Strategic Marketing Management

 

An Introduction :

which of these marketing concept do you belong to :

• the production concept, 
• the product concept, 
• the selling concept, 
• the marketing concept, and 
• the societal marketing concept.

let discuss :

Marketing is the process of identifying and developing products that suit the needs of the customer even as the organization makes profits. The marketing mix is a unique combination of the four P's of marketing namely product, price, place, and promotion. After taking into consideration the other factors that affect business, another three P's – people, physical evidence, and process management have been added to the four P's.

There are five basic concepts in marketing namely the production concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, and the societal marketing concept. Production-oriented organizations focus on low cost and high availability of products. These organizations feel that high availability creates its own demand. Product-oriented organizations focus on the quality of the product. These organizations believe that buyers prefer quality products to low cost products. Selling-oriented organizations believe that products need to be advertised and aggressively sold. These organizations believe that when left alone, buyers do not purchase enough of an organization's products. They therefore focus on the selling concept.

 The marketing concept focuses on customer satisfaction and customer requirements. The societal marketing concept focuses on the ethical issues of an organization while marketing. For an organization to be successful the marketing plan has to be aligned with corporate strategy. Strategy means to lead. Strategy helps an organization to use the resources optimally. Business strategy helps to plan with the objective of achieving long-term objectives. A good strategy answers the questions of what needs to be achieved, where it needs to be achieved, and how it needs to be achieved. The components of a well-defined strategy are size, goals, resource utilization, sustainable competitive advantage, and synergy. There are three levels of strategy namely corporate level strategy, business level strategy, and functional level strategy. Corporate strategy deals with strategy formulation and planning at the top level. It is about coordinating activities across various businesses. Business level strategy deals with the strategies that allow a company to deal with competition in its industry or business. Functional level strategy deals with the strategy for a particular product or market. The strategic management process involves strategic analysis, strategic choice, and strategic implementation.

Strategic marketing is the process of strategy development by regularly considering the marketing environment and customer satisfaction. It gives an organization the competitive advantage over its rivals. Marketing strategy involves identifying the marketing objectives and developing and implementing marketing programs. The strategic marketing process involves the marketing analysis, analysis of the marketing situation, formulating a marketing strategy, market program development, and implementing and managing marketing strategy.
 

Creating a Great Business Marketing Plan

 

A marketing plan is when a business outlining his marketing strategy and tactics. It's often focused on a specific period of time and covers a variety of marketing-related details, such as costs, goals, and action steps.
Smart small business owners know the importance of a business plan, which outlines their company's course for success. One critical portion of that plan is the marketing strategy.  

Marketing strategy is the section of your business plan that outlines your overall game plan for finding clients and customers for your business. Sometimes marketing strategy is confused with a marketing plan, but they are different.

Because this strategy is buried in the larger business plan, you may not give marketing the attention it deserves. However, an in-depth layout of a marketing strategy can reveal opportunities from a new audience or potential product line, pitfalls in pricing, competition reaction, and potential reach. After all, you don't want to miss out on the profits you could be making with an effective marketing plan.

The goal of marketing is to connect your business’ value to the right customer base. It’s a simple concept but it can take on a million different shades.

• What demographics make up your customer base?
• Where do they live?
• Where do they hang out online?
• How do they look for products in your niche?
• Who do the listen when making decisions relative to your product?

A marketing plan describes who your customers are, where they get information and how you expect to reach them. 
Here are a few important things to keep in mind as you create your plan.

1. Know your niche.

the Wikipedia defines  A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that it is intended to target. It is also a small market segment.
the business dictionary defines niche marketing: Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population
 
Before you can write a marketing plan, you need to find and understand your niche – the specific demographic you're targeting, said online business and marketing strategist Amber Dee. For example, if your business sells 30-minute meals, then those who work traditional 9-to-5 jobs are likely in your market. Study that group of individuals to understand their struggles and learn how your business can solve the problem, Dee said. Research your target market by asking those within it.

