A Guide To Marketing

Nearly every business on the planet sets out with the primary objective of earning money. This is generally done by producing some form of product, or offering a service, and then charging people money for it. This fundamental principle is fairly straight-forward, although it contains many specific details.

Firstly, it is a very rare case where a business can offer a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be provided by anybody else. This means that your company will be competing with other businesses that sell a similar product and you will both be trying to earn money from the same customers, who only want to spend their cash once. So how can you boost the chances of them spending money with you?

Marketing is the primary tool used by modern organisations to draw prospective customers to do business with them and not with their competitors. It is a very broad topic that is affected by a great number of internal and external factors, but when done well it can be the single business practice that can make or break a corporation. Any time spent on marketing will reap rewards, although spending this time correctly can yield incredible outcomes.

So where should you start when creating a marketing strategy for your own company? Well, each situation is different, and every business will have its own set of advantages and weak points that must be taken into consideration, but there is a marketing principle that can be applied to almost any company to be used as a marketing framework.

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix was a term that was first coined in the 1950′s and is an expression that is used to express the fundamental building blocks of any marketing system. It reflects the fact that marketing is not a straightforward, blunt-edged business technique, but rather a delicate balance of different elements of business operations. It got its name because it is similar to the ingredients list for a recipe.

The term was later developed to include the idea of “four P’s” that described the critical elements of the marketing mix. The formalisation of these P’s made it very easy for company managers and marketers to quickly associate the elements of marketing to the strengths of their own companies, and by doing so could very quickly create a customised and effective marketing system.

There are multiple income avenues for nottingham chiropractor so our company used marketing ideas to open new paths to our buyers.

Product

Whilst every aspect of the marketing mix is a necessity, the “product” element mentioned as one of the four P’s is perhaps the most critical of all. It describes the physical product or intangible service that your company will be offering, and at the end of the day it is the reason that buyers are going to spend money with you.

Several people don’t think that marketing has any place to play when it comes to the physical product that your business is selling. In fact, the common train of thought very often bears the exact opposite sentiment. Surely it should be the opposite way around – your production department creates an item for sale and then it is the task of the marketing department to find ways to sell it, right?

Consider the computer software market as an example. There are many established brands of both operating system and software application solutions on the marketplace already, and since the market is relatively well saturated it would be incredibly tough (and expensive) to “take on the big boys”.

Rather than developing an operating system and then attempting to craft a marketing strategy to rival the likes of Microsoft or Apple, it would be more effective to look at what sorts of product are desired in the current marketplace, and how viable it would be to produce and sell them.

Once your products have been designed and created it is still a critical skill to be able to objectively review your own products to identify the reasons why a customer should buy your product rather than a competitors’.

A different form of this part of the marketing mix is called product variation and is typically used to either prolong the lifecycle of a product already in the market, or to make your brand new product attractive to as many customers as possible.

The car industry uses this approach very effectively by offering various engines, trim packages and interior options with the cars that they sell. They use the marketing mix to great effect to sell their own products in an incredibly competitive marketplace.

“Product is paramount” is one of the mottos applied within our chees graters organisation which aims to remind all staff that we expect top quality manufacturing.

Price

Another important factor in the marketing mix concerns the price of your products or services. This is not a simple case of carrying out market research to determine the top price that your customers would spend (although that can be a useful tool to use), but rather using the price of your products as a strategic tool designed to achieve any specific targets your company has. The potential benefits of an effective pricing plan are surprisingly substantial!

Whilst it may seem obvious, it is still worth pointing out that price has always been, and likely always will be, one of the key factors that customers take into account when they are making a purchase. It is also worth noting that customers don’t always consider the lowest price to be the best price. In fact a price that is too low can sometimes turn buyers away.

There are many questions that you need to ask yourself when devising a good pricing plan, key among which are the price sensitivity of your clients, what your rivals are doing and how can pricing maximise your own profits. From a strategy point of view however, pricing can be covered by two primary principals; price skimming and also penetration pricing. These are outlined below.

Price skimming

The principal idea behind price skimming is to make as much money as possible from the segment of the market which is price-insensitive and will be willing to spend a premium amount of money to get a product or service early on. Not only can this technique yield excellent economic advantages, but it can also promote an exclusive and high quality image of your product.

This pricing technique is frequently used in the consumer electronics market where customers will often eagerly await the launch of a new mobile phone or computer games console. Manufacturers could set almost any price they wanted to and there would still be a loyal base of customers that would pay it. By using this method as part of a pre-ordering strategy, a company can help to smooth its own money flow.

Penetration pricing

Penetration pricing is at the other end of the pricing spectrum, and is tailored towards gaining a large market share at a short-term cost so that monetary benefits can be made long into the future. It can be a high risk strategy, but when used correctly it can create revenue streams for many years to come.

