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What is a Marketing Management Process?

Marketing management process is a method of planning, organizing, and controlling an organization’s marketing activities. The marketing management process is a set of systematic steps that helps businesses reach their goals by satisfying customers’ needs. Each step in the marketing management process helps companies meet these goals.

The marketing process starts with defining the company’s organizational goals and objectives, then moving on to identifying customer needs and wants, creating a product or service that meets those needs and wants, developing an effective distribution system for delivering products to customers, assessing sales data to determine whether the product or service is meeting its stated goals, and making changes as needed to improve performance.

The marketing management process is a continuous cycle of reviewing performance and making changes, which can lead to more efficient use of resources and improved customer satisfaction.

Why is Marketing Management Important?

Marketing management is important because it allows marketing managers to make better decisions about how they spend their money on marketing plans. It also helps them determine what their objectives are in the first place.

Marketing management is also important because it helps organizations in developing marketing strategies to understand how their products or services fit into the marketplace. This allows them to make better decisions about pricingand positioning, which can help them increase revenue.

5-Steps in the Marketing Management Process

The marketing management process is a 5-step process that includes marketing efforts that can help you grow your business. It’s a process that helps your marketing team to create a marketing strategy and then implement that strategy in a way that will be effective for your company. The five steps are:

Step 1: Conduct Market Research

The very first step in the marketing strategies starts with conducting a market analysis.  As previously mentioned, if a product is a new launch, then the company is likely to be in the blind for the future projects of the product. The marketing manager  do not know what product the market needs, should they go for a new product or do a product extension, what will be the expected turnover increase from the new product, etc. Such questions are answered by market research. Thus, to even start thinking of launching a new product, market research is necessary.

Step 2: Develop a Marketing Strategy

Before making a marketing strategy, you need to know the market. As market research has already been done, marketing strategy forms the second step in marketing management process. The marketing strategy takes several points in consideration.

Simple things such as segmentation, targeting and positioning are a part of Marketing strategy. However, tough things like deciding the marketing mix as well as getting the positioning strategy right are also involved. Core competencies like financials and production are also to be analysed during the marketing strategy stage. Taking all these things in consideration, a marketing strategy is formed.

Step 3: Make a Marketing Plan

After marketing strategy, a written marketing plan is made. This is the third and a very important step in marketing management process. A written marketing plan is made to analyse where the company is and where it wants to reach in a given time period. The marketing plan actually puts the plan on paper and the marketer can anytime refer to the marketing plan to analyse whether he is on track or not. 

• Situation analysis – Business environment analysis, Internal analysis (SWOT analysis), USP’s, core competencies.

• Strategic plan – A time related strategic plan outlining the pros and cons of the strategy.
• Financials – Sales forecasts. Expenses forecast. Working capital etc.
• Implementation – Operations. Customer loyalty. Brand building. Consumer behaviour. Product and pricing decisions.
• Follow up – After implementation, follow up is done to ensure marketing strategy is on track.

Step 4: Implement Automation

Once you’ve made a plan, it’s time to automate the marketing campaigns so they can run smoothly without having to be constantly monitored by humans (who will likely get bored with all the repetitive tasks). Automation is key because it allows us to scale up our operations quickly without hiring more employees—which means we can serve more customers at lower prices!

For example, if you have a lot of repetitive tasks (like managing your email inbox), there are many great tools out there that will help you automate those tasks for you so that they can run in the background without taking up too much of your time or energy.

Step 5: Feedback and Control

Once a product is in the market, customers might give further ideas for the improvement of the product and marketing campaigns. These ideas are usually considered by the marketing department and a market research is conducted to find the validity of the ideas. If the idea is valid, another product can be developed or another marketing strategy implemented.

On the other hand, if the product is not received positively, then the control mechanism needs to fall in place and implement an alteration process for the product or in the worst case scenario – take the product out of the market before it affects the brand.

The five steps above complete the marketing management and the integrated marketing communication strategy. With the world becoming a small place due to the advent of the internet, the marketing management process has become simpler. Feedback can be obtained online through simple questions, Marketing strategy can be changed by keeping an online brand watch and market research can be done through social networks. However, this does not change the gruelling process which traditional marketing companies like FMCG, Electronics and Automobiles have to adopt.

Final Words!

Your marketing management processes should be the core of your marketing strategy and marketing management team and act as a guide for all your current and future marketing activities. The steps within this process will help you focus on important tasks that will make a difference to your marketing efforts. The better this process, the more effective your overall marketing strategy is going to be.

