10 Steps to Building a Successful Marketing Mix Strategy

“Marketing mix is the combination or arrangement of marketing components” to suit the actual business situation of each enterprise. Understanding the benefits of the marketing mix will help strengthen the business’s position in the market. So having an excellent marketing mix strategy is crucial to your business. This article will show 10 steps to creating a perfect marketing mix strategy.

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What Is Marketing Mix?

Marketing is an essential strategy in business activities and the development of enterprises. Especially in the 4.0 era, businesses have to compete fiercely to gain a prominent position in the industry. That makes marketing more enjoyable than ever.

So what is the marketing mix? What’s the difference from traditional marketing?

Simply put, the marketing mix is ​​one of the most potent complements to the overall marketing strategy. A marketing mix helps promote brands and bring products to customers faster. Therefore, it can be said that the marketing mix is ​​an excellent stimulus method for all business activities. The role of the marketing mix is ​​to combine marketing components, helping businesses understand customers and the market needs to develop the best marketing campaign.

What Is a Digital Marketing Mix (Online Marketing Mix)?

Basically, the term Digital Marketing refers to marketing and promotion through electronic media. It uses channels and strategies that empower an agency to execute and test digital marketing campaigns. It is the fusion of marketing mix models (4 Ps of digital marketing) with online marketing channels such as the internet, search engines, social networks, etc.

Marketing Mix 4Ps

The four Ps of the marketing mix model were introduced in 1960 by E. Jerome McCarthy and are now applied to university lectures worldwide. Above all, to set up a perfect marketing mix strategy, you need to know precisely what the four Ps of the marketing mix are. Many researchers discuss the marketing mix concept to explain the idea and elevate it from 4Ps to 7Ps. This section also mentions a few 4 Ps of marketing mix examples.

The four elements of the marketing mix model are:

Product

This P appears first in the Ps of marketing, meaning that the product is created to satisfy the customer’s needs. The product here can be tangible or intangible – as it can be a product or service. But businesses must ensure to provide the correct type of product for the market demand.

If your business is in the product development stage, the Marketing team needs to carefully study the product’s life cycle to be manufactured.

Let’s take Coca-Cola as an example. The company offers a lot of product lines to meet as many customers as possible, from original Coca-Cola to Coca-Cola Zero Sugar which has the same taste as traditional Coca-Cola products but without sugar for dieters and weight-losers or coca-cola coffee for those who want to increase their alertness.

Price

This second P (price in marketing mix) is essential because it determines the approach and sales of the business. The selling price is determined by a few related factors, such as the cost of raw materials, market share, level of competition, and product type. The importance of price in the marketing mix shows estimated customers’ reactions to possible product prices.

Tom Ford provides a good illustration. Tom Ford Lip Color lipstick costs an average of $200, 4-6 times higher than a popular lipstick. This product is usually sold in shopping malls, showrooms, and Stores that display products instead of selling in markets or small stalls. This is the high-pricing strategy.

Place (Distribution)

This P (place in marketing mix) represents where your customers can buy your products. And it’s also called Distribution Channel.

 Distribution locations can include both physical stores and online business stores. Any marketing activity must deliver products to the right place and time.

Promotion (Product Promotion/Sales Support)

Promotion in the marketing mix is the activities aimed at promoting the brand and its products/services to the Target Audience, making them more aware of the product and promoting more sales.

Before building this promotional mix, businesses need to understand the following:

• Advertising: Advertisements of your product need to carry a direct message calling for a specific behavior from customers.
• Promotion: Promotions must stimulate consumption and stick with the product. Each promotion needs to be done within a certain period in different ways.
• Personal selling/selling: Businesses and products need to create individuality; direct contact between a customer and a sales representative. This is an essential tool for industrial machinery and solutions businesses.
• PR: PR campaigns must build a beautiful image of the business with real stories; organizing events to connect customers and businesses;… This creates firm trust and has a more direct impact on customers’ buying behavior.
• Direct Marketing: Marketing teams need direct access to customers wherever they are; customers can give feedback about the product immediately; Enterprises must measure this feedback to develop the necessary strategies and solutions. Promotion is an indispensable component of Marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness and sales.

