An effective marketing mix is evidence based, timed perfectly, and reflects a deep understanding of how your audience interacts with your brand.
Back in the day, creating a marketing mix was a pretty simple affair that involved sitting around a desk deciding how you would promote your brand, product, or service.
The marketing strategy for a large company might feature a marketing mix that includes the three most prominent forms of media: print, radio, and television. The marketing mix for a smaller business might lean more towards flyers for a letterbox drop.
Then came the digital age and the ways of promoting your business became as infinite as the web itself.
Now, businesses can include into their marketing mix social media posts and paid advertisements across multiple digital platforms, search ads, influencer marketing, and website advertising, as well as offline marketing options.
Digital has presented more opportunities to add to your marketing mix, but which should you include? And how? And when?
Too often we see marketing mixes that are little more than a hot mess of multiple messages, over-exposure, and brand confusion.
The most effective marketing mix is evidence based, timed perfectly, and reflects a deep understanding of the ways in which the audience interacts with the platform or medium.
Key components of the marketing mix: the four Ps
Traditionally, marketing professionals have used what they call the four Ps as the basis of developing an effective marketing strategy: product, price, placement, and promotion.
Product is what you are selling, its point of difference, and how it’s used; price refers to how much your product costs to produce and how much the market is willing to pay for it; placement is where and how it is purchased; and promotion is how much you spend on advertising and marketing.
These principles stand strong today as a solid foundation of any marketing strategy, but they are just the start. You can learn more about the key components of a marketing mix here.
Why a mix of activities is crucial to your marketing mix
One of the most important reasons to include a strategic mix of activities in your marketing strategy is the basic truth that the more people you target, the better your results. But that’s not the whole story.
When you target potential customers from several different angles, it builds your brand, and provides a fuller picture of who you are and what you offer.
A comprehensive marketing mix targets customers at every stage of the buying the cycle, including the phases of awareness, research, consideration, purchase and retention. By applying a mix of marketing activities, you’re more likely to reach a wider range of prospective clients at different stages of their purchasing journey.
The other benefit of having a marketing mix is that one-off, isolated campaigns don’t tell the full story of your brand. Only advertising on one platform or only engaging with one medium means that that you don’t get enough marketing data about your business (and your clients) as a whole.
When you run a few different marketing activities at the same time – incorporating digital, print and TV, for example – you can glean a lot more information about what works for your marketing campaigns, such as timing and messaging.
And perhaps the biggest benefit of executing a mix of marketing activities is that it is always going to be more effective. Having a mix of activities means you can broaden your net by having multiple touch points to share your message and reach your target market, in addition to gathering important data to inform future marketing campaigns, giving your business the insight and edge it needs to grow.
What’s in the marketing mix?
The marketing mix of your strategic marketing plan should be a delicate recipe of digital and traditional platforms interacting and adding value to each other.
Digital advertising includes paid advertisements on websites or on search engines, like Google. Digital also comprises marketing on new media platforms such as online publications, podcasts, video, email newsletters, e-books, and more.
Social media offers a great way to market your product or service because it provides a direct two-way conversation with you and your potential audience, creating deeper relationships.
Print advertising includes any print collateral such as brochures, flyers, and newsletters. They may seem old-school, but they continue to have marketing value, especially as they are frequently kept for future reference.
Television and radio are still very popular marketing tools, with options from paid commercials to brand collaborations and sponsorship.
Content is key in the marketing mix
Sure, the digital space gives you an inexpensive and accessible means to market your product or service, but it’s also providing that to your competitors. And it’s getting pretty crowded there.
That’s why good content is so powerful in your marketing mix.
Content marketing, at its most effective, delivers lead generation and sales. It can include tips and lists, blog posts, free downloadable guides and reports, infographics, and videos.
Free, timely, engaging and interesting content will be shared by social media users, will rank you highly in search engines, and will raise awareness of your service or product, and place you as a thought leader in your particular area.
The value of a great marketing mix doesn’t end when the campaign does. The mix should provide information and data about your clients and how they purchase, as well as how they best interact with the different marketing platforms.
The processes for collecting this data needs to be set up before a campaign is launched, and as an essential part of any marketing strategy.
Need help with your marketing mix?
Studies have shown that people need to see a message seven times before it sinks in so it’s important to have a mix of activities taking place at the same time to reinforce the message and capture a broader spectrum of consumers.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne and can help brands and businesses develop a marketing mix to achieve the most effective results possible.
To find out how we can help you create the right marketing mix, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via our contact form below.