Most marketers think of marketing as solely the promotion of products or services. This is not entirely true because marketing extends well beyond promotion.
In its entirety, marketing involves seven core functions. Each function is a pillar encompassing various tasks and responsibilities, which must seamlessly work together to drive business growth.
To create a successful marketing strategy as an event venue business manager, understanding the seven functions of marketing and what each entails is crucial. That’s why we’ve prepared this guide.
You’ll learn the importance of proper marketing in business, the seven marketing functions, and how to approach each function in a way that will ensure your marketing efforts succeed.
The Importance of Marketing in Business
Effective marketing is an integral aspect of any business for several reasons:
- It offers valuable insights into target customers and markets through in-depth research. Proper market research reveals helpful information on the target audience, their level of satisfaction, changing needs and demands, factors influencing their purchasing decisions, and so on.
- It helps with product development. Insights from adequate marketing research can help you create new business offerings or align the existing ones to match customer needs. When your venue matches what the target audience wants, success is guaranteed.
- It helps with awareness and promotion. Proper marketing through various channels helps you reach out to your target audience. People need to know your business exists so they can interact with your offerings.
- It works to drive sales. When done correctly, through relevant channels and well-curated messaging, marketing helps you convert prospects into loyal customers.
- It leads to sustained business growth. Efficient marketing allows you to grow with your target audience. You develop fruitful customer interactions that give you the feedback you need to improve your business processes and generate more revenue.
Understanding the 7 Functions of Marketing
To ensure your marketing efforts bear fruits, here are the seven marketing functions you ought to focus on as a marketing team leader:
1. Marketing Research & Information Management
Effective marketing relies on accurate data collection and analysis. For this reason, marketing research and information management is one of the most important functions of marketing you should pay close attention to.
It helps you to systematically gather information about your target market, competing venues, and industry trends. Then, you can analyze and interpret all relevant data to obtain helpful takeaways or action items that inform the decision-making processes of other marketing functions.
One of the best ways to approach this function is to collect data using both qualitative and quantitative research methods on various aspects, such as customer demographics and psychographics. This way, you won’t have to depend on numbers only to capture information, as numbers can be limiting, especially when capturing customer sentiments.
Use well-curated surveys, online reviews, and internal data from website report analyzes to get reliable feedback. Also, consider using venue management platforms like Perfect Venue. The platform’s reports feature provides valuable insight into your target audience’s behavior.
Some of the most essential tasks within this function include:
- Identifying and understanding target audience – what are your customer segments, their pain points, and what drives their decisions to support your venue
- Target market sizing – what market size exists for the different business offerings? What trends indicate your growth potential?
- Competitor analysis and benchmarking – what are your competitor’s offerings and their unique selling propositions? How can you position your business above them?
- Consumer sentiment analysis – are there any emerging expectations or shifts in sentiment among your consumers you need to address?
Overall, proper marketing research offers insights into your target audience’s behavior and relevant market forces that can affect the growth of your business. It will also highlight the competitive advantage you need to succeed.
2. Product & Service Management
Thorough market research reveals opportunities to increase your product-market fitness, and this marketing function assists with execution. As a venue manager, proper product and service management helps design new venues or complementary services to fill a gap in the market. Or it works to upgrade the existing offerings to meet your target customers' needs better.
This also includes identifying the best ways to deliver the best services and products possible.
Essential tasks under this function include:
- Addressing unmet needs and fulfilling unmet demands following insights from the marketing research function.
- Evaluating commercial viability by finding out if enough customers are willing to invest in a new product or service to justify its development costs.
- Product and service innovation and testing that involves researching what amenities are not part of your offerings that your target audience appreciates. You might consider outdoor fairgrounds, banquet halls, or ballrooms. Based on data from your market research, create new sought-after products and introduce it to your audience.
Product management drives differentiation. You use a fresh approach to ensure your products or services stand out among several competitive offerings. The final result of product management is new or improved venue offerings that are likely to increase your company’s market share.
3. Pricing
Another critical function of marketing is pricing, i.e., deciding how much your products or services should sell for. The price you set largely depends on your target customers’ perceptions, which, in turn, determines their willingness to buy.
If your brand’s perceived value is high, customers will choose your venue even if cheaper alternatives exist. This is how luxury brands thrive despite having higher price tags than their more budget-conscious counterparts.
The marketing research and information management function we discussed earlier sheds light on your customers’ perceptions of your brand and can guide your pricing strategy. Other factors to consider during this process include:
- Competitor pricing
- Production costs – How much does it cost you to design and maintain different types of venues?
- The value you offer, i.e., product quality, benefits, post-purchase support, etc. – Are there any additional services you offer customers who rent your venues?
- Business goals
- Branding
Also, consider the following pricing techniques to optimize your pricing and maximize revenue while positioning your brand for long-term success:
- Penetration pricing – introductory low prices to aid in rapid market share gains
- Price skimming – higher introductory pricing to recoup development investments faster before competitors catch up. It’s suitable for radically innovative products.
- Dynamic pricing – helps factor in peak vs. off-peak demand cycles.
