What is marketing? According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stake holders.
According to Kotler marketing management is an art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating delivering and communicating superior customer value.
The following is an analysis of the role, job, and contribution of a marketing manager:
A] Qualities required by a marketing manager
Good communication skills.
Strong determination to achieve goals.
Knowledge of self, he must know his capability before taking up such responsibility.
Maturity to handle situations, not just routine problems but also those affecting the organization internally but also fighting external sources mainly competition.
Knowledge of the product. He must know what he is selling.
Knowledge of firm. He must analyze the situation and position of the organization constantly.
Update technology.
Patience.
One of the most important traits required is creativity.
B] Roles and job of a marketing manager:
He acts a demand manager: as Kotler says he must be skilled in stimulating demand for a companys product. This requires him to not only create a demand for new products but also stimulate demand for existing products.
Brand awareness is also a very important task for a manager. He must make create stable marketing so as to bring awareness amongst customers in a target market.
Another important task for a marketing manager acting as a demand manager is to help shift demand from negative demand to full demand.
Chose the right market segmentation. Segmenting the market is one of the key reasons for the success of a product it lies in the hands of the marketing manager.
Idea generation. The real birth of a product takes place from idea generation.
Idea recognition. These ideas can spring up from customers, clients or employees and it is the responsibility of the marketing manager to identify such potential product.
Building stronger brands.
Customer relationship management.
Maintain quality of the product.
Price fixation.
Adopting the right marketing plan.
Adopting marketing information systems so as to assess the managers information needs.
Achieving organizational objectives.
Market research operations: this can be done through data collection, data analysis, interviews. And a final judgment based on such reports.
Fixing remuneration.
Overcome tactfully the effects of competition.
Maintain stable relationship with creditors ands well as other firms.
Maintain corporate trustworthiness.
Choosing the right channel for distribution.
Analysis of the degree of competition.
Social benefits.
He also has the responsibility towards his customers. As the definition states he has to help more customers to enjoy more of these products and services.
Using modern technology such as data warehousing, data bases and data mining.
The key source to his success is definitely customer satisfaction.
Difficulties:
Dynamic environment.
Satisfying customers is the trickiest and most difficult part for marketing manager.
Market research.
Variations in economic position.
We can say that the basic job description doesnt relate every time to the actual job. In fact the employee should be adaptable to the environment and maybe work on tasks which were is not in the same order everywhere.
