Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large (American Marketing Association [AMA], 2013). It is the art of creating value for the customers, which in turn satisfies individual and organizational goals.
A strong marketing process helps to ensure that your marketing activities are aligned with the organization’s goals, maximizing the business return from your marketing efforts. The marketing process steps include:
- Understand your Customer: Know your target customer and their pain points. Understand how your solution will benefit the customer.
- Analyze the market: Through basic market research understand the total available market, market growth, and market trends.
- Analyze the competition: Know what your competitors offer and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.
- Research distribution channels: Understand the best way to reach your customers.
- Define your marketing mix: Find the optimal strategy for the four Ps of marketing i.e. Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
- Analyze the financials: Draft the marketing budget and estimate the marketing ROI and cost of customer acquisition.
- Review and Revise: Continuously evaluate your marketing strategy, and review and revise as needed.
