Organisational aspects that affect successful marketing communications.

Introductory thoughts:

According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest good definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably”.” (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.45.). Marketing is arguably the most important aspect of any organisation, successful or unsuccessful marketing is one of the key aspects within an organisation which ensure either its rise or fall. This important area of business is ever changing and growing, and the ways that information is delivered to the market have changed drastically over the past decade. The development of the internet and social media has unarguably changed marketing, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, these platforms and many more are used every single day to convey information to audiences across the world, and this large development in technology has an understandable effect on organisations throughout the world. Managing these communications successfully is vital to the success of an organisations marketing. According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “Thus we see marketing management as the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering and communicating superior customer value”. (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.45.).

In this paper, I will thoroughly explore three topics, and their importance for organisations in relevance to effective marketing. The three topics which I have chosen are as follows: defining the corporate mission and vision, balancing customer and competitor orientations, and behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences. I have chosen these topics as I feel that they are amongst the most relevant and important areas to be considered by organisations for effective marketing. I feel that without these being thought about in immense detail, marketing effectively could prove difficult, and in this paper I will explore why this is.

The overall purpose of this paper is to explore why these three aspects of business are vital for effective marketing, and upon completion of this paper I hope to have explored this in great detail and to have a greater understanding of the importance of the three chosen areas, in relevance to marketing.

Defining the corporate mission and vision:

According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “An organisation exists to accomplish something: to make cars, lend money, provide a nights lodging, and so on. Over time the mission may change, to take advantage of new opportunities or respond to new market conditions. Amazon.com changed its mission from being the world’s largest online book store to aspiring to be the world’s largest online store; and eBay changed its mission from running online auctions for collectors to running online auctions for all kinds of goods”. (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.81.). Corporate mission and vision is the overall purpose and direction of an organisation, without a corporate mission being discussed and confirmed, an organisation will not have any coherent aims and objectives, which are a vital asset to help ensure an organisations success, as the direction of the organisation should be considered prior to making any decisions.

The corporate mission for most organisations is defined in a mission statement, according to John Wolinski and Gwen Coates: “A mission statement is a qualitative statement of an organisations aims and describes the general purpose of the organisation. Corporate aims are the long-term intentions of a business”. (Wolinski, J. Coates, G. (2009) p.2.). A clear mission statement is an extremely valuable asset to an organisation, and the vast majority of organisations have one, for example: according to Sony (2017), Sony’s current mission statement is as follows: “At Sony, our mission is to be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity. Our unlimited passion for technology, content and services, and relentless pursuit of innovation, drives us to deliver ground-breaking new excitement and entertainment in ways that only Sony can. Creating unique new cultures and experiences. Everything we do, is to move you emotionally”. According to John Wolinski and Gwen Coates: “Corporate objectives are designed to enable a business to achieve its aims or mission”. (Wolinski, J. Coates, G. (2009) p.2.). To achieve an organisations corporate mission, the organisation should ideally set a variety of both corporate and functional objectives. Defined by John Wolinski and Gwen Coates, corporate objectives are: “the goals or targets of the whole organisation, usually based on its mission or aims”, and functional objectives are: “The goals or targets of each of the functional areas of a business, usually based on its corporate objectives”. (Wolinski, J. Coates, G. (2009) p.2.). Setting objectives to achieve the corporate mission is of great importance.

In relevance to marketing, and organisations seeking to market effectively, the corporate mission, and the mission statement is one of the most important pieces of information for an organisation, without a clear mission statement, it will be very difficult to decide on how to successfully market the organisations products or services. As talked about briefly previously, the corporate and functional objectives of an organisation, in relevance to marketing, are of great importance; a clear mission statement is vital, as without it the marketing specific objectives of a business cannot be effectively planned. An example of this is as follows: If a corporate mission is confirmed, the organisation can correctly decide on how to best make use of the marketing mix, and how to market an organisations product or service as successfully and effectively as possible, as all of these decisions can be made with the corporate mission in mind. Whereas if the corporate mission is not confirmed, the organisation does not know which market it is appealing to or how to market itself in general, which makes day to day operations substantially more difficult.

