target markets «

Posts Tagged ‘target markets’

Role of marketing

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Marketing has taken a variety of forms as it’s developed over the years. A common and extremely incorrect view is that selling and advertising is marketing. Although these activities are part of the marketing mix and were generally perceived as the only outputs from a lot of marketing efforts that were measured, they are indeed only a fraction of this whole process.

In addition to promotional activities, or the extended marketing mix as they’re more commonly known, marketing includes a much broader strategic and tactical set of functions including; auditing & analysis, planning, product development, packaging, pricing, distribution, customer service and evaluation.

Many organisations and businesses assign responsibility for the marketing functions to a marketing manager or specific group of creative’s within the organisation. In this respect, marketing is a unique and separate entity. Those who make up the marketing department may also include brand and product managers, marketing researchers, sales representatives, advertising and promotion managers, pricing specialists, and customer service personnel.

A Marketer will typically take up the following roles, acting between the customer and the organisation; Strategic Partner, Guide, Deliverer, Communicator, Co-ordinator, Negotiator and Customer Voice.

A Marketing role will also assume the following responsibilities;

• Understanding the economic and competitive features of a sector
• Identifying target markets
• Identifying segments within a target market
• Identifying most appropriate strategies
• Commissioning, understanding and acting upon market research
• Understanding competitors and their strategies and likely responses
• Developing new products
• Auditing customers’ brand experience
• Establishing environmental scanning for opportunities and threats
• Understanding an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
• Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
• Understanding where a brand needs to be in the future
• Creating and delivering marketing plans to get there
• Establishing management information systems to identify progress

What does marketing achieve?
As a managerial process, marketing is the way in which an organisation determines its best opportunities in the market place, given its objectives and resources. Therefore the managerial philosophy of marketing puts central emphasis on customer satisfaction as the means for gaining and keeping loyal customers. Therefore, Marketers urge their organisations to carefully and continually gauge target customers’ expectations and to consistently meet or exceed these expectations.

In order to accomplish this, everyone in all areas of the organisation must focus on understanding and serving customers; the business will find it hard to succeed if marketing occurs only in the marketing department and does not involve everyone.

Tags: advertising and promotion, brand experience, developing new products, marketing mix, promotional activities, strategic partner, sustainable competitive advantage, target markets
Posted in How To Do... | 2 Comments »

Marketing planning

Friday, February 19th, 2010

What is it?

Marketing planning is a road map which consists of strategic and tactical (day-to-day) organisational marketing activities that are required to drive your company forward, both efficiently and profitably. Comprising of evaluating, planning, implementation and control; marketing planning is fundamentally a key business process, covering areas such as;

•   Company objectives and marketing’s role in achieving them.
•   Target audience descriptions for each segment, the associated USP’s and the insights. that led to those USP’s.
•   Movement and management of customers through each of the buying stages throughout the customer lifecycle.
•   Management and implementation of the 7Ps.
•   Customer Relationship Management.
•   Infrastructure requirements including changes to sales practises, database development and understanding of any research required.
When to use it?

Marketing planning is used to;
•   Understand the economic and competitive features of a market sector
•   Identify target markets
•   Identify segments within a target market
•   Identify most appropriate strategies
•   Commission, understand and act upon Market Research
•   Understand competitors, their strategies and likely responses
•   Develop new products
What does it achieve?

Well constructed and professional marketing planning will help to clarify the purpose of organisations in terms of; where it currently resides in the minds of the consumer; where it wants to be, how it will be perceived; what does it need to do to get to a suitable position and then evaluate the progress to see if the objectives have been met. Successful Marketing planning achieves;
•   Auditing of customers’ brand experience
•   Establishing environmental scanning for opportunities and threats
•   Understanding of an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
•   Creation of a sustainable competitive advantage
•   Understanding where a brand needs to be in the future
•   Establishes management information systems to identify progress
Key steps:

Step 1 – Where are we now?
•   Marketing audit
•   Financial /ratio analysis
•   Competitor analysis
•   Customer analysis

Step 2 – Where do we want to be?
•   Mission (Vision, values and purpose)
•   Objectives

Step 3 – How might we get there?
•   Direction of growth
•   Which markets to compete in
•   Which customers to target
•   How to position the offering
•   Nature of growth

Step 4 – Which methods should we use?
•   Marketing Mix
•   Promotional activities
•   Media mix
•   Activity plans, budgets, schedules

Step 5 – How can we ensure arrival?
•   Monitoring and Management controls
•   Measurements
•   Evaluation