Marketing : Plans

What is it?

A marketing plan aims to help organize the strategy for a company, its products or services. Planning is essential in all organizations and company plans should be documented.

A marketing plan is not a unique document within an organization. Production would have a Production Plan, Human Resources a Human Resources plan and so on.

However, all good plans must support the overall corporate objectives of the organization, the corporate objectives maybe to be global leader in the next five years, all individual plans must support this.

Let’s look at what an outline of a marketing plan may look like.

A common method used to help plan a marketing plan is an acronym called AOSTC. It simply stands for
1. Analysis – Of environment.
2. Objectives – Setting you SMART objectives.
3. Strategies – For segmentation and growth, targeting and positioning.
4. Tactics – Used i.e. marketing mix
5. Control. – How you will monitor that you are achieving objectives.

Structure of a typical Marketing Plan

1. Situational Analysis – Where are we now?

Every good marketing plans needs to analyze the current business situation and ask a simple question, where is the business now? This involves the business firstly conducting an internal audit.

An internal audit will look at:
- Past objectives and success rates.
- Past marketing mix strategies.
- Past budgets.
- Past segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies.

The internal audit aims to look at what you did in the past, was it successful, if not why not, if so, why so? Simple hey!

After the internal audit the next stage is for you to conduct an external audit. The external audit will involve:

- Conducting a PEST analysis, and discussing the impact of this on your strategy.
- Researching the industry you operate in. What are the trends within the industry you operate in?
- Competitor analysis. What are your competitors up to?
- A SWOT analysis to help establish your current strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats.

2. Set your objectives – Where are we going?

Set yourself SMART objectives so you know where you are heading. Remember SMART stands for:
Specific – Clearly state what you want to achieve.
Measurable – Is it easy to measure the objectives you set by monitoring sales, market share figures?
Achievable – Set you attainable objectives.
Realistic – Can you really achieve them with the current resources you have?
Timed – Set a realistic time scale for the objectives.

An option is to use Ansoffs model to help you set your objectives,

3. What tactics or methods will you use to get there? How will you get there?

- Define your target market. Select your segment, your targeting strategy and positioning strategy.
- How will you use the marketing mix to assist you. What will be your product, price, place or promotion strategy?

4. How do I evaluate the strategy? Are we getting there?

Are you achieving the objectives you set for yourself? To evaluate your plan some benchmarks may include:
- Market share data.
- Sales data.
- Consumer feedback.
- Feedback from staff.
- Feedback from retailers.

5. Executive summary – Write a summary of the plan.

Finally at the end of this task write a summary of the plan and place it at the front. Why? Well it acts as a quick reference guide to the plan you have just written.