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Allama Iqbal Open University.

Submitted By: Rehman Shoukat

Roll #: 565568

Assignment # 2
The Marketing Process
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The Marketing Process

Introduction

Marketing plays a critical role in any business. You can’t attract and keep customers

without marketing. And you can’t make a genuine difference in your business without a solid

plan. Marketing doesn’t simply happen after you’ve started your business or developed a new

product. In today’s market, you need a comprehensive marketing plan, and that starts with the

planning process. This guide will teach you about marketing processes and how to develop a

strategic marketing plan including what to do for each step, templates to help streamline the

analysis you’ll need to do, and an explanation of how the different marketing processes work.

What Is the Definition of Strategic Marketing?

A marketing plan establishes the goals and tactics of every marketing campaign. It keeps

everyone in your organization on the same page about the direction and purpose of your

marketing efforts. A marketing plan also provides a way for you to measure your success.

Without a plan, you won’t really know whether you’re succeeding. While every individual

campaign should have a plan, your company also needs a strategic marketing plan to guide your

overall efforts. A strategic plan identifies your business goals, the marketplace in which you

compete, your target audience, the ways you want to reach them, and how you will evaluate your

success. It integrates everything you say and do to grow your company. A strategic marketing

plan is not a static document that gets tossed in a drawer once it’s written. Instead, a plan is a

living document that guides your work and is regularly updated to reflect changes in your

business, your customers, and your competition.

The process of developing a strategic marketing plan is crucial to your business. You cannot

create strategic marketing without strategic thinking. This planning helps you clarify your goals

and identify where you see your business in the future, which ultimately strengthens your

strategy. A strategic marketing planning process also helps with:

 Providing a clear map of your company’s goals and how to achieve them.

 Getting all stakeholders to share a common goal and a have a common understanding of

your company’s opportunities and challenges.

 Identifying and meeting customer needs with the right products in the right places.

 Growing your market share and product lines, leading to more revenue.

Enabling smaller companies to compete with bigger firms. One caution: A strategic

marketing plan focuses on your goals for your products and customers. The overall

business plan, which outlines all of your company’s goals, should support the marketing

plan. If they don’t work together, neither plan will succeed.

What Problems Should You Anticipate in the Strategic Marketing Process?

Every manager knows to expect the best but plan for the worst. In the marketing planning

process, here are some challenges you may face:

Confusing Strategy with Tactics:

A strategic marketing plan outlines your larger goal. Sometimes, this can be confused with a

tactical marketing plan. The difference between the two is that the strategy identifies your goals

and objectives and the tactical marketing plan outlines the details for how you’ll reach those

goals. Your strategy may be a larger goal, such as increasing your market share. Tactics are the

action steps, such as lowering your prices, so more people buy your product. A successful plan

needs both, implemented at the proper stage of the process.

Lack of Resources:

Maybe your goal is to increase sales, but you don’t have the workforce to meet all the incoming

orders. Perhaps you don’t have the resources to hire experienced people who can adequately staff

the marketing pipeline. The strategic planning process will help you identify the resources you

have and the best way to put them to work for the good of the company.

Assumptions about Your Customers:

Market research can help you identify your target audience. Sometimes the audience

changes, and your planning process should include steps for adjusting to the evolving tastes of

consumers.

5 Essential Steps for a Successful Strategic Marketing Process

The strategic marketing process is a deliberate series of steps to help you identify and reach

your goals. Even more, you’ll discover what your customers want and develop products that

meet those needs. Here are the steps to a successful strategic marketing process.

1. Mission

2. Situation Analysis

3. Marketing Strategy/Planning

4. Marketing Mix

5. Implementation and Control

Practical Study of the organization in marketing Process

The marketing management process goes through various stages to ensure the success of a

product in an organization. A company is generally in the blind about any new product. In a

tough business environment, with a customer who knows everything beforehand because of the

presence of online portals and websites, it is tough to plan and launch a new product or a

strategy. Just like movie stars waiting in anticipation for their movies to be released, companies

wait in anticipation when a new product is launched. This new product can rock or it can fail in

the market. The marketing management process ensures that whatever happens, the product is

given its best chance to survive and thrive in the market.

1: Target Your Market

Remember, your marketing will produce the best results for the lowest cost when you

target prospects who are already interested in what you offer. Who needs your product or

service? Targeting answers this question effectively and factually. So always define your market

first!

2: Create a “Unique Selling Proposition” for Your Business

A Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is a statement of what is different about your

company and its products. Your USP quickly and succinctly gives people the reason they should

do business with you. It amplifies the benefit of doing business with you and your company.

