MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING

What Is Marketing?
Marketing refers to activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or
selling of a product or service. Marketing includes the advertising, selling and
delivering of products to consumers or other businesses.

Professionals who work in a corporation's marketing and promotion departments

seek to get the attention of key potential audiences through advertising.
Promotions are targeted to certain audiences and may involve
celebrity endorsements, catchy phrases or slogans, memorable packaging or
graphic designs and overall media exposure.

Understanding Marketing
Marketing as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw
in customers and maintain relationships with them. Networking with potential or
past clients is part of the work too, including writing thank you emails, playing golf
with a prospective client, returning calls and emails quickly and meeting with
clients for coffee or a meal.

At its most basic, marketing seeks to match a company's products and services
to customers who want access to those products. The matching of product to
customer ultimately ensures profitability.

[Important: Marketing refers to any activities undertaken by a company to

promote the buying or selling of a service].

How Marketing Works

Product, price, place, and promotion are the four Ps of marketing. The Four P's
collectively make up the essential mix a company needs to market a product or
service. Neil Borden popularized the idea of the marketing mix and the concept
of the four Ps in the 1950s.

Product refers to an item or items the business plans to offer to customers. The
product should seek to fulfill an absence in the market, or fulfill consumer
demand for a greater amount of a product already available. Before they can
prepare an appropriate campaign, marketers need to understand what product is
being sold, how it stands out from its competitors, whether the product can also
be paired with a secondary product or product line and whether there are
substitute products in the market.

Price refers to how much the company will sell the product for. When establishing
price, companies must give considerations to the unit cost price, marketing costs
and distribution expenses. Companies must also consider the price of competing
products in the marketplace and whether their proposed price point is sufficient to
represent a reasonable alternative for consumers. Place refers to the distribution
of the product. Key considerations include whether the company will sell the
product through a physical storefront, online, or through both distribution
channels. When it's sold in a storefront, what kind of product placement does it
get? When it's sold online, what kind of digital product placement of sorts does it
get?

Promotion, the fourth P, refers to the integrated marketing communications

campaign. Promotion includes a variety of activities, such as advertising, selling,
sales promotions, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, and guerrilla
marketing. Promotions will vary depending on what stage of product life cycle the
product is in. Marketers understand that consumers associate a product’s price
and distribution with its quality, and take this into account when devising the
overall marketing strategy.

Special Considerations
As of 2017, approximately 40 percent of U.S. internet users buy several items
online per month. Experts expect online sales in the U.S. to increase from
$504 billion in 2018 to over $735 billion by 2023.

Taking these statistics into consideration, it is vital for marketers to use online
tools such as social media and digital advertising, both on website and mobile
device applications, and internet forums. Considering an appropriate distribution
channel for products purchased online is also an important step. Online
marketing is a critical element of a complete marketing strategy.

Five Functions of Management

Henri Fayol gained world-wide fame for his 14 general principles of
management. He distinguished six general activities for industrial
enterprises: technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting and
managerial. He defined five functions of management for the management
component and these are still seen as relevant to organizations today. These
five functions focus on the relationship between personnel and its
management and they provide points of reference so that problems can be
solved in a creative manner.
1. Planning

Planning is looking ahead. According to Henri Fayol, drawing up a good plan

of action is the hardest of the five functions of management. This requires
an active participation of the entire organization. With respect to time and
implementation, planning must be linked to and coordinated on different
levels. Planning must take the organization’s available resources and
flexibility of personnel into consideration as this will guarantee continuity.

2. Organizing

An organization can only function well if it is well-organized. This means that

there must be sufficient capital, staff and raw materials so that the
organization can run smoothly and that it can build a good working
structure. The organizational structure with a good division of functions and
tasks is of crucial importance. When the number of functions increases, the
organization will expand both horizontally and vertically. This requires a
different type of leadership. Organizing is an important function of the five
functions of management.

3. Commanding

When given orders and clear working instructions, employees will know
exactly what is required of them. Return from all employees will be
optimized if they are given concrete instructions with respect to the activities
that must be carried out by them. Successful managers have integrity,
communicate clearly and base their decisions on regular audits. They are
capable of motivating a team and encouraging employees to take initiative.

4. Coordinating

When all activities are harmonized, the organization will function better.
Positive influencing of employees behaviour is important in this. Coordination
therefore aims at stimulating motivation and discipline within the group
dynamics. This requires clear communication and good leadership. Only
through positive employee behaviour management can the intended
objectives be achieved.

5. Controlling

By verifying whether everything is going according to plan, the organization

knows exactly whether the activities are carried out in conformity with the
plan.

Control takes place in a four-step process:

1. Establish performance standards based on organizational objectives

2. Measure and report on actual performance
3. Compare results with performance and standards
4. Take corrective or preventive measures as needed

It starts with an overview

Each of these steps is about solving problems in a creative manner. Finding

a creative solution is often more difficult than discovering what the problem
is, than making choices or the decision-making process. It starts with
creating an environmental analysis of the organization and it ends with
evaluating the results of the implemented solution.

Fayol’s Sixth Function

The sixth function of Henri Fayol is mostly managerial. This include activities
like planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling.

Although well understood in their own right, none of the first five of these
functions takes account of drawing up a broad plan of where the business is
going and how it will operate, organising people, coordinating all of the
organisation’s efforts and activities, and monitoring to check that what is
planned is actually carried out.
Fayol’s sixth function acts as an overall function in relation to the five
functions.

A Closer look at organizing

As one of the five functions of management, Henri Fayol divided “organizing”
into five subcategories. These first five functions of management are still
important in organizations today. The first of the five functions of
management, Henri Fayolmentioned was “specialization”; if every employee
is allowed to use their individual skills this will be advantageous to their area
of expertise. Secondly he mentioned “unity of command”, in which an
employee is answerable to one manager only. The “formal chain of
communication” is linked to this so that the employee will know how and
with whom they will have to communicate. The fourth category is “unity of
direction”; all employees must be aware of the organization’s strategic
objectives. The fifth category is “authority and responsibility” in which
managers have the authority to give orders.

Develop your skills

As a result–oriented manager, instead of focussing on the details of the task, you
allow your employees the freedom - within an agreed framework - to approach and
accomplish it as they see fit. In this learning journey, you will learn all about this
way of managing.