What is Marketing Management? 8 Things You Need To Know

These days, you can’t talk about business, the internet, or social media without discussing in some way marketing and marketing management. Marketing is activities and strategies a company undertakes in order to promote a product or service.

There are many people — typically an entire team at a given company — that are involved in the marketing responsibilities of a business. Marketing can be a very lucrative career to go into, and even more so, marketing management.

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

1. What is Marketing Management?

So, you know what marketing is, but what is marketing management? Marketing management is the process of making decisions, organizing plans, and taking the lead on the marketing needs of a company. It’s the practical application of marketing techniques that can be used to help a company get the word out about their product or service.

Marketing managers have a big job and though they’ll likely be working with other marketing team members, a managerial position in marketing may require a lot more responsibility and time commitment. It can be an interesting career that involves a lot of leadership, creativity, and ultimately, reward.

We’ll find out if marketing management is right for you!

Marketing Concept

Most people who are unfamiliar with how marketing works might believe that marketing happens once you have a product or service, and then you figure out how to market it to your audience. However, the marketing concept states that you must identify consumer needs before creating products or services.

Is there a problem that you can offer a solution to with a product or service, or can you create something that people will be eager to buy? Once you’ve done some research and figured this out, then you can create goods or services that will entice your audience and/or solve the problem they have, while making a profit in the process. Think: work backwards! Most companies will use this strategy when developing new products and services in order to continue wowing their customers and keep them coming back for more.

Importance of Marketing Management

You can probably already see why marketing management, or a marketing manager, is so critical to the marketing goals of a company. But how do we summarize the importance of marketing management in just a few sentences?

Well, without a marketing manager, the exchange of goods and services from the producer to the consumer would not be very straightforward.

In fact, how would a consumer even know that a product or service exists without proper marketing, and how would a company know to develop a product or service without knowing the needs of their target audience? By establishing this, companies can make a profit, create employment opportunities, and provide something meaningful for their consumers.

2. What are the Features and Functions of Marketing Management?

Innovation is clearly an important part of the marketing concept. But there are other features and functions of marketing and more specifically, marketing management, that also need to be understood if you want to go down this career path. These two can often go hand-in-hand or overlap in some way, but the marketing manager will be able to distinguish the responsibilities under each category:

Features of Marketing Management

Marketing management may look slightly different depending on the industry, but there are some key features that marketing managers can expect to see no matter where they work. These generally fall under five categories which are essentially the objectives of marketing overall:

• Focusing on consumer needs
• Satisfying the customer
• An integrated and functional marketing management system
• Accomplishing organizational goals and objectives
• Continuously innovating

Within these categories, a marketing manager will break up tasks even further:

• Managerial process
• Consumer centric
• Research and analysis
• Planning and development
• Constructing a marketing foundation
• Set goals and objectives
• Promotion and communication
• Oversight of marketing activities

Functions of Marketing Management

Along with the features of marketing management are the functions of marketing management. The two are somewhat similar, but while features focus on the what of what needs to be accomplished by a marketing manager, the functions of marketing management focus on the how; or, how the marketing manager will go about reaching the end goal.

• Assessing marketing opportunities
• Planning and organizing marketing strategies and activities
• Coordination and communication among all marketing employees
• Directing and assigning tasks to employees
• Evaluating and analyzing marketing efforts

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

3. Process of Marketing Management

The process that a marketing manager would take in their role may be different depending on where they work, but it follows the same set of questions/guidelines:

• What is the mission of the company, and what are the goals?
• What are the marketing objectives based on the above?
• Where is the best place to double-down on marketing opportunities?
• How can we formulate marketing strategies related to the marketing opportunities? How can we do this to achieve the mission, goal, objectives that we’ve laid out?
• Where or to whom should we allocate marketing efforts?
• How do we measure performance and the strength of the marketing campaign overall?

4. Challenges of Marketing Management

There are a number of issues and challenges of marketing management that come up here and there, but the issues you constantly need to have in the back of your mind are:

• Size
• Geography
• Number of buyers
• Demographics

These factors are essential to know when you ideate, develop, plan, and ultimately market a new product, service, or good to your consumers. This should be your starting point, but know that even after identifying your target audience, you may have some surprises or see some trends that are unexpected based on the categories above.

For example, are you getting into a smaller-sized market? This would make your product or service more niche, and therefore, it may be either very easy to cater to them or very hard to continue to make a profit if you can’t innovate for this small market going forward.

5. Marketing Management Salary

Another important question that somebody might ask before even considering a degree in marketing, let alone marketing management, is “What is the salary of a marketing manager?”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of 2019, the median yearly salary for a marketing manager was $136,850. If you take a closer look, you can see that that median salary is actually much higher in certain states. Therefore, if you’re looking to go into a career that makes a lot of money, this could be the one for you.

6. Education and Skill Requirements of a Marketing Manager

A marketing manager needs to have met a certain education level and possess a robust skill-set to land a job as a marketing manager.

To start, someone who wants to be a marketing manager (or work their way up towards being one), should possess a bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, public relations, or something similar. Pursuing a certificate program in marketing can also prove to be highly beneficial.

Then, you’ll need to get a job in marketing and get enough experience under your belt that you can be considered a candidate for a role as a marketing manager. Sometimes, staying with one company may allow you to move up the proverbial ladder quickly, but in other circumstances, getting experience in different marketing roles at different companies can diversify your skillset.

While there are many skills that go into that of a strong marketing manager — creativity, resourcefulness, analytic skills, confidence, and maybe even some graphic design — communication skills take the cake. If you cannot be a good communicator, you will have a hard time learning from your target audience, expressing your ideas to your team, and instructing them on what to do in order to get the job done.

7. Responsibilities of a Marketing Manager

A marketing manager may have several responsibilities, but the biggest one is that they are able to develop programs to develop the consumer base for a product, good, or service. They need to do whatever they can to get people interested in what their company is selling, whether it’s through a social media marketing campaign, a live event, free t-shirts, or something else!

8. Where Do Marketing Managers Work?

Most marketing managers will work in a corporate setting or they may get hired at a startup that’s looking to grow their consumer base quickly.

Marketing managers play a key role in the companies where they work, and it’s a position that’s often sought after but can also be quite demanding.

Of course, marketing managers can also work for themselves; whether it’s running their own marketing business or helping a small business get off the ground. This is the beauty of working in marketing and being a marketing manager; you can kind of have your pick of what you’re comfortable with.