Bill Gates came up with a bright idea and product (WINDOWS) which had the power to revolutionize the personal computer world. What would have been the use of that product if sufficient pain had not been taken to place the product in the market? No decision was made on pricing and market was not aware of it. The answer is, although the product was magnificent, it would have failed in the market. Here comes the concept of business marketing. Business marketing activities involve analysis of 5 C's that is company, competitors, context, customer & collaborator. Next in the line of work is segmenting (S) the market on the basis of age, income, region etc , then targeting (T) the right segment, positioning (P) the product/service in the minds of the customer and finally managing 4 P's related to the product or service that a particular business offers. Let us discuss these 4 P's in a bit detail.

1. Product / Service: This is the first and the foremost step in business marketing. The business you are in should produce such a product or offer such a service that makes a valuable addition to the customer. There should also be a market for your product/service. Many businesses are good at this stage as they come up with good product or service offering that has the potential to make goodwill in the market. Let us see what the other important aspects of business marketing are.
2. Place: The next step is to make the product/service available to the end user. This can be achieved by identifying right distribution channels to reach your target customer, for example Microsoft used computer vendors and computer manufacturers as their medium of distribution.
3. Promotion: This is the most important aspect of business marketing. In the era of cutthroat competition it is important that customer should be aware of all the features of the product that you are offering. He should be able to relate himself to the product or service. Promotion of a product can be done through various channels like TV/Radio advertisements which are the most common and has a wider reach or printed advertisements. Promotion can also be achieved through affiliations which give credibility to your product or service for example IBM recommends WINDOWS as the official operating systems.
4. Price: This is the last step in the business marketing activity; it is kept towards the end because its value depends on the cost involved in above 3 P's product, place and promotion. Apart from the cost factor, pricing is highly dependent on competitor's pricing and customer's assessment of unique product features. A business may want to keep its prices much lower than the competitor's price to achieve market share, this type of pricing is called penetration pricing.

Thus, we can see that business marketing is all about creating a value for its chosen customers (in a market driven strategy). Having created the value for its customers, the firm is then entitled to capture a portion of it through pricing. To remain a viable concern, the firm must sustain this process of creating and capturing value over time.

Iwan KP
Support writer
http://www.ifunbusiness.com