Marketing Management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application

of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Rapidly
emerging forces of globalization have compelled firms to market beyond the borders of their home
country making International marketing highly significant and an integral part of a firm's marketing
strategy.[1] Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition
of customer demand accepted definition of the term. In part, this is because the role of a marketing
manager can vary significantly based on a business' size, corporate culture, and industry context. For
example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the
overall general manager of his or her assigned product [2] To create an effective, cost-
efficient Marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of
their own business and themarket in which they operate.[3] In analyzing these issues, the discipline of
marketing management often overlaps with the related discipline ofstrategic planning.

Marketing is a very important aspect in business since it contributes greatly to the

success of the organization. Production and distribution depend largely on marketing.
Many people think that sales and marketing are basically the same. These two concepts
are different in many aspects. Marketing covers advertising, promotions, public relations,
and sales. It is the process of introducing and promoting the product or service into the
market and encourages sales from the buying public. Sales refer to the act of buying or
the actual transaction of customers purchasing the product or service.

Since the goal of marketing is to make the product or service widely known and
recognized to the market, marketers must be creative in their marketing activities. In
this competitive nature of many businesses, getting the product noticed is not that easy.

Strategically, the business must be centered on the customers more than the products.
Although good and quality products are also essential, the buying public still has their
personal preferences. If you target more of their needs, they will come back again and
again and even bring along recruits. If you push more on the product and disregard their
wants and the benefits they can get, you will lose your customers in no time. The sad
thing is that getting them back is the hardest part.

Marketing Promotes Product Awareness to the Public

It has already been mentioned in the previous paragraph that getting the product or
service recognized by the market is the primary goal of marketing. No business possibly
ever thought of just letting the people find out about the business themselves, unless
you have already established a reputation in the industry. But if you are a start-out
company, the only means to be made known is to advertise and promote. Your business
may be spending on the advertising and promotional programs but the important thing is
that product and company information is disseminated to the buying public.

Various types of marketing approaches can be utilized by an organization. All forms of

marketing promote product awareness to the market at large. Offline and online
marketing make it possible for the people to be educated with the various products and
services that they can take advantage of.
 A company must invest in marketing so as not to miss the opportunity of being
discovered. If expense is to be considered, there are cost-effective marketing techniques
a company can embark on such as pay-per-click ads and blogging.

Marketing Helps Boost Product Sales

Apart from public awareness about a company’s products and services, marketing helps
boost sales and revenue growth. Whatever your business is selling, it will generate sales
once the public learns about your product through TV advertisements, radio
commercials, newspaper ads, online ads, and other forms of marketing. The more
people hear and see more of your advertisements, the more they will be interested to
buy.

If your company aims to increase the sales percentage and double the production, the
marketing department must be able to come up with effective and strategic marketing
plans.

Marketing Builds Company Reputation

In order to conquer the general market, marketers aim to create a brand name
recognition or product recall. This is a technique for the consumers to easily associate
the brand name with the images, logo, or caption that they hear and see in the
advertisements.

For example, McDonalds is known for its arch design which attracts people and identifies
the image as McDonalds. For some companies, building a reputation to the public may
take time but there are those who easily attract the people. With an established name in
the industry, a business continues to grow and expand because more and more
customers will purchase the products or take advantage of the services from a reputable
company.

Importance of Marketing
From a very small fish to becoming the big one and then the biggest among all. This is how few brands have
changed with time e-g: Levis Microsoft and many other "The Big Fish"

The financial success of such brands have been depending on combined efforts of their financial strategies and
their marketing efforts. One thing that's been common among all there brands is a high degree of Brand loyalty.
They have managed to capture the share of heart and in turn share of customer’s wallet. 

Companies now understand that marketing plays an important roll in their overall success ,so
now companies have CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer) along with CFOs and CEOs. They
understand that if there are functions close to customers its ether Sales or Marketing. Sales
become a direct interface among customs and products offered by companies, and marketing
is an indirect function between customer and the company.
But what makes marketing so big? Why is it important? If you have a great product you are
bound to succeed then why do u need to spend on marketing / advertising?

The answer to these questions lies deep within the customer’s brain. Customers / consumers
are smart and they understand what makes your product different form mine. If you are
offering then 1 % more that what I do why should they pay me rather than paying you. That’s
the point. And secondly it’s important to communicate the product offerings to the end user.
If a marketing team has worked hard on understanding the consumer needs they need to make
sure their customers get a feel “This brand knows what I want ”. Trust me this is the only
major differentiator between why your 1% more is able to get you more loyal and
more number of customers.

The time has changed. To products that are offered by a brand you have "n" number of more 
substitutes and consumers get to know which is the better substitute that suites there
requirements . So it is important to make sure that marketing efforts are more on
understanding the changing needs on today’s customer. We need to understand the minds of
customers. It’s rightly said “customer is KING”

Marketing managers need to understand the customer needs and they need to make their
major decisions such as the features to include, the price to be offered to customers and what
to spend on advertisements.

