encompassing; and a challenge for many business owners. The additional challenge is recognizing that the different stages of your business life–cycle: start–up, mid–cycle, mature or late–in–life.
During start–up you need to develop your marketing strategies to grow sales; for example, you might want to use a market penetration pricing strategy to build sales quickly.
During mid–cycle, you need to grow your customer base (often through lead generation) and that need requires different marketing strategies, such as cold calling on prospective clients, email marketing, newsletter and blog sign ups and distribution (all to grow your list of prospects).
During the mature cycle, you need to build your marketing efforts around your brand; your competitive advantage can be in your reputation, history, and identity and on what differentiates your business from your competitors.
Marketing your products and services is not something that you do once (such as a marketing plan) and then never change or do again. You need to be continually researching and building your strategies and tactics to be ahead of the market, and ahead of your competition.
The market is constantly evolving; ever more rapidly with the impacts of globalization and technology. You need to invest resources into marketing to ensure that you build and sustain your business.
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Outsource Your Marketing
If you need support in your marketing efforts, or if you'd like a review of your marketing plan, contact us for more information on our marketing services.
If marketing is not your core strength, or if you don't have enough staff to commit to developing your marketing efforts (and acting on the plan), outsourcing your marketing strategy and implementation will allow you to concentrate on developing your business.
Start with a marketing plan that includes the necessary research, strategy development and implementation action plan. We provide you with the plan tactics, budget, schedule and key performance measurements.
Execute the plan yourself or have us at Voice Marketing Inc. manage the execution for you.
Once the plan is implemented, we report on the actions we've taken, the performance of the tactics employed, and on the results.
You'll feel confident that your business marketing is being effectively managed and continually evolving.
We specialize in providing services to small business owners and understand that marketing efforts must be customized for each business' unique needs.
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