What is Marketing Management?
Marketing management is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling marketing activities in order to achieve the desired marketing goals of the organization. It is a customer-centric approach.
The main activity of marketing management includes finding the target market, getting the market, and earning greater customer satisfaction by delivering and communicating superior products and services. It aims at meeting customer demands better than rivals do.
It simply is the combination of marketing and management. Marketing is the process of getting potential clients or customers interested in your products and services. Whereas, management is the administration and coordination of tasks to achieve the desired goals.
By combining both of them, marketing management can be best defined as the process of setting marketing strategies, implementing them, and managing all the relevant activities so as to achieve the targeted marketing goals as effectively and efficiently as possible.
This has been an important marketing practice in today’s competitive world. As the market and customers‘ expectations are changing more rapidly than ever this marketing practice is becoming more suitable nowadays.
Objectives of Marketing Management
Marketing management aims to best utilize the 4ps i.e. product, price, place, and promotion. It creates the appropriate products and services, delivers them to the target market, and communicates the value of the products to the customers.
Its main objectives can be pointed out below:
- Attracting and creating new customers.
- Satisfying the needs of customers and retaining them.
- Maintain and increase the profitability of the firm.
- Increase the market share.
- Uplift the living standards of customers.
Characteristics of Marketing Management
The following are the key features of marketing management.
Art and Science
Marketing management is an art and science. Marketing managers use their arts to manage some activities – in addition to this, they apply some proven tools and techniques to achieve goals.
Customer-Oriented
It is a customer-oriented program. Its main goal is to achieve the highest customer value and satisfaction.
STP
STP means segmentation, targeting, and positioning. It comprises choosing target markets by using STP and marketing research tools and procedures to better understand the needs, wants, and preferences of the target audience.
Related: STP Marketing Model
Market Research
Understanding client needs wants, and desires are crucial while conducting market research. To remain relevant in the market, a regular and organized program of marketing research is needed. Moreover, creativity and innovation are needed to match products to customer needs.
Techniques of Marketing Management
Marketing management has its philosophies which are commonly known as marketing concepts namely production, product, selling, marketing, societal, and holistic concepts.
Each of these marketing techniques is different from the others, however, one thing is common in all these marketing philosophies is that they ultimately aim to increase companies’ profitability.
The practice of these marketing techniques came into existence mainly from the industrial age when the product concept was most popular. Later, other marketing concepts are developed and the latest of these is holistic marketing. Let’s understand each of these marketing management techniques.
Production Concept
This marketing concept came into practice before the 1930s. It is a marketing philosophy that explains consumers choose the product that has a low price and is widely available.
It emphasizes companies to do mass production, increase production efficiency, and achieve economies of scale. It believes product price is the key factor consumers consider when they buy the product.
This marketing technique is unuseful in today’s market where most consumers look for product quality. However, it is useful when labor cost is low and companies aim to capture big markets.
Product Concept
This marketing technique came after the 1930s. The product concept assumes that product quality is the key variable people look into products. It believes consumers purchase a product that has the best quality.
It argues companies to provide qualitative, high-performing, products having unique yet reasonable features products. And, should continuously improve the quality as per the changes in the market.
This marketing management technique is most useful in today’s market where most customers are quality-centric and the competitive market forces companies to produce such products.
Selling Concept
This is an aggressive method of selling products. It includes heavy promotion, aggressive marketing, and increasing sales as far as possible. It does not consider the needs and wants of customers it only focuses on increasing sales volume.
As such the selling technique might not be useful when companies goal is to increase customer satisfaction. However, it is a useful technique if there is a need to sell products like insurance policies, expensive products, and other unsought products.
Marketing Concept
This is the customer-focused marketing technique. It explains companies should produce products based on the customer’s needs and wants. It strongly emphasizes organizations to make products only they can sell.
It is an outside-in marketing technique, in which, marketers first go and understand customers’ needs, wants, tastes, and preferences, and then only they produce goods. It has become an important marketing technique in this competitive business setting.
Societal Marketing Concept
The societal marketing concept is the same as the marketing concept but it has one additional feature that is along with customer satisfaction its other goal is for society’s welfare.
It is based on the belief that society’s welfare is key for businesses to sustain in the long run. So, it argues companies to provide products that satisfy customers’ demands and do not harm the social climate. It aims at generating profits through communities’ welfare.
Holistic Marketing
Holistic marketing is a broad and integrated marketing concept. It is the latest thinking in marketing philosophies. It explains an organization should work as a system and that all its interconnected parts should be focused on the same goal.
A system of connected and related components is how an organization is seen in holistic marketing. It emphasizes that, just as every organ in the human body must function properly for the body as a whole to be healthy, a holistic approach maintains that every department, business unit, and work team within a company must perform effectively.
Why Marketing Management Is Important?
Marketing management is necessary to meet the expectations of customers. As it argues about working on the needs and expectations of customers – it is the most effective marketing tool to meet customers’ demands. The following are some of its importance to the business.
- Helps to satisfy customers.
- Increase sales and profitability.
- Increase customer retention.
- Provide competitive advantage.
- Helps companies to build a good public image and reputation.
- It helps businesses to promote new ideas.
- Considers sustaining the business in the long run.
Marketing management is important to run successful marketing campaigns and realize the desired goals stated in the company’s statements. It can be a strong backbone for companies to achieve marketing goals.
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