2. Develop clear insight into why a potential customer would use your business.

Figure out the core need that your product or service will meet, said Robert J. Thomas, a marketing professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Is it to help your customers get through the day more easily? Do their job more efficiently? Be respected and admired by friends? Your offering should be designed to solve client problems or meet customer needs better than the competition can.

3. Identify competitors that would also want your target customers.

No matter how original your product or service may be, there is always competition for your target customer's dollar. Small businesses seldom take the time to study their competitors in depth, or determine competition that may be outside their industry but just as capable of luring the customer away, said Thomas. Knowing who they are, what their core competitive advantages are and how they will respond to your offering (price cuts, increased communication, etc.) will help you figure out strategies to combat such losses.

4. State your brand position for your target customers.

Ultimately, your brand and what it symbolizes for customers will be your strongest competitive advantage, Thomas said. You should be able to write down a simple declarative sentence of how you will meet customer needs and beat the competition. The best positioning statements are those that are single-minded and focus on solving a problem for the customer in a way that promotes the best value, he added.

5. Audit if all else fails.

Don't panic if your initial marketing strategy doesn't give you the results you wanted, said Dee. Auditing your business, which you can do with the help of a third-party contractor, can help you recover.
Dee advised understanding what products or services you are offering, then identifying who you help and how you help them. Next, check all your marketing platforms to ensure they reflect that message. If your perception of your brand's message is one thing, Dee said, but your audience interprets that message as something entirely different, that is a disconnect to be fixed.

 

6.Marketing approaches

Now that you know the elements of the plan, you need to figure out how you are going to reach that target customer. Aside from traditional print and broadcast media, here are three tech-driven marketing channels that many of today's business owners utilize.

Social media

Social media has become an essential part of businesses' marketing plans because every type of customer is on some type of platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. Small business owners may feel overwhelmed at the possibilities but should focus on the ones that can benefit them the most.
Brett Farmiloe, founder of internet marketing company Markitors, advised companies starting out in social media to get to know their customers and what platforms they use.
"Figure out where your customers are spending their time, and set up shop on those platforms," Farmiloe told Business News Daily. "Develop a content strategy that can be executed internally, [and then] execute your strategy by posting branded content on your selected platforms."

Email

Though email marketing may not be as new a concept as social media marketing, it is an effective and popular choice for small business owners. Companies can implement email marketing techniques in a number of ways, including newsletters, promotional campaigns and transactional emails. For instance, MailChimp and Constant Contact help companies to manage their email campaigns.
Farmiloe noted that companies can set their email marketing efforts apart by segmenting their markets.
"Not all subscribers want to receive the same blast," he said. "Smart email marketers take the time to segment subscribers at the outset, and then continue to segment based on subscriber activity. Through segmentation, companies reduce the amount of unsubscribes, increase open rates and, most importantly, increase the amount of actions taken from an email send."

Mobile

The popularity of smartphones and tablets has changed the way companies target their customers. Since people have the devices with them nearly all the time, companies are looking to implement strategies that reach customers on their gadgets.  
"Mobile marketing is interruptive," Farmiloe said. "It's because of this power that a marketer has to let the consumer determine how and when to receive marketing material. That's why almost every app comes with the option to turn notifications on or off. The consumer has to hold the power with mobile marketing."

7.Monitoring results

Creating a well-defined list of budgets, goals and action items, with appropriate personnel assigned to each, can help make your marketing plan a reality. Think about how much you're willing to spend, the kind of outcomes you expect and the necessary tasks to achieve those outcomes.
“If you're working towards getting 300 followers in 14 days, you should track the strategies that you're using to ensure it is working," said Dee. "Are you paying for a certain plan that's costing you $1,000 but only yielding a $50 return? Something needs to change. Your [return on investment] is important, and understanding what return you're wanting is important. ROI doesn't necessarily have to have a monetary value, but knowing the value you'll receive from implementing a certain strategy is important."

















 credit to businessnewsdaily

WHO IS A MANAGER

 

This was a topic at a seminar that I recently attended on management and management functions.  The question seem simple but a deep reflection quickly shows that being a manager is more than just a title given to certain class of people in corporate ladder. This article critically discusses who a manager is by delving into the qualities, experience, characteristics, and qualification of a manager. A good place to start from is to provide a reasonable discussion of who a manager is and then go further to look at what qualities one must possess to be called a manager in this volatile competitive business world.

