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Marketing management is the process of developing strategies and planning for product or services, advertising, promotions, sales to reach desired customer segment.

Marketing management employs tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates. These include Porter's five forces, analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others.[1]

In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors.

Marketing management often conduct market research and marketing research to perform marketing analysis. Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include:

• Qualitative marketing research, such as focus groups and various types of interviews
• Quantitative marketing research, such as statistical surveys
• Experimental techniques such as test markets
• Observational techniques such as ethnographic (on-site) observation

Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis.

A brand audit is a thorough examination of a brand's current position in an industry compared to its competitors and the examination of its effectiveness. When it comes to brand auditing, six questions should be carefully examined and assessed:

1. how well the business’ current brand strategy is working,
2. what the company's established resource strengths and weaknesses are,
3. what its external opportunities and threats are,
4. how competitive the business’ prices and costs are,
5. how strong the business’ competitive position in comparison to its competitors is, and
6. what strategic issues are facing the business.

When a business is conducting a brand audit, the goal is to uncover business’ resource strengths, deficiencies, best market opportunities, outside threats, future profitability, and its competitive standing in comparison to existing competitors. A brand audit establishes the strategic elements needed to improve brand position and competitive capabilities within the industry. Once a brand is audited, any business that ends up with a strong financial performance and market position is more likely than not to have a properly conceived and effectively executed brand strategy.

A brand audit examines whether a business’ share of the market is increasing, decreasing, or stable. It determines if the company's margin of profit is improving, decreasing, and how much it is in comparison to the profit margin of established competitors. Additionally, a brand audit investigates trends in a business’ net profits, the return on existing investments, and its established economic value. It determines whether or not the business’ entire financial strength and credit rating is improving or getting worse. This kind of audit also assesses a business’ image and reputation with its customers. Furthermore, a brand audit seeks to determine whether or not a business is perceived as an industry leader in technology, offering product or service innovations, along with exceptional customer service, among other relevant issues that customers use to decide on a brand of preference.

A brand audit usually focuses on a business’ strengths and resource capabilities because these are the elements that enhance its competitiveness. A business’ competitive strengths can exist in several forms. Some of these forms include skilled or pertinent expertise, valuable physical assets, valuable human assets, valuable organizational assets, valuable intangible assets, competitive capabilities, achievements and attributes that position the business into a competitive advantage, and alliances or cooperative ventures.

The basic concept of a brand audit is to determine whether a business’ resource strengths are competitive assets or competitive liabilities. This type of audit seeks to ensure that a business maintains a distinctive competence that allows it to build and reinforce its competitive advantage. What's more, a successful brand audit seeks to establish what a business capitalizes on best, its level of expertise, resource strengths, and strongest competitive capabilities, while aiming to identify a business’ position and future performance.

Two customer segments are often selected as targets because they score highly on two dimensions:

1. The segment is attractive to serve because it is large, growing, makes frequent purchases, is not price sensitive (i.e. is willing to pay high prices), or other factors; and
2. The company has the resources and capabilities to compete for the segment's business, can meet their needs better than the competition, and can do so profitably.

A commonly cited definition of marketing is simply "meeting needs profitably".

The implication of selecting target segments is that the business will subsequently allocate more resources to acquire and retain customers in the target segment(s) than it will for other, non-targeted customers. In some cases, the firm may go so far as to turn away customers who are not in its target segment.The doorman at a swanky nightclub, for example, may deny entry to unfashionably dressed individuals because the business has made a strategic decision to target the "high fashion" segment of nightclub patrons.

In conjunction with targeting decisions, marketing managers will identify the desired positioning they want the company, product, or brand to occupy in the target customer's mind. This positioning is often an encapsulation of a key benefit the company's product or service offers that is differentiated and superior to the benefits offered by competitive products.For example, Volvo has traditionally positioned its products in the automobile market in North America in order to be perceived as the leader in "safety", whereas BMW has traditionally positioned its brand to be perceived as the leader in "performance".

Ideally, a firm's positioning can be maintained over a long period of time because the company possesses, or can develop, some form of sustainable competitive advantage.The positioning should also be sufficiently relevant to the target segment such that it will drive the purchasing behavior of target customers. To sum up,the marketing branch of a company is to deal with the selling and popularity of its products among people and its customers, as the central and eventual goal of a company is customer satisfaction and the return of revenue.

