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10 responsibilities of marketing manager
Marketing is like a plate of really well-made gnocchi pasta, with many different ingredients coming together in the right balance to create an amazing meal, with a Tiramisu to go with right after. The key ingredients are customer acquisition and market share growth—but these two can be expanded into many more marketing functions. We’ll now zero in on 10 most important responsibilities of marketing manager.
- Create and implement marketing plans
- Brand reputation management
- Evaluate brands by accurately estimating brand awareness metrics
- Control product pricing and placement
- Generate online traffic and identify new funnels (SEO, SEM, SM, Influencer)
- Analyze market and competitors
- Measure brand loyalty
- Identify opportunities using analytics and improve conversions to optimize ROAS
- Develop new market for products and identify new customer acquisition channels
- Assign sales targets and report KPI’s to management board
Marketing is the tool, when competition is fierce!
“Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.”, sorry Mr. Edwin, we couldn’t agree with one word of it! What he meant here is, for a truly great product, you don’t really need marketing! Product will fly off the shelf just on words of mouth alone! It would be true, if you’re holding pure monopoly in your market! Look at what the infamous Pharma Bro did, he was holding a monopoly with a patent in a very niche prescription medicine, but decided to jack up the prices of his drug Daraprim by 5000%! But karma had other plans for this little flea, that’s a story for another day!
You don’t need marketing, you can do as you please, when there is one product (with no alternative) and one provider in the market! Forget marketing costs, selling with a shabby service will do just fine, so you can pocket humungous profit! But try not be like Martin Shkreli, the Pharma bro, karma will wipe you clean! He’s the first and hopefully the last of his kind.
When everyone strives to build best service backing a well-made product, it shows capitalism at play, in its finest stroke. Efficiency and innovation driving market towards optimal resource allocation. Let us explain, its slightly tricky, so we’ll ease it into you! Business who provides better product eats away into competition slowly but surely; so, the firm with poor build quality and service eventually runs outs of business and customers now pours their money into the better company who is utilizing their profits to create newer and upgraded products with R&D which requires a lot of resources. That’s what we meant, the excess resources in the market, that is our disposable income going into the pockets of players who is scoring all the right goals! You are not paying someone $200, so they would sell you a $30 Nike knockoff! You expect the exact value from the product which was promised in the product description or specifications.
1. Create and implement marketing plans
A marketing plan is about getting a clear roadmap to help senior management determine how well the marketing deliverables or targets are met. The single most important thing is an organized plan of attack.
Just like before cooking a new dish, you need to understand which raw materials would be needed to whip up your next culinary masterpiece. The marketing plan’s first step is identifying the target audience who’d want to buy your product. Not knowing your core customers and going all out selling is like trying to sell a sunglass to a blind man.
Once you’ve identified your money man who will open their wallet to you, you have to start strategizing how to attract those audiences using online and offline marketing campaigns. A marketing plan gives you clearly defined goals and targets to work with. So at the end of the run, the management board can review the performance.
Here’s where data, measurement, and analytics come in; as you work your way to the target, you tweak and turn your campaigns to adjust for any surprising discovery.
2. Brand reputation management
Marketing managers are the guardians of a brand’s reputation, constantly working to keep it shining bright. They monitor customer sentiment and proactively engage with positive and negative feedback to maintain a solid online presence. They build trust and credibility through strategic content creation, helping establish a positive brand image. The key to maintaining a good reputation is delivering high-quality products and services, being transparent and honest, and always striving to meet customer expectations.
In this digital age, a strong brand reputation is vital to attract and retaining customers. These specialized pools of people work alongside marketing specialists to safeguard a brand’s image, using their expertise and skills to analyze and strategize the best ways to present the company to the world. Whether through social media, public relations (PR), corporate social responsibilities (CSR), community engagement, or leveraging partnerships, marketing managers work tirelessly to keep the brand’s reputation in tip-top shape.
3. Evaluate brands by accurately estimating brand awareness metrics
Marketers are excellent detectives in solving brands’ popularity scores. We say solve because unlike your university exam, where you get a score after completion. They use social media surveillance, what customers comment on their social media posts. Use custom-designed surveys to gather data from the sample population.
Brand awareness metrics measure audience familiarity with a brand and can be tracked through surveys, customer feedback, and social media monitoring. Surveying customers directly and analyzing social media trends provide specific insights into brand recognition. In contrast, customer feedback surveys or focus groups help businesses improve their online presence and effectiveness.
Marketing managers constantly gather information like hunting clues to open the door to a treasure chest, which is the mind of the customers. They piece together the data like a jigsaw puzzle to form a complete picture of the brand’s recognition levels.
4. Control product pricing, positioning, and placement
Marketing managers are like tightrope walkers, balancing the art of setting the right price and positioning their products. It is not just about affordability or store placement but finding the sweet spot that drives sales and attracts customers. They must be masters of the market, understanding their target audience, competition, and industry to determine the best pricing strategy.
Product pricing and placement play a crucial role in any successful pricing strategy. Pricing involves setting prices based on costs, demand, competition, customer behavior, and profitability goals. Placement deals with making the product easily accessible to the target audience. Different companies have different goals and use various pricing methods like cost-plus, market value-based, target ROI, psychological approach, or prestige pricing.
Marketing managers must navigate these waters confidently, knowing that their decisions will influence the success of their products. It is like a high-stakes game of chess, where each move must be carefully calculated and thought out in advance. The goal is to score a checkmate that ends with record-breaking profits.
5. Generate online traffic and identify new funnels (SEO, SEM, SMM, and Influencer)
As a marketing manager, it is your job to choose the right digital marketing channels to reach your target audience effectively. With many options, such as SEO, SEM, SMM, and influencer marketing, it is important to understand your audience and choose the best methods that resonate with them.
