Marketing Management

This week – fruitsofsuccess- has been  featuring a  Marketing Week. There will a new post each day on a marketing related topic. To round off this mini series today’s subject is....

Marketing Management

Marketing Management can be simply defined as making the Marketing Process happen.  There are five principal stages:

Stage 1:       Planning the different stages of the Marketing Process

The Marketing Process identifies several different stages.  The Marketing Manager has to plan the timing of all the different steps to meet the deadlines and time objectives.

Stage 2:       Providing the different resources required

The Human Resources (e.g. salespeople, advertising agencies, PR, administrative staff) required have to be selected, trained, directed, coordinated and controlled.

The Financial and Material Resources (e.g. literature, stocks, capital equipment, promotional materials, finance for all aspects of operations) have to be budgeted for and their supply has to be assured at the right times.

Stage 3:       Organising the internal structure of the business

The structure of the business must be suited to working in a marketing-oriented or customer-oriented fashion.  The traditional structure of a whole business is by FUNCTION (production, sales, finance, personnel, Rand  D etc.).  To keep closer contact with clients and provide a local service, it has been traditional to organise the Sales Department on a GEOGRAPHICAL basis.  To make the whole business more marketing-oriented, another type of organisation can be superimposed on the traditional ones by having a person or a team responsible for cutting across traditional functional and geographical lines to represent the overall interests of a product (GROUP), a BRAND, a CUSTOMER TYPE or a MARKET SEGMENT.

Stage 4:       Implementing the marketing plan and coordinating the different activities and techniques

The separate hand-out on the Marketing Process identifies all the separate activities and techniques which have to be coordinated.  This stage of Marketing Management also involves all the methods and techniques used in any other area of management and can really be summarised as making sure that Stages 1-3 work properly.

Stage 5:       Adapting objectives, plans and strategies to allow for changes in external influences

Internal management has to allow for external influences such as:

·         Laws ·         Politics ·         Social Attitudes

·         Competition (direct and indirect) ·         Economic Factors ·         International Relations

As these factors are constantly changing, a major challenge for marketing management is to keep in touch with developments outside the company and to react to them by adapting Stages 1-4 appropriately.

Related Links on Marketing

The Marketing Model

 

Consumer Behaviour

 

Marketing Research part 1

 

Marketing Research part 2

 

  

Product 

 

Price

 

Promotion ( Marketing Communications)

 

Place

 

Marketing Management