Another thing to bear in mind is that “price” is the one part of the marketing mix that will generate earnings for a business. The other members of the four P’s will all cost money to create or carry out. So it is even more essential to get your pricing strategy right.

When promoting your corporate web site it’s important to choose a suitable key phrase. Beef cooking fitted our business the best and we have made the suitable marketing modifications.

Place

Place is the portion of the marketing mix that’s often not addressed by companies, but it’s still an important part of selling your product successfully. In a nutshell, it describes the method in which you provide your product to your customer, and consequently how you receive money from them.

The most common implications of place-based marketing are the physical locations in which your goods are sold. For the vast majority of consumer products, this involves the distribution network between your manufacturing plants and retailers and other outlets around the world. Since distribution of a physical product costs money it is important to determine your own priorities and modify your distribution network appropriately. This is the principal application of this element of the marketing mix.

With the growing use of the Internet by your prospective customers, marketing techniques have had to consider how they use the Internet to help distribute their products. By using the Internet as a point of contact (or even as a whole distribution route in download-based markets such as MP3s) companies are now able to reach out to a huge pool of potential customers. Effective placing of your product or service can therefore deliver impressive financial results.

Promotion

When you say the word “marketing”, many people instantly think of the promotional aspect of the marketing mix, although as we have seen, this is only one branch of a more comprehensive system. Promotion can be employed on a very individual basis or as a mass communication tool, and whilst it might be a costly undertaking it is often an important one. The key concern of promotion is to deliver a specific message that will increase sales.

Advertising is one of the most common forms of promotion. Classically it would be done by posting on billboards, creating short clips for TV and radio or by physically handing out flyers or leaflets to potential customers. With the arrival of the information age we have seen a great increase in promotion via e-mail and the Internet, or simply as targeted advertising material posted through your door. The potential for individualised advertising has never been so good.

Another significant part of promotion involves branding, which may not necessarily yield more sales directly, but relates back to one of the preliminary purposes of marketing; getting customers to choose your product over those of your competitors. When all other pieces of the marketing mix are equal it could be branding that sways a customer’s choice.

Putting it into Practice

As previously mentioned each company is unique and will have different marketing needs. By using a balance of the four P’s discussed above you can take a good view of your own marketing strategy.

Exploring The Webz

How SIPS get their strength

SIPs are sorted to accept dimensional lumber and are seamlessly compatible with stick framing. Builders may choose to build with SIP walls and a traditional truss roof, or stick walls and a SIP roof with little trouble. As a solution, we can make strong reliability guarantees about the code running in a SIP. SIPs are more energy-efficient, so they don’t need the heavy-duty HVACs of other buildings. Smaller units can run on less power for longer lengths of time — and they dehumidify in the process, which is key to keeping mold concerns off your mind.

Many of California’s SIPs rely on the same core set of control strategies, including emission standards for gondolas and heavy trucks and decorative thermoplastic panels, fuel regulations and limits on emissions from consumer products. SIPs are made in a factory and shipped to job sites. Builders then connect them together to build a house. Some of these structures are planar constructions and several incorporate integrated passive substrates.

SIPs are basically thick planes of expanded polystyrene board sandwiched between two sheets of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) or plywood. They can be used to build walls, roofs, floors ? SIPs are the only wall and roof system that is automatically approved for EPAs Energy Star program- the current energy efficiency standard.

SIPs are a structural composite, kind of like an ‘I’-beam and used as a sandwich panel. This composite assembly yields stiffness, strength and predictable responses. SIPS are structurally insulated panels which are used to construct ecologically friendly buildings and trailer panel and lift panel designs. Building with SIPS will lead to dramatically reduced heating bills, decreased carbon dioxide emissions and increased available living space in the build. Sips are super energy efficient because they reduce thermal bridging and eliminate drafts that are prevalent in conventional stick framing construction methods. Because of these factors, SIPs are able to produce whole wall R-values that far surpass other building methods.

Promotional Balloons and The Environment

Introduction

There are people who have some anxiety about the impact of promotional balloons on the environment and safety issues of printed promotional items and around the effects of working with latex. However fear is often a derivative of ignorance so becoming knowledgeable enables people to make informed choices. Where there is understanding and information, the mind does not need to fill in the empty spaces with fearful conjecture and catastrophising.

The idea of balloon safety is not really about balloons so much as the materials from which they are made. The majority of balloons are made from latex or natural rubber which is actually a very environmentally friendly product and has been around for decades. More recently foil balloons have been produced that are made from thin non-stretch fabric which is basically metalized plastic film which does not bio-degrade like latex. This type of balloon is invariably filled with helium so that it rises up and is secured with a ribbon so that it doesn’t float away.

So what is Latex?

