Module 1 : Scope Marketing as a Value Building Process

What is Marketing?

The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

• Key points: It's a process (organize information, create intelligence, devise action), its goal is to communicate, deliver, and exchange value to customers, and value should be created for all stakeholders and society at large (value ecosystem) for a long-term, sustainable view.

What is the Marketing Process?

Steps:

    1. Situation analysis

    2. Upstream Marketing Strategy

    3. Downstream Marketing Strategy (tactical elements)

    4. Performance

• Overall objective: To deliver and capture value for all stakeholders.

What is a Marketing Plan?

• Definition: A document that summarizes your marketing strategy and chosen course of action, acting like a roadmap.

• Elements it addresses: Where you are (situation analysis), where you want to go (marketing strategy), how to get there (tactical elements), and what happens if successful (performance indicators).

• Need to write one: Forces goal alignment across teams and stakeholders; forces decision-makers to be specific and provide strict analysis/recommendations.

• Need for regular updates: Due to performance gaps and changes in the market.

• Template elements: Situation analysis (Point A), definition of marketing strategy (Point B), definition of a tactical plan (how to get from A to B), identification of a performance plan (where the road will take you).

Product-centric vs. Customer-centric Organization

• Product-centric organization: Focuses on manufacturing products/solutions first and sees marketing's role as persuading customers to want what the company has. Marketing is a "support" function for pushing the product.

• Customer-centric organization: Adopts the opposite approach, aligning development and delivery of products/services with current and future needs of a select set of customers to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm. It fully embraces marketing as a value-adding function across departments.

Competitive advantages of customer-centric organizations

   1. Understanding that customers are more powerful (access information, interact, influence each other) and being tailored to respond to these changes.

    2. Understanding the strategic value of collecting and using meaningful data about customers to create actual profits.

• Key insight: All good marketing is customer-centric, but customer centricity is not solely the responsibility of the marketing department; it requires thinking beyond traditional silos.