Mastering Marketing Management: Functions for Business Success

Posted on Jun 17, 2025 in Marketing

Mastering the Marketing Effort

Managing the marketing process requires four essential marketing management functions:

Marketing Analysis

Marketing analysis begins with a complete assessment of the company’s situation. Marketers should conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis:

  • Strengths: Internal capabilities, resources, and positive situational factors that may help the company serve its customers and achieve its objectives.
  • Weaknesses: Internal limitations and negative situational factors that may interfere with the company’s performance.
  • Opportunities: Favorable factors or trends in the external environment that the company may be able to exploit to its advantage.
  • Threats: Unfavorable external factors or trends that may present challenges to performance.

Marketing Planning

The company decides what it wants to achieve with each business unit. This involves choosing marketing strategies that will help the company attain its overall strategic objectives. A detailed marketing plan is needed for each business, product, or brand. The plan begins with an executive summary that quickly reviews major assessments, goals, and recommendations. A marketing strategy consists of specific strategies for target markets, positioning, the marketing mix, and marketing expenditure levels. The planner explains how each strategy responds to the threats, opportunities, and critical issues outlined in the plan. The last section outlines the controls that will be used to monitor progress, measure return on marketing investment, and take corrective action.

Marketing Implementation

Marketing implementation is the process that transforms marketing plans into marketing actions to accomplish strategic marketing objectives. While marketing planning addresses the “what” and “why” of marketing activities, implementation addresses the “who,” “where,” “when,” and “how.” Doing things right and doing the right things are critical to success, and companies can gain competitive advantages through effective implementation.

Marketing Department Organization

In very small companies, only one person may handle all research, selling, and advertising. As the company expands, the marketing department grows. Large companies often contain many marketing specialists. Many companies have also created the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) role, who heads the company’s entire marketing effort.

  • Functional Organization: Different marketing activities are headed by a functional specialist (e.g., Research Manager, Customer Manager).
  • Geographic Organization: Sales and marketing personnel are assigned to specific countries, regions, or territories.
  • Product Management Organization: Common for companies with many different products or brands, where a specific marketing manager is assigned to each product or brand.
  • Market or Customer Management Organization: Suitable for companies that sell one product line to many different types of markets and customers who have varying needs.

Marketing Control

Marketing control involves evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective action to ensure that objectives are attained. This process typically involves four steps:

  1. Set specific marketing goals.
  2. Measure performance in the marketplace.
  3. Evaluate the causes of any differences between expected and actual performance.
  4. Take corrective action to close the gaps between goals and performance.