- Using psychological tactics – charm pricing tactics, like $49 instead of $50, make your products seem more affordable, especially if you’re targeting price-conscious consumers.
4. Promotion
An essential part of marketing involves putting your services and products in front of your audience so potential customers can know they exist and learn more about them before purchasing.
That’s the aim of the promotion function. It involves all marketing communications you use on various channels to build brand awareness, communicate the value of your offerings, and develop your brand image, thus motivating purchases.
Some promotional strategies to consider include:
- Running advertising campaigns, such as online and print ads, to inform and educate the masses on your venue offerings and brand ethos
- Public relations through press releases and industry experts to showcase your event spaces
- Personal selling, where you deploy a salesforce well-trained in consultative and customer-centric selling to demonstrate your brand’s value in one-on-one interactions. You can use this technique to market your conference or convention halls to companies looking for space for their corporate events
- Direct marketing through catalog distribution or text marketing to qualified leads
- Digital marketing via relevant online platforms, such as websites and social media
Ensure all promotional strategies you use encourage two-way communication. So you can build lasting relationships with your prospective customers. You want to connect with your audience, not throw information at them.
5. Selling
Every marketer’s job is to nudge the prospect towards making a purchase. But there’s a difference in how marketing teams approach the selling process and how sales teams do it.
A marketing team nurtures potential customers throughout the buying process, slowly moving them down the sales funnel by explaining the product or services' values and how it can meet their needs. In doing so, they warm customers so they’re ready to buy when they reach the sales team. The sales team facilitates closing the sale.
An effective way to approach selling as a marketing function is to consistently make the case for your business by naturally including product-centric talking points in all marketing communications. Preferably, use a mix of marketing communication channels and resources to target consumers at each stage of the sales funnel.
Prospective customers should clearly understand how your venue offerings and services stack up against competitor products by the time they speak with your sales team.
Also, use technology and CRM systems to track lead quality, conversion rates, and channel effectiveness to refine your marketing strategies and increase customer lifetime value through cross-sell or upsell opportunities.
6. Distribution
Distribution, as one of the seven marketing functions, focuses on effectively making your products available and accessible to customers where and when needed. You can use various physical or digital distribution channels, including e-commerce stores, in-person stores, wholesalers, and retailers.
Choosing the most fitting distribution channels and getting your distribution strategy right ensures your products reach all intended customer segments conveniently and cost-effectively. It requires you to perform various tasks, including:
- Creating distribution channel partnerships by developing symbiotic relationships with retailers, resellers, and dealers. These come in handy when you’re marketing your event spaces on different platforms, and when managing different events on different venues in your establishment. You’ll get all the resources you need to meet customer demands and manage all events successfully.
- Managing channel partnerships so you can monitor channel partner performance
- Integrating all distribution channels that will allow you to offer customers a unified brand experience across all contact centers and online platforms.
- Aligning your marketing activities with the supply chain team’s activities to ensure seamless product deliveries. Your supply chain should be aware of any marketing campaigns you launch so they’re ready to meet demand hikes and facilitate timely production distribution. It ensures sustained sales and promotes customer satisfaction.
7. Financing
Marketing and financing in most companies work hand in hand. Data from the marketing department can help demonstrate quantifiable positive returns. It can also create accurate financial projections for the finance department to secure funds to grow the company.
Specifically, comprehensive marketing reports provide proof of healthy revenue generation from your venue management business activities and expansion into new markets. Most lending institutions ask for proof of consistent revenue generation and marketing plans to assess a company’s financial health before offering loans.
On the other hand, marketing professionals require adequate funds to implement various marketing strategies online and offline. For example, you’ll need a budget to run paid ads showcasing your event venues on relevant social media platforms.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
For your marketing efforts to succeed, avoid the following common mistakes:
- Inconsistent marketing messaging. Inconsistency brings confusion, which distorts your brand’s image. Ensure all marketing materials embrace your brand’s persona and communicate your brand values for the best results.
- Poor communication with other teams. The success of your marketing team relies on a collaborative effort with other departments, including the sales and customer success departments. Establish reliable communication channels to foster seamless communication between relevant teams.
- Failing to measure the success of marketing campaigns. Marketing, like most other business processes, requires constant improvement. Monitor the performance of your campaigns to ensure you’re getting the desired results. Here’s a step-by-step process for effectively measuring your marketing campaigns’s success you can follow.
Conclusion
All seven functions of marketing are the foundation of the activities you should carry out as a marketing professional. Collectively, the seven functions allow you to promote your business offerings, retain existing customers or acquire new ones, maximize sales, and ultimately increase your profits.
Remember, the insights you gather from your marketing endeavors can improve your business’s daily operations and promote long-term data-driven strategic decision-making processes for your company.
Also, find the right tools to help you organize, analyze, and communicate important information across teams.
If possible, find an all-in-one solution or a tool that integrates with other relevant tools to make it easy to implement and monitor the performance of various marketing strategies.
To streamline your event venue management activities, consider having Perfect Venue in your arsenal of tools. The platform will help you manage various venues under one roof for maximum profitability. It also integrates with various event venue marketing platforms to promote sustained growth for your business. Book a demo for free to see how it works!