According to John Wolinski and Gwen Coates, the marketing mix is: “those elements of a business’s approach to marketing that enable it to satisfy and delight its customers”. (Wolinski, J. Coates, G. (2008) p.342.).

Source: The Marketing Mix (2016).

The marketing mix would be very difficult to produce without the company having a corporate mission and vision.

Corporate mission and vision can often stem from an organisation seeing the want or need of a customer, for example; according to ColdFusion (2015) Apple saw a gap in the market for personal computers, and therefore started selling personal computers. Customer centricity is of large importance to many organisations, which leads to the idea regarding your corporate mission being based on your customers wants and needs, or your goals stemming from what your competitors corporate mission is. This links to customer and competitor orientations.

Balancing customer and competitor orientations:

Customer orientations refers to when an organisation focuses its strategies on its customers’ needs and wants. Competitor orientations refers to when an organisation focuses its strategies and decisions on their competitors position and actions. For example: an organisation changes their pricing strategy based on what their competitors’ prices are set at; an organisation introduces a new product line as a result of a highly popular, revenue producing project which a competitor has recently introduced. This is because some organisations feel as though a close eye should be kept on competitors actions, to maintain their share of the market. According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “A customer-centered company focuses more on customer developments in formulating its strategies”. (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.354.).

In marketing, maintaining an equal balance of both customer and competitor orientations is extremely significant to assist an organisation with effective marketing. The opportunity costs of focusing too heavily on one on these aspects are large and should be considered. For instance, if an organisation focuses completely on their customers, customer developments and customers wants and needs, the organisation is voluntarily producing a weakness in their strategy, as now they are not at all concerned with their competitors actions, which in turn could result in their competitors completing actions which place them in a better position, such as acquiring more of a market share and therefore taking a percentage of the organisations customer base. On the other hand, if an organisation focuses completely on their competitors, they are also putting themselves into a position of potential weakness, this is because if all focus is being put onto their competitors and none onto their customers, there could be customer developments which are not addressed and considered, which in turn could also have an effect on the organisations position. Both of these strategies need to be balanced relatively equally in order to not miss out on any important information which could assist in effective marketing, acquiring all of the information from both competitors and customers is extremely useful in helping to decide on how to market a product or service in the best, most successful way, for example: information about consumer trends, feedback from customers on current projects, and customers’ needs that aren’t being satisfied; otherwise known as a gap in the market.

However, it could be argued that the most successful strategy is to be slightly more customer orientated, whilst still keeping a close eye on your competitors. Amazon is very well known for being an extremely customer orientated organisation. According to Talk Desk (2015) Amazon “consistently rank first on most lists of the top customer-centric companies in the world – and they are showing no signs that they may give up their spot anytime soon”. According to Talk Desk (2015) a few of the practices used by Amazon to keep them at the top of the customer-centric organisations are as follows:

·      “Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos leaves one seat open at the conference table and states that the seat is occupied by the “the most important person in the room – the customer”.”

·      “Bezos believes that, “Everyone has to be able to work in a call center” so that they have insight into the customer’s perspective. As such, each year he and thousands of Amazon managers attend two days of call center training and field calls periodically.”

·      “Amazon appoints “Customer Experience Bar Raisers” to maintain excellent standards.”

·      “Amazon develops products based on customer desires rather than their development team’s opinion.”

·      “They cultivate a “culture of metrics” where they routinely engage in head-to-head tests of customers’ reactions to different features or site designs.”

This information suggests that customer orientation should be the strategy adopted by organisations more so than competitor orientation.

At times there is not a distinct division between the two strategies, as customer orientation and competitor orientation can sometimes correlate. Suppose an organisation is focusing primarily on their competitors rather than their customers, basing their decisions from their competitors. If the competitors they are focusing on are using a customer orientated strategy, the organisation is essentially acting upon customer developments in the market through being competitor orientated, which is where a correlation between the two strategies occurs. Overall, the two strategies should be balanced so that an organisation using them does not miss out on any information, and has access to the relevant information needed to market effectively.

