The History Of Strategic Marketing Management Marketing Essay

The History Of Strategic Marketing Management Marketing Essay In order to pursue an effective strategic marketing management in organisation, it is necessary to grasp all of the internal and external areas and domains that may lead to successful implementation of the marketing initiatives. Realising the fact that strategic marketing management is quite a broader field, todays marketing professionals have to consider a number of those critical factors and aspects that turn the organisation into huge success, or an absolute failure. The word strategic is, itself, suggests scrupulous planning and policymaking, because these are the overall effects of strategic marketing management that play a major role in long-term growth of an organisation. Section 1 Strategic marketing plays a fundamental role in any organisation. Strategic marketing mainly helps in devising positioning strategies in relation to the market being targeted, but beyond all that, strategic marketing, primarily, helps in analysing the targeted market segments in view of the market competition with all well-established, mature and even immature products and services. After segmenting the market, a strategic marketer meticulously devises relationship strategies with those of the consumers or customers being aimed at. Strategic marketing, then, creates effective and the most relevant distribution and pricing strategies, followed by formation of exclusive strategies for advertising and promotional plans and strategies. Moreover, a strategic marketer, also, formulates business development and research strategies in a way that, ultimately, fosters long-term organisational growth and business sustainability. This is, again, the role of strategic marketing to pursue a set of strategies for marketing research too. Cosse and Swan (1983) found one major problem in marketing planning was that US product managers lacked the strategic orientation required by strategic planning. (Piercy, Morgan, 1990, 128) Usually there are three fundamental processes involved in strategic marketing, wherein planning is the leading and most significant process, followed by the implementation and control accordingly. Each of these elements is important not only for desired success of entire marketing strategies, but for an all-inclusive organisational growth. Exclusively for the planning process, organisation needs to perform a SWOT analysis first keeping view both internal and external factors. A marketing audit can help identify target markets for your firm. A marketing audit evaluates various internal and external components. (Caragher, 2008, 59) Objective and goal setting is also its main part, as it helps determine the market and consumer segmentation, as well as the role of strategic marketing management. Implementation is the process that brings the planning into action, and the control phase helps organisations in evaluating the planning process. As per their functions, strategic marketing and corporate strategies are interlinked with each other, and organisation can never achieve their role by dealing with these elements separately. According to Tom Connora (2007), a corporate strategy is more than marketing alone. (Connora, 2007, 369) A marketing strategy needs to be aligned with the corporate strategy of the organisations, while corporate strategies remain ineffective if its managers take the process of strategic marketing for granted. Corporate strategies mainly determine the direction of the organisations, where marketing is supposed to follow the same direction. Although marketing must be the principal channel of market knowledge this must be combined with and balanced by knowledge provided by the other business functions of the organisation. Thus a transcendent organisational view emerges which, it is suggested, is the true basis for corporate strategy. (Connora, 2007, 369) This is necessary to craft a comprehensive corporate strategy for the organisational success, but this cannot be completed without creating a strategic marketing plan. Knowing the fact that marketing has a lions share in entire business development of an organisation, effective corporate strategy entails a flexible structure enabling marketing strategies to freely perform in the market. The same goes for the marketing gurus in any organisation, as they can never achieve their goals and objectives if their strategies are not aligned with those of the features clarified in their main corporate strategies. Both of these factors go alongside each other. Section 2 Utilised in strategic marketing planning, various models offer numerous benefits and advantages to organisations. The first benefit of using models is that it enables strategic marketers to find out substitutes and alternatives, during strategic marketing planning. Consequently, utilisation of these models enhances the decision making capabilities for strategic marketers, helping in making due decisions without unnecessary delays. Through these models, organisations get timely information as well, thus making them capable to perform market forecasting more accurately. This well-timed information appears to be an asset in strategic marketing planning, as this information is, always, accessible and far-reaching. By using these models, organisations derive benefit from flexibility in framing the control reports as well. There is a strong link between employing strategic marketing and strategic positioning. Theoretically, strategic positioning helps in product placement in a way that makes the product easily available in the target market. In a word, strategic positioning stands for the strategic convenience in strategic marketing management, because strategic marketing revolves around positioning. Marketing strategies should respond to the distinctive characteristics and desires of its target market. Strategic positioning differentiates a business from its competitors by uniquely serving its target market. A strategic marketing plan should position a business so that its target market perceives that the business serves them and them alone. (Kruger, 2011) This is also the strategic positioning which helps in formulation of segmentation targeting. Strategic positioning also helps in multiplying the returns on existing marketing plans and strategies. Entire marketing strategies will bring no positive results if the crucial aspect of strategic positioning remains avoided. This is because strategic positioning plays a significant role in promoting the ratio of customer loyalty and profitability as well. Merits of strategic positioning with respect to strategic marketing development are includable. First and foremost, it helps determine the target audiences according to the demographics of the target market. It helps in determining the way an organisation wants to place its products or services in the market after meticulous categorisation and classifications. The employment of positioning strategies that leads to creating a position in the marketplace is undertaken over time through deployment of marketing practices including advertising, public relations, promotion, sales inducing efforts, publicity, etc., brand management, firm image and reputation, product development, and cost controls.