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What You Need to Know About Marketing Management
Marketing management is the field of creating and executing strategies as well as planning for the promotion of a product or service with the objective of reaching the desired target group and selling to them. Marketing management uses tools such as strategy, pricing, advertising, economics etc to understand and analyse the industry in which the company operates and accordingly plan for the organization to achieve competitive advantage in that market. Marketing professionals are usually trained in their field by educating themselves through a marketing management degree. Advertising is a popular sub domain of marketing and many professionals who seek to become experts in advertising, go for online advertising courses to gain the required skills. Similarly, there are various other specialisations within marketing domain such as digital marketing, sales, strategy etc.
As part of marketing, a marketing manager is trying to move all the goods from the stage of concept to the final stage of purchase by the end consumer. There are 4 P’s of marketing that define the concept of marketing. These are product, place, price and promotion. All the companies who sell any product or service need these four elements to be finalised before they can make any sale to the consumers.
The product is the actual product that a company is selling. The company needs to be clear about what is their final offering for the customer. They have to decide its benefits and its unique selling proposition to the customer. For organizations in the services sector, the product refers to the service they will be providing to the customer.
The place or the placement, refers to how the organization will want to provide the product or service to target customers. Distribution is a key element of this domain. The placement strategy decides what kind of distribution model the company will employ. The company also needs to ensure that the product strategy is complemented by the way the end consumer is going to access the product.
The 3rd P of marketing is price. Pricing is a critical aspect of marketing. An organization has to analyse the market, its competitors, the production and other associated costs of the product, its product proposition to the customer and the value of that product in the customer’s mind. Keeping everything in mind and its own financial requirements, a company can decide the pricing of its products. The price of a product directly affects its sales. The pricing is in fact linked to the perceived value of a product in the customer’s mind. If the product is priced higher or lower than the perceived value of product in the customer’s mind, then it will not sell. Hence, it is very crucial for an organization to understand the perceived value of their product or service. If the customer has a positive perceived value of the product, the organization can price the product higher than its actual value. Similarly, if the customer has a lower perceived value than the actual value of the product, the organization will need to lower the price of the product for it to sell. Pricing is also affected by other elements such as distribution model, the cost of the value chain amongst others.
Finally, the 4th P of marketing is promotion. All the marketing communication strategies and tools fall under the promotion element. Any organization needs to make people aware of their product of service. For this, they give their offering a brand name, create an imagery for it and communicate about its emotional or functional benefits to the target customer. They advertise it across various marketing communication channels such as television commercials, radio, print publications, digital marketing, outdoor media, on ground activation and retail visibility. Through different means, the company tries to reach its targeted customer and position their brand in the minds of the customer. They want to garner the interest of the customer and generate sales leads. Once the sales channels receive the leads, it is their task to convince the customer to buy the product. It is important to choose the correct channel as per the pricing, the product and the targeted customer.
Through a good marketing mix, a company aims at creating long life customers as well as sellers. It is a constantly evolving mix as per the business strategy of the organization. The marketing managers constantly monitor the market and the competition. They keep a tab on latest trends and the performance of their ongoing campaigns. Accordingly, the marketing strategy and plan keeps on changing with time. A company is successful in its marketing efforts when it is able to connect with its target customers through optimum utilisation of the marketing channels and by delivering the correct brand message to the intended customers.
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