“The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising” is given the term ‘marketing’. It plays a critical role in every business, whether the business is providing goods or services to the market. One cannot simply attract customers and keep them without the process of marketing. The development of a product or a service doesn’t simply mean that one can start marketing it.Without a solid plan and a good strategy that can be executed properly, a genuine difference in the field of business cannot be made. A
comprehensive marketing plan is needed in today’s world and this cannot be done without planning. So, here is an explanation of what the marketing process is about and how it works –
When the talk of identifying and reaching your goals arises, the strategic marketing process is a deliberate series of steps that need to be taken into consideration. This helps to discover what the customers want and customize the product or service that one has to offer to meet their needs.
Following are the steps to a successful strategic marketing process –
1. Situation analysis
The situation analysis is an analysis of the external and the internal environment of the firm itself. This must include the past, present and future aspects –helping reveal the gap between what the customers want and what is currently being offered to them. There is a scope of improvement and the firm then matches its own capabilities with its
competitors’ to satisfy customers’ needs better.
2. Marketing strategy
A strategic plan is required for pursuing the opportunity developed after analysis of the current situation of the firm to satisfy unfulfilled customers needs. A good research of the market will provide specific market information, permitting the firm to select the target market segment. This will result in optimal positioning of the offering and within that segment,finally leading to a value proposition of the target market.
3. Marketing mix decisions
For the controllable parameters of the marketing mix, detailed tactical decisions need to be made, such as –
• Product development
• Pricing decisions
• Contracts of distribution
• Development of promotional campaign
4. Implementation and control
The last step in the Marketing Process is implementation and control. At this point, the marketing plan has already been developed and the launch of the product has been done. The results of the marketing effort need to be monitored easily now as few environments are static. Changing the advertising message will lead to small changes in customers’ wants. The marketing process never ends with implementation and control. Continual
monitoring and adaptation need to be undertaken all the time to fulfill customer needs consistently for a longer period of time.