Thomas Watson Sr., former president of IBM, coined this famous phrase: “Nothing happens until a sale is made”. This statement emphasizes the critical role marketing plays in any business organization.
To achieve success as a business, you need to get your marketing right. In other words, you need a great marketing management system in place. This article will be discussing marketing management in depth. Let’s go already!
What is marketing?
In the year 2017, The New York Times in an article described marketing as the art of telling stories so enthralling that people lose track of their wallets. This description may have emerged because of how marketers convince people to purchase things that they may not need or cannot afford. However, what is the real meaning of marketing?
Investopedia defines marketing as the activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of its products or services. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Some marketing is done by affiliates on behalf of a company.
What is Marketing Management?
The American Marketing Association 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.
Furthermore, the Institute of Marketing Management, England, defined Marketing Management as “the creative management function that promotes trade and employment by assessing consumer needs and initiating research and development to meet them. It coordinates the resources of production and distribution of goods and services, determines and directs the total efforts required to sell profitably to the ultimate user”.
Phillip Kotler (an American Marketing Professor), defines Marketing Management as the art and science of choosing target markets and building a profitable relationship with them. Marketing management as a process involves analysis, planning, implementing, and control.It covers goods, services, ideas, and the goal is to produce satisfaction for the parties involved.
Simply put, Marketing Management focuses on the managerial functions in Marketing. It identifies market opportunities and designs strategies for exploiting these opportunities. It is also concerned with the implementation of marketing programs, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of these programs.
Economicsdiscussion.net provides a list of what Marketing Management involves. They are as follows:
- The setting of marketing goals and objectives.
- Developing the marketing plan.
- Organizing the marketing function.
- Putting the marketing plan into action.
- Controlling the marketing program.
For more details, visit www.economicsdiscussion.net/marketing-management/what-is-marketing-management/.
10 Things You Should Know About Marketing Management
Here, we will be discussing 10 things you need to understand about marketing management, which will make your marketing efforts more productive. Find them below:
Maximize Mobile Marketing
As more consumers consistently shift towards using their mobile devices to research and pay for products and services, it only makes sense for you to step up your mobile marketing efforts to catch your share of this market.
Research from Smartinsights.com reveals that mobile device users globally increase faster than desktop computer users. Visit www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/, for more details.
Truth is, there is a steady tilt towards the use of mobile devices over the use of desktop or laptop computers. According to internettrailer.com, 30 percent of all e-commerce purchases in the USA are done on mobile devices.
In addition, when consumers come across a new commercial, their first port of call to verify the product is their mobile devices. It is therefore a smart move for your organization to step up its mobile marketing efforts, to ensure your prospective consumers see the right things about you when they research your organization with their mobile devices.
Make your Website Mobile Friendly
One of the first steps to take in building a formidable mobile marketing force is to make your website mobile-friendly. It was pointed out earlier that most consumers prefer checking up on new products and services online with their smartphones. It is therefore critical for you to make your website mobile-friendly.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, you can be sure to miss out on most, if not all the consumer traffic that prefers using their smartphones.
Target Your Marketing
Imagine trying to sell ice to a bunch of Eskimos. That is exactly what your marketing efforts would look like if they were not targeted. What does market targeting represent?
According to yourarticlelibrary.com, market targeting refers to the process of selecting your target market from the entire market. The target market consists of groups/groups of buyers to whom the company wants to satisfy or for whom the product is manufactured, price is set, promotion efforts are made, and distribution network is prepared. Visit www.yourarticlelibrary.com/economics/market/market-targeting-introduction-definition-procedure-and-methods/48609/.
The importance of targeting your marketing efforts cannot be overemphasized. With it, you will be sure you are placing your products in front of people who are interested in them.
Furthermore, it helps your marketing efforts to be more effective and productive. Imagine trying to reach everybody with your message, it is quite confusing to come up with a message that will appeal to everybody.
However, imagine the advert becomes focused on teenagers; it becomes easier to come with a plan that will capture their interest. It is easier to come up with a message for a specific class of persons than to come with a message for everybody.
Finally, targeting your marketing efforts will help you spend your energy in the most profitable direction – in the direction of people who are ready to pay for your products or services.
Be Consistent
Have you ever wondered why organizations like Netflix, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. never relent in their marketing, even though they are already famous and rich?I believe the answer can be found in the fact that they understand how important it is to be consistent in their marketing.
