The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him well and sells itself."
- Peter Drucker
What do you think was meant by this statement? How do you think a product sells itself? This is where marketing management comes into play. After reading this explanation on marketing management, you will understand why this function is vital for a brand and how it helps a brand achieve the goal of a product selling itself.
Definition of Marketing Management
Marketing, a very complex and core business function, needs proper management to ensure the business's desired goals are reached. Marketing management is the process that helps a business plan, organise, control, and implement marketing strategies.
Marketing management is the process that helps a business perform its various functions to achieve its goals successfully.
Businesses can achieve profitable customer relationships from satisfied customers through marketing management.
Marketing Management Processes
Marketing management is a 7-step process that starts with setting marketing objectives and ends with organising, implementing, and controlling the marketing efforts. The six steps are as follows:
Set Marketing Objectives
Analyse Marketing Opportunities
Research and Select Marketing Targets
Design Marketing Strategies
Plan Marketing Programmes
Implement Marketing Programs
Control
Set Marketing Objectives
Setting objectives in place is the first step of marketing management. The set goals must align with the brand or organisation's mission. Setting objectives help the business understand how to conduct their research and in which market.
Analyse Marketing Opportunities
Once the objectives are set, the brand or business starts to analyse marketing opportunities to find the right target market. A SWOT analysis is performed to analyse the company's situation, which is essential for understanding the brand's limitations.
Research and Select Marketing Targets
Businesses should understand the market's attractiveness and know how it should be measured to select an effective market. Market segmentation and its evaluation are performed for a more straightforward market evaluation, after which product positioning strategies are used in each market.
Design Marketing Strategies
The marketing strategy describes how the organisation plans to achieve its goals. This is one of the essential steps of marketing management. The marketing strategies will state how the brand approaches the target market. Additionally, decisions related to the marketing mix, marketing expenditure and distribution are made in this step, along with decisions about the product, place, price and promotion (the 4Ps).
Plan Marketing Programmes
Marketing programmes and strategies are necessary to achieve the organisation's marketing goals. This stage involves making decisions about branding, product characteristics, packaging, sales, and distribution, among many others.
Implement Marketing Programs
Implementation is a crucial step, as this involves acting on the set marketing strategies and programmes. The first step would be deciding when, where and how to implement them. The business takes the first steps to advertise your products and their characteristics to attract potential customers through various methods such as sales promotions, public relations, etc.
Control
Controlling is the process of monitoring and evaluating marketing strategies. After implementing the marketing strategies, their results are tested to analyse their success in helping the brand achieve its goals. Businesses can measure success by analysing sales, customer feedback, satisfaction, etc. Controlling will also aid in future marketing strategies, as these results will help the company keep track of what does and does not work. In addition, it is also vital to evaluate how your competitors operate to understand what your company could or should do better to stay on top of the market. Companies use various tools such as sales force management systems to analyse their progress.
Importance of Marketing Management
Now that you understand the marketing management processes let's look at what these steps ultimately strive to achieve. The marketing management process has many objectives, as listed below.
Demand Creation
The main goal of marketing is to create demand for the product that the brand is promoting. Marketing management uncovers insights about consumer behaviour and needs, informs the potential customers about the products' features, and advertises the products to convince them that they would cater to their needs.
Customer Satisfaction
Marketing management majorly helps improve customer satisfaction, as it helps identify customer needs, allowing the brand to develop better and more valuable products. Customer satisfaction is likely to increase when a product's value is higher.
Brand Reputation
Improving the brand's reputation is also a crucial function of marketing management. Sales promotions, advertisements, etc., are tools that may improve a brand's reputation. Offering products at a reasonable price and an expected quality also helps strengthen the brand image.
Profit Generation
Profit generation is crucial for the business's survival - this can only be achieved through proper marketing management. Without good marketing management, the brand would not sell enough products or acquire enough customers to make a profit.
Market Share
Due to intense competition, businesses need to try and increase their market share. Through market and organisational analysis, marketing management helps develop strategies or plans that aid companies in improving their market share.
Product Marketing Management
You might have noticed by now that understanding customers, their buying patterns, and their needs are crucial for marketing. They help the brand align its products with customers' desires - precisely what product management aims to do. Product marketing is a type of marketing management that brings together the product, the market, customer success and sales. Product positioning is crucial in product marketing to generate more sales.
Product marketing focuses on the product and its users, making products valuable for the customers and sellable in the market.
A product marketer is responsible for launching products, introducing different features, understanding the market, assisting the sales team, positioning and messaging, and generating product awareness and demand.
Product marketing should not be confused with product management. While product management focuses on customers and understanding their problems to provide them with a solution, product marketing focuses on advertising the product and driving demand.
Airbnb has tapped into people's need to feel a sense of belonging while travelling, which is undoubtedly what they provided. They allow people to stay in a house, room, penthouse, or even villa, according to their needs during their stay. Airbnb's symbol plays a vital role in helping people feel welcome. Their 'Bélo symbol', as Airbnb puts it, "is an iconic mark for our windows, our doors, and our shared values. It's a symbol that, like us, can belong wherever it happens to be".1
Content Marketing Management
Businesses use content marketing to attract audiences and capture their attention. Companies practising content marketing use images, text, videos and other digital instruments to achieve their organisational goals. Businesses approach different audiences using various digital tools to engage them with a brand or product. It is an alternative to promoting products without bombarding customers with information, leading to advertising overload. Content marketing aims to convert target customers to loyal customers.
Content marketing is the technique of attracting and capturing audiences using digital instruments.
Content marketing focuses on the customer journey. This function convinces a customer about the product's value and aids the customer through their journey. Content marketing helps customers in their pre-purchase stage with product information and product instructions.
Some main content marketing tools include blogging, social media, visual content, e-books, etc.
Intrepid Travel is a travel agency that organises small-group travels around the world. They promote and share information about the trips on Facebook, including travel images and customer experiences. This is a form of social media content marketing.
Rolex uses visual content marketing to promote its products. The brand uses exceptional photography to inform its target market about the product's quality and timelessness.
Now, you might have understood how the marketing management function helps a product sell itself. So, to summarise, brands research and collect information about customers to provide them with products that will fill the product gap in the market and add value to customers' lives. This function makes sure to use the right marketing tools to reach the appropriate customers to inform them about the products and their features so well that they are convinced about their need for the product in their life and finally purchase it. Marketing management is, therefore, a complex process that ensures that products are marketed to the right target market using the appropriate marketing techniques.
Marketing Management - Key takeaways
- Marketing management is the process that helps a business to perform its various functions to achieve its goals successfully.
- The marketing management process includes setting marketing objectives, analysing marketing opportunities, researching and selecting marketing targets, designing marketing strategies, planning marketing programmes, implementing marketing programs, and controlling.
- Demand creation, customer satisfaction, brand reputation, profit generation, and increasing market share are the objectives of marketing management.
- Product marketing focuses on the product and its users, making products valuable for the customers and sellable in the market.
- Content marketing is the technique of attracting and capturing audiences using digital instruments.
- Content marketing focuses on the customer journey.
References
- Brian Chesky, Belong Anywhere, July 16, 2014, https://medium.com/@bchesky/belong-anywhere-ccf42702d010
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