DEFINITION AND MEANING OF A MANAGER
A manager is a person saddled with the responsibility of other people’s burden. This definition might be weird and criticised by many but, how else can you explain who a manager is other than a person that is blamed or praised for other people’s failures or successes respectively. Have you ever tuned your radio or television and hear financial analysts or investment accountants criticise or praise workers for the failure or success of a business entity?

The view of these professionals about manager’s responsibility to accept both praise and blame is the right thing to do as managers in their various positions are better positioned to:

(a)   Motivate people and bring out the best in them which in most cases are wonderful innovative business ideas.

(b)   Supervise the activities of others as part of the directing function of management

(c)    Co-ordinate the activities of other resources to ensure that sub-optimal decisions are avoided while working towards a common objective of the company

(d)  Providing feedback to both the owners of the business and workers in the business.

A manager like many think is not a lazy boss that seats in the office all day doing nothing other than bullying subordinates and co-members of management team.

CHARACTERISTICS | QUALITIES OF A MANAGER
Being called a manger in the office is not all that it takes to become a real manager of resources (people, machines, finance, etc). There are qualities that distinguish successful managers and those that have failed in managerial position. Below are some of those features that you must have if you really want to be a true manager.

PROACTIVE AND GOAL ORIENTED
Managers are people who don’t
react to situations but respond to situations. It is a business and management
taboo to be an activity oriented manager. An activity oriented manager is someone who is busy doing nothing. You will always see them making fuse out of nothing. They are the loudest in the office and never allow their subordinates to be organised. As a manager, your first and surest bet to achieving your dream success is to become a ‘proactive and goal oriented manager’. Goal oriented managers are people that sees opportunities where others are seeing threat and danger.

VAST IN RELEVANT OPERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Being a manager entails so many things which include constant hunger for knowledge. You dare not allow your knowledge to rust as a manager. In today’s risky business world that is characterised by incessant financial crisis and corporate failures, the areas that managers must pay close attention are:

1. Internal control and fraud prevention techniques
2. Human resource management and staff motivation
3. Management accounting and decision making skills
4. Proper deployment and use of information technology
5. Human Resource Management
6. How to benefit from outsourcing certain business functions
7. Marketing
8. Financial SWOT analysis
   

LIVE BY EXAMPLE
My father always says that children do what they see you doing and not what they hear you say. As a managers, you need to lead an exemplary life that is worthy of emulation so that your followers can do same. You don’t for example come late to work on a daily basis and expect that people working under you will do the opposite. Not living by example is an ugly and unacceptable business ethics that managers should try as much as possible not to overtake them.

SHOULDER RESPONSIBILITY
I have never seen any successful person that avoids facing responsibilities squarely. As a manager, one of the things that will make or mare you is your ability to stand up tall when the tides are high. You will never regret that you do.

HONEST
There is cliché that puts me off whenever people say is to my hearing. People say that ‘honest guys don’t last in businesses’. Who told you that honest people do not go far in business? In case you do not know, this is a trick that is used by dream killers to lure you into doing unethical and unprofessional things that will in no distant time pull the business that you represent down the drain. Make honesty, accountability and transparency your motto if you really want to make it to the top as a manager.

ORGANISED
Being confused and in disarray is not what managers are known for. As a person that is made the custodian of other assets, you need to plan ahead in all that you do. What others will want to do tomorrow, set yours in motion yesterday.




Credit: accountantnextdoor.com