The term "Marketing mix" refers to the 4 P's of marketing; Price, Place, Promotion and Product. When marketing you need to build a long term strategy and often it helps to think about the mix and, just like in baking, the mix of ingredients is essential to the results.

Here is how each element of the marketing mix breaks down:

Price
Giving your customers the right price is always important, some things however cannot be lowered in price for example, wages, license fees and marketing tools. If you cannot get your prices any lower then you can still focus on value, spend less time focusing on the price and more time telling people why it is valuable - for instance we offer SMS advertising as a Value Added Service and we tell our customers about the money they can make and the customer experience improvements they will see.

Place
Location is a very important thing, having a shoe shop in an industrial estate is a mistake, having it on the high street set apart from competition is perfect. The same applies to the Internet, find a niche market either by geo-targeting or buying the right domain name, for instance if there is a demand in the UK for widgets make a website specifically for the UK and buy a domain like ukwidgets.co.uk.

Promotion
This refers to your promotional strategy and execution, very often this is a large part of any marketing campaign so requires more attention. Spend time researching what has worked for other similar industries and assess current trends and buzz to determine what works best for your products and services. Mobile marketing can help build market segments for targeted promotions, its easier than ever to profile subscribers in a natural way. Publishers use text the editor and campaigns, radio broadcasters use text the DJ and opinion poles, event organisers use viral promotions and retailers use loyalty schemes and discount SMS vouchers. However its done, the targeting process has been completely automated and prices are lower than ever.

Product
Adapting your product range or services to meet customer demands is a smart move, the best way to keep up with your customers is to speak to them. You could try email, setting up special events and other more direct approaches. I have always found cold calling to be a bit of a turn off, mobile marketing is highly appropriate because it reaches them wherever they are, it is less obtrusive than cold calling and the open rate is higher than traditional methods such as email.

It is expected that a huge proportion of SME's will adapt their marketing mix to include SMS, those that are strong innovators and get to grips with the technology early on will be the most successful.

The marketing mix should not be the same for all businesses, different products and industries require a different ratio. Contact us if you have any further questions or comments and good luck.