Fact is, it takes consistent exposure to your products for a consumer to be familiar with them. It takes even more exposure for them to take any action with regards to your product. This explains why even established brands like Coca-Cola invest a chunk of resources into marketing.
According to brandnicely.com, it takes consistent marketing/adverts for your audience to understand what your brand represents. Each time they are exposed to your adverts, they get a better understanding of your brand. This makes it necessary for marketing managers not to relent in their marketing efforts. Visit www.brandnicely.com/consistency-in-advertising/, for more information.
Integrate Your Marketing
Adroll.com describes integrating marketing as the process of unifying all aspects of marketing communication — such as advertising, Public Relations, and social media — and using their respective mix of media, channels, and tactics to deliver a seamless and customer-centric experience. For more details, visit https://www.adroll.com/blog/marketing/integrated-marketing-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters#.
As the name suggests, marketing integrating refers to synchronizing all your organizations marketing efforts, such that each of them reinforces the other, and further convinces prospective customers to make use of your products or services.
For instance, your social media messaging is the same with or supports your TV, billboard, etc. messaging. Presenting disjointed messaging across your advert platforms will only confuse your audience and kill whatever interest they may have had in your products.
Use Social Media Marketing
Investopedia defines social media marketing as the use of social media and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Social media marketing is necessary for any organization that hopes to stay relevant. This is because of the numerous benefits that social media marketing offers.
Some of the benefits of social media marketing include:
- It boosts brand awareness.
- It provides a platform for interaction with your customers as well as potential customers.
- Helps to boost the sales of your products and services, etc.
For more information on the benefits of social media marketing visit (please add the link to my article on the benefits of social media marketing, as I do not have the link).
Maintain a strong online presence
Beyond being active on social media, your organization needs to have a strong internet presence to boost its marketing results. Lots of businesses today are done on the internet, this makes it necessary to have a strong presence on the internet.
Climb.pcc.edu suggests getting your business website or blog registered on major online directories such as Angie’s List, Yelp, Google My Business, etc. Doing this will help boost the SEO ranking of your website, and offer several other benefits to your organization.
Post-High-Quality Content
Why do you use Google to do most of your research? The answer can be found in the quality of the service they provide. The same holds true in content marketing.
Content marketing occupies an important position in today’s world of marketing, as a lot of consumers consult online content for purchase advice. Providing high-quality content on your online platforms will help establish your blog or website as a go-to place for quality information.
This will help you earn the trust of your audience, as well as their demand for your products or services. It is, therefore, necessary to always provide top-of-the-range content on your blogs, website, etc.
Measure Progress
When we measure progress, we review efforts put in so far, resources invested in marketing initiatives, vis-à-vis set goals. In other words, we look out for how much of our set marketing goals we have been able to achieve so far while considering how much it has cost.
At the beginning of every marketing calendar, marketing goals should be set and strategies to achieve them should also be written. It is on the basis of these set goals that progress can be measured.
For instance, if the set goal was to make 50,000 sales in 2021. When we measure progress here, one question we must ask is how much sales we have made so far.
Measuring progress is key in your marketing management efforts, as it helps you identify how much progress you have made and at what cost. In addition, it gives you the opportunity to identify areas you need to direct more effort in your marketing, as well as areas you need to discontinue.
It also helps you identify new initiatives that could help you achieve your goals. Intechnic.com offers valuable insight on how to set marketing goals and measure them.
Be Patient
You might have heard the story of the Chinese bamboo that does not really grow in the first four years after planting it. However, if you continue to care for it, in its fifth year, it grows as much as 80 feet in six weeks!
Marketing can be like this sometimes. If you are doing the right things to boost your marketing and it seems like you are not getting the result you desire, we recommend you do the following:
- Review your activities to see if there are mistakes.
- If there are no mistakes, tweak your strategy a bit to see if there is anything you are missing.
- Review the marketing strategy of your competition for insight.
- Organize customer surveys to get fresh insight.
- Finally, be patient. Keep at it until your marketing producesa commensurate result.
Marketing sometimes requires time to yield expected results. It takes time to build a large following on social media, to build a brand name, to build a blog or website with high organic traffic, etc. So be patient as you work towards a better marketing outcome.
Conclusion
This article has tried to discuss key factors you should be aware of in your Marketing Management. Feel free to add these ideas to what you already have, as they are guaranteed to yield great results. We wish you success as you proceed in your marketing adventures. To your success!
