What Is A Marketing Plan?

What is a Marketing Plan?

Marketing/MKT571

What is a Marketing Plan?

In order to get from point A to point B, there needs to be road map. With a marketing plan a marketer can outline specific actions that will take a product or service to potential customers. It does not have to be long or dragged out process and it doesn’t have to break bank in order to complete. This can be part of an overall business plan or as a document that provides detail instructions on how to achieve the marketing goals.

In this assignment, the following discussion will include the following information concerning a marketing plan: discuss what a marketing plan is and is not; examine the elements that should be included in a marketing plan; examine the importance of a marketing plan; discuss how a marketing plan can be applied to a new product launch; and discuss ways to determine goals, strategies, tactics, and objectives for a new marketing plan.

Marketing plan is and is not

A marketing plan is written document that summarizes what the marketer has learned about the marketplace, indicates how the firm plans to reach its marketing objectives, and helps direct and coordinate the marketing effort (Kotler & Keller, 2016).

Plan is…

According to Business Link UK (2009) “Marketing is a key part of business success. You need to decide which customers to target. You need to work out how you will reach and win new customers. You need to make sure that you keep existing customers happy. And you need to keep reviewing and improving everything you do to stay ahead of the competition.”

The right marketing plan identifies everything from 1) who your target customers are to 2) how you will reach them, to 3) how you will retain your customers so they repeatedly buy from you. Done properly, your marketing plan will be the roadmap you follow to get unlimited customers and dramatically improve the success of your organization (Lavinsky, 2013).

Plan is not…

Failing to develop a marketing plan can result in budget problems, low customer volume and, in a worst-case scenario, the closure of a business. If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan in place for your business, chances are your advertising; marketing and promotion efforts are haphazard (McQuerrey, 2016).

With no marketing plan in place, you won’t have a formal system for assessing where your leads and customers come from. This means you won’t know which of your marketing approaches works. You could be wasting money on marketing and advertising venues that don’t work for your business while underutilizing effective marketing vehicles at the same time.

The worst-case scenario of not having a marketing plan in place is that your business fails to attract enough customers to warrant keeping the doors open. Refers as the budget if you randomly place ads, run commercials and print promotional materials with no real goal in mind, you can overpay and see poor results.

Elements and importