8605-413 Managing Marketing Activities

Unit Overview

8605-413 Managing Marketing Activities is a unit within the ILM Level 4 module that focuses on improving the awareness of the managers on the role they should play in improving the market performance of their organisations. Middle managers play an important role in ensuring that the organisation is able to achieve tis targets in terms of sales and market share. This targets can only be achieved by effectively managing strategies that are aimed at strategically placing the organisation in a way that it is able to utilise the available marketing strategies to achieve preset goals and objectives.

This involves understanding principles of marketing and effectively conducting marketing activities that identifies the market segments, market needs and the market mix that is required to ensure the needs and expectations of the customers are adequately met. 8605-413 Managing Marketing Activities is a unit that helps to improve the awareness of the managers to this duties and ensure that they successfully run the marketing programs hence facilitate success within the organisation.

The main purpose and aim of this unit is to develop understanding on the critical marketing strategies and mix that can be used to achieve the organisational goals and objectives which is a primary responsibility of practicing or potential middle managers. The unit is taught in 15 hours of guided learning and contributes 3 credit values to the completion of the ILM Level 4 module making it one of the primary units within the course.

Suitability of the Unit

Different leaders within the organisation are tasked with the duties and responsibilities of conducting effective marketing of products and service sot ensure that the organisation achieves its goals and objectives in their areas of responsibilities. 8605-413 Managing Marketing Activities is a unit therefore, that is mainly designed to provide the awareness of the managers in different areas within the organisation with relevant information that they can use to achieve the desired levels of marketing in the different fields and areas of responsibility.

With the information provided in this unit the managers can understand the importance of marketing within the organisation and principles of marketing that help achieve the organisation target. The unit is mainly singed to provide relevant support and learning opportunities to the middle managers within the organisation. This is because these are managers tasked with overseeing activities within specific departments or regions that have direct interaction with the customers. However, all managers need to ensure they facilitate marketability of the organisation in their areas of responsibility.

As such, the unit is suitable for all leaders including the top level managers within the organisation. First line managers and team leaders can pursue the unit to ensure they are prepared for future leadership positions within the organisations. The unit is further suitable for the external consultants who provide relevant support to the management when developing marketing strategies and putting up structures for the product and service marketing within the organisation. It helps them to understand the critical areas of importance in the organisation and the general marketing process hence facilitate success sin the process.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Understand the differences between product and service marketing

• Describe the various marketing mix that can be used to provide a summary of the factors including in a marketing strategy

• Identify various marketing strategies that can be implemented within the organisation especially in their areas of responsibility

• Understand the effectiveness of the organisation in identifying effective market segments that divide the consumers based on their needs or characteristics

• Examine the effectiveness of the marketing mix for the product or service being marketed by the organisation

• Provide recommendations based on the reviews on improving the management of marketing to achieve organisational targets and goals.

Key Learning Areas

8605-413 Managing Marketing Activities is a unit that helps the middle managers to understand the market better and conduct various practices required of them as managers to achieve the goals in marketing. The unit therefore covered both the principals and monitoring principles for marketing. The main areas that that the unit address are:

Principles of Managing Marketing

This area of learning helps the learners to better understand marketing within the business context. They are first guided to understand the differences between product and service marketing which is important in ensuring they understand the actual aspect that they are selling o the market.

The learners are also presented with information on different principles of marketing including the marketing mix, product differentiation and customer segmentation. other information provided in this area of learning include the product life cycle, marketing strategies, growth and development and generating strategy framework that was developed by Porters. The learners are also helped to remove their tools of situation analysis and environmental scanning which helps to understand various trends within the market that could affect sales targets.

Review and Monitoring Marketing Practices

This area of learning helps the learner to understand their role in identifying the efficiency of marketing strategies that have been put in place. The area of learning helps to understand the different methods that can be used to collect both primary and secondary data and analyse the information to generate valid recommendations and conclusions on the trends within the market.

Within this area of learning, the learners are guided in understanding tools of reporting the findings to achieve the desired levels of influence over different organisational activities. This involves making presentations of the recommendations and supporting the recommendations wit data to improve the efficiency of the process.

Evaluation

Upon completion of the unit, the learners are put through an evaluation process. The evaluation consists of a written assessment where the leaners are require to complete a 3000 written paper providing responses to questions provided on the unit.

The assessment covers both theory and practice that is included in the question through the use of structured question to provide case studies and simulated exercise where the learners are required to use the theory learned in a practical context to solve problems. Assessors are therefore able to evaluate accomplishment of learning goals and objectives based on responses provided.