The success of marketing planning is measured by the effectiveness in achieving marketing objectives. If marketing objectives were achieved, the marketing plan was successful. However, if marketing objectives were not achieved, then the marketing plan was unsuccessful.
Even though marketing planning is done and the marketing plan has been drawn, it does not guarantee anything as strategic marketing decisions must be taken and implemented.
Advantages of Marketing Planning
Advantages of marketing planning include:
- Better control of marketing activities. The most important advantage of marketing planning is that it allows the marketing manager to have better control of the business when it comes to all marketing activities. Marketing plans are usually an important part of the annual overall business planning process; hence marketing plans and corporate plans must be aligned with one another.
- Helps to identify and solve marketing problems. While planning does not guarantee any success, it can help marketing managers to identify and solve any marketing-related problems, e.g. lack of demand, ineffective promotion, wrong pricing, etc.
- Provides direction for the business and its employees. Thanks to marketing planning, the marketing employees at the firm can better plan, set and accomplish achievable goals. Thus, the marketing plan can provide the sense of direction and purpose to future marketing decisions which everyone in the marketing department can understand, support and execute. For example, if the overall goal for the whole firm is to increase sales revenue, all sales personnel will be working towards selling more products to existing customers and finding new customers as well.
- Makes coordination with other departments more efficient. Effective marketing planning relies on constructing marketing plans in collaboration with other departments in the business. It is because the marketing department does not work in isolation from other departments. The finance department will be involved as the marketing budget must be calculated, approved and paid for. The human resources department will be involved as sales staff must be recruited, trained, motivated and appraised. The production department will be involved as new product may need to be developed and manufactured to meet the customer demands. All those tasks require cooperation and integration between different business functions to bring substantial benefits for the whole business.
- Helps to introduce new marketing strategies. Changing market environment will require the marketing manager to devise specific marketing plans to help introduce a new marketing strategy to meet the marketing goals. Such new marketing strategies include planning a new product, adjusting the current product, entering into a completely different market or adjusting activities in the current market. The market can be understood either as a geographical location such as a new city or country, or as market segments such as selling to old people in addition to young people. Marketing plans are helpful as they greatly reduce the risk of failure of taking new business directions.
- Can help to convince potential investors. A marketing plan is a part of an overall business plan for a new business proposal. Hence, it can help entrepreneurs to convince potential investors to invest their money in a new business start-up. It is because investors want to see evidence that the market for the firm’s products exist and the firm will be able to sell its products and become profitable.
- Improves the chances of success. Another advantage of marketing planning is that it helps to improve the firm’s chances of the long-term success – increasing the shareholders’ value. Management cannot expect to reach important objectives such as adding value through marketing unless it adopts new strategies that have been well-planned.
Disadvantages of Marketing Planning
Disadvantages of marketing planning include:
- Not feasible at small businesses. One of the most important disadvantages of marketing planning is that majority of the small firms do not have enough resources (money, people and time) to plan their marketing activities in a systematic way, especially small businesses. Many of very small businesses may not have either the money or the skilled management know-how to produce a professional-looking plan. In these two cases, the style and complexity of marketing plans may have to be adapted to meet these problems. But the risk of not planning marketing activities at all is likely to be far greater than the risk of these two problems rendering the plans unsuitable.
- Inflexible when facing market changes. Formalized marketing plans can be inflexible and become outdated very quickly as market conditions can change unexpectedly. In a fast-changing market, the plan could become out-of-date even before it is published. Complex processes are not only costly to construct and follow, but can slow down decision-making due to its inflexibility. In fact, detailed marketing planning can be counter-productive when firms operate in markets at the cutting edge of technology and must react quickly to changing environments. In these circumstances, it is recommended that marketing strategies emerge progressively rather than being systematically formulated in advance.
- Failure to implement the marketing plan may be demotivating. Marketing managers may become connected to the plan that they have devoted so much time and energy to. Their attachment to the plan may prevent them from seeing that unseen changes in the external environment – such as an economic downturn − could require substantial revisions to the plan before it has run its course. Inflexibility can be damaging to a business’s prospects and marketing plans need to be adaptable enough to cope with changing circumstances.
- Expensive and time-consuming. Detailed marketing plans are complex and costly. Marketing planning requires considerable amount of resources to conduct. The results of the marketing plan must always be collected and analyzed against the pre-established objectives. It should be done as an ongoing process rather than just once at the end of the process. Setting, monitoring and evaluating marketing strategies is not a static task. If the marketing strategy does not work, then a market research should be undertaken to find out any negative response from the market and customers.
At the end of the marketing planning process, the overall success or the lack of therefore must also be judged. This information will be used for preparing the new marketing strategy for the future years.