Organisations can consider customer and competitor orientations in other aspects as well, for instance: customer orientation ties in with behaviour segmentation and other customer based market research, opposed to competitor orientation which would link with researching your competitors in the market more so than your customers. The idea behind these two strategies is relatively universal, and can be used in multiple areas of business.

Behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences:

According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “In behavioural segmentation, marketers divide buyers into groups based on the basis of their knowledge of, attitude toward, use of, or response to a product.” (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.263.).

Source: tutor2u (2015).

Behaviour segmentation is a huge aspect of marketing as a whole; this strategy makes targeting audiences and deciding who to market something towards drastically easier, segmenting the market based on behaviour and then targeting audiences based on how the population behave is a very effective way for an organisation to conduct their marketing. There are many potential groups in which the population can be divided into, using several different factors. Common characteristics of market segments include: age, gender, interests and lifestyle. According to Tutor2u (2015) there are four main bases of market segmentation: geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioural.

Source: Slideshare (2014).

According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller the variables of behavioural segmentation are as follows: benefits, occasions, buyer-readiness stage, user status, usage rate, attitude and loyalty status. According to Phillip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller: “Many marketers believe behavioural variables – occasions, benefits, user status, usage rate, buyer-readiness stage, loyalty status, and attitude – are the best starting points for constructing market segments”. (Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009) p.263.).

Behaviour segmentation is arguably the most important type of market segmentation, it is extremely useful for targeting audiences based on their day to day habits, which in turn will result in the correct products or services being advertised to the most suitable audiences.

Behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences can be compared to both defining the corporate mission and vision, and balancing customer and competitor orientations. All three areas correlate with each other which further demonstrates their importance. Behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences is a very customer orientated marketing strategy rather than competitor orientated; behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences could link to the organisations corporate mission and vision, and what audience they aim to target. 

Concluding remarks:

To conclude, this paper has thoroughly explored three key aspects of marketing, and marketing management. The overall purpose of this paper was to explore why these three aspects of business are vital for effective marketing, and upon completion of it I hoped to have explored this in great detail and to have a greater understanding of the importance of the three chosen areas, in relevance to marketing. The three areas which I chose to explore are: defining the corporate mission and vision, balancing customer and competitor orientations, and behaviour segmentation for targeting audiences.

A brief summary of the idea’s explored throughout this paper is as follows: an organisations corporate mission is extremely important in relevance to marketing, as knowing the corporate mission will help the organisation correctly decide on how to market their products or services; balancing customer and competitor orientations is of great importance as focusing on one of these strategies more than the other could result in an organisation missing out on vital information which could help them market effectively; and behaviour segmentation is a hugely significant aspect to marketing effectively as segmenting the market based on aspects such as behaviour increases the likelihood of the correct products or services being advertised to the most suitable audiences.

In my opinion, the three areas which have been discussed are all extremely useful and important to assist with effective marketing, and I would urge organisations to consider these three elements in great detail. I feel as though I have achieved the overall purpose of this paper and I have done what I wanted to do. I have thoroughly explored three areas of business and their importance for organisations seeking to market effectively. I now have a greater understanding of the importance of these three areas.

References:

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· Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009). Marketing Management.13th ed. London. Pearson Prentice Hall. p.81. (Accessed 3 December 2017).

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· The Marketing Mix. (2016). Themarketingmix. Available at: https://marketingmix.co.uk. (Accessed 4 December 2017).

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· Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009). Marketing Management.13th ed. London. Pearson Prentice Hall. p.354. (Accessed 5 December 2017).

· Shauna Geraghty. (2015). Talkdesk. Available at: https://www.talkdesk.com/blog/top-10-customer-centric-companies-of-2014. (Accessed 6 December 2017).

· Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009). Marketing Management.13th ed. London. Pearson Prentice Hall. p.263. (Accessed 6 December 2017).

· Tutor2u. (2015). Tutor2u. Available at: https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/market-segmentation. (Accessed 6 December 2017).

· Tutor2u. (2015). Tutor2u. Available at: https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/market-segmentation. (Accessed 6 December 2017).

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· Kotler, P. Keller, K. (2009). Marketing Management.13th ed. London. Pearson Prentice Hall. p.263. (Accessed 7 December 2017).