Marketing management employs a variety of metrics to measure progress against objectives. It is the responsibility of marketing managers to ensure that the execution of marketing programs achieves the desired objectives and does so in a cost-efficient manner.

Marketing management therefore often makes use of various organizational control systems, such as sales forecasts, and sales force and reseller incentive programs, sales force management systems, and customer relationship management tools (CRM). Some software vendors have begun using the term marketing operations management or marketing resource management to describe systems that facilitate an integrated approach for controlling marketing resources. In some cases, these efforts may be linked to various supply chain management systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), material requirements planning (MRP), efficient consumer response (ECR), and inventory management systems.

An online degree is an academic degree (usually a college degree, but sometimes the term includes high school diplomas and non-degree certificate programs) that can be earned primarily or entirely through the use of an Internet-connected computer, rather than attending college in a traditional campus setting. Improvements in technology, the increasing use of the Internet worldwide, and the need for people to have flexible school schedules while they are working have led to a proliferation of online colleges that award associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.

The goal of educational accreditation, according to the United States Department of Education, is to ensure that programs provided by institutions of higher education meet acceptable levels of quality.[1] ENQA, the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, describes the role of external quality assurance in education as one that "combines both accountability for the reassurance of the public and an objective and developmental role for enhancing quality in institutions".[2] In the area of online education, it is important to avoid unaccredited diploma mills that offer fake degrees, as these are unfortunately common. Students seeking valid online degrees should obtain proof of accreditation from an appropriate national or regional accrediting body.

In the United States, online colleges that are fully accredited have earned a widely recognized form of university accreditation from one of six regional accreditation boards.[3] Each of six geographic regions of the United States has one of these boards, a non-governmental agency that oversees and accredits degree-granting institutions headquartered in their areas. The U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) also recognize the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) as the accrediting organization for distance learning institutions and education programs that offer online degrees.

Outside of the United States, other national and regional standards of accreditation hold, and may be highly supportive of, distance education. For example, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, or Open University of Catalonia, has been accredited by AQU, the Agency for Quality Assurance in the Catalan University System (a full member of ENQA), since its inception in 1995, and has been called a "significant success story" as "the world's first continuous, and sustainable, virtual university".[4] Similarly, in Ireland, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) has accredited a number of online colleges and degrees, e.g. Setanta College.[5]

In many cases, an online degree earned through an accredited public or private university may be effectively indistinguishable from a degree earned in a campus-based program, sometimes referred to as "brick-and-mortar" programs. The instruction is often exactly the same, with the online degree containing no special designation. As such the same financial aid packages are often available to online students, which has helped make them more accessible to traditional applicants. An example of an indistinguishable degree program is that offered by Columbia University. Student who earn a degree through the Columbia Video Network (CVN) earn exactly the same type of degree as the campus-based program.[13] The professors, courses, homework, tests, and eventual transcripts and diploma are identical to that of on-campus students.[14] Another example is NYU Tandon Online which offers master's degrees completely online through New York University Tandon School of Engineering.[15]

In recent years many top universities have been actively expanding their extension and online learning programs in an effort to legitimize the online education arena.[16][17] While admissions to online programs at prestigious universities hasn't seen a dramatic spike, there has been a large expansion in course offerings in recent years. Almost all Ivy League and top 20 universities now offer at least one online graduate degree program or certification.[18]

The Sloan Consortium, based on data collected from over 2,200 U.S. colleges and universities, reports that nearly 3.2 million students took at least one online course during 2005 (a significant increase over the 2.3 million reported in 2004). According to the same report, about two-thirds of the largest institutions have fully online programs.[11] In 2010, more than 6 million students were taking at least one course online.[20] As of 2013, the number of students enrolled in online courses had risen to over 6.7 million.[21]

• "U.S. Department of Education Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs". ed.gov. United States Department of Education. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• "ENQA Mission Statement". enqa.eu. European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• "College Accreditation in the United States-- Pg 7". ed.gov. United States Department of Education. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• Rajasingham, Lalita. "New Challenges Facing Universities in the Internet-Driven Global Environment". EURODL. European Distance and E-learning Network. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• "Setantal Report Final with Amendments" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-12.

