Small Business Marketing

Marketing Mix and the Five Ms of Marketing

Written by Clayton Reeves for Gaebler Ventures

When you produce a marketing strategy, there is a mix that must be created. This involves the five Ms of marketing and how they convince buyers to purchase your items.

Marketing has many different interactive parts.

Among them is the communication aspect.

The five Ms of advertising provide a framework by which you can create an advertising platform.

First, the firm must decide what the purpose of the advertisements will be. This is called the mission. Monetary constraints usually determine how large any project can be. This is the money aspect of the advertising project. Message is the creative aspect of the advertising strategy. Next, the media by which the message will be delivered must be determined. Finally, measuring the project is important to determine how effective the advertisements actually were. This can sometimes be the most difficult part of the plan, since measuring changes in customer opinion can be time consuming and costly.

In this article, we take a deeper look at the five Ms of marketing.

Mission

There are several ways that a company can determine what the mission of an advertising strategy should be. Quantitative measures such as increasing the awareness of the brand among a certain segment by a certain percentage can be chosen. For example, increasing the awareness among financial executives of a certain audit control offered by your company by 20% could be a mission. This could be measured before and after using a survey or some other form of primary research.

Money

Budget constraints are everywhere in business, and nowhere are they more evident than in small businesses. Advertising and marketing can sometimes be ignored because they do not offer immediate results. However, in every business environment, some resources must be allocated to building a brand and image. Without this, the company will not continue to grow. Even during recessions, marketing must be a priority to avoid losing market share. Having a suitable budget is an important part of the process.

Message

Advertising is a creative process. There are slogans, themes and gimmicks that try to lure the customer in. The message of an advertisement is this creative aspect. Any manner of theme can be implemented as long as it is in line with what the company stands for.

Media

This aspect of the program refers to the media that will be used to communicate the message. This can include television, radio, mail, telephone and in person contact. Most media has metrics to measure their efficiency and costs associated with those metrics. Choosing the right media can make or break an advertising program.

Measurement

Finally, the firm must measure the effects of the program on their intended audience. This can be done by measuring sales or trying to gauge interest through research. It is often very difficult to measure how much the advertisements actually impacted customer interest and how much other external factors played a part.

When he's not playing racquetball or studying for a class, Clayton Reeves enjoys writing articles about entrepreneurship. He is currently an MBA student at the University of Missouri with a concentration in Economics and Finance.

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