The Marketing Process

What are the common mistakes of MBA students? It is not a surprise if one of them is thinking that a promotional tool is a marketing process or marketing process stops in creating the promotional tools. That is really wrong because promotional tools are a part of marketing process and the marketing process does not stop there. Many students are too focused on the promotional tools that they become advertisers inevitably not marketers. So, what is marketing process? And what is the difference between marketing process and advertizing? Now, let’s look at marketing process first.

Marketing process has no start and no end as its basic principle. Keep in mind that the end is always evaluation to create more distinctive activities for each process [Exhibit 1]. The purpose of these distinctive tailored activities is to support the company competitive advantage, so it will not be imitated by competitor easily.  That is also why students need to be supported by valid and reliable data when they create marketing process. This data will lead them to a specific answer. “Never assume anything” is the last rule of marketing process, especially in research and strategy process. Gather all the data needed, analyzes them then create something from them is the best way to create marketing process. Sporting the most innovative idea for the promotion will be useless without valid and reliable data. Now, you already understand what marketing process is; it is a cycle that has to be repeated in order to get better and better each time. So, what are the differences between marketing process and promotional tool?

As most MBA students know, every company needs to create profit. It is the requirement of survival. For that reason, we can conclude that marketing process and promotional tools have similar purpose which is to generate company profit. However, they have different job in the company. Molding customer perception is what marketers do while changing customer perception is what advertisers do. For example, Apple marketers not only have to convince potential customers to believe that Apple products are innovative and reliable with technical specification that suitable with target market, but also unique [think different as slogan].On the other hand, advertisers have to push the potential customers to buy the products by putting advertisements in the most strategic places and using the most influential icon that is appropriate with the target market.    

Now you already understand what is marketing process and, the differences between marketing process and promotional tools. You might be wondering what you need to do to create a good marketing plan to start a good marketing process [realistically speaking marketing process only applied for companies, we as a student should be satisfied with marketing plan]. It might be a surprise but valid and reliable data is the most important thing in creating marketing plan. Having these data shape the purpose of the marketing plan itself. It shows the customer segmentation in a cluster so it is pretty easy to choose the segment that the students want to pursue. Moreover, it will give a big picture of what is the real product that the target market is looking for. Students must think of what the target market want to get. Creating the product that meets customers need and adding more value in it are a success guarantee for a marketing plan.

By: Claudya Lita Grace