Discussion questions

“Marketing is managing profitable customer relationships” (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011, p.4). In marketing you want be able to get new customers, while also still satisfying your existing customer. Word of mouth marketing from customers is business’s best and worst thing for a company. If customer was impressed it makes a company look really good, but if customer was not impressed you could also lose customers because of what another customer said. The end of day goal in sales is to profit through sales volume, and marketing’s end day goal is to profit through customer satisfaction. I do think that marketing and sales should be included as part of the sales organization within a company. Marketing gets the customers in door, so then the sales team can sell the correct product to the customer. Marketing and sales need to work hand and hand, to make sure marketing is getting the right people in the door to get the product. Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P (2011). Marketing: An Introduction (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Planning is very important in marketing because you have to know how to market your products. A market plan is made of strategic and tactical plans. “The marketing planning process consists of analyzing marketing opportunities, selecting target markets, designing marketing strategies, developing marketing programs, and managing the marketing effort”( Kotler & Keller, 2012, p15). A market plan should be updated to keep up with the market. If you just make a market plan and walk away from it then you just wasted your time. There are the five p’s that need be addressed in a marketing plan; they are product, price, place, people and promotion. The marketing plan is a road map for the whole department. I would convince my supervisor that the marketing department should produce a formal