Create your own USP and put it on all your promotional materials, invoices, shipping labels, etc.

Use it to communicate the benefit of doing business with you and why you are better than any of

your competitors.
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3: Always Include a Call to Action and an Offer

Make sure you ask your prospects and customers to DO something when they receive

your postcard. By offering them something you know they are likely to want and giving them a

smooth path to respond, you are making it easy and desirable for them to respond. You have to

TELL THEM WHAT TO DO. “Call NOW” or “Visit our website TODAY” are a couple of

examples of a call to action.

4: Create and Maintain a Database of the Customer Information

Remember, most people who receive a postcard from you won’t contact you the first time

they receive one. But once they do contact you, you must create and maintain a database which

allows you to repeatedly contact them with offers to respond to. Fifty percent or more of many

businesses’ sales come as a result of following up with people who were previously contacted,

but didn’t buy right away.

5: Take Away the Fear of Loss

People don’t want to be fooled, plain and simple. They have been disappointed too many

times by being sold one thing and getting another. A guarantee or warranty is a good way to

reduce or eliminate the customers’ risk of getting something other than what they bargained for.

Guarantees and warranties increase response and sales by reducing customer risk.

6: Expand Your Product Line and Offer to Older Leads

Getting new customers is more expensive than selling to existing ones. By regularly

developing new products and services to sell to your customers and prospects and offering these
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new products and services to them, you can expand your business efficiently and easily. When I

say “older leads,” I mean anything not from the current day – that’s right – yesterday’s leads.

Let me reiterate this. This prospect was interested enough to call. Providing your receptionist

was friendly and inviting, you’ve now got a really good lead there. That lead is more likely to

call you again – your repeat mailings gain you credibility, but the right offer will bring the

dough.

7: Test Your Postcard Promotions

Track the effectiveness of your postcard mailings. How many people responded to your

mailing? What dollar amount of sales resulted from those responses? Keep a spreadsheet on this.

Monitor it. Tally it and utilize the results to tweak your campaign.

Merits and Demerit of organization in marketing process

The advantages of Functional Organization:

 The team is managed by an experienced person with a high ability and skills who can

adequately understand and review the entire work.

 The team members work with other people in the field and it allows sharing of thoughts

and knowledge to make the people learn new skills.

 The staffers have the chance to get promoted within their functional areas which can be a

reason for them to stay long term. The company is getting the advantage of their expertise

and knowledge.
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 Because of people’s expertise, the workers with specialized skills can perform tasks

quickly, efficiently and with more confidence, while reducing of work-related mistakes.

The clear nature of the career path within the functional unit makes it possible for

employees to be highly motivated to advance their careers as they move up within the

hierarchy. This will keep them aiming for advancement and development.

 This can be an ideal structure for small businesses that focus on one product or service

because you can maximize performance by encouraging peer cooperation among

different units at various levels of management through supervision and coordination.

Specialization leads to operational efficiencies and enhances productivity levels

The disadvantages of Functional Organization:

 The functional organization may have unhealthy competition working with the other

areas. There may be a lack of understanding as to how significant that specific are to the

company. In one example, there may be a request from the marketing department which

may not be prioritized in order to attend to the concerns of the sales department by adding

more people. Ideally, the companies decide based on what is urgently needed.

 Because the people in the functional organization are grouped according to their special

set of skills, roles or task, the entire team will operate well. However, the business

strategies and the level of bureaucracy make it difficult to respond to changes

immediately.

 Another disadvantage of functional organization structure is that these functional groups

may not be able to communicate more often which decreases flexibility and innovation.
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 When a company uses this type of structure, it groups its people according to their

knowledge and skills which help them become specialists on that field. It also requires a

management system which allows promotion, development and visibility of skills of

people in each functional area. It helps to bring in-depth knowledge and skill

development among the employees to achieve the goals of the company.

 Management issues may arise because it is more bureaucratic and the functional

organization are not accountable to each other and the poor horizontal coordination

within the department may occur. Employees’ motivation is greatly affected by lack of

innovation and restricted views of organizational goals. This structure can be rigid and

the standardized ways and high formalization can hamper or impede faster decision

making.

 Another weakness of functional organizational structure is there could be lack of

unit coordination. This means that though the functional units can perform with higher

level of efficiency however, there could be difficulty working well with each other thus,

cooperation is compromised. Some people may be territorial or there may be some who

are unwilling to cooperate. These unhealthy coordination’s may lead to delays, reduced

commitments, competing interests, waste of time, and getting late in finishing the project.