Reinventing marketing strategies

Marketing is the backbone of every business organisation in the world. It is the act of understanding the customer needs and selling a product to satisfy his needs where in a market expansion happens. A strongly built marketing strategy is key to achieving meaningful business goals successfully. With varying consumer behaviour and evolving mediums, businesses must have to constantly reinvent their marketing models and plans.

Reinventing marketing models help companies to foresee future demands of the industry. A perfect marketing strategy is a balanced blend of all marketing activities and also based on the four P’s of marketing- Product, Price, Place, Promotion which meet customer expectations.

The importance of formulating an effective marketing strategy gets manifested in various implications such as: understanding of the true needs of the consumers and translating the same into order winning product design and service offerings; creation of a potential chance for any brand to have leverage over its competitors; identification the areas for the overall growth of an organisation and accordingly fetches out solutions for successful implementation. Since strategy is derived out of many minds specialising in different roles, it ensures efficient team coordination as well.

Management institutes today are undertaking various activities to develop its students such as international study tours, industry-embedded activities, immersion programmes and a case-based pedagogy, dual specialisations in management programmes, marketing clubs, relevant internship opportunities, and more.

International study tours conducted by Management and Business institutes provide an opportunity for the students to gain valuable and in-depth insights into international business and the functioning of the global market. These tours broaden the perspective of the students; they make them to understand the consumers, identify the growth areas, and recognise the subjects for research — all of which are a must to have impactful strategy acumen.

Industry-embedded activities and a case-based pedagogy also involve students into various activities like group and individual presentations, mock tests and interactive discussions. Through these activities, students learn how to professionally put together an idea and then they unleash the process of carrying out fruitful research.

Dual specialisations in management programmes enable the students to build expertise and capabilities in two domain areas simultaneously at the same time. It widens the learning capacity of aspirants and gears them up to be multifaceted in the future for their respective organisations. This process also helps the students to enhance their knowledge domain which ultimately make the students capable to design the suitable business strategies.

Institutes nowadays encourage the students to get involved in various club activities such as marketing clubs for discussing, debating, analysing and developing awareness of the frontier practices and concepts pertaining to the corresponding domain. It intends to take a note of the ‘content beyond syllabuses that the students need to inculcate for enhancing their future prospects. Through the formation of these clubs, aspiring marketing minds come together to discuss news related to marketing, product development, branding, new services being introduced by different sections. With the activities of marketing club, the students come up with new ideas to test and assess their understanding and skills before their final presence in the market.

Relevant internships always act as a trial and training tool for budding marketing professionals. These internships provide students as a chance to get experience and understand the fast-paced environment of an professional organisation. The students get to learn and grow among other experienced experts that ultimately add a lot of value to their personal characteristics and also enhance their knowledge domain.

To be able to do excel in a competitive and dynamic environment where everything is rapidly changing, an individual like a student must hold a strong knowledge base and must understand the process of the industry. To sustain in the competitive field, emerging marketing professionals have to make sure that they are capable of identifying new opportunities in the digital era and accordingly must be capable to deliver solutions that are innovative, futuristic, and measurable. Therefore, the Business Management institutes and colleges must upgrade their course curriculum continuously with different activities and programmes to keep their students up-to-date which ultimate make their students industry ready.

(The writer is with Calcutta Business School)