MANAGING THE MARKETING PROCESS
Marketing management involves marketing analysis, planning, implementing and controlling a marketing strategy. It is involved with product and service development as well as supervising basic marketing functions such as promotion, pricing and distribution.
What is marketing planning?
Marketing planning consists of making decisions about the overall direction of a marketing effort and is a function of effective marketing research. Areas that have to be planned include the company`s marketing mix, the marketing budget and the priority allocations, distribution methods, brand names, and packaging.
A marketing plan should have a brief executive summary giving the plan`s highlights and major conclusions. It should also discuss the current market, product, competitive and distribution environment. All relevant variables and data are discussed with an analysis of how they impact the marketing plan. Analyses are provided of current opportunities, product market strengths and weaknesses, and of major issues needing attention. Financial and market objectives are also detailed. The marketing plan is used for developing an overall marketing strategy.
What is marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a comprehensive marketing methodology that is developed as a result of extensive marketing planning. A marketing strategy details the following factors: target markets, product line, product positioning, price, distribution channels, sales force, service procedures, advertising and promotion methodologies, product research and development expenditure targets, and marketing research.
How are marketing departments organized?
Many types of marketing organizations currently exist. Companies often create various combinations of marketing organizations. The basic types of marketing organizations include the following: functional, geographical, product and brand management, and by markets.
What is a functional marketing organization?
A functional marketing organization consists of marketing personnel typically managed by a marketing vice president. It is the most widely used marketing organization. Since a functional marketing organization is not specialized, it is the simplest to manage. While this is a strength when a firm has relatively few products and services, it can also be a liability as a firm`s market offerings become more diversified and specialized. Since a functional marketing organization has broad responsibilities, marketing personnel can compete with each other for specialized product or service resources. Figure 3.1 shows a typical functional marketing organization chart.
FIGURE 3.1
FUNCTIONAL MARKETING ORGANIZATION CHART
What is a geographical marketing organization?
National companies often find it is more effective having regional sales managers reporting to one national sales manager. The regional sales managers directly supervise a certain number of sales personnel. This facilitates regional market responses while freeing the national sales manager from excessive responsibility. Figure 3.2 shows a geographical marketing organization.
FIGURE 3.2
GEOGRAPHICAL MARKETING ORGANIZATION
What is a product and brand-directed marketing organization?
Product and brand-oriented marketing structures normally occur when organizations have experienced a large increase in products being offered to the market. Corporate management finds managing individual products and brands to be too time intensive and therefore choose individual managers who specialize in a particular product or brand. Product and brand organizations are essentially separate entities that interface with all elements of the larger organization. Thus, product and brand managers interface with the overall organization`s production, promotion, advertising, legal, budgetary, research, purchasing and related functions.
Product and brand managers become deeply knowledgeable about their product areas and can react quickly to market changes. However, product and brand management organizations often multiply to include even minor products. This imposes a large financial cost on the overall organization. Additionally, product and brand managers often compete with each other for organizational resources, creating a highly charged corporate environment.
What is a market organization?
Companies often deal with many different target markets. However, each target market has its own distinctive needs (example, some companies sell products or services to various industrial sectors as well as to federal, state and local governments). Often products are developed just for certain target markets (e.g., a book publisher will produce books for the primary, secondary, college and trade markets). When the market potential is great enough, companies often organize departments to coincide with those specific markets.
The market organization focuses attention on the marketing function. It allows for greater concentration of effort on the markets that are essential to the organization`s success. Figure 3.3 shows a market organization for a publisher.
FIGURE 3.3
MARKET ORGANIZATION FOR A PUBLISHER
How are marketing plans implemented?
An organizational marketing plan has no values unless it is put into action. A close management interface with all aspects of the organization including production, promotion, marketing, research and design is essential to successfully implement the plan. Successful implementation requires creating a specific management plan to carry out elements of the marketing plan.