Marketing management





Marketing management is the practical application of marketing techniques.
It is the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs
designed to create, build, and maintain mutually beneficial exchanges with
target markets. The marketing manager has the task of influencing the level,
timing, and composition of demand in way that will achieve organizational
objectives.

Marketing management involves:

   * Understanding the economic structure of your industry
   * Identify segments within your market
   * Identifying your target market
   * Do marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic,
     and behavoural) of your core customers
   * Understand your competitors and their products
   * Develop new products
   * Establish environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and
     threats
   * Understand your company's strengths and weaknesses
   * Audit your customers' experience of your brand in full
   * Develop marketing strategies for each of your products using the
     marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
   * Create a sustainable competitive advantage
   * Understand where you want your brands to be in the future, and write
     marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
   * Setup feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process

Recent changes and future trends in Marketing Management

   * was organized by product units..............
        o now organized by customer segment
   * was segmented on geographic or demographic variables.................
        o now segmented in depth using all relevent variables, especially
          behavioural variables like useage rate, loyalty, or benefit
   * was short term focus on profitable transactions.................
        o now look at customers' lifetime value
   * was focus on capturing new customers..................
        o now emphasis on keeping existing customers
   * was performance measured by financial metrics...........
        o now performance measured by financial, strategic, and marketing
          metrics
   * was satisfy shareholders........................
        o now satisfy all stakeholders
   * was company was the unit of analysis..............
        o now the whole value chain is the unit of analysis
   * was build sales through advertising..................
        o now build brands through a coordinated integrated marketing
          strategy that involves all points of contact between the company
          and the public
   * was marketing department does the marketing..............
        o now everyone in the company does some marketing
   * was individual and hierarchical work structures............
        o now cross funtional teams
   * was developing and implementing a marketing plan took years..........
        o now it takes months (or weeks)