(Blankson et. al., 2008, 2) Accurate projection of the sales can never be achieved by skipping the inevitable element of strategic positioning. As organisations are never supposed to please all and sundry under the sun, there must be a smart positioning that may your products to customers found in a predefined market. Product positioning has emerged as a separate field in the world of strategic marketing management. Despite offering a highly enriched product to consumers, this is the meticulous positioning of the product which will decide its acceptability and penetration into the market. There are various examples corroborating the significance of strategic positioning of any brand or service e.g. Coca Cola, Nestle, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and FedEx, and GE (General Electric), and many more. Strategic positioning, also, depicts the in-depth market knowledge of organisation, as positioning is, usually, done with the help of market research, market intelligence and data gathering. Section 3 To ascertain growth opportunities in a market to the maximum, I would utilise a set of appropriate marketing techniques that includes branding, offerings, packaging and labelling, value additions, and environmental scanning. In details, I would, first, utilise the branding technique in order to differentiate the product than those of the products being offered by the competitors in the same market. Then here comes the phase of packaging and labelling that focuses on attractive presentation of the products through catchy designs and colour schemes etc., which is, further, supplemented by the labelling tool. Successful marketing strategies have always been based on unique insights into consumer behaviour, generalizations of successful tactics, brilliant advertising ideas, and technical innovations as well as market segmentation research. (Gibson, 2001, 1) The tool of offering will be, also, utilised to find out the best solution addressing the customers problems and concerns in comparison with other products available. Being a strategic marketing manager, I will, also, concentrate on value addition so as to multiply the demand and recall of the product in the real market by the targeted consumers and customers. Additionally, I will perform an essential environmental scanning by collecting the data in way that brings us exceptional growth via strategic marketing. In any market, an effective utilisation of market strategy options is taken as the fundamental and crucial phase in entire strategic marketing management. As the battle for the wallet of the emerging-market consumer shifts into higher gear, companies that think about growth opportunities at a more granular level have a better chance of winning. (Atsmon, Kertesz Vittal, 2011, 60) Being a strategic manager, I will use the same in accordance with the four Ps model which entails 1-Product, 2-Price, 3-Placement, ad 4-Promotion. This will be, accordingly, done in consideration of organisational strategies and its accessible resources so that it helps in maintaining the ratio of profitability. The same, also, fortifies the products being sold in the market, thus facilitating standardisation to a large scale. Most of the time, companies and organisation find it difficult to standardise their own marketing and positioning standards and values. Particularly on the consumer side, this standardisation is necessary, as this builds up the confidence of the target customers, and increases the customer loyal to a large extent. Standardisation is an on-going journey, where organisations need to perform the similar way to retain their existing customer base. The most important factors is that this is, also, inevitable to standardise their marketing and positioning efforts, as not all companies can maintain their level of standardisation being offered to their customers. For a defined market, creation of appropriate strategic marketing objectives is considered as a daunting task for the marketers. In fact, strategic marketing objectives are formed in a way that creates a constant need of the particular product in the market, and this objective can never be achieved with flawless standardisation. Section 4 A marketing strategy is always dependent upon various environmental factors. Starting from the political situation of the country to its sluggish economic trends, these environmental factors help in devising a win-win marketing strategy that may successfully address all of these external environmental factors all at once. The function of marketing strategy deals with determining the nature, strength, direction, and interaction between marketing mix elements and the environmental factors in a particular situation. (Akinyele, Samuel Taiwo 2010, 24) Other than law and order situations, absence of competitor in the market affects the sales of a particular product, as well as existing purchasing power of the customer, also, determines the products penetration in the concerned market. Organisations also need to keep up with those of the technology changes and up-gradations occurring in the outside word. I, being a marketing manager, will conduct an internal analysis in order to identify current strengths and weaknesses in a marketing strategy, and this will be done by evaluating the strengths and weakness of the market strategy. Strength of a market strategy is determined by evaluating the effectiveness of the promotional mix. This is, further, followed by knowing the current positing of product placement in the market, mostly relying upon quality of the products, effective branding, packaging and labelling, as well as variety of offerings made for the target consumers and customers. The most important components related to niche marketing include: Firm profile (Organisation charts, billing rates, financial statements); Partner profile (partners personal and professional objectives, firms specialties, age and tenure with the firm); and SWOT analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). (Caragher, 2008, 59) This is, also, fundamental to knowing the weakness of the marketing strategies being implemented, and this is done by analysing various factors critically and neutrally. This may pertain to the lack of innovation, ineffective or irregular communication, and wrong selection of marketing and advertising channels, along with imperfect or untimely distribution of the products etc. The penetration and popularity of the digital media is one of the emerging themes in the world of marketing. As per my response to this rapidly emerging marketing theme, I propose the strategic and well-planned utilisation of the social and digital media after thorough research and investigation. This response will be tinged with usage of latest technological tools and methods, as innovative marketing enables companies to churn out maximum results in form of overall business development and profitability.