If the makefile is portable (e.g. to various OS) you would install GNU make, if you don't have it already. cygwin and mingw include GNU make. If it meant for a particular non-standard Windows make program, you will need to install that one, or fix it. If you installed Visual Studio, you should have NMAKE, so that is the most likely one for a makefile which is intended to work only on Windows.
If the makefile is intended for a compiler other than the one you are using, you must study it to see whether it is set up to allow you to specify your compiler, e.g.
make FC=ifort -nf makefile
would display the commands which would be executed by invoking make without the n option, if it is set up in the most usual way.
