Marketing Management: A Brief Introduction
What is marketing management? It’s the process of planning and executing strategies to bring products or services to market. It includes market research, identifying customer needs, designing a product based on customer requirements, pricing the product for profit, distributing the product/service through channels selected by management to create demand among consumers. Over recent years, the term “marketing” has evolved from being just about advertising or promotion to have a much broader meaning that encompasses all aspects of delivering value to customers.
Marketing today is about understanding your target customers so well you can meet their needs before they even know what those needs are. It’s also about building relationships with them so they’ll want more from you in the future – not just when it comes time for them to buy, but throughout their entire lifecycle.
The traditional marketing management approach is about creating awareness of the product or service by communicating its value proposition through various touch points – especially advertising. It emphasizes finding new customers through new-customer acquisition and increasing sales among existing customers through loyalty programs. This type of marketing is called traditional marketing; it’s the same approach used by most businesses, but it is no longer enough on its own.
Traditional marketing :
This type of general promotion cannot sustain a competitive advantage for very long because competitors can copy each other’s activities quickly and inexpensively. Some marketing management firms try to gain a competitive advantage through superior products or services; they attempt to look different from competitors and appear more attractive. But the difficulty of being unique makes this an uphill battle. As a result, most companies try to gain an advantage by offering lower prices or better value; they compete on price or value rather than differentiation.
Businesses that turn their marketing efforts into a strategic asset do so by using integrated marketing.
Integrated marketing :
The customer value chain is the process companies use to identify the true worth of what they do for their customers and improve it. This means knowing who your “customers” are (the stakeholders you serve with your products or services), deciding which of those stakeholders’ needs you will try to satisfy, and then determining how best to communicate with those stakeholders to create true value for them.
The customer value chain helps companies recognize that most products and services only provide value when delivered as part of an overall solution. The solution itself may involve multiple suppliers and stages of development/production, creating a complex environment to manage.
The customer value chain also helps companies determine where along the delivery chain they can create the most customer value and still make a profit – often by working with other companies who are providing value-adding services or components of the overall solution. This is why modern companies tend to buy rather than build critical assets, even if they can make or do the same things cheaper; they buy these assets to improve their abilities.
One of the most widespread marketing applications is advertising, which seeks to inform customers about products and brands while also influencing customer behavior.
For example, if you want to use an ad: it could be in the form of a television commercial, radio spot, web banner ad, brochure, salesperson’s speech or an interactive online experience; you need a real expert.
Marketing management is not an easy task, so you need a good and experienced firm to do it!