What is the marketing mix?

If you are a business owner it is crucial that you understand the marketing mix and how it will affect your business. The more educated that you are about the marketing mix themore effective you can be with your business marketing. The marketing mix are the components that will directly affect how and where you market your product or service. When you know what the marketing mix is made up of you will be able to make better decisions when it comes to your marketing plan. Here is what you need to know about to answer the question-What is the marketing mix?

- Product-The first part of the marketing mix is fairly obvious. Product refers to what your business has to offer. However, the bottom line is that what you sell will in large part determine how you market it. You will also need to consider not only what yourbusiness sells but who will want to buy your products, as well. This will be the basis of your marketing plan. When you know who your customers are, why they will buy your product, and how they will use it then you can move on to further developing your marketing plan.
- Price-Surprisingly many business owners do not consider price as part of the marketing mix. However, price is integral as to how you are going to market your product or service. It is important to keep in mind that if you don't price your product correctly it will be hard to make up any ensuing losses. You should also keep in mind that if you price your product to low your customers may not see it as having value while if you price your product to high then you may drive your customers' right to your competition. Finally, when you are pricing your product you should also take location into account since that can also affect how much your customers will be willing to pay for your product or service.
- Place-Where your customers will buy your product will have a direct effect on how you market it. This is especially important information that you will need to get from market research. Knowing where your customers like to shop will determine how you market to them. For example-For some types of customers you will need to set up a physical location while other target markets will be most inclined to buy your product online. Knowing this type of information will help you to determine where and what type of marketing to use.
- Promotion-Once you have determined the other three parts of the marketing mix you can then begin to decide what methods you will use to market your product or service. You should not assume that all marketing methods are the same and it won't matter which one(s) that you use. You should also not think that you have to be everywhere. It is simply a waste of money to bombard your customers with print and TV ads, online campaigns, and have text and mobile marketing. You want to focus on the 2 or 3 marketing methods that will be the most effective and bring in the highest returns. When you are forming this part of the marketing mix you will also be determining who will be working on the marketing campaign. Once that is decided the people who will be working directly on the marketing will begin to decide on the details for the marketing methods that have been selected and determined to be the most effective. They will then begin the physical work of bringing all aspects of the marketing mix together for an effective marketing strategy.