Marketing Mix and Promotion Mix in Current Business Marketing Environment

 The Marketing Mix

Four primary areas strategically combined give the best results to both consumer and producer and this are known as the marketing mix. Also known as 4ps these basic elements of marketing are easy to remember.

• Product: The product must be right for the chosen market/consumer. It is both the reason for marketing and the object of advertising. Without a product all else is irrelevant. Products comprise three categories. durables such as cars, refrigerators, sewing machines anything meant to last over a long period. Non-durables include food items and other perishables. Services can range from medical, legal and financial services to after-sales maintenance for equipment. insurance hairdressing, laundry the lot.

• Price: The product must be correctly priced, named and packaged for this correctly judged market segment. To the consumer, it simply means: What do I get for my money?". To the producer and seller, 'What profit do I make?

• Place: Where will the product be sold? The distribution must be efficient at stages to whatever channel is used from small shops to supermarkets. This classification also includes branding and all necessary instructions that accompany a sale, guarantees, after-sales services and spares. This refers to distribution. It must be efficient in all its branches, planned to reach the correct consumer segments in the correct quantities. It would also include the supply of services, guarantees, replacements and the availability of spares.

• Promotion: Promotion includes all advertising, personal selling public sales promotion. This is the element in the marketing process that induces the consumer to buy the product he/she needs. How these primary areas are combined to give the best results to both consumer and producer is called the Marketing Mix. It could also be termed Marketing Strategy which we shall study in a different lesson. For the present, we will deal with promotion, the last but not least of the 4Ps Marketing because advertising is one of its components.

The Promotion Mix

The four basic elements in marketing plans are,

1. Personal selling
2. Advertising
3. Sales promotion
4. Public Relations and publicity

• Personal selling: Personal selling is face to face contact between buyer and seller. Its objective is to effect immediate and repeated sales. In contemporary marketing, it refers to organized personal selling by field representatives calling on prospective clients, chiefly in the medical, engineering and other specialized professional segments. Their sales pitch includes demonstration and assurances of better after-sales services, basically similar to encounters housewives have daily with vendors of fish or vegetables at their doorsteps. Success or failures will depend not only on presentation techniques but more importantly on the quality of the product or service.

• Advertising: Its pre-sales the product through its written spoken or visual message conveyed to the target consumer through the media - print, electronic or radio. It supports the salesperson by giving the consumer information about the product, the company and its reputation.

• Sales promotion: Basically, sales promotions are a tool for offering consumers an extra incentive for buying. Its objectives are similar to those of advertising - to stimulate demand, improve marketing performance and increase the amount of impulse buying. But some differences should be discussed in a broader context in another lesson.

• Public Relations and publicity: This is an exercise for earning goodwill and improving the image of a company and its products and services. Company-sponsored events such as we have seen in the field of sports and education, donations to charities, social gatherings, press articles and press conferences are the more common methods in use.