marketing 8

Marketing Analysis

Managing the marketing function begins with a complete analysis of the company’s situation. The company must analyze its markets and marketing environment to find attractive opportunities and avoid environmental threats. The marketer should conduct a SWOT analysis, by which it evaluates the company’s overall strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Marketing Planning

Marketing planning involves deciding on marketing strategies that will help the company attain its overall strategic objectives. A detailed marketing plan is needed for each business, product, or brand. A marketing strategy consists of specific strategies: target markets, positioning, the marketing mix, and marketing expenditure levels.

Marketing Implementation

Marketing implementation is the process that turns marketing plans into marketing actions in order to accomplish strategic marketing objectives. Implementation involves day-to-day, month-to-month activities that effectively put the marketing plan to work. Implementation addresses the who, where, when, and how. In an increasingly connected world, people at all levels of the marketing system must work together to implement marketing strategies and plans. Successful marketing implementation depends on how well the company blends its people, organizational structure, decision and reward systems, and company culture into a cohesive action program that supports its strategies.

Marketing Department Organization

The company must design a marketing organization that can carry out marketing strategies and plans. The most common form of marketing organization is the functional organization. Under this organization functional specialists head the various marketing activities. A company that sells across the country or internationally often uses a geographic organization. Companies with many very different products or brands often create a product management organization. A product manager develops and implements a complete strategy and marketing program for a specific product or brand. For companies that sell one product line to many different types of markets and customers that have different needs and preferences, a market or customer management organization might be best. A market management organization is similar to the product management organization.  Market managers are responsible for developing marketing strategies and plans for their specific markets or customers. Large companies that produce many different products flowing into many different geographic and customer markets usually employ some combination of the functional, geographic, product, and market organization forms. Many companies are finding that today’s marketing environment calls for less focus on products, brands, and territories and more focus on customers and customer relationships.  More and more companies are shifting their brand management focus toward customer management.

Marketing Control

Marketing control involves evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective action to ensure that objectives are attained. Operating control involves checking ongoing performance against the annual plan and taking corrective action when necessary. Its purpose is to ensure that the company achieves the sales, profits, and other goals set out in its annual plan. Strategic control involves looking at whether the company’s basic strategies are well matched to its opportunities. Marketing strategies and programs can quickly become outdated, and each company should periodically reassess its overall approach to the marketplace.