A Most Important Element of the Marketing Mix

Most marketing textbooks always list the 4 elements of the marketing mix equally. However, the Product is always shared in the first section related to the topic of the marketing mix. Mainly behind the curtain of advertising messages, we often see a product we do not need or want. There are only a handful of products that are really worth paying attention to.

Marketers can do as many campaigns and promotional activities as they want to achieve their business goals. Still, if the product is not remarkable and does not meet the needs or wants of customers uniquely, As consumers, we would undoubtedly ignore it. Because of this, the most crucial component of the marketing mix is the product – the rest include Price, Place, and Promotion. You can’t implement any of the other 3 Ps without a product.

Benefits of the Marketing Mix

Understanding the importance of marketing mix tactics is the door that leads to the right direction for your business. Here are a few advantages of marketing mix:

• Provide data for resource allocation

The allocation of human and financial resources is one of the tasks that ensure the success of marketing. This resource depends on quite a lot on the marketing mix model and helps optimize business profits and increase customer satisfaction.

• Solve distributed data problem

Marketing mix gives businesses specialization. Therefore, every enterprise member is distributed data and divides the work to ensure the most convenient and intelligent possible.

• Create trade promotion opportunities

These are not only solutions to support policies on products, prices, or distributors, but the marketing mix also creates trade promotion opportunities that enhance the effectiveness of those policies. Therefore, thanks to the trade promotion benefits of the marketing mix, businesses create advantages and differences in the competitive market.

10 Steps to Building an Effective Marketing Mix Strategy

Now you may wonder how to set up a perfect marketing mix strategy for your business? Check this step-by-step guide out!

Step 1: Goals and Objectives

According to an industry survey of more than 3,200 marketers, those who clearly analyze the goals of their marketing campaigns have a 376% higher success rate than those who don’t. And a successful Marketing campaign certainly cannot lack core goals.

Firstly, your business needs to clearly define the campaign results you want to achieve:

• Increase brand awareness online?
• Attract more customers?
• More sales?…

Each marketing strategy of a business has its own goals. At the same time, you should also note the specific time frame when implementing the campaign to ensure the expected results.

Step 2: Set a Budget

A Marketing Budget is the amount of money you have available to pay for all your marketing expenses and should be listed in detail for each channel you use. Determining a marketing budget is not easy; it is considered a challenge for those in the marketing industry.

Therefore, you need to think and calculate carefully: How much capital are you willing to invest in user research, product innovation, and advertising campaigns?

Setting a budget for activities will help you control costs and allocate them appropriately.

Step 3: Determine the Product’s USP

The USP is the Unique Selling Point – it should highlight the product’s features that can meet the user’s needs well.

Ideally, you should come up with 1-2 unique features, different from your competitors.

Marketing around the product’s UPS is also how marketers often remind customers of their products.

Apple provides excellent marketing mix examples. It focuses on its USP, the beautiful design you can see as soon as you open the box with increasingly compact packaging.

Step 4: Research target users

To create a detailed and effective marketing mix strategy, you must clearly understand what your customers need and want from your product/service.

Firstly, create a record to store all the essential data you have collected about your customers. So that you can answer the question: Who is the Ideal Demographic?

For example, In-depth research and analysis of the business environment and new customer behavior is the key to Netflix’s success.

For Netflix to be the ability to provide videos with content that is of great interest to users is thanks to Netflix’s good job of observing, researching, and analyzing consumer behavior and the business environment. Maybe few of us suspect that when users watch videos on Netflix, it is also the time when Netflix monitors and observes our behavior and usage habits to get reliable data from there for Marketing.

Step 5: The Marketing Team Needs to Consult With the Customers

Take surveys to find out what your customers really think about your business to answer these questions:

• How do customers feel about the service/product?
• Are they satisfied with your product?
• What special benefits does the product bring to the customer?
• Does the product meet customer needs?

In addition to the questions, you need to plan the customer survey process. When, where, what do your audience likes, and the results do you expect. Those are the things you should be concerned about within a survey. Having the right customer feedback plan keeps you from being caught off guard by bad situations.

Step 6: You Need to Define Your Product Details

Take the time to produce quality content describing your product/service. Focus on particular points to highlight the value of your product.

