What is Marketing Management?
Marketing management is all the activities done by a business to make sure the marketing activities meet its goals. Simply, it is a process of planning, implementing, and controlling marketing exercises of the business to make customers’ needs satisfied and achieve organizational objectives.
The main objectives of marketing management are to satisfy customers’ needs, create customer value, increase sales, and ultimately increase the profit of the firm. Basically, it is a branch of management that is concerned about the direction of purposeful activities to accomplish marketing goals.
It is an art and science which helps in identifying and selecting target customers and making with them a good exchange relationship. Building a beneficial exchange relationship may be hard because it requires to make in the proper functioning of all elements. A manager who is involved in this should gather proper knowledge about customers and the marketplace.
To be more clear, just imagine yourself as a marketing manager. What would be your responsibilities to make marketing successful and generate good profit for your business? For this, you may first analyze the marketplace & choose your target market–understand the targeted market’s basic needs and wants, make plans and produce products, deliver to customers, make customers satisfied, make a brand value, grow & and retain customers, and most importantly increase profit for your business. So all these and you may also add some activities relate to the marketing management activities.
When we seek to learn about marketing management, maybe we should not forget to see the most influential definition given by Philip Kotler, “Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating, superior customer value.”
Because of the growing complexity in the marketplace marketing management scope is fast growing as it most fit meeting customers’ need and want in such place. Its scope is very wide and can’t be explained in a single paragraph, so let’s talk about its other components.
Characteristics
The characteristics of marketing management may be,
Art and Science. It is both an art as well as a science. Marketing managers increase their management sales through experience in form of arts, and it has certainly tested and proven tools, techniques, principles, and decision models as in the form of social sciences.
Market segmenting, targeting, and positioning. It involves the selection of target markets by employing tools and techniques of segmentation, targeting, positioning, and marketing research to better understand the needs, desires, and preferences of target customers.
Value Creation and Delivery. It involves the creation of appropriate products and services, delivering to the target market, and communicating the value of the products to customers.
Objectives of Marketing Management
The primary objectives of marketing management are enlisted as follows,
Creation of New Customers
Customers are the main factor for any business to succeed. A business can not succeed without any customers, otherwise whom business sells its goods and services. Marketing management helps to create new customers through analyzing the marketplace, identifying the target market, producing products, and applying various means of marketing tools such as promotion, advertising, to attract new customers.
Customers Need Satisfaction and Retention
Satisfied and returning customers for the business is vital to succeeding in the present as well as the future. As discussed, this approach first understands the customer’s need, want, problem, and preference. After successfully understanding, the business delivers the right product to the right customer and match their need. And, a satisfied customer is always likely to purchase again.
Sustain and Enhance the Profitability of Business
Every business’s aim is to sustain in long run and generate enough profit, so the marketing management helps. Since the two above objectives increased customers and matched their needs. It always emphasizes business to produce quality products and services which help to sustain in long run. Since the customers are high, retained, and served quality product the business profits automatically increases. It also emphasizes the business to regularly improve the quality of products to operate with the dynamic market.
Upgrade the Living Standards of Customers
Marketing is always concerned about giving the standard of living to both customers and society. It may upgrade customers living standards by ensuring quality products, meeting demand & supply, ensuring proper distribution, providing new & improved products, generating employment, maintaining economic stability, etc.
Marketing Management Tasks
How the marketing management helps marketing managers achieve organizational goals? How to do it? Every manager focuses on creating products and stimulating customers to buy those products. He has to determine the interests of customers and make strategies to make sales.
The four major tasks or activities of marketing management: are analysis, marketing planning, implementation, and control. It is also known as the marketing management cycle through which one can do it successfully.
Analysis
The cycle of marketing management begins with strategic analysis which means a thorough evaluation of the firm’s internal and external factors that affect marketing activities. Mainly for effective analysis, the SWOT analysis is conducted to identify the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
The internal analysis of the firm gives an idea of where the firm stands in terms of its key strengths and weaknesses. And, also gives tips on how to improve it to stand in the competitive market.
The external analysis gives the idea of a firm’s opportunities and threats, basically, it performed in over the market, customers, competitors, and marketing environment. It gives the firm’s the ideas of investment decisions such as Where to compete, Where to invest for growth, and How to grow, and also gives the idea of which functional area strategy is appropriate such as product strategy, price strategy, place, and distribution, etc.
Marketing Planning
Simply, defining marketing planning is a step-by-step process of combining and coordinating all marketing decisions.
The marketing manager must have to design both short-run and long-run plans. For the day-to-day problems, the manager has to develop short-run plans. And, he also has to develop a long-run strategic plan to effectively utilize the firm’s resources and potential.
The marketing planning process involves mainly four steps: defining the business missions, developing alternative strategies, specifying operational tasks, and designing situational strategies if the plan needs to be altered.
- Business missions and goals: What does the firm want to achieve in the marketplace?
- Strategic alternatives: How does it accomplish business missions and goals?
- Operational tasks: What actions should be taken to implement strategies and realize goals?
- Situational strategies: In case if the plan needs to be changed due to any forces what alternatives strategies should be implemented?
Implementation
The third task of marketing management is to implement marketing plans. It is focused on organizing the marketing department to assign tasks, targets, authority, and responsibility to all marketing staff. Implementation of plans involves the following key activities.
Task Assignment. Assigning tasks, targets, authority, and responsibilities to each marketing unit and personnel.
Structure. Preparation of organization structure, job assignments, territory allocation.
Internal Relationships. Establishment of functional relationships within the marketing department and with the marketing departments and other key departments of the organization.
Coordination. Effective coordination and cooperation with outside agencies such as suppliers, advertising agencies, transport agencies, etc.
External Relationships. Keeping long-term relationships with customers and other essential stakeholders and aiming for a favorable image of the company.
Control
Marketing control is the regular measurement and revision of employee behaviors and marketing progress. The marketing management’s tasks of planning and implementation can not effective without a control system. So the marketing department must develop an effective control system to make sure the implementation of planning is going on the right track.
Marketing Management Philosophies
The marketing management philosophies play a key role in directing the marketing activities of any business. These are the key marketing concepts that are applied by all businesses.
As a marketing manager, you should know what the customers are looking for such as a high amount of products, quality products, products that ensure social welfare, or any others.
The major marketing management philosophies are:
- Production Concept
- Product Concept
- Selling Concept
- Marketing Concept
- Societal Marketing Concept
- Holistic Marketing Concept
Learn More: These Philosophies in Detail
For the proper implementation of these marketing philosophies, a marketing manager should first know the basic notion of these philosophies. Every marketing philosophy has different means and focuses which aids in the achievement of companies mission, vision, and goals.