They focus on understanding the audience inside out. Research and analyze their needs and preferences, where they spend most of their time, and create content and messaging that speaks to them. That will provide the ammunition to drive more traffic to the branded web pages using the aforementioned advertising methods.
They also identify profitable funnels that will convert website visitors into leads and nurture those lead into a sale, using email newsletters and remarketing. It is essential to build an automated sales funnel that provides a seamless and engaging experience for visitors, ultimately leading them to purchase.
6. Analyze market and competitors
As a Marketing Manager, keeping a finger on the pulse of the market and your competitors is key to success. It is like being a secret agent, gathering valuable information that gives your brand a refined edge. By analyzing market trends, customer needs, and competitor strategies, a marketing manager can stay ahead and continuously adapt their tactics to maintain competitiveness.
To get a complete picture of the market, these 4 questions will prove pivotal:
Who are your customers?
What do they want?
Where are they spending most of their time?
What are your competitors up to?
Then, understand your market and track changes happening in your industry. Research your competitors, including their products, services, and pricing strategies. Did you know you can find your competitors' complete picture of their online advertising strategies using SAAS tools such as SemRush, SimilarWeb, Ahref, and Moz?
You can increase brand recognition, customer loyalty, and overall success by continuously monitoring the market and your competition.
This involves identifying any weaknesses in your sales channels and processes through a SWOT analysis and taking actionable steps toward your goals. This includes breaking down complex challenges into smaller, manageable tasks and setting realistic timelines to ensure success without compromising quality.
7. Measure brand loyalty
Modern marketing managers measure brand loyalty to keep a close eye on the target audience’s changing behavior. It is like uncovering the clues that lead to the truth about how customers feel about your brand. But once you solve that mystery, you’ve peeked into the mass psyche of your consumers and how they experience your brand.
The marketing manager must be able to accurately assess brand loyalty by analyzing consumer data, conducting surveys, and monitoring brand buzz online.
For instance, if customers consistently choose your brand over competitors, it shows strong brand loyalty. On the other hand, if they frequently switch to other brands, it is a sign of weak brand loyalty. It may indicate a need to revamp your marketing strategies.
Measuring brand loyalty is vital to a marketing manager’s role, as it helps maintain and grow the brand’s customer base. It is like a litmus test for the brand, providing a clear picture of its standing in the market and allowing for proactive measures to enhance customer loyalty.
8. Identify opportunities using analytics and improve conversions to optimize ROAS
Improving campaign performance involves locking your eagle eyes on the metrics that matter and using data-driven insights to identify opportunities for optimization. The goal is to increase the return on advertising spend (ROAS) by improving conversions and driving more sales.
But how do brand owners know if your efforts are paying off? That’s where analytics come into play. By analyzing data from various sources, marketing managers can uncover trends and patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. This information can be used to make effective marketing decisions that improve the brand’s marketing performance and increase ROAS.
Marketing managers must also take action to improve conversions. This could involve playing with landing page copy, changing the landing page design, creating artificial scarcity or hype by giving away a prize pool if someone purchases products worth $50 or more, or experimenting with different marketing channels. The key is to be nimble and willing to try new things to drive more conversions, which would increase ROAS.
9. Develop new markets for products and identify new customer acquisition channels
Businesses are always in a quest for growth. To fuel that growth, you need to feed it more orders. And that requires generating more sales by tapping into a new market or customer acquisition channels.
By keeping abreast of the latest market trends, businesses can develop distribution right for their existing products or services in new overseas markets. Or develop a new product flavor that can tap into new consumers. The premise is to find new avenues for growth, whether by accessing new markets locally by introducing a new product or by accessing overseas markets with existing products.
Take for example, the case of Coca-Cola, which has a profile on Giphy.com, where 700 million daily users are clearly up to something cheeky. It’s a fun GIF-sharing platform for content creators. But to tap into the buzz, Coca-Cola runs its account there, giving users free access to its library of custom-made funny GIF banners. In the world of business, any visibility is good visibility. This is a clear example of how you entertain, give value, and acquire new customers from a new channel.
10. Assign sales targets and report KPIs to the management board
The responsibilities of marketing managers are not just about developing and executing marketing plans. It is also about ensuring the sales team’s success. This is where the responsibility of assigning sales targets and reporting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) comes in. The marketing manager plays a crucial role in setting attainable goals for the sales team and tracking their progress toward meeting those targets. But it’s not just about setting targets and monitoring progress.
Marketing managers understand the sales process deeply and what drives conversions. They use data, analytics, and insights to identify marketing opportunities, utilize those with the sales team, and increase the ROAS. The marketing manager acts as a coach, strategist, and cheerleader for the sales team.
The sales reports include KPIs to bring attention to its performance against the overall marketing plan. This KPI report plays a critical feedback-gathering process for the senior management board and keeps them briefed on the track of progress the team is making.
If you want a detailed look into the duties and responsibilities of a marketing manager, we h ave covered this topic here.
What is word of mouth marketing (WOMM)?
Word of mouth is the ultimate dream come true for marketers! Whether using viral advert or just the amazing build quality of the product. Customers can’t stop talking about it because they loved the ad that strike a chord with them. Or the WOMM kicks in after purchasing the product because the customer comes to fall madly in love with the experience and starts to share his or her personal account of using the product among their circles. They are essentially brand ambassadors minus the millions being paid out to Portuguese power player Cristiano Ronaldo.
You have to pay to get your ads across the screens of users. But then there’s the rare occasion when your Ad becomes the talk of town! It’s on everyone’s mouth and you’re spending nada to deliver it to their devices! They are actively searching the Ad on the internet because everyone else is talking about it! These brilliant word of mouth marketing examples shows advertisement going viral and firing billions of neurons in the minds of viewers.
