Importance of Marketing: Plan, Strategy and Mix

Marketing can be defined as actions or initiatives taken by a company or business to attract an audience or target market towards the products and services provided by them. With the help of marketing, the business owners try to communicate their product’s useful characteristics and prospects with the intended market. An effective marketing strategy can help increase the sales of products and earns profit for the business hence, defining the importance of marketing.

The basic purpose of marketing is to conduct research and analyze the target market continuously. It also includes focus group studies, sending out surveys and questionnaires, studying the consumers’ online shopping habits to answer one basic question, i.e., “Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?”.

Importance of marketing

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business. On the one hand, it increases brand awareness, while on the other hand, it also increases sales of products, helps in the growth of the business, and engages customers. Several core business functions emerge from a good and effective marketing plan. All these characteristics highlight the importance of marketing which is discussed in detail below:

• It informs: Primarily, marketing is compulsory for informing and educating customers about new products and their characteristics; therefore, it helps create customer education. It creates sound understanding regarding a product explaining that how it works and what it does.
• It equalizes: The modern forms of marketing have made it less expensive than before. With social media platforms and e-marketing campaigns, businesses can now reach out to their customers requiring less budget. Smart marketing even proves to be more useful when SMBs (Small–and–medium-sized businesses) compete with big competitors.
• It sustains: The major purpose of carrying out marketing campaigns is to sustain a business in the market. Therefore, marketing is something that a business requires all around the year. It helps create goodwill about the business and its products among the customers and maintain a healthy relationship with consumers.
• It engages: Marketing intends to engage customers with the business. It engages the customers when they are out of the company’s outlet. It plays an important role where there is no face-to-face interaction. Businesses can use multiple mediums to reach out to their customers to keep them engaged. Marketing is also pertinent because it allows the customers to form a relationship with the brand.
• It sells: Marketing plays a substantial role in selling out the products and services of the company. It helps them generate profit which is the ultimate goal of any business. Therefore, marketing helps in earning profit and making money. Without marketing, it would be tough for businesses to generate income.
• It grows Marketing, by drawing customers and increasing sales helps the businesses in growth. It also assists the business in increasing its reach and expand its group of customers. Smaller efforts like simple social media posts and campaigns run through emails can also sustain customers and attract new clients. Therefore, marketing makes a business secure by working on old and new customers.
  

Importance of marketing plan

                An effective marketing plan helps businesses promote their products and services and meet the target market’s needs. For this reason, it needs thorough research, commitment, and time by the developers of the marketing plan, which ultimately results in the success of the business. The importance of marketing is entirely dependent upon the marketing plan, which consists of the following steps:

• Look at your industry structure: For developing a good marketing plan, the developers need to start by finding out everything about the industry when they have to survive. They need to find out everything from industry associations, statistics to benchmarks.
• Conduct market research: It is also essential to conduct market research to determine the target market and the consumer’s needs. For this purpose, any of the two market research methods could be applied, including primary and secondary research. In the primary research, firsthand knowledge is collected through surveys, interviews, and first communication with customers. In secondary research, public information is utilized, for example, research reports, government statistics and trade publications, etc.
• Define your market and customer profiles: It is necessary to define the target market because doing so would help develop useful campaigns. It also helps determine if enough people belong to the target market, which could save the product and resources from being wasted.
• Conduct a SWOT analysis: SWOT analysis helps in the detailed examination of the business internally and externally. It helps the business team find out internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats as they leave a strong impact on the businesses.
• Study the competition: To survive in a market, one must compete with the competitors. For this reason, it is mandatory to know that who the competitors are and what they are offering to your target market. Competitors can be classified into two main categories, including direct competitors and indirect competitors. Direct competitor refers to businesses offering the same products and services as you. In contrast, indirect competitors account for products or services that are different from yours. However, they can satisfy the same customer need.
• Set your goals and objectives: It is also necessary to think on a long-term basis and identify the business’s main objectives because doing so would provide a direction to the business. After that, immediate objectives should be focused on finding out if establishing a business is required at the moment or increasing sales of customers.
• Outline marketing strategies: After defining the goals and objectives, the next step is to define strategies to achieve those goals. While choosing the marketing activities, one should choose activities that best suit the customers and businesses.
• Set marketing budget: The business owners should be clear regarding the budget allocation for the marketing campaign. They need to be clear about how much should be spent on marketing and how to make the campaign successful.
• Keep your marketing plan up-to-date: It is compulsory to remain updated about the new marketing trends. It is so because these factors can impact the marketing results.
  

Importance of marketing strategy

A sound marketing strategy keenly observes all aspects of selling activities and helps them support each other. Therefore, the strategy developers need to ensure a well-integrated marketing strategy that will further help make better individual decisions regarding specific marketing tactics. A good marketing mix strategy helps businesses in:

• Streamlining product development: It helps create products and services that can help in earning the best profits.
• Determining optimal prices: Market research helps determine the best prices for the products that can compete with competitors’ prices.
• Establishing effective distribution: After getting information about target customers, the businesses can decide where they want to sell their product and how they can sell it to the target customers.
• Assisting in marketing communications: It helps find out which communication medium can prove to be the best fit for the selling plans.
• Organizational impact and communication: it helps different departments of the same organization to follow the same plan and, therefore, show better coordination with each other while working.

Importance of marketing mix

A marketing mix can be defined as a set of marketing tools that a business can use to sell its products or services to its target customers. This term was coined in the mid-20^th century. Identifying and arranging the various elements of the marketing mix allows the businesses to make profits. It further helps the businesses to make decisions regarding:

• Developing the strengths and limiting weaknesses
• Becoming more competitive and adaptable in the market
• Improving profitable collaboration between departments and partners
  

Conclusion

A good and effective marketing strategy is, now, the need of the hour; businesses cannot establish or flourish in the absence of a good marketing plan and sound knowledge of the market trends. The aspects of marketing discussed above clearly portray the importance of marketing in today’s age. It is evident that had there been no marketing, attracting and retaining customers would not be easy.