What is Consumer Behavior?

Consumer behavior consists of how consumers' emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behavior. It's the study of customers and how they behave while deciding to buy a product.

Indeed, the study of consumer behavior is essential for marketers to understand the wants and needs of consumers. If you know the likes and dislikes of your consumers, then you can design a specific marketing strategy for them.

Consumers have different attitudes towards shopping. Understanding their thought processes is necessary for an effective marketing strategy. Also, understanding your consumers will help to find success for your current products and any future ones.

Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior

Five factors affect or influence consumer behavior. These factors help determine whether a person will purchase an item. Following are these five fundamental factors:

• psychological
• social
• cultural
• personal
• economic

1. Psychological Factors

In particular, human psychology significantly affects consumer behavior. However, it isn't easy to measure these types of factors.

These factors are:

• Motivation: The drive to get what we need. Every person has different needs. However, some needs are more pressing than others.
• Learning: It's how consumers change their behavior after they gain information. This process affects how you shop and what you buy.
• Attitudes & Beliefs: These are "mental positions" or ideas. Marketers aim to change beliefs and attitudes to positive ones. They do this by designing unique campaigns.
• Perception: This is when a customer collects information about a product and then gives it meaning. Two people can look at the same product yet see something very different.

Psychological factors have a considerable extent impact on consumer behavior and the factors can be seen while purchasing an object or product. - Louis Hill

2. Social Factors

Without a doubt, humans are social animals. We feel the need to it in and feel accepted. One way we do this is by imitating others. This includes imitating their purchases.

Social factors include the following:

• Family: Certainly, family greatly influences buyer behavior. Therefore, companies are interested in which family members have the most influence over purchases.
• Reference Groups: These are groups a consumer identifies with and may want to join. For example, there are social groups, workgroups, or close friends. The influence will be more significant if the product is visible, such as a purse or a car.
• Roles and Status: A role consists of the activities a person is expected to do, while status is a person's standing within society.

For example, if a woman works as a finance manager, she plays two roles: finance manager and mother. Therefore, she is largely influenced by her role and will choose products that communicate it. - Bakkah Learning

3. Cultural Factors

Cultural factors have a strong influence on consumer behavior. These factors are the values and ideologies of a community or group of individuals.

These factors are:

• Culture: The influence of culture varies from place to place. This means marketers have to be very careful in analyzing the culture of different groups, regions, and countries.
• Subculture: Marketers can use these groups by segmenting the market into several small portions. For example, they can design products according to the needs of a  geographic group.
• Social Class: Consumers in the same social class show similar purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketing activities can be tailored to fit different social classes.

4. Personal Factors

Personal factors, of course, vary from person to person. Such factors create different judgments and affect consumer behavior.

Here are the factors that influence our shopping tendencies:

• Age: Needless to say, each life-cycle involves different buying choices. For example, teenagers are more interested in buying the latest trends in clothes. In contrast, middle-aged people might be more interested in purchasing a family car.
• Occupation and Lifestyle: these two factors are important determinants of consumer behavior. An example of this is eating habits. A person living a vegetarian lifestyle will buy vegan products, while a "meat-eater" will be fine purchasing products containing meat.
• Personality: There are "Big Five" personality traits. Marketers determine the consumer behavior for a product or service based on these traits.

5. Economic Factors

Finally, let's talk about the factors that most affect consumer behavior. Economic factors have a big impact on consumers' purchasing decisions.

There are several economic factors, but we've narrowed them down to these three:

• Personal Income: When a person has a higher disposable income, the purchasing power goes up.
• Country Economic Situation: Consumers have higher buying power when a country has a strong economy. On the contrary, consumers' buying decisions become limited when a country's economy is struggling.
• Liquid Assets: When consumers have higher liquid assets, it gives them more confidence to buy luxury goods. 

The Power of Consumer Behavior

Even though most of the time we don't notice, consumer behavior plays a big part in our daily lives. Therefore, it's always necessary for business owners to have the best marketing strategies targeted to their consumers. Starting from the type of coffee you buy in the morning to the dinner you order at night, each purchase has a process behind it with a whole list of factors that led to that decision.

Let's look at the article now. These articles give us a better understanding of the subject.

                               The process of marketing management 

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46534113_The_process_of_marketing_management__between_the_management_marketing_activities_and_the_operational_marketing)