Steps in Strategic Marketing Management

Marketing is a process whereby the company promotes its products & services and spreads brand awareness. Marketing plays a key role in introducing a company’s product among the consumers and in elevating the business. However, it isn’t a child’s play to advertise one’s brand. Sometimes, one strategy works for a brand while it is a total flop for another brand. Furthermore, a strategy that was successful three years ago may not garner the same results today. So, the marketing strategies should be based on the type of business and various other factors.

Businesses need to have an action plan in place and they need to formulate strategies that can effectively promote the brand’s offerings. That is why businesses seek for professionals who can understand the market and exploit their knowledge in marketing management to create stellar marketing campaigns. In general, strategic marketing management consists of three steps:

Market Learning

The consumer trends keep on changing from time to time. So, the first step should be  understanding of customer preferences. The firms should conduct surveys and research to understand consumer preferences over time. Thus, it is the task of marketing managers to formulate a survey questionnaire that can help in interacting with the customers directly and understanding their perspective. The firms should try to understand why consumers prefer a brand/product over its adversaries. The survey findings and feedback received from the customers are then combined together to formulate strategies. Market learning is an essential process as it assists the marketing managers to fine-tune their strategies according to consumer trends.

Market Sensing

Basically, marketing sensing is a process of judging the mood of the market. It is an indirect method of finding trends in the market. It refers to a process where the managers combine consumer preference data with their market knowledge and experience to comprehend the way the market is moving. Thus, the marketing managers collect market data, analyse it and then put it together with a strategic model of marketing in order to sense the consumer behavior. In this way, they come to know what will work in the market and what will not.

Market Intuiting

Market intuiting is the third step in strategic marketing that takes forward the concept of market sensing and market learning. It refers to the process where the marketing managers comprehend the ‘mind and soul of the market’ and accordingly make future predictions. Here the managers get an intuitive understanding of the way the market is moving. The managers can find out whether consumers will flock towards a brand or abandon it completely by having an intuitive understanding of the market. This approach helps in finding out how the consumers would behave in the future. In this way, the businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies to cater to the consumers.

Closing Thoughts

The business landscape is evolving rapidly. So, it isn’t enough to simply measure the data and create marketing campaigns. But, the marketing managers should consider consumer trends, consumer behavior and future trends to create effective marketing strategies. The marketing managers need to adopt strategic marketing to learn and sense how the market moves. They should know the best ways to gain insights into the mind and soul of the customers. But no college or institute emphasise on teaching these strategic steps to the marketing managers. However, when you pursue a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) course in the specialization of Marketing Management from MIT School of Distance Education (MIT-SDE), you are taught to master these skills. So, what are you waiting for? Enroll for a course in MIT-SDE right away!

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Different marketing environment that affects marketing management

Marketing management is the art to advertise the products and services ultimately spreading the words in such a way that the customers are accustomed to the products and they are convinced to buy the products. There are several factors that the Different marketing environment that affects marketing Management as well as the firm’s functioning. These factors come under the marketing environment. In general, marketing environment includes various factors that affect the firm’s operations internally as well as externally and restrict the firm to serve or maintain a healthy relationship with targeted customers.

1. INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

Internal environment consists of the internal factors of the firm affecting the marketing environment such as employees, assets (like plant and machinery), products served, policies, as well as the structure of the organisation. Such factors are easily controllable by the firm.

2. EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

The factors that affect the firm externally and which are uncontrollable especially when preparing the marketing strategies come under the external environment. The external environment is further divided into two parts:

a)   Micro Environment

The factors which affect the decision making and the firm’s performance fall under the micro environment. Listed below are the factors under the micro environment which affect the marketing:

• Customers

Customers are at the heart of an organisation. Without the customers, marketing strategies will remain incomplete since they play quite an imperative role in b2b as well as in b2c trade. The customers define the reasons why they should procure the products and how the product serves their wants.

• Competition

There are various competitors in the market that sell homogeneous products.  The marketing strategy of the company is prepared after understanding how the customers approach the competitors or they approach their customers, at what price do they vend the product and any product differentiation if present.

• Suppliers

Suppliers are quite important for any organisation because they provide the firm with the required goods. The firm’s success depends upon the quality of goods. Both the quality and quantity of goods is the key to the success of the firm that is provided by the supplier and the supplier’s power depends upon his reputation in the market.

b)     Macro Environment

The demographic, technological or physical factors or forces which affect the decision making and the firm’s performance fall under macro environment. Listed below are the factors under micro environment which affect the marketing environment:

• Demographic Factors

Marketing strategies are affected by various demographic factors such as country, lifestyle, ethnicity, didactic levels. It is mainly dependent on the nature and volume of the population, per capita income of the people as well as the migration of the people in urban areas.

• Technology Factors

Gradually, enhanced technology is changing the business environment. People are becoming more addicted to the internet and are adopting online businesses. Since competition is growing, the main challenge for a company is to stop selling obsolete products and continuously bringing novelty in their technology.

• Political Environment

The political environment is bringing changes as more and more companies are leaving behind the socialistic system and going after the market-based system. However, before starting its business in a particular country, a company must clearly investigate its tax policy, competition policy as well as speculation policy to continue its successful and uninterrupted run.

Closing Notes

So, these were the factors that the marketing manager must consider before formulating any marketing strategy. At MIT School of Distance Education (MIT-SDE), we train our students to create effective marketing strategies by considering all the essential factors that are a part of the marketing environment. We offer Distance MBA course in Marketing Management whereby the managerial skills and knowledge of candidates is enhanced so that they can immediately get absorbed in the industry after the completion of course.  So, what are you waiting for? Enhance your employ ability skills with MIT-SDE’s distance learning course.

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