The process of analyzing market opportunities, selecting target markets, developing the marketing mix, and managing marketing efforts is called the marketing process. The following four steps are included in the marketing process that primarily focuses on target customers.
Setps Involved in Marketing Process
-
Analysis of opportunities in the market
-
Selection of the target market
-
Development of marketing mix
-
Management of marketing efforts
Each of these steps is discussed below.
Analysis of Opportunities in the Market:
The first component of the marketing process is to analyze the market in order to find opportunities that should be availed. These opportunities are related to the needs and wants of customers that are not properly satisfied by competitors in the market.
A company that is initiating the marketing process focuses on opportunities that would be beneficial for long-run success so that its performance would be effectively improved. For this purpose, the company gets help from the Marketing Information System (MIS), which plays a significant role in providing useful information about the market.
The company also conducts effective market research that provides valuable information about customers, competitors, general trends, and any extraordinary changes occurring in the market that can be useful for the company. Finally, the company identifies potential opportunities from the collected information and splits the whole market into different segments.
These segments are based on factors like age group, geographical location, etc. The company evaluates each segment separately to check its potential in the light of its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, it selects the target market segment to proceed further.
Selection of the Target Market:
This is the most important step of the marketing process in which target customers are selected. For this purpose, the company conducts careful analysis of target markets in order to choose final customers. As it is obvious that a company does not satisfy the needs and wants of the whole market, it must divide the whole market into different segments and choose the segment that best matches its strengths and opportunities.
In this regard, there are certain concepts in this step of the marketing process.
Market Segmentation:
The process in which the whole market is split into different units of consumers, each unit having similar wants, characteristics, and behaviors which need different marketing mixes and strategies.
Market Targeting:
In this process, targeted segments of the total market are evaluated to ascertain the attractiveness of each segment so that one or two most suitable and potential segments should be selected and entered. The simple rule of selecting the target unit or segment is that it must provide an opportunity to the company to create potential customer value in the long run.
Another important rule is that a company has the option to satisfy the needs and wants of one or two segments. In this case, the company focuses on relevant segments and develops its products and strategies for them only. Such small segments are called “niches”.
The company also has another option to split the whole market into different segments and offer different products and marketing mixes to each segment of the market. But the most effective method is to focus on one or two segments and, after succeeding in those segments, further new segments should be targeted.
Market Positioning:
This concept relates to the positioning of a company’s product in the minds of customers as compared to competitors’ products. In other words, the company tries to maintain a clear and specific perception among customers about its products. When a company wants to position its product, it first specifies the competitive edge for which it offers competitive advantages to its target customers.
The whole marketing program of the company should concentrate on its identified positioning strategy. Positioning is effective when the company truly provides an efficient and competitive offering to customers in order to give them maximum value as compared to competitors’ offerings.
Development of Marketing Mix:
After setting a complete marketing strategy, the company is ready to initiate planning of its marketing mix.
Marketing Mix:
Marketing mix is composed of certain market variables that are combined by the company in order to generate a desired response in targeted segments.
In fact, the demand for a product is influenced by the use of certain marketing mix activities. The marketing mix is composed of the following four P’s.
-
Product means any offering (goods or services) to the market by the company.
-
Price means the money paid by customers to obtain the product.
-
Place means the efforts which ensure the availability of the product in the market to customers.
-
Promotion means all the efforts by the company that ensure the sale of products to customers through better provision of information about product advantages.
A company develops an effective marketing program in which a suitable combination of the marketing mix is blended so that they are efficiently coordinated into a useful program to provide greater customer value in order to accomplish the company’s objectives.
The 4P’s of the marketing mix are from the seller’s perspective. In certain cases, the 4C’s replace the 4P’s which are:
• Product means Customer Solution
• Price means Customer Cost
• Place means Convenience
• Promotion means Communication
Management of Marketing Efforts:
This is actually the action phase of developing a marketing program in which a suitable marketing mix is set for a target market. For the management of marketing efforts, four functions are adopted which are as follows.
-
Analysis of the Market in which the company identifies internal strengths and weaknesses along with external opportunities and threats.
-
Marketing Planning in which marketing plans or strategies are developed so that overall marketing objectives can be accomplished.
-
Marketing Implementation in which developed plans and strategies are practically implemented in order to achieve marketing objectives.
-
Marketing Control in which performance results of marketing plans and strategies are evaluated and necessary steps are taken to ensure accomplishment of overall marketing objectives of the company.