Step 7: Distribution Channels

Distribution is a momentous step in the Marketing mix 4Ps strategy. It brings about circulation that helps the product reach the consumer. At the same time, the distribution intermediary policy will influence enterprises’ profits.

Depending on your product group and target audience, you’ll establish a distribution channel based on the following customizations:

• Supply to distributors => Retail stores => Consumers.
• Supplied directly to retailers.
• Offer directly to customers.

Seiko high-end watch products use an exclusive distribution strategy. The display system at the point of sale must be arranged according to a common standard of the manufacturer.

Step 8: Create a Pricing Strategy

Research your competitors to be able to offer an intelligent price and make customers feel “satisfied” without depending too much on their psychology. In addition, you should also consider the following:

• Product manufacturing process.
• What segment is your target audience in?
• What are they willing to pay.

Step 9: Choose a Form of Promotion

A marketing mix campaign will not be successful if the business’s marketing team does not promote the product well.

This is a crucial step in helping customers know your brand and products.

There are many methods of advertising, such as:

• Advertising.
• Personal selling. 
• Direct Marketing. 
• Public relations (PR). 
• Sales promotion. 
• Word of mouth. 

Step 10: Inbound Marketing!

Inbound marketing is an inward marketing method – it is essential to implement a perfect marketing mix campaign.

Effective Inbound Marketing implementation should include the following:

• Programming – Website design
• Writing blogs
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media
• Email marketing

…

Bonus: 4 Most Effective Marketing Mix Templates for You

The marketing mix strategy of each business is different, focusing on various Ps factors. Therefore, some businesses apply a marketing strategy to each product line, while others use it for the entire business.

Applying marketing mix strategies helps businesses stay on track and achieve their goals. The 4 P’s of a good marketing plan are four elements used effectively and can support each other. Because of that, having a good 4Ps of marketing template would be a necessary condition. Here is some marketing mix modeling that you can refer to.

1. Simple Marketing Mix Template

This simple marketing mix template is the ideal start for businesses trying to adopt a marketing mix strategy. With this template, the manufacturer can capture all the elements involved in the marketing of a product.

Simple Marketing Mix Template

Product: Name and describe your product	Price: How much will you sell your product for?
Place: List out the places your product will be sold	Promotion: What strategy will you utilize to promote your product?

2. Company Marketing Mix Template

This marketing mix strategy template applies to every type of business. Managers can outline initiatives and follow-up plans for most or all of the products/services the business provides.

Company Marketing Mix Template

Product: Name and describe all products and services your company provides. Example: Product 1: Name and purpose Product 2: Name and purpose	Price: Present the price point(s) of your product and/or service. For example, our products range in price from $10 to $100. This price helps us reach as many customers as possible.
Place: List the places where you sell each of your products and services, and specify where each product is sold. Example: Product Product 2 is available in stores  Product 3 is e-commerce exclusive for our online store.	Promotion: Determine the promotional tactics your company carries out both for your business as a whole and for specific products/services.  Example: Products will have discounts on holidays throughout the year.

3. Structured Marketing Mix Template

Marketing mix strategy templates with clear images and structure make marketing planning easier and straight to the point. This thirdly bulleted marketing mix template is ideal for businesses.

Structured Marketing Mix Template

Product: Product Name: …Product Launch Date: …Product Description: …	Price: Price to Consumer: …Price to Distributors / Stores: …Contribution Margin: …Revenue Goals: …Revenue to Date: …
Place: Product 1: Store/website product 2: Store/website	Promotion: Separate promotion campaigns for each type of product or service.

4. Production Marketing Mix Template

Finally, the product marketing mix sample is widely used within the enterprise. This template helps answer questions about the go-to-market efforts for your business’s products and services.

Production Marketing Mix Template

Product: Introducing the product name, why has this name is, and what is this product for?	Price: What is the total cost, including promotion, R&D, etc., to produce the product?
Place: Indicate the place of manufacture and the places where the product is sold.	Promotion: Do you have any company promotional plans? How do you plan to utilize employees and current customers to promote your product?

Wrap It up

All in all, by understanding the basic concept of the marketing mix, you will be sure to achieve financial success. Whether it is your business or you are supporting the business’s success. The ultimate goal of business is to make a profit. And creating a successful marketing mix strategy is a proven way to achieve this goal.