What Are the Best Tips for Creating a Marketing Mix?

The best tips for creating a marketing mix ultimately concern achieving a good return on marketing investment (ROMI). To achieve this, the best use of a company's resources, including both the budget and employees, must be incorporated. Another guide for creating a marketing mix made up of product, price, place, promotion and packaging is that everything must interact effectively while also staying true to the company's overall branding goals. A marketing mix must also keep the company ahead of the competition and provide strong value for the target audience.

Value propositioning, or what a brand offers its market, must be clearly understood by a company before the marketing mix strategy can be constructed effectively. The target audience wants and needs to know what it gets for its money. It's crucial to always think what benefits make it worthwhile for the target market to choose the company's offerings over its competitors. Once those benefits are clearly addressed by the company, they can be communicated to the target through the marketing mix.

The benefits should be summed up in the product's promotions, in all distribution channels and on its labeling. Once the benefits are clear in the marketing mix strategy, it becomes easier to discover the right price point that offers target market value as well as company profit. Each element of product, price, place, promotion and packaging — what is known as the 5Ps of Marketing that make up the mix — should be part of a cohesive interaction that creates strong branding. When creating an effective marketing mix, any two elements should be able to be randomly combined to make a strong benefit statement to the target audience.

For example, the price should reflect the quality and value of the product. The packaging should be fitting for the place, or distribution channel, in which the target comes in contact with the product. For instance, a grocery store product has to have packaging that will stand out to consumers from competing products as well as contain information that will sell the benefits and value to the consumer.

All of the marketing mix strategies must be able to be accomplished on time and on budget by a team. Deadlines are important in marketing as issues such as printing and product delivery must often rely on the schedules of partner companies. Even after an effective marketing plan is created, it must always be followed up on to measure its success. In this way, creating powerful mixes on future product launches can be based on learning from any failures as well as by leveraging past successes.