Balloons have been around for many years and the latex from which modern balloons are made come from the Hevea Brasiliensis tree or as many people know it, the rubber tree. These trees which grow in tropical climes, such as South East Asia, do not need to be cut down to obtain the rubber. The mature trees are tapped regularly by making a Y cut in the bark and placing a small container at the bottom of the Y to collect the milky sap which oozes from the tree. This is the basic latex from which so many different|variable|diverse} goods are made. Latex is a highly sustainable product providing work and income for people in some of the poorest countries in the world.

The management and maintenance of the rubber plantations means there is no deforestation, which helps in the issue of global warming. The trees use carbon dioxide and release oxygen back into the atmosphere, which is the opposite process to industrial pollution which contributes to the substantial increase in greenhouse gases. So as a basic resource it is an environmentally friendly, regenerating product.

Uses of Natural Rubber latex (NRL)

Natural Rubber latex (NRL) is used in thousands of everyday items we take for granted in our modern lifestyle. A balloon is just one of many commercial products we recognise as obviously being made from rubber. Some of the more essential items made from NRL are car, lorry, plane and bus tyres which carry us and the essential consumer products we use daily, around the world. vital items such as underwear elastic and elastic used in fashion day wear, shoe soles, carpets, rubber bands and erasers have been in use for many decades. More recent consumer necessities come in the form of buttons in calculators and remote controls.

Balloon Publicity

Balloons races or balloon releases are a way of generating publicity at major fund raising events. A message or company logo is printed onto the balloons and then released into the sky in large numbers. This is a spectacular sight when thousands of helium filled balloons of different colours rise up into the atmosphere all together.

Balloon gas is the component used to make balloons rise and become airborne.

Rubber balloons inflated with Helium normally only stay afloat for a few hours days if they are not punctured by birds, trees or other sharp objects that they might encounter. To retain the buoyancy and increase the float time of a gas filled balloon the inside can be coated with a special polymer solution which reduces leakage.

Safety and Environmental Concerns

The concerns over the years from the general public have been about the effect of large numbers of balloons being released into the atmosphere. Naturally some people believe that massed balloons may be harmful to wild, farm and domestic animals and that on landing they may pose a serious hazard through ingestion or entanglement.

However all latex balloons are completely natural coming from the Hevea tree and they break down at about the same rate as oak leaves. Oxidation starts to occur within an hour of a balloon being inflated and during the process of decay, by natural exposure, nutrients are released into the soil. The oxidation is sometimes visible as a cloudy appearance when balloons are exposed to outdoor conditions, direct sunlight and heat. However research shows that latex balloons under varying conditions take about 6 months to decompose so they are even suitable for composting.

Reputable balloon companies should only use bio-degradable latex these days. For example, all balloons produced by B-loony, the UK’s largest manufacturer of printed promotional balloons, are made from bio-degradable latex.

It is estimated that 90/95% of balloons released rise to an altitude of approximately 5 miles at which height the cold will cause the balloon to become brittle and shatter in to miniscule pieces. Balloon remains are unlikely to cause harm on landing, even if ingested, as the latex and the dyes used in latex colouring are non-toxic and completely bio-degradable.

Regulations on Balloon Releases

The UK’s Balloon Trade Association NABAS, is very aware of its responsibilities to the environment and has released a Code of Conduct for balloon releases giving advice to ensure the protection of the environment. Only natural rubber latex may be used for balloon releases. Balloons must be hand tied and labels attached are required to be recycle-able paper. Plastic valves or wire should not be used.

Any Large balloon event of more than 5,000 balloons requires permission from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) which has to be applied for in writing at least 28 days before the event. The CAA like to be informed also for balloon releases of up to 5,000 balloons.
Source: NABAS The Balloon Association and The European Balloon Council

Printed Balloons

Lately I was looking for a balloon which had a 90 printed on it because my grandmother is ninety this week and we are giving her a big celebratory party. However there were no balloons in the store where I was looking, that had any number above 60. Maybe the suppliers of printed balloons don’t think people over 60 want to be reminded of their age. I did think it would be a good idea to have a balloon which could have the number you want attached once it is inflated. They do it with some birthday cards where you buy a separate number and stick it onto the card of your choice.

Helium balloons are the perfect accessory or decoration to mark a special event.

There are a great number of possibilities for the use of helium and printed balloons. They can be used as a marketing tool to deliver a message about a company or event, or to highlight a product launch or marketing campaign. The logo or message is specially printed onto the balloons by the company supplying the service and they will also deliver the balloons to the customer. It is obviously more economical to order large quantities and for balloon releases or races this would not be a problem.

