Importance of Marketing to socioeconomic development

     Marketing creates employment, as a profession it can create jobs like advertising manager, public relations manager, media planning manager, sales strategy manager, brand managers etc.

     Marketing raises people’s standards of living, marketing can raise the standard of living of both the marketer and the consumers since they will have proper knowledge of the product they are consuming through marketing.

     Marketing pays for most of the entertainment and news that the mass media provides to the public. Through the huge marketing budget that most established companies have, marketing is able to pay for all its personnel and activities that goes around the marketing processes.  

     Marketing facilitates international trade , through marketing international companies are able to find markets for their products and services, many firms are now able to compete both locally and internationally through marketing of their products and services.

     Marketing leads to improvement of infrastructure .i e for banking industry where they have more teller points, more services like mobile banking, cash point to attract more clients to their services and products.

     Marketing improves social economic status of the citizens, marketing helps to raise the standards of living of the marketers as professionals and it also improves the lives of the consumers as they are now consume more competitive products and enjoy better quality services.

     Information generation is a strategic role of marketing. Through marketing, information about the product i.e. benefits, usage, expiry dates, is given which makes the consumer knowledgeable about the product. Marketing departments can also have their marketing intelligence/research units gather information on what is happening in the market. 

     Marketing makes possible the availability of the much needed foreign exchange. By engaging in both export and import trade a country is able to have a balanced foreign account thereby meeting its foreign exchange needs.
     Marketing provides incentives for innovativeness, inventions and efficiency.

     Marketing provides entrepreneurial talents/ opportunities especially for the small-scale market intermediaries. Marketing as a profession has created many entrepreneurs, e.g. in the media industry we have many advertising agencies owned by many Kenyan entrepreneurs like Aegeis and Saracen.  

     Marketing leads to accumulation of capital through enhanced savings, for instance in the financial sector i.e. the banks and insurance companies give very good incentives to attract many client to do savings with them, e.g.  Faulu bank, this has been achieved through marketing of these products and services.

     Marketing stimulates demand which in turn enhances production and increased utilization of resources. Through sales promotions, advertising, CSR, PR activities product and services consumption is highly enhanced. This helps in providing information about the product and in turn influencing the consumer purchasing decisions.

Importance of Strategic Marketing to businesses

Strategic marketing seeks to establish a sustainable competitive advantage for an organization. This can be achieved through allocation of resources to opportunities that are geared towards meeting the organizations objectives. Strategic marketing employs processes beyond the marketing mix scope to ensure the organization differentiates itself effectively through providing superior offerings to customers. It provides the organization with an opportunity to improve on its strengths while seeking out opportunities and avoiding or dealing with threats appropriately.

Strategic marketing and customer value

Strategic marketing plays a major role in delivering added value by increasing consumer satisfaction and the quality of the organization’s offerings. Value from a strategic marketing point of view would include

·         The quality offered being commensurate with the price being charged

·         The value that is attached to the reputation of the brand

·         Value through customer service

·         Value provided by exceeding the customer’s expectations

In order for the above to be achieved strategies need to be implemented to better understand the customer’s needs and how they make their decisions, to incorporate features in the product or service that would meet these needs and cultivating loyalty and trust to ensure long-term engagement with the customer.

Strategic marketing and business portfolio

Strategic marketing enables the organization to determine the businesses that it should engage in. Thus the organization only concentrates its efforts and resources towards developing an attractive business portfolio and understanding the businesses that it engages in. Apart from determining the direction of the businesses the organization should engage in, strategic marketing will also guide the process of developing the organization’s growth policies.

Strategic marketing and understanding of the environment

Strategic marketing provides for the understanding of the environment and situation. A PEST analysis would guide the marketing process in order to gain the highest level of benefits. Political, economic, social-cultural, technological, legal and environmental factors are given high priority to enable the organization to recognize both the opportunities and threats presented by these factors.

Marketing strategies

Strategic marketing provides the approaches that would be used to handle the different strategic business units as they are determined by the organization. These approaches are derived from the different characteristics of a particular unit. For example, using the BCG matrix, different units would be classified in different levels which are stars, cows, question marks and dogs. Stars are high growth products that are stronger than competitors and have the potential of becoming cash cows in future. Cows are low growth products with a considerable high market share. Question marks they operate in high growth markets but are currently in low market share. Dogs are units that operate in low growth markets and have low market share making them unattractive.

For each of these levels different strategies may be employed such as building share to turn a question mark into a star, hold where the organization would invest only enough to keep the unit going in the case of stars, Harvest in the case of stars to turn them into cows and Divest in the case of dogs.