Necessary Skills of Marketers

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Necessary Skills of Marketers

According to Kotler (1972), effective marketing consists of analysing, planning, organising and controlling marketing efforts:

• ANALYSIS: marketers have to be good at
  - Market analysis to identify the characteristics and demands of the market, and
  - Product analysis to facilitate identification of market opportunities.
• PLANNING: marketers have to master:
  - Continuous product development planning, which allows marketers to identify sources of new ideas and ways to market products better, i.e. packaging, identifying additional product features and testing those.
  - Planning the pricing of the goods effectively to include all desired features at prices that an organization can afford to sell and customers are willing to pay for.
  - Distribution planning is essential for the marketers to determine the most effective ways to deliver the planned product at the right time and - by most effective and efficient means- to the right place.
  - Promotion planning will be done to attract optimal attention to the product and enable the sales.
• ORGANISING: marketers need to have organisational design skills that makes them aware of the benefits and pitfalls of regulating market activities along existing functional, product and market lines. Organisational staffing is responsible for training and getting other organisational resources involved in marketing activities.
• CONTROL:
  - Control skills are crucial for marketers to be able to measure the results and progress of marketing activities.
  - Marketing cost measurement, being the second control aspect, ensures that marketing intiatives are carried out efficiently.

Source: Kotler, P 1972, 'A Generic Concept of Marketing', Journal Of Marketing, 36, 2, pp. 46-54