Marketing Management

MARKETING MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS

Are your marketing programs swimming or sinking? To survive in such a densely competitive market environment it is necessary for business owners to know customer needs and align business activities to those needs. Getting started with (or overhauling) your marketing programs is just as important as maintaining & measuring AND managing them for the long term.

Even if you have a marketing manager, hire a marketing agency, or outsource your campaigns & programs – you need to be informed enough to make key decisions that have to do with keeping those programs on track. Management is key, and that means you need to stay on top of it.

If you are a small business, you might be wearing all the hats, which means you are the manager and the action-taker at the same time. Either way this is a short guide packed with info to get you managing your marketing.

If you haven’t noticed, we talk about a lot of marketing related topics, it’s kinda our thing.

Here’s what we will be talking about in this example of content marketing:

• Learn about the main idea and understanding of marketing.
• Ways to manage your marketing programs effectively.
• Different steps of the marketing management functions & processes.
• Learn something about the decisions marketing managers have to make.

Of many things, marketing is primarily about the market and customer orientation of the whole company. An alignment of your branding in the minds of your customers. Marketing focuses on mutually satisfying customer and business needs in a competitive environment. Looking at some marketing definitions, in a more formal way, we can understand the world-wide accepted definition.

The American Marketing Association states that, marketing is an organizational function and set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to the customer and managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Daily business and practice of marketing management is often misunderstood. People might say marketing is advertising but marketing management goes beyond this simplistic perception.

Marketing management includes the customer-oriented philosophy of the whole company.

ALIGNING YOUR MARKETING WITH CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

As markets become more and more competitive customer orientation is key for success. If the customer has the choice between company A&B they will be attracted by the company which fulfills the needs best. Therefore, companies have to look at customer needs and desires in a competitive environment, and they have to satisfy customers by fulfilling these needs.

Increasing customer orientation leads to higher customer satisfaction rate and higher loyalty with lower acquisition costs. Orienting your company to the right customers is the first step to properly managing your marketing programs and people.

Orienting your company to align its marketing with customer sentiment, opinion, affinity, and many more things comprising your marketing strategy will help you understand what all will need management or oversight.

Simply put, a business can not survive or grow without marketing, but many businesses do marketing in the wrong ways, which also ends in the same lack of results.

Let’s learn how we can make our marketing easier, and with less resistance by using marketing management, but first, understanding what good marketing concepts are.

Marketing should be implemented as a function within the company, so all the marketing knowledge and expertise is bundled in a department, or a team. In addition to that, marketing is also a set of cross-functional processes.

That means marketing orientation and customer orientation should be included in R&D, production, service, and fulfillment, so marketing managers have to understand that the customer orientation is anchored in all the departments within the company.

HOW TO START MANAGING YOUR MARKETING PROGRAMS

Marketing management can be explained by this planning process:

Start with a situation analysis, we look at markets, customers, and competitors, and at our internal situation. Then we will derive marketing goals from that analysis.

The goals we determine will be implemented by defining marketing strategies or tactics. The marketing strategies will be achieved by designing marketing activities, the so-called marketing mix.

Then we establish a marketing organization (or marketing team) and a marketing controlling process, this is the marketing management part of the process. So, let’s look at things you need to do to start managing your marketing efforts to get better results.

Start with an analysis of our internal and external environment. Looking at the internal business environment means we have to identify strengths and weaknesses regarding meeting customer needs.

When looking at the external environment, we have to identify and analyze the competitive relevant market.

Once we know what the situation is inside our organization and outside of it, we have to analyze the customer needs, which is a big starting point within the external analysis.

We need to look at our branding and products in comparison to the competitors, in addition to the market analysis we have to care about influencing factors of the macro market environment.

The analysis of the macro marketing environment is called pestle analysis that means that we have to look at political-economic, geo-political, social-ecological and legal influencing factors. All of the macro factors can have trickle-down effects on micro markets.

The internal and the external situation analysis will lead to the so-called SWOT analysis.

While we combine internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats, we are getting ready for implementation, but before taking action we need to consider building management into these.

Actions without orientations will lead to misleading direction for marketing goals. Marketing goals should fulfill different functions.

First of all, marketing goals should give orientation, second, they should coordinate activities within the marketing department and within the company, and third they should motivate decision-makers to achieve the goals, and finally marketing goals should fulfill a control function such as one or more KPIs. That means activities and strategies and their achievements should be controlled by having defined goals that your management of marketing can track the performance of.

