8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers

Unit Overview

8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that helps to build an understanding of the principles of marketing that are important for leaders within the organisation. Marketing within the organisation is critical as it establishes channels of communication between the customers and the organisation in relation to the products and services that the organisation is offering to the market.

The leaders have a responsibility of ensuring that they effectively conduct marketing, including using principles of marketing to effectively identify the characteristics of the market and create segments that can be used to effectively meet the needs of the market.In the contemporary markets that are highly competitive, marketing plays a critical role in ensuring that the organisation can strategically position itself as the best seller of its product and services to ensure that it achieves maximum success of operation and engagement.

This includes being able to build a competitive advantage by utilising the marketing mix available to the organisation and implement strategies of conducting an evaluation and analysis of the marketing to identify areas of strength and weaknesses that can be used to optimise sales and performance in general. 8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is a unit that focuses on helping to build this knowledge that is critical in the leaders to ensure they can conduct and run effective marketing processes and practices. The unit is taught in 4 hours of guided learning and contributes 1 credit value towards the completion of ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

All stakeholders within the organisation must contribute to increasing awareness of products and services that are being offered by the organisation to the market. This involves being able to effectively interact with the customers and ensure that they are convinced to choose the organisation as their preferred seller. These activities revolve around maximising the sales and performance of the organisation within the market, which is the responsibility of all stakeholders within the organisation.

As such, 8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is a unit that is suitable for all stakeholders within the organisation in building their knowledge and skills of the role that they should play in improving the marketing practice and activities and maximising the sales of the organisation.8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is designed to cover the learning needs of the first-line managers, junior managers and team leaders who are responsible for overseeing the accomplishment o goals with project teams in the organisation.

The unit is useful in building the knowledge of these leaders and helping them to understand their roles in strategically positioning the organisation within the market to beat the competition that may exist in market share. The unit is also applicable to other leaders within the organisation who develop tactical and strategic decisions in marketing as well as employees who play an active role in implementing the marketing strategies. The unit is also useful for external consultants who support the marketing practices and procedures within the organisation.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• explain the marking concept and its significance within the organisational context

• show understanding of the concept of the marketing mix, explain its elements and features and provide relevant examples on how it is applicable within the context of the organisation

• identify the key elements of the marketing strategy, focusing on aspects that they can influence from their area of responsibility

• conduct an effective organisational SWOT analysis to understand the context of the market

• identify action plans that can be used to major on the strengths and opportunities while minimising the adverse effects of the threats and weaknesses within the organisational context

Key Learning Areas

8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is a unit that focuses on building the understanding of the learners on principles and strategies of conducting an effective marketing activity. The unit focuses on building the knowledge on the effective approaches of understanding the market needs and creating effective influence over the market. Some of the main learning areas include:

Principles of Marketing

This area of learning help the learners to understand the definition and impact on marketing in organisations. The learners are guided on understanding various principles that form an effective marketing strategy that can be used within the organisation to achieve the desired levels of sales and popularity within the market.

They are guided to understand the idea of marketing mix and how each element can be implemented to achieve the desired levels of marketing and attractiveness within the competitive markets. The learners are also introduced to market segmentation, where they identify different groups of customers and provide their needs. In this area, the learners are guided to establish different public and customer relations activities that contribute to different methods of sales promotion and advertising that are available to the organisation.

Market Analysis

In this area of learning, the learners are taught to conduct an effective analysis of the position of the organisation within the market context. The SWOT analysis is one of the tools that is used to promote this learning goals and objectives. The learners are guided on the various elements of the SWOT analysis tool and led to understand the implication of each element in the marketing strategies and principles. This area of learning also ensures the learners are able to develop strategies to improve the performance of the organisation.

Evaluation

8600-330 Understanding Marketing for Managers is a unit aimed at impacting theory and practice of the learners. The unit is evaluated using two main approaches, which are a written assessment to determine mastery of theoretical concepts and simulated exercises, a case study as well as supervised practice to evaluate practical mastery of content.