Marketing planning is the complete systematic process of planning all marketing activities within a single business organization.
These activities will mainly focus on devising marketing objectives and appropriate detailed marketing strategies to achieve these specific goals within a set timeframe.
How companies of different size do marketing planning?
The marketing planning may be conducted either for an individual product or for the entire company including all of its products.
1. Marketing planning at small businesses. Many small businesses plan only in the short-term, hence their marketing plans may be relatively informal and incomplete.
2. Marketing planning at medium businesses. But, medium-sized firms are likely to produce formal and professional marketing plans outlining how they will achieve their marketing objectives.
3. Marketing planning at large businesses. Large businesses, such multinational companies or conglomerates, have a broad corporate plan and they will fit the objectives of the smaller companies which operate within the group into that plan. These might be foreign divisions, subsidiaries or franchises which will have its own plans for delivering what the parent business wants them to achieve. The broad marketing plan will detail individual marketing activities which are designed to put those strategies into practice locally.
As achieving marketing objectives will later contribute towards achieving the overall corporate objective, the marketing plan will be strongly influenced by the firm’s strategic plan for the entire business.
Why is marketing planning important?
A marketing plan aims to help organize a marketing strategy for the company and its products – goods and/or services. A visible and widely agreed marketing plan acts as a focus for the whole business. Businesses are seldom static organizations and they operate in quickly changing market places.
Good marketing planning can help the firm to:
- Take advantage of current market opportunities and to address any future market threats.
- Ensure that all marketing activities are focused on achieving corporate objectives such as business growth by increasing sales, improving competitiveness through increasing market share, etc.
- Coordinate those marketing activities and monitor how individual business function (Finance, Human Resources (HR), Production/Operations, Marketing) are contributing to the success of the overall marketing plan.
- Provide employees with a sense of direction which tends to improve motivation and performance. This can have a considerable effect on the ability of the business to hit targets and maintain profitability by reacting to changing environments and unforeseen events.
- Reflect on stakeholder interests and identify how their aspirations will be met.
- Encourage a rational approach based on budgets and making marketing decisions using Management by Objectives (MBO).
Marketing planning process
Let’s now take a look at preparing a common marketing plan for your business organization. As mentioned, the marketing plan is a fully-researched formal written report on the marketing objectives and appropriate marketing strategy to be used to achieve them.
Here are a few steps involved in the typical marketing planning process:
1. Conducting Marketing Audit. Marketing planning starts with doing the marketing audit. Marketing audit means researching the current market climate in which the business operates. It is usually done by collecting and analyzing information about the particular market such as the market size, existing and potential customers, market growth rate, etc. As market research is integral to marketing audit, marketing managers will investigate strengths and weaknesses of the company as well as future opportunities and threats, and then decide on action programes.
2. Setting Marketing Objectives. After the marketing audit is conducted, the firm will set marketing objectives which are marketing goals to be achieved by the whole business. Examples of marketing objectives include increasing sales, increasing market share, improving price competitiveness of current products, improving market leadership, developing new products, etc. In addition, there will be a time limit for each marketing objective to be met and this will be clearly communicated across the marketing department. Remember that the marketing objectives as well as corporate objectives should be SMART.
3. Devising Marketing Strategies. The marketing plan must include different strategies how to achieve marketing objectives. These strategies are simply just different ways of designing, using and tweaking the four elements of the Marketing Mix – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Adjusting the marketing strategies accordingly will happen after checking and monitoring that goals are being met. It is important that all marketing strategies must fit together and be aligned with marketing objectives and the marketing budget to create an integrated Marketing Mix. Thanks to prior market research, the marketing plan can identify specific customer needs and wants to devise marketing strategies to fulfill them while generating an acceptable level of profit.
4. Reviewing the Marketing Planning process. The last step in the marketing planning process includes evaluation of the progress towards the business succeeding in achieving its pre-set marketing objectives. As this review process aids subsequent rounds of marketing planning, regular evaluation of the marketing plan is essential. Therefore, criteria need to be set to provide formal assessment of progress which will include analysis of:
- Customer reactions. Are products satisfying customer needs and wants?
- Sales performance. This can be benchmarked against product line, product range, area of business operations or whatever other grouping the company wishes to use.
- Market share. Has the market share grown, shrank or remained the same? And if so, by how much and what has happened to competitors?
- Profitability. Are sales revenue and various costs as forecasted and budgeted?
After marketing planning is completed, it is worth writing an executive summary which will give a short overall summary of the entire marketing plan. The executive summary should include a brief description of each stage of the marketing planning process as well as the timescale.
Tips about marketing planning
Good marketing plans have a degree of flexibility. Changes in consumer tastes, external economic environment, market conditions and competitor reactions all have to be incorporated into a revised marketing plan.
In addition, every marketing plan must also include the marketing budget prepared in cooperation with the Finance Department. It will be mainly based on sales forecasts and projected financial statements.
Summary
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 – get where it wants to be.
