Regular evaluation of the marketing plan will help with reviewing the marketing planning process.
Marketing planning is the complete systematic process of planning all marketing activities within a single business organization.
In fact, these activities will mainly focus on devising marketing objectives and appropriate detailed marketing strategies to achieve these specific goals within a set timeframe.
The marketing planning process answers several important questions such as ‘Where is the business now?’, ‘Where does the business want to be in the short-term and in the long-term?’, ‘How can the business achieve its objectives to get where it wants to be?’.
How to review marketing planning process?
It is essential to set appropriate criteria to provide formal assessment of progress. There are five ways in which the business can quantitatively evaluate its marketing plan. These include:
1. Sales performance. Sales can be measured regarding the whole product portfolio, product range, product line, region (geographical area) or a single product. In order to evaluate performance of sales personnel, the firm can measure how much sales each employee generated. An analysis of either the volume of sales or the value of sales can be conducted. Has sales increased, decreased or remained the same?
2. Market share. This analyzes the business’s sales in terms of sales of the whole market. Market share is expressed as a percentage. Has market share increased, decreased or remained the same with regards to other companies in the industry?
3. Profitability. Marketing profitability shows the percentage of profit in sales for each product. Are sales revenues, costs and profits as forecasted? Has profitability of each product increased, decreased or remained the same?
4. Customer satisfaction. Are customers happy with the product? Is the product fulfilling their needs and wants? This can be measured using customer satisfaction surveys.
5. New customers. Many businesses measure how many new customers or new leads a particular promotion campaign generated. They also count phone calls, Emails, website visits, social media likes, social media shares, etc.
On one hand, the main benefit of marketing planning is of course reflecting on past marketing activities not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.
On another hand, the main problem with marketing planning is that the firm does know how to produce a successful marketing plan and is too focused on sales rather than fulfilling customer needs and wants profitably.
Additionally, all good marketing plans have a degree of flexibility. Changes in consumer tastes, economic and market conditions and competitor reactions all have to be incorporated into a revised marketing plan.
To sum up, the marketing planning process involves deciding where the business is at the present, where the business wishes to be in the future and how will the business achieve its objectives meaning get where it wants to be.
