Marketing is a process whereby the company promotes its products & services and spreads brand awareness. Marketing plays a key role in introducing a company’s product among the consumers and in elevatingthe business. However, it isn’t a child’s play to advertise one’s brand. Sometimes, one strategy works for a brand while it is a total flop for another brand. Furthermore, a strategy that was successful three years ago may not garner the same results today. So, the marketing strategies should be based on the type of business and various other factors.
Businesses need to have an action plan in place and they need to formulate strategies that can effectively promote the brand’s offerings. That is why businesses seek for professionals who can understand the market and exploit their knowledge in marketing management to create stellar marketing campaigns. In general, strategic marketing management consists of three steps:
Market Learning
The consumer trends keep on changing from time to time. So, the first step should be understanding of customer preferences. The firms should conduct surveys and research to understand consumer preferences over time. Thus, it is the task of marketing managers to formulate a survey questionnaire that can help in interacting with the customers directly and understanding their perspective. The firms should try to understand why consumers prefer a brand/product over its adversaries. The survey findings and feedback received from the customers are then combined together to formulate strategies. Market learning is an essential process as it assists the marketing managers to fine-tune their strategies according to consumer trends.
Market Sensing
Basically, marketing sensing is a process of judging the mood of the market. It is an indirect method of finding trends in the market. It refers to a process where the managers combine consumer preference data with their market knowledge and experience to comprehend the way the market is moving. Thus, the marketing managers collect market data, analyse it and then put it together with a strategic model of marketing in order to sense the consumer behavior. In this way, they come to know what will work in the market and what will not.
Market Intuiting
Market intuiting is the third step in strategic marketing that takes forward the concept of market sensing and market learning. It refers to the process where the marketing managers comprehend the ‘mind and soul of the market’ and accordingly make future predictions. Here the managers get an intuitive understanding of the way the market is moving. The managers can find out whether consumers will flock towards a brand or abandon it completely by having an intuitive understanding of the market. This approach helps in finding out how the consumers would behave in the future. In this way, the businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies to cater to the consumers.
Closing Thoughts
The business landscape is evolving rapidly. So, it isn’t enough to simply measure the data and create marketing campaigns. But, the marketing managers should consider consumer trends, consumer behaviour and future trends to create effective marketing strategies. The marketing managers need to adopt strategic marketing to learn and sense how the market moves. They should know the best ways to gain insights into the mind and soul of the customers. But no college or institute emphasise on teaching these strategic steps to the marketing managers. However, when you pursue a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) course in the specialisation of Marketing Management from MIT School of Distance Education (MIT-SDE), you are taught to master these skills. So, what are you waiting for? Enroll for a course in MIT-SDE right away!
