Marketing Mix

What are the best strategies to promote my products and services?

Advertising, Sales and Public Relations are different forms of promotion and are all part of marketing or, more precisely, the Marketing Mix.

A comprehensive Stark Reality Marketing Mix analysis will provide your business with the parameters necessary to make an informed decision on:

What the service should be
How much it should cost
How it should be delivered
How it should be promoted to maximise sales and profits.

Although the tools of marketing analysis remain the same no two strategies are ever exactly the same.

The meaning of Marketing

If you ask business people what marketing is they will respond with a variety of descriptions, because the discipline of marketing encompasses many more activities than most people realise.

The simplest and for most businesses most useful definition of marketing is one by the U.K. Chartered Institute of Marketing:
"Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying consumers' requirements profitably."

What is the Marketing Mix?

The Marketing Mix can simply be described as the 4P's:

PRODUCT
PRICE
PLACE
PROMOTION

Stark Reality provides marketing consulting services that assist you in formulating the most effective Marketing Mix and we use the Stark Reality 9C's model to examine your market in a more consumer focused rather than product focused way.

PRODUCT
Stark Reality will assist you in researching your market category as well as the consumer behaviour characteristics. We will help you develop or adjust your product or service offering so that it most effectively satisfies the needs of your customers and prospects.

The Stark Reality Marketing Consulting Process will focus in on the real customer needs and how your business can deliver a product or service experience that best satisfies those needs, not just what you have to offer to the market.

Today products and services are commoditized. With Stark Reality you will discover how to present your product and service as a Solution. You will learn how to provide this solution differently to your competitors and add value to your customers.

PRICE
By researching the pricing in your market category - understanding your customers opportunity costs and the pricing of your competitors, a Stark Reality marketing consultant will assist you in setting the optimal price in your category. Your pricing strategies will depend on many internal and external factors.

Price is also a very important communicator. So many businesses attempt in vain to convince their customers that they have the best product at the cheapest price, when we all know this is extremely rare! You get what you pay for is the mentality and reality that is not going to disappear in a hurry. Discounting leads to price wars that are not sustainable and in the long run very few companies can compete on price alone. Consumers may say that they didn't buy from you because the "price was too high" yet every customer survey shows that price is about the 5th most important element in their decision process. At Stark Reality we believe it is important for you to understand what customers mean not just listen to what they say.

PLACE
A Stark Reality Marketing Consultant can assist you on deciding how to best distribute your product or service and select the most effective distribution channels.

Most importantly however we will focus your thinking and our strategy on the Convenience aspect of delivering your service or product.

PROMOTION
Marketing has become synonymous with Promotion. The reason for this is two-fold:

1. Promotion is, in most cases, the only element of the Marketing Mix that Marketing Consultants truly control. Additionally once decisions about Product, Price, and Place have been made they tend to remain the same for long periods of time. The room for change within these elements after they are set tends to be very limited.

2. Hence, 80% of the Marketers budget (time and money) is spent on Promotion or more correctly in today's world - Communication. That is, reaching your customers and prospects with your message!

"In an increasingly homogenous market place, with low barriers to entry, the only real differentiating feature that a marketer can use to attract customers is what those customers perceive about your product or service and their relationship with your brand." Gene Stark

Positive customer perceptions are achieved through Communication that is Clear, Consistent and Credible. Stark Reality differentiates your business from your competitors and positions it to maximise the positive perceptions your customers have about your business. Perception is Reality and the perception your customers and prospects have about your business is directly related to profitability.

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