Marketing management process: An Overview

The marketing process is a process of analyzing the opportunities in the market, selection of the target markets, and development of the Marketing Mix and management of the marketing efforts. Below are the 4 marketing process steps that involved in targeting the right audience in the market.

The Marketing Process Steps

1. Analysis of the opportunities in the market.
2. Selection of the target market.
3. Development of marketing mix.
4. Management of marketing efforts.

(1) Analysis of the Opportunities in the Market

The first component of the Marketing Process is to analyze the market in order to find the opportunities that should be availed. These opportunities are related to the needs and wants of the customers that are not properly satisfied by the competitors in the market. A company that is initiating the marketing process focuses the opportunities that would be beneficial in the long run success so that its performance would be effectively improved. For this purpose, the company gets help from the marketing information system (MIS), which plays a significant role in providing useful information about the market.

• Marketing Environment – Micro and Macro Environment

The company also conducts effective market research that would tell him the value able information about the customers, competitors, general trends, and any extraordinary change occurred in the market that can be useful for the company. Then company identifies the potential opportunities from the collected information and split the whole market into different segment. These segments are based on some factors like age group, geographical location etc. The company evaluates each segment separately to check the potential of the segment in the light of its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, it selects the target market segment to proceed further.

(2) Selection of the Target Market

This is the most important step of the marketing process in which the target customers are selected. For this purpose, the company conducts a careful analysis of the target markets in order to choose the final customers. As it is obvious that the company do not satisfy the needs and wants of the whole market therefore it must divide the whole market into different segments and choose the segment that will best meet its strengths and opportunities. In this regards, there are certain step you need to follow.

• Market Segmentation:

The process in which the whole market is split into different units of consumers, each unit having similar wants, characteristics and behavior of consumers which need different marketing mixes and strategies.

• Market Targeting

In this process the targeted segments of the total market are evaluated to ascertain the attractiveness of each segment so that the one or two most suitable and potential segments should be selected and entered. The simple rule of selecting the target unit or segment is that it must provide the opportunity to the company to create potential customer value in the long run. Another important rule is that a certain company has the option to satisfy the needs and wants of one or two segments. In this case the company focuses on that relevant segments and develops its products and strategies for them only. Such small segments are called “niches”. The company has also another option to split the whole market into different segments and offers different products and marketing mixes to each segment of the market. But the most effective method is to focus on one or two segments and after succeeding in those segments, further new segments should be targeted.

• Market Positioning:

This concept relates to the positioning of the product of a company in the minds of the customers as compared to the products of competitors. In other words the company tries to maintain a clear and specific perception in customers about its products. When a company wants to position its product, it first specifies the competitive edge for which it offers competitive advantages to its target customers. The whole marketing program of the company should concentrate its identified positioning strategy. The positioning is effective when the company truly provides the efficient, competitive offering to its customers in order to give them maximum value as compared to the offering of competitors.

(3) Development of Marketing Mix

After setting of a complete marketing strategy of a company, then it is ready to initiate the planning of its marketing mix.

• Marketing Mix

Marketing Mix is composed of certain variables of markets that are mixed by the company in order to generate certain desired response in the targeted segments.

In fact the demand of the product is influenced by the use of certain activities of the marketing mix. The marketing mix is composed of the following four P’s.

01- Product:  means any offering (goods or services) to the market by the company.

02- Price:   means the money paid by the customers to obtain the product.

03- Place:  means the efforts which ensure the availability of the product in the market to customers.

04- Promotion:  means all the efforts by the company that ensure the sale of products to customers through better provision of information about the advantages of the product.

A company develops an effective marketing program in which a suitable combination of marketing mix is blended so that they are efficiently coordinated into a useful program to provide the greater customer value in order to accomplish the company’s objectives.

4P’s of marketing mix are from the seller perspective. In certain cases the 4C’s are replaced by the 4P’s which are

1. Product means Customer Solution
2. Price means Customer Cost
3. Place means Convenience
4. Promotion means Communication

(4) Management of Marketing Efforts

This is actually the action phase of the development marketing program in which a suitable marketing mix is set for a target market. For the management of marketing efforts four functions are adopted which are as follow.

01- Analysis of the Market in which the company identifies the internal strengths and weaknesses along with the external opportunities and threats.

02- Marketing Planning in which certain marketing plans or strategies are developed so that the overall objective of the marketing should be accomplished.

03- Marketing Implementation in which the developed plans and strategies are practically implemented in order to achieve the marketing objectives.

04- Marketing Control in which the performance results of the marketing plans and strategies are evaluated and necessary steps are taken to ensure the accomplishment of overall marketing objectives of the company.