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Social media ads. Promotional emails. In-store signage. These are all items that are influenced by marketing management. Behind every one of them is someone deciding who needs to see the message, what it should say, and how you’ll know it worked. This guide walks you through what the work involves, how the process runs, and how a program like Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s bachelor’s or master’s in marketing can help you get ready for a career in it.

What Is Marketing Management?

Marketing management includes any process that informs businesses of how to promote and sell their products, from idea to execution. This can include researching a company’s consumers, setting realistic goals, developing new market-penetration strategies, or executing effective marketing plans within budget. Day to day, that covers many marketing activities, from email newsletters to trade shows and other client retention actions.

Many companies rely on marketing managers to inform and direct the way their brand looks, feels, and communicates across all channels. Marketing managers are also responsible for coordinating with other departments to ensure that the strategies they employ are successful.

Oftentimes, people incorrectly conflate marketing with advertising. While marketing and advertising work closely together, they each have different roles within the greater process and require different skills. Think of it this way: Marketing management determines who the consumer is and how they want to be sold to, and then it’s the job of the advertising team to get the word out in a strategic way.

Why Is Good Marketing Management Critical?

Good marketing management is critical because it has a powerful influence on the outcome of an organization’s sales and growth. Its role is to inform businesses how to promote and sell to their customers, and when it’s done effectively, you can see the benefits in a few places:

• More revenue: Good marketing management finds the best ways to communicate with potential customers to boost sales.
• More insight: By analyzing and reporting on consumer buying habits, marketers can help their companies make more informed advertising and sales decisions.
• More reach: With the research done by marketing management, companies can be better equipped to target their audience or expand into new segments.
• More brand awareness: Consistent messaging across channels helps people recognize and remember a company, which makes every subsequent sale easier.

What Are the Features of Marketing Management?

There are four major features of marketing management. Here’s what each one looks like in practice:

• Setting goals: The foundation of marketing management involves setting clearly defined goals and creating a timeline and strategy to meet them. These goals can include everything from sales to budget. Defining goals up front also gives every campaign something to be measured against.
• Coordinating with other teams: In order to respond to consumers’ demands, marketing management works with other departments such as public relations teams, executive leadership, and creative teams. This coordination is essential for the smooth functioning of the company and consistent messaging across all mediums.
• Conducting market research: Market research works to identify the needs and preferences of consumers. It involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, and it arms the company with important information to make key decisions. The better you understand customer needs, the easier every other decision becomes.
• Building relationships: When the consumer feels more connected and invested in a brand or a product, they’re more likely to buy the product. That’s why it’s crucial for marketing management to create and maintain relationships with its customers to encourage repeat buyers. Email, social media, and loyalty programs all support customer engagement.

What Is the Process of Marketing Management?

The marketing management process is an ongoing cycle of researching, planning, implementing, deploying, and measuring. Marketing managers are involved at every stage of the process, ensuring efforts are in line with the company’s, or campaign’s, overall strategy and goals. Here’s a look at what happens at each stage.

• Researching: Gathering information is the first thing that needs to happen. This includes conducting research through surveys and interviews with a target market, collecting customer feedback, and researching market data and industry trends. All the collected data is then used to inform the marketing strategy.
• Planning: In most cases, planning involves product and sales teams working together to create a promotional calendar that’s aligned with product development and sales targets. Once the calendar or timeline has been established, managers work with their teams to create a plan for the parts relevant to marketing.
• Implementing: Once campaigns and projects have been mapped out, marketing managers lead their teams through campaign development. Campaigns might include a mix of paid, earned, and owned media, including content marketing such as blog posts, videos, and guides. It’s the job of the marketing manager to select the specific marketing channels and determine how they fit into the overall strategy. From there, they’re also responsible for establishing the unique positioning and messaging guidelines for communicating through those campaign channels.
• Deploying: Next, there’s developing and deploying marketing copy and creative, such as website pages, graphics, and copy. The marketing manager oversees all the moving parts of this process, from suggesting design edits to deciding when to launch the campaign.
• Measuring: Finally, as campaigns are deployed, the marketing manager oversees measuring the results so they can optimize and iterate on future campaigns. This might include creating and reviewing reports, strategizing A/B tests, or making campaign optimization recommendations.

What Are the Types of Marketing Management Approaches?