• Adams, Jonathan; Defleur, Margaret. "The acceptability of online degrees earned as a credential for obtaining employment". Communication Education. Routledge. doi:10.1080/03634520500343376.

• Wellen, Alex (2006-07-30). "Degrees of Acceptance". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• "Fraud and Online Learning". 5 October 2011 – via NYTimes.com.

• Robinson, JoAnn (2004-03-23). "Using Your Distance Education to Earn an Academic Degree" (PDF). detc.org. Distance Education and Training Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-06. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• Carnevale, Dan (2007-01-05). "Employers Often Distrust Online Degrees". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• Allen, I. Elaine; Seaman, Jeff (2006-11-15). Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 (PDF). Sloan Consortium. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• Lohr, Steve. “Second Thoughts On Web Classes.” New York Times 13 Sept. 2010: 3 Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

• Schweitzer, Karen. "Will Anyone Hire a Grad with an Online Business Degree?". about.com. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• Online Degrees Portal Is online degree the same as on-campus degree?

• NYU-ePoly FAQs What is the difference between an on-campus course and online course content?

• charley (8 April 2015). "About Us".

• "Online courses + time on campus = a new path to an MIT master's degree".

• "Top Universities You Didn't Know Had Online Masters Degree Programs - academical". 9 July 2016.

• Tabs, E.D. (2003-07-15). "Distance Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2000-2001" (PDF). National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

• "Growing number of college students choose online courses". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 2012-02-16. Retrieved 23 December 2012.

• "The Rise of Online MBA Education". University of Ohio. Retrieved 23 February 2015.

• Croix, Wendy. "Down with the 50 Percent Rule: Up with Online Education Financial Aid". WorldWideLearn. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

Industry Description Full Program Listing

Code	Concentration	More Info
BSGB	Associate in Business - Marketing
School: Baker College Program: Marketing encompasses a wide range of positions, such as advertising, sales, retailing, wholesaling, warehousing, packaging, and distribution. This program prepares students for a variety of positions in sales, wholesale distribution, customer service, retailing, and buying. :: Concentration: Online Courses :: Online        ::  Location: Online ::  more info

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Code	Concentration	More Info
BSGB	Bachelor in Business - Marketing
School: Baker College Program: Marketing offers a variety of career opportunities in retail sales, distribution, or advertising. Marketing majors may choose a business minor that will tailor their overall program to their particular career objectives. :: Concentration: Online Courses :: Online        ::  Location: Online ::  more info

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Code	Concentration	More Info
BSGB	MBA/Marketing
School: Baker College Program: This program has been designed for people who work (or want to work) in marketing, advertising, or public relations. In addition to core MBA courses, students are exposed to practitioners, the constantly changing roles of various marketing functions within the company, and to a variety of topics and issues highly relevant to the changing workplace. :: Concentration: Online Courses :: Online        ::  Location: Online ::  more info

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Industry Description

The use of the Internet as a marketing medium was one of the major factors that have fuelled its explosive growth over the last ten years. Increasingly companies realize that they need at least representation on the Internet, and many are now embracing the new methods of both marketing and sales that the Internet presents.

If you want to be a part of this incredible growth, then you need to get into Internet marketing now. The best way of getting yourself into this profession is to take an Internet marketing course. This will cover subjects such as the principles of marketing, market research, e-Business, web design and administration, financial and business planning, and other relevant areas. You will get the chance to build web sites, and even run pilot commercial projects.

You could choose to study on campus or online, using a PC and a connection to the Internet. Studying online is a particularly suitable medium for this course, as you will be able to experience both the advantages and the disadvantages of online usage, and you may well find that working online inspires you to think of new business or new angles that could transform your future career.

The prospects for marketing professionals are good at the moment, according to the US Bureau of labor, and salaries are around the $65,000 for marketing managers. It is probable that you would have advantages with your knowledge of Internet marketing, as courses are relatively new and this degree of specialization will help you to get a good first job. So take an Internet marketing course, and launch your new career.

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