Business organizations all around the world invest lots of resources in marketing and promotional activities to improve sales and expand the customer base.
Marketing has been very vital in informing and educating consumers as marketers identify consumer needs and want and the ways such needs must be met. The more marketing strategies are directed at meeting consumer needs, the more successful such strategies help in achieving desired results especially in sales generation.
What Role Does Marketing Play in Our Society Today?
Marketing plays the role of identifying the needs and wants of consumers and then design and manage business product offerings according to the consumer needs identified.
Marketing also plays the role of establishing a strong bond between consumers and business owners for enhanced trust.
What Are The Main Roles And Benefits Of Marketing In Today’s Society?
Marketing Helps Create a Balance Between Demand and Supply
Supply and demand are a fundamental aspect of marketing strategy. There must be a balance between these two elements for marketing to be successful. Needs and fulfilments of needs must be fulfilled by marketing and when a balance is created between demand and supply it means the demand or need does no increase or decrease abnormally.
It also means the conditions of demands will remain normal. We can also conclude that marketing is designed to make equal supply and demand, at the current price.
Marketing Improves and Sustain Distribution
Proper distribution of consumed products and services is another role marketing plays. If the products produced are not consumed, it means marketing strategies are ineffective.
Proper distribution in marketing ensures that all consumers within a geographical zone have access to products and services without stress. People or consumers must not only have access to products and services, they must access them at the right time.
Proper product distribution brings customer satisfaction which in turn improves their confidence and trust in a company. Efficient distribution through a strong marketing strategy may also help consumers and the business itself reduce the costs of getting access to the products and services.
Marketing Helps Monitor and Manage Research and Development
Without research and development, marketing strategies are obsolete and there will be no meaningful business progress. Consumers can get bored quickly but a business organization that embraces innovation can use marketing to generate new ideas to improve existing products and develop new ones.
Marketing tools like surveys, product testing, and product and services reviewing are marketing research techniques a business can use o gather information. When marketing tools are used to generate information, products can be rejuvenated and remade to meet the new tastes and preferences of consumers.
Marketing Can Facilitate Large Scale Production
Marketing is one of the fastest tools businesses can use in creating new emerging markets in different regions. With the expanding markets, there will be a need to expand the distribution of goods and services, which means production lines must be expanded to meet new demands.
Marketing is one of the first tools considered by organizations when expanding businesses locally, regionally, and internationally. As a business becomes more popular with a particular product, the mass production of such a product becomes inevitable.
With the use of marketing tools like promotions, events, and PR, you can take your businesses far and wide. Good marketing PR will help protect your business image and reputation. The boom in the media industry has also made PR (public relations), a lot easier and more effective.
Marketing Drives Consumer Satisfaction
Consumer satisfaction is more than just deriving pleasure from consuming a particular good or service. It also means getting access to information that can improve health, lifestyle, and other things.
Consumers build trust in a business that offers practical and realistic solutions to their everyday problems. This is the reason successful businesses use social media to create larger followership by offering very useful and engaging content.
Marketing Supports Organization’s Survival, Growth, and Reputation of Business
No organization or business will grow or survive the business climate without customer retention. Marketing is one of the potent tools for retaining customers. When a company retains more consumers, its business or market share increases. Marketing will help businesses achieve their customer-centric objectives. Marketing is also one of the tools of exceeding beyond customer expectations.
Marketing will Help Adapt the Right Price for Your Products and Services
Price has become a critical element in the marketing of goods and services because it generates revenue or profit. A sustainable marketing strategy will help you set fair prices for your goods and services.
In addition to helping in setting fair prices, it will also incorporate the changes added to products and services to ensure that new prices are convenient for customers and prevent loss of revenue to the business.
Marketing Helps Create Better Product Offerings
Most businesses will sell more than one product, and these products must be well-labeled and packaged. On the other hand, services comprise intangible and inseparable components. Marketing thus plays an active role in the design and management of all product and services offering.
Marketing Creates Utility
Most of a product’s utilities are created through marketing. Simply put, a utility is the ability of any product to satisfy wants. Marketing helps create utility for a product by creating the form, place, time, possession, and information on the product.
Marketing Helps You Face Competition Challenges
Any healthy business will face challenges from competitors in today’s competitive business environment. Marketing strategies will help a business maintain a balance between consumer expectations and offerings from competitors by constantly monitoring trends and the market closely.
Through marketing and monitoring of competitors, a business owner can provide premium products alongside superior services to retain their share of the market.
There will always be some things a business can do better than its competitors, these are the things consumers always look forward to, to keep their loyalty to such business.
Marketing Helps Business Owners Discharge Their Responsibilities
Companies are being forced to practice more social responsibilities with the increase in pressure from environmental challenges, and the government. To this end, social marketing plays a critical role in helping business owners meet their corporate and social responsibilities.
Cause-related marketing is now being used by businesses to meet up with social responsibilities and at the same time give customers healthier choices. For instance, recyclable product packages are being used to make consumers more responsible for keeping the environment safe. Food production companies are incorporating more organic foods into their lines of products.
What Are The Core Elements Of A Successful Marketing Plan?
The main components any business organization must include in its marketing plans are;
- Market research
- Defining the target market
- Position of your business
- Analysis of competitors.
- Market strategy
- Budget, and
- Metrics.
Market research is the foundation of any successful market plan. It involves identifying consumers’ buying habits plus your current market size, market growth and decline, and current trends. Online research and consumer surveys are some of the tools business owners can use for this purpose.
Defining your target market is another key step in a marketing plan. Your plan must identify your key buyers. You will have to define several segments of your potential and current buyers to be able to identify their social and economic statuses. This will help you create personalized marketing plans for the different segments.
Positioning is simply the perception of your brand in the market. For instance, do your customers see you as the best alternative for an organic food store in the market? You should reposition your business by developing a compelling brand ha will communicate how you want your business to be perceived.
Analysis of your competitors matters a lot when it comes to marketing planning. You should know your competitors’ price-selling points. You can only define a beer way of doing business when you know the ins and outs of your main rivals.
Your market strategy is simply your path to achieving your goals. Find out how you can search and attract your buyers. Events, social media engagements, direct mail, emails, word of mouth, content strategies, discount coupons, networking, and partnerships should be included in your marketing strategy.
You should have a marketing budget for month-to-month implementation and there should be monitoring metrics to indicate whether the budget is yielding desired results or not.
Your metrics will help you track the success of your business. Google analytics for instance can help you evaluate marketing results. It can also be used in creating email sign up lists that can be used to market products and services to new customers.
Conclusion
Having a solid marketing plan is essential o the growth and survival of any business. While some elements or components may not produce instant results in the beginning, consistency, and accurate translation of data can help you re-design your marketing plan to achieve better results. The golden rule is to focus more and strengthen the marketing plan elements that generate higher returns on investment.