The main types of marketing management approaches are digital, product, and brand marketing management, and each one focuses on a different part of how a business reaches people. Your own path will look different depending on which of these types of marketing you lean toward, and plenty of managers end up working across all three.

What Is Digital Marketing Management?

Digital marketing management is the practice of planning and running a company’s online marketing, including its website, email, social media, and paid ads. A digital marketing manager decides which channels to use, how much to spend on each, and how to measure the results.  

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one example, since it focuses on earning visibility in a search engine like Google. Content marketing, email campaigns, and social posts also fall here. Marketing automation tools can send emails and schedule posts for you, which frees up time for strategy and can boost the consistency of your campaigns.

What Is Product Marketing Management?

Product marketing management is the practice of guiding a product through its life cycle, from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. Product marketing managers work with product and sales teams to define the target market, shape the product’s positioning and pricing, and write messaging that reflects customer needs. As a product moves from one stage to the next, the plan changes with it, so you’ll keep adjusting your approach as the market responds.

What Is Brand Marketing Management?

Brand marketing management is the practice of building and protecting a brand’s identity and equity, which is the value people place on a brand beyond the product itself. Brand managers set the voice, look, and values that a company uses everywhere, and consistent branding raises brand awareness over time. Every one of your marketing activities, from packaging to social posts, should reinforce that same identity.

What Are Some Examples of Marketing Management?

Two common examples of marketing management tasks are consumer profiling and devising a social media strategy based on that consumer data.

Example #1: Consumer Profiling

Consumer profiling is the practice of gathering data about who your customers are and what they care about. Consumer data in marketing management is one of the most important assets because it informs an organization what its customers care about most. For example, imagine you work for a vitamin brand and your customer profile research reveals that yoga enthusiasts between 20 and 30 are your main buyers. In this case, you should tailor your marketing content in a way that speaks to their lifestyle and preferences.

Example #2: Social Media Strategy

You build a social media strategy by using the data from consumer profiling to reach the people most likely to care. Building on the example above, you can target social media users who fall within your ideal audience. Paid ads, product giveaways, and partnerships with fitness or lifestyle influencers can also strengthen your social media strategy. Replying to comments and sharing customer photos adds to customer engagement and helps grow your customer base.

What Challenges Does Marketing Management Face?

The biggest challenges in marketing management are staying on top of trends, keeping internal communication clear, and making sense of data. The world of marketing is always changing, and problems can arise wherever there’s a lack of knowledge. The good news is that many of these challenges can be overcome with the right people, planning, and education. Solving each one starts with the right tools and the right training, and effective marketing depends on both.

Staying on Top of Trends

You can stay on top of marketing trends by making ongoing learning part of your career. Keeping up with trends in social media, web design, consumer behavior, and more can be overwhelming for even the best marketing managers. As the marketing field grows and becomes more complex, there’s more to know, do, and track. Furthering your education, whether that’s through professional development courses or a degree like Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s M.S. Marketing, is one of the best ways to grow your knowledge of the marketing landscape. Marketing and management skills build on each other, so a degree that teaches both gives you a strong base.

Poor Internal Communication

You fix poor internal communication by giving every team one system for collecting, organizing, and sharing information. Facilitating communication is one of the biggest hurdles in the business world. This is especially true in marketing, where there can be several campaigns going on at once. If marketers aren’t equipped with a system to collect, organize, and interpret data, it can be a challenge to provide clear, timely reports. Project management and reporting tools are two ways marketers can prevent communication breakdowns, ensuring all teams and departments have a designated hub for sharing and receiving information. Automation can help here too, since many tools send status updates and pull campaign reports into one place.

Difficult Data

You make sense of difficult data by putting the right experts and tools in place. With so much consumer data now available, the challenge for many marketers is making sense of it all. Having the right expert in place, like a data analyst, can be key for keeping your organization informed about marketing statistics and the numbers behind your marketing strategies. Analytics is a useful secondary skill for any marketing manager, and you can build it alongside your core marketing coursework.

Marketing managers are responsible for staying on top of changing technology and consumer behaviors. With the right resources and tools at their disposal, they can be prepared to face it all head-on.

Ready to Start Your Journey Toward a Marketing Career?

If marketing management sounds like it could be a good fit, you can take the next step at Â鶹ԭ´´. and see if a degree in marketing is right for you.