Marketing_Mix

Marketing Mix Sarah Jobst MKT/421 February 20, 2013 Bruce Requa Introduction Marketing mixture is required for an organization to plan and implement all new marketing strategies and tactics. There are four important elements in planning a marketing mixture: product, price, place, and promotion. Each of these elements are vital in developing, and implementing the plan. In this paper, one can see how Merry Maids implemented a plan to increase new customer accounts. The cleaning industry is bigger than most people may think. Although it is not something that all families can afford in today's economy, there are many people that have these services on a weekly basis. This industry is continuing to grow with each coming year. Elements of the Marketing Mix Marketing mix is up of factors under its control—product, price, place, and promotion( the four Ps)(Armstrong & Kotler, 2011). The company engages in different activities to help them find the marketing strategy that best fits their situation. These activities consist of marketing analysis, planning, implementation and control(Armstrong & Kotler, 2011). The company will watch the actions and adapts to the forces in the marketing environment(Armstrong & Kotler, 2011). We will now look at the four P's of the marketing mix. Product is the good or service that a company is offering. For example, Merry Maids offers to come in and clean your house. They give the consumer the option to have whatever they need done completed in a professional manner. Price is the amount of money that a consumer must pay to have the goods or the service performed. Although they are given the option to choose what they have done, they also have the option to add services for additional charge. In the case of Merry Maids, Place consists of the consumers home. This would be where the cleaning service would be completed to the consumers satisfaction. Promotion means activities like personal selling, word of mouth, advertising and other activities that merit the product or service and persuade the consumer to buy the product or service. Affect on Marketing Strategy Each of the four elements of the marketing mix will have an affect on the organization's marketing strategy and tactics. The following will look a little into how product, price, promotion and place affect Merry Maids marketing strategies and the tactics they use. The product that Merry Maids sells is house cleaning, although not everyone thinks they need help in this area of their everyday lives, many actually do. Merry Maids must develop a successful marketing strategy in order to compete with the other companies that may be in the same area that they cover. Thus, the owners and managers of this company must do their research and learn as much as they can about the surrounding area and also the competing companies near them. The price of the Merry Maids product varies due to many factors like services requested or the size of the house in question. Merry Maids has actually found a program the they use to bid on the services that a consumer requests. This program plugs in the requests of the customer, the size of the house and the extra services that may have been requested and pulls up a bid for the manager to give the client. Place affects Merry Maids in a few ways, since place can mean transportation, channels, coverage and location. In order for Merry Maids to be successful they must take into account all of these. In order to get to the houses, the employees of the company must have reliable transportation. Frequent inspections of the cars the employees drive would help in keeping the transportation to the houses of the consumer running smoothly. Lastly, Promotion can have the greatest affect on this particular company. If the people who are employeed for Merry Maids do not take pride in their job, it will show and complaints and lost customers will happen frequently. Word of mouth is one of the greatest forms of advertisment for this company and if the employees do not do the job they have been trained to do in the manner they were trained to do it then the customer will spread the word that this company does not do a good job and customers will become hard to find and keep. How Merry Maids decides to implement these issues depends of the people in charge of their marketing plan. Implementation of Elements The elements of the marketing mix are implemented differently depending on the company in question. Merry Maids implements product by creating a calling card of sorts. They have a certain order that their service is performed to ensure that nothing is missed and the customer recieves the same end result no matter who performs the service. They also developed their own like of cleaning products that customers seem to prefer. Price is implemented by using the program designed to help them bid on the services wanted without over charging. The consumer is almost always conscious of the amount of money they want to spend on a service. Place has been implemented very well in the case of Merry Maids. They have found locations where the competition is not as great as it may be elsewhere. They cover a wide range of areas. Promotion has been implemented in the form of door hangers for the houses surrounding the ones that are already clients. Also they mail out cards quarterly to prospective clients to try and get the Merry Maids name out to as many people as possible. Conclusion In conclusion, the marketing mix components are very important for organizations to consider in their every day runnings. Without marketing companies would most likely have a harder time growing and continuing to be successful. As the four components of the mix are important, it is also important to be able to implement them in a manner that will benefit the organization the best. Implementation is key to grow and be a successful company in a world of competition that we live in today. In light of this, marketing teams and all other employees in the organization should be marketers and constantly think of new and exciting ways to get the business name out to as many people as possible. Everyone that works for a company is considered part of the marketing team and input from them is almost always welcome. References Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P. (2011). Marketing: An introduction. (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River. NJ: Prentice Hall.