Marketing strategy consists of two major elements: An organization must determine its target market and then develop a marketing mix to meet the needs of that market. The target market is a specific group of potential customers on which a firm focuses its marketing efforts. The use of a marketing mix is an excellent way to help ensure that putting the right product in the right place, will happen efficiently. The Marketing Mix at Hive Studio is a crucial tool to help understand what the product or service can offer and how to plan for a successful product offering. The marketing mix is most commonly executed through the 4 P’s of marketing: Price, Product, Promotion, and Place. Hive Studio stresses the importance of the usage of the 4Ps that serve as a great place to start planning for the product or even to evaluate an existing product offering. The Marketing Mix is the combination of four factors-called the 4ps of marketing – designed to serve the target market:

The idea is to provide the product that customers need and want at an appropriate price and promote its sale and place or distribute the good or the service in a convenient location for the customer to purchase. The 4ps of the marketing mix need to be blended in the most appropriate manner to be best meets the needs of the target market. Finding the best blend of the 4ps is constrained by environmental factors beyond a firm’s control. Let’s first look at each of the 4ps in a bit more detail.

 Product

Source The Marketing Mix

Distinguishing your product from that of your competitors is critical. If you don’t do something that’s different from or superior to the competition, why should customer buy from you? Product Differentiation is the creation of a real or perceived difference in a product designed to attract customers. Product differentiation is one of the most critical success ingredients for most business. Product differentiation can take the form of functionality, styling, quality, safety, packaging, warranty, accessories, or brand name image. Hive Studio analysis about how a brand is a name, term, symbol, or design that distinguishes a company and its products from all others.

Source: B.E. Publishing

Price

There’s a lot to consider when deciding on the price for a product. Of course, the price will have to be sufficient to cover costs if you wish to make a profit. However, the product must be competitively priced to appeal to customers. Hive Studio perception is, If there is a positive customer value, rather than a product may be successfully priced higher than its objective monetary value. Conversely, if a product has little value in the eyes of the consumer, then it may need to be underpriced to sell. Price may also be affected by distribution plans, value chain costs and markups and how competitors price a rival product.

Promotion

The promotion part of the marketing mix consists of all the methods to inform and persuade targeted customers to buy a product and build positive customer relationships. Communicating the benefits of your good or service to customers includes advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, direct marketing, and publicity. Hive Studio highlights how Promotion is beneficial that it  lets people know that your product solves a specific need. In the promotion stage, your message should be clear and geared towards your target audiences. Tell them why they need your product and how it will benefit them. What makes your business different from the competitors? Is it a lower-price? Higher quality? Faster service? More flexibility?

Place

The place (or distribution) component of the marketing mix refers to all the methods involved in getting a product into the hands of customers.  Hive Studio shares the idea of A product isn’t beneficial to a customer if it can’t be purchased when and where it is needed. When a business is providing a good instead of a service, the delivery component is often more complicated. Many goods, such as grocery store items, go through a distribution channel, which is a series of firms or individuals that participate in the flow of a product from the manufacturer to the consumer. The middlemen in a distribution channel are sometimes called distributor or wholesalers. Some goods, such as food products, go through many wholesalers before reaching a retail outlet.

Source BrandingBeat

e.g. ( a grocery store) and, finally, the customer. Other goods, such as automobiles, typically move from the manufacturer to just one wholesaler, the car dealership, and then the consumer. Still other goods bypass wholesalers altogether and move from manufacturer directly to the customer, such as L.L.Bean Clothing Products, which are ordered from a catalog and shipped directly to customers.

Source Crain’s Cleveland Business

Finding the appropriate distribution channel and managing it efficiently to get the product to the right place at the right time, in the proper quantity, and at the lowest cost.