Under the marketing concept, a firm must find a way to discover unfulfilled customer needs and bring to market products that satisfy those needs. The process of doing so can be established in a series of steps. These steps include: analysis of the situation to identify opportunities, the marketing strategy that is formulated, the decisions regarding the marketing mix, and the final implementation of the plan.

Situation analysis serves as the basis for identifying opportunities to satisfy unfulfilled customer needs. In addition to the identification of these needs, a firm must understand its own capabilities and the environment in which it is operating. This analysis can be viewe

The third P in the marketing mix stands for Promotions; this includes all of the tools available to the marketer for marketing communication. In order for a product to successfully sell, it must be effectively promoted and advertised. There are two basic promotional strategies, the push strategy and the pull strategy. The push strategy maximizes the use of all the available channels of distribution to push the offering into the marketplace. This usually requires generous discounts to achieve the objective of giving the channels incentive to promote the offering, which will minimize the company’s need for advertising. The pull strategy requires direct interface contact with the end user of the product. The use of distribution channels is at a minimum during these first stages of promotion, while a major commitment to advertising is required. The objective is to pull the prospects into the various channel outlets creating a demand that the channels will be unable to ignore.

There are three basic marketing strategies to consider. The first is a Skimming Strategy. If an offering has enough differentiation to justify a high price and a company possesses the desire for a quick profit with minimal desires for significant market penetration and control, then a company will set their prices very high. A Market Penetration Strategy is used when a near term income is not so critical and rapid market penetration for eventual market control is desired. In this case, a company will set their prices very low. A Comparable Pricing Strategy is used when a company is not the market leader in its industry. The industry leaders will most likely have created a price expectation in the mind of the marketplace. In such a case, a company will price its product comparable to its competitors. Whichever method a company chooses to use, there is always the chance that it will need to be altered. Whichever method a company chooses to use, there is always the chance that it will need to be altered eventually.

The final step in the marketing strategy is the implementation of the plan. At this point the marketing plan has been developed and the product has been launched. Given that few environments remain static, the results of the marketing effort should be closely monitored. As the market changes, the marketing mix can be adjusted accordingly to accommodate these changes. Often small changes in consumer wants can be addresses by changing the promotional and advertising campaign. As the changes become more significant, a product redesign or an entirely new product may be needed. The marketing process does not end with implementation; there must be continual monitoring and adaptation is needed to fulfill the customer needs consistently over the long term.

The next step would be to make decisions based upon the controllable variables of the marketing mix that is comprised of the four Ps. The four Ps include Product development, Promotional campaign development, Place of distribution,

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