DEFINING MARKETING KPIs YOU NEED TO MANAGE

By defining marketing goals, we can differentiate between economic and psycho-graphic goals. Looking at the economic goals, we have revenue KPIs with profitability goals.

We could define market-share as a goal, or sales volume, or the contribution margin.

Before being able to achieve these KPIs & goals, we have to change something in the customer’s mind and therefore we have to address the so-called psycho-graphic.

Brand awareness is to create a special image of our business that the customer is willing to consider our product, that could be a marketing goal. On a side note, branding strategy is important, so important in fact, it should be centered around your customer profiles & orientation.

Satisfaction goals are important to look for to create a loyal customer, therefore the interplay of psychographic goals and economic goals are important for the marketing planning and management.

Marketing goals should be made of KPIs with substance, and not based on meaningless “vanity metrics”. Marketing goals should include the following elements;

• increase awareness
• Increase interest
• Increase lead capture & inquiry
• increase revenue
• increase awareness by 10% in the next 12 months
• increase awareness by 10% the next 12 months in Germany

KEEPING MARKETING PROGRAMS UNDER CONTROL

Which marketing strategies are appropriate for the achievement of the marketing goals?

We have to develop marketing strategies and plans for the achievement of these marketing goals. in marketing literature, you will find a lot of strategy typology with a lot of recommendations to develop marketing strategies, but there is no right and no wrong way to do this – you just need to understand the core concepts.

A successful marketing concept we would like to show developed to structure growth strategies can look at existing markets and new markets and at existing products and new products.

You can grow with a market penetration strategy, for example, by cross-selling if you want to grow in new markets with your existing products you might go international, so market development means that you approach with your existing product.

• Develop new products for your existing customers that is called product development strategy.
• Approach new markets with new products, and that is called diversification.

Strategy typology, developed by Michael Porter, was on how to create competitive advantages and he differentiated between two main types of strategy.

1 – Create a competitive advantage by being the cost leader in the market. That means the company has the lowest price for a reasonable quality of a product.

2 – The opposite is the quality leadership, so to create competitive advantages by having the best quality in the market for a higher price indicates the so-called quality leadership strategy.

Michael Porter indicates that both strategy can take place in the mass Mac market and Indonesia market so a quality can be profitable in a mass-market but also in a small focused niche market in addition to growth strategies and competitive strategies we can mention a lot of war strategy types like branding strategies or timing strategies all of these strategies were developed will be a basis or platform for the implementation of marketing measures or marketing actions.

What measures can be taken to implement the marketing strategy?

We have to look at the so-called marketing mix the marketing mix consists of all the measures which we can Implement to make our company customer oriented the classical marketing mix consists of the product the price and place and promotion and was in all these areas we have to implement measures which makes our company more customer oriented

The product policy is often called The Heart of the marketing mix was out having a customer-oriented product or service most of you will fail to satisfy customer needs Visions to be made in the product policy area it’s about product innovation it’s about product differentiation and sometimes you have to eliminate products from the market

What you have to make more decisions it’s about branding off the product or service is about packaging and offering additional services always product activities should be coordinated to satisfy customer needs price policy is about setting the right price and the right conditions to attract customers

It’s about setting a price for a new product or changing the price for existing products giving price promotions or Price bonus what changing the price in a dynamic way also price differentiation is a main topic in the area of pricing so the objective of pricing policy is to meet the willingness to pay of the customer and in competitive environment

Decisions in the area of place or distribution policy a targeted to the question when and where our customer will get the product within the distribution policy area we have to consider two types of decisions first we have to define the right distribution Channel there’s a variety of options to design a distribution Channel take a physical store or an internet shop or a mail-order option the second main area of decision is how to design the physical flow of the product to the customer this is all about designing the logistical Channel so defining the right distribution policy will lead to the answering the question when and where our customer will get the product

We have to decide how to communicate or customers this is the communication policy area they also main decisions to make first of all what is the right Communication channel is it print newspaper mailing or the internet second we have to be signed about what to tell to the customer so it’s about the content for the communication campaign this area are mostly advertising agency will help the company to design and advertisement or campaign for the communication policy all the communication measures should be coordinated to address the customer groups in a efficient way

Finally all the communication channels and the content of the companies should be coordinated and targeted to the customer segments which are defined in our situation analysis house with marketing be organized and we can look at the different options

first of all we can Define responsibility for coordinating our marketing activities of the product level bald product management could also be that we try to build responsibilities around our core customers it’s called key account management

another way is that marketing managers are responsible for which has what countries and then we can Define responsibilities by looking at different marketing functions like product development pricing distribution communication it is important that the marketing organization supports the idea that marketing is an overall philosophy of the company

KEEPING YOUR MARKETING UNDER CONTROL

Why should marketing be controlled?