Marketing today has become a emotional research which helps understanding customer and

consumers psychology so that products are developed based on these understanding. The
marketing managers need to answer following questions:

 How do we find the right market segment?

 How do we differentiate?
 How can we compete with low cost business models?
 How do we build a better brand?
 How do we reduce cost of customer acquisition?

A successful Marketing team can carefully analyze customer needs and carefully monitor
there competitors marketing moves. Remember a short term sales driven view does not work
in business world today. The C-level managers, the CEO,CFO
should communicate importance of marketing in an organization,  how the
marketing function plays a great role in organizations success
Marketing  Management  is the  management  process  of 

-determining  the  customer  needs /wants

-developing  the  product [ service ] to  satisfy the needs/wants.

-developing the process mechanics  to  reach the customers

-determine the  methods  to  distribute the  products

-create  a  place for  transaction  of  the product with the customers

and  thus  satisfying  the  customer  of  his/her   needs / wants.

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Most  organizations  use  marketing  / its  elements  ,  which  include
*Market  research  to  determine consumer needs.
*Prototype  product  development
 *Product  testing  
*Product  development
*Product planning
*Test Marketing  
*Development  of  Market  Planning
*Sales  Planning   
*Distribution  Planning  
*Advertising  planning  
*Sales  Promotions  Planning  
*Merchandising   Planning  
*Retail  marketing  
*Marketing  Research. [ consumer  satisfaction ]
==============================================
How, Why and What are its benefits to a company? be supported by
relevant practical examples. 

*Market  research  to  determine consumer needs.

-helps  to  determine  what the consumers needs are/how much would
they  need/ when / total  market potential etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*Prototype  product  development
*Product  testing  
*Product  development
*Product planning
-helps  the  organization  to  develop  new products
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Test Marketing  
*Development  of  Market  Planning
-helps  the  organization  to  find  the  strategy/mechanism/
the  process  to  take the  product to the  consumers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sales  Planning  
*Distribution  Planning  
-helps  the  organization  to  spread  geographyically 
the  availability  of  the  product .
---------------------------------------------------------------
*Advertising    
*Sales  Promotions  
*Merchandising
-helps  the  organization  to  create  awareness / influence the 
consumer  to buy  the  products.
------------------------------------------------------------   
*Retail  marketing  
-helps  the  organization  to  lift the  profile of  the  product
at the  point  of  sale.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
*Marketing  Research. [ consumer  satisfaction ]
-helps  the  organization  to  determine the consumers 
reaction [ positive  / negative ] to the  product.

The importance of Marketing Management in Target markets

The marketing management realizes the characteristics and other variables of each group. They are
geographical location, demographic, customer behavior pattern and need. Like a group of people can be
recognized who can be less price sensitive, purchases often and are growing.

Such groups can be worked on by heavy investments as they are worth the money and time.
They cannot only retain such customers and make new customers in this group but they can
go to the very extent of turning back customers who don’t belong to this group.
Understanding the needs makes customer’s expectations to be met per their satisfaction,
better than the competitors, which will lead to higher sales and obvious profit. 
Marketing management involves choosing target markets that not only get new customers but
also retain the existing ones. It is a business subject, which is based on research and study of
practical applications of marketing techniques and management of the marketing resources.
The one who excels in this field is known as marketing manager. The job of the marketing
manager is to influence the timing and level of customer demand so as to help the sales. It
actually depends on the size of the business and environment in the corporate industry. Like
if he is working in a huge production company, he will be the general manager of a particular
product category assigned to him and he will be responsible for profit and loss with respect to
the product. And in small business there is no marketing manager as his job is taken over by
the partners of the company.

Creating and communicating best customer values can increase the number of customers. The
steps taken and resources utilized to maintain existing customers and get new customers fall
under marketing management. The scope is quite large because it not only consists of
developing a product, but also retaining it. The term marketing management has
manydefinitions. It actually depends on individual firms and how the marketing department
functions and activities of other departments like operations finance, pricing and sales. 

Before deciding about a marketing strategy, the company must do an in-depth study about
their business, and the market. This is where marketing management merges with strategic
planning. Usually the marketing strategies are of three types, customer analysis, company
analysis and competitor analysis. Using the customer analysis, the market is broken down
into different types of customers. 

Company analysis highlights the cost structure and resources of the company and cost
position when compared to competitors. The accounting executives use it to learn about the
profit earned by a particular product. From time to time, audits are conducted to study about
the strengths of various brands of the company. 

Marketers using competitor analysis build detail customer profiles. It gives a clear picture
about the strengths and weaknesses of the firm, when compared to a competitor. The
competitor’s cost structure, resources, competitive positioning, degree of vertical integration,
product differentiation, and profits are studied in detail and are compared to what company is
doing in those regards.

The marketing management to do marketing analysis carries out marketing research. The

most common of such researches are qualitative
marketing research, quantitative marketingresearch, experimental techniques and
observational techniques. 

After all the studies and researches are conducted, its easier for the marketing manager to
make strategic decisions and they then can design a marketing strategy to increase the profits
and revenues of their company. The other goals can be profit over the long run, market share,
and revenue growth.