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Trends are important for marketers as they help us identify what direction marketing taking ahead of time. Knowing trends before they happen allow us to understand what is and isn’t working, and then implement that change before your competition does; helping you achieve goals more effectively and giving you an advantage. The macro and micro environment can affect us in the planning stage of marketing, and this week we went over the factors and trends in the marketing environment, and how they affect it.
Micro and Macro environment
What is micro and macro, I hear you ask…? Well, maybe you didn’t quite get that excited, but here’s what they are. Micro factors, are the factors that can directly influence your marketing, some of which are controllable by your company. Macro factors are factors that indirectly influence marketing, these are typically the factors you would see in a PEST analysis and cannot be controlled by your organisation.
Example micro factors: the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customers, competitors, and the public
Example macro factors: demographic forces, economic forces, natural forces, technological forces, political forces, cultural forces, environmental and ecological forces, legal forces, and ethical forces
Once you understand how to identify the relevant factors that influence your business, the next step is to outline and evaluate these in a marketing audit. The marketing audit is a vital stage of marketing planning as it establishes a benchmark or starting point on which to grow from. The marketing audit is made up of three elements, there are an external audit of the macro environment, external audit of the micro environment, and an internal audit. I talked more about influencers can have an impact on the business, or customer/ consumer in one of my other CIM blogs, you can read that here.
PESTLE Analysis
The PESTLE tool is a way of working through every factor that we should be considering, we use it in similar way to a check list. PESTLE stands for:
[P] Political – First consider the external political environment, and any changes you can forecast over the next 3-5 years. What policies may a new government enforce, and how will that affect your company.
[E] Economic – Here you are looking to spot any trends in consumption, such as taxation inflation or unemployment, and changes to exchange rates would be evaluated here.
[S] Social – Changes to society, demographics, a useful resource might be the census or regular government reports to look over regional and social movements.
[T] Technology – This is where you begin to identify new technologies in the market that provide an opportunity, IoT is one area that is massively growing and will shape today’s industry. Try to evaluate how your company will move with change.
[L] Legal – New laws are often introduced, such as the more recent GDPR regulations put into place, how will this affect your company?
[E] Ethical – Consider your ethical corporate responsibility to be ‘green’ as well as take an ethical approach, companies should understand what are growing concerns of the public and the expectations that lie with you as a business to improve situations such as global warming, can you introduce a ‘paper less workplace’ for example?
Check out some of the other models and tools you can use in my marketing tool kit blog!