Health and Safety for People Working with Latex

People who work with Latex on a habitual basis have to be concerned about the long term effects of exposure to the material. Natural rubber latex is a plant product and as such contains proteins to which some individuals may become allergic. The proteins naturally present in latex may cause allergies either through direct contact with skin or by inhalation of a powder. Latex gloves may be powdered with cornstarch which attach to NRL allergens causing them to be airborne and possibly inhaled when the gloves are used. Those most at risk are health care workers who use latex gloves on a daily basis and those undergoing multiple surgical procedures.

Some people experience irritation to the skin on contact with NRL but it is not a true allergy but rather an irritant contact dermatitis. Sensitised people however may discover they have an allergic reaction when in direct contact with balloons. Other individuals who may have an allergic reaction are people who already suffer with atopic allergic diseases such as hay fever, asthma and some irritant skin conditions or a history of certain food allergies of banana, avocado, kiwi and chestnuts.

If you are prone to any of the above conditions then it is probably not wise to work in a company producing items made from NRL. However cornstarch is not used as a de-tack powder in the manufacture of toy balloons. Instead they are lightly coated with an inorganic filler such as calcium carbonate diatomaceous earth and clays which do not bind to latex proteins. Natural Rubber Latex is a very cost effective material that is widely used throughout the world and for the majority of individuals there is no form of clinical risk.

Source: Health & Safety Executive Guidelines 2008 (see www.hse.gov.uk/latex ) TARRC Rubber Consultants Report 2005

Another great low cost advertising give away are hand-held flags, or hand waivers as they are also known. These are very cost effective and will provide a colourful impact to your event. Because they are made of paper they are bio-degradable and can be made of recycled materials. It is easy to have messages printed on them and you can create your own scheme and effect.

Hand held flags are small rectangles of paper, which can be printed on one or both sides, and mounted on a plastic or biodegradable stick. These paper flags have become particularly popular over recent years because they are colourful, attractive, and can be purchased at unbelievably low prices. Paper flags are more often used today to advertise and promote fund raising projects, special occasions or sporting events. Small children particularly enjoy waving flags as part of the crowd during a special event.

A Royal visitor is another occasion when hand waving flags are used to great effect.

Obviously paper flags are a great way to get your promotional message across. They can be printed on one or both sides with the company logo and they can also be used as very economical promotional gifts.

Because paper flags are made from paper and the print area is flat and a set size, it is possible to choose almost any artwork you can think of to customise your event. The quality and finish of the flags is exceptionally high because they are digitally printed. The printing firm will probably have an impressive range of paper flags designs as samples because they usually hold back a few from each print run.

All samples will be from real events ranging from world promotions, product launches, sports teams events or fund raising campaigns and there will be no limit to the number that can be printed. Paper flags are a popular choice for other promotional events such as VIP visits, sales events and advertising. Many football fans carry paper flags with their club logos or colours to advertise their devotion for their favourite club whether it’s the Premier League, the World Championship, or a local cup final.

Foil Balloons

Foil balloons are very attractive with shiny reflective surfaces and can be printed with full colour pictures and patterns to a customer’s specification. Foil balloons have the advantage of being lightweight, longer-lasting, with increased buoyancy. They are perfect for eye catching promotions, special celebrations and for product launches.

There are further environmental concerns about the safety of the foil balloon because they don’t biodegrade or shred like rubber balloons. However they are not allowed to be used in balloon releases or races, and need to be carefully disposed of after use. The most important property of metalized nylon or foil balloons is its ability to keep the helium gas from escaping for several weeks.

Balloons for Work

Latex balloons are an environmentally friendly product. Not only do they provide entertainment and recreational use bringing pleasure to thousands of children, they are valuable in a work setting for research, medicine, promotion and education.

Balloons are often used for meteorological work and in more recent years they are used in some medical procedures for a variety of conditions such as angioplasty, catheters for weight loss, and sinus procedures. Also balloons are a widely used teaching device to demonstrate Newton’s third law of physics and the functioning of a rocket. Once the balloon is inflated, the mouth of the balloon is released and the greater pressure of air inside, forces its way out so that the elasticity of the balloon contracts and the balloon is propelled forward making a rude noise. This is fundamentally how a rocket works.

Without balloons valuable services could not be performed and the public would be the losers in the long run. Professional quality balloons are made from 100% biodegradable latex.

Conclusion

The concerns about balloon safety primarily arise from the materials of which they are made. Although Latex is a natural substance and has been used for many years without harm, people who work in the arena of manufacture are exposed to some degree of risk and employers will conduct thorough risk assessments . Latex balloons are considered very safe and environmentally friendly, but problems will arise when a balloon is inflated using a plastic valve or with a ribbon attached which are not biodegradable.

There are a number of industry bodies which control and monitor balloon activities on a large scale and health and safety regulations in place for those working in industries manufacturing or using latex. The advantages of having and using latex products, certainly outweighs any perceived dangers of such an environmentally safe material.