Looking at the overall marketing planning process and what we have read so far, you will finally see that marketing controlling is also an important part to control strategies and measures which we have defined and implemented is one essential part to make a marketing management more effective and efficient

Marketing control tries to define the main marketing metrics and the key success factors and marketing controlling gives feedback to all the decision-makers which are involved in the marketing management process.

TOOLS FOR MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Whether you have a small or wide scale marketing campaign, there can be an assortment of tools, such as digital marketing tools, that you will need to effectively manage those campaigns. Tools used to measure marketing can be as simple as a sheet of paper, spread sheet, or a time management software. In terms of digital marketing tools you will need for online marketing, take some of the following examples.

Points of Access

• Google Drive
• Dropbox

Templates

• Images
• Print designs

SOPs

• Marketing tactics, step by step

Dashboards & Spreadsheets

• Base Camp
• Slack

Data Visualization

• Google Analytics
• Ahrefs

MARKETING TASKS YOU CAN DELEGATE TO OTHERS

For big organizations, a marketing team is necessary. For medium or small businesses, you may not need a marketing team, but every business, no matter how big or small, needs a marketing manager.

As a marketing team manager, or an entrepreneur, it is your job to think about the marketing of your firm or brand on a high level, meaning that you, yourself, should not get caught up in too much actual implementation. Your primary objective is to make sure the main objectives are on track.

For organizations with marketing teams, you can assign tasks in relation to the strengths of team members. For smaller businesses, you may only have one or two people who must keep up with everything. In either case, organizations and small business can take advantage of the help from outsourcing or an agency.

We are talking about delegating things like:

• Social media updates
• Adding new photos to the website
• Adding or editing pages on the website
• Keyword research
• Consumer studies
• Market studies
• Performance reporting
• Agile adjustments
• Agile pivoting

WHEN TO HIRE A MARKETING MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Most business owners are well aware of the key points of interest to measure that reflect marketing ROI, but most business owners may not have all the time or detailed knowledge to either get or analyze the data.

A big chunk of the marketing management role is to understand and identify tactics or campaigns that show signs of falling flat, and inputting that data back into the strategy, templates, SOPs, etc.

So, if you are having trouble realizing what your marketing data is telling you, or you simply do not have time to analyze, react, & make changes – then you need the help of an agency to address those needs.

FAQ about managing your marketing

What do you mean by marketing management?
The American Association of Marketing defines marketing management as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services in order to create, exchange and satisfy individual and organizational objectives (Grönroos, 1989).

What the marketing concepts?
Commonly known as the 4 P’s of marketing, they are: Price, Product, Promotion, Place, concepts.

What are the 7 principles of marketing?
The seven principles of marketing are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people.

What is the role of marketing manager?
Marketing managers are responsible for developing and measuring the marketing programs for their organizations.

Glossary of terms related to marketing management

AIDA (marketing)

Arrow information paradox

Article marketing

Article video marketing

Attack marketing

Bargain bin

Business-to-business

Business-to-consumer

Business-to-government

Cause marketing

Copy testing

Cost per conversion

Conversion rates

Customer lifetime value

Customer relationship management

Decision making unit

Disintermediation

Double jeopardy (marketing)

Double loop marketing

Emotional Branding

Engagement (marketing)

Facelift (product)

Fallacy of quoting out of context

Fine print

Flighting (advertising)

Growth Hacking

Heavy-up

Inbound marketing

Inseparability

Intangibility

Integrated marketing communications

Low-end market

Marketing communications

Marketing experimentation

Marketing exposure

Marketing information system

Marketing mix for product software

Marketing speak

Mega marketing

Name program

Next-best-action marketing

Nielsen ratings

Out-of-box experience

Perishability

Permission marketing

Price Analysis

Product lifecycle

Product lifecycle management

Promoter (entertainment)

Q Score

Relational goods

Representative office

Response rate ratio

Return on event

Return on investment

ROI – Return on Investment

SEO – search engine optimization

Share of Wallet

Soft launch

Solutions Marketing

Sports Entertainment

Square inch analysis

Sweeps period

Top of mind awareness

Visual merchandising

White label

What others have to say about marketing management

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-management.html