We have discussed in the first lecture that understanding the marketing process is essential for anyone planning to communicate with customers and persuade them to change their attitudes and behaviors. That's why the strategic marketing process prompts the basis for any integrated marketing communications campaign and we need to understand it very well to tailor our markets and communications. In this lecture, we will focus on the marketing process and learn about it steps. The first step is about analyzing and understanding the situation in the market. It requires an analysis of our consumers, company, competitors, collaborators, and context. In other words, it requires a thorough five C analysis. We need to evaluate all these factors to have a healthy understanding of the company's ongoing market situation. We need to ask ourselves a lot of questions. First, we need to understand our company. How did we define the business we are in? What skills do we have? Who is our target audience? What do our existence and potential consumers needs? How can we differentiate our brand from others? Who are our direct and indirect competitors? Who are our collaborators in our efforts to meet consumers needs? How is the political and economic environment that we are functioning in? The answers to these questions are critical in every step of the marketing process. To have a detailed analysis of the markets will help us grasp the value that we can provide to our consumers, taking into consideration our companies resources, competition in the market, our customers needs and so on. To establish a successful marketing campaign, we need to understand what distinct and relevant value we can offer to our target audience. After we understand the value, we need to create it. We have limited resources, I cannot afford to communicate with the public in general. That's why we need to refine our target audience definition, the people that we can deliver the value to. Refinement requires segmentation and targeting. And it will allow us reduce the size of the people we will communicate with. The primary purpose of segmentation is to increase the efficiency of our marketing efforts. We divide the market into distinct groups of buyers according to their needs. These groups should share at least one characteristic in common that will make them responsive to our marketing message. Then, we evaluate the attractiveness of each group according to our company's resources and how well the value we can provide fits with their needs. Segmentation and targeting are critical steps toward developing a compelling positioning, which requires all elements of the marketing strategy come together to form a single, focused and distinctive value to be delivered to the target audience. Positioning takes the value we offer to our consumers and plants it in their minds so that it's very clear what the product stands for and how it is different from the other offerings in the product category. The third step of the marketing process is to construct a marketing program that links the strategy to execution. In other words, to how we've delivered the value. In marketing program that is prepared according to the findings of the five C analysis and their refined segmentation, targeting and positioning, is supposed to deliver superior value compared to the competitors. And marketing programs should coordinate every component of the marketing mix, the four p's: product, price, place, and promotion, in order to achieve harmony in the messages relate to the consumers. In other words, the value created in the previous steps will be delivered to consumers in the form of a product that is priced attractively, made accessible through multiple channels, and communicated correctly and effectively with the right audience. In marketing program, is a thoughtfully coordinated set of activities that help you build strong customer relationships and maximize their sales. Plus all these three steps: understanding, creating, and delivering value are achieved successfully. Then, the company may expect to capture value from the consumers, creating sales and profits. In this lecture, we have gone through the different steps of marketing process. In the coming lectures, we will learn more about different decisions that as marketing or brand managers we need to take. And additionally, we learn how this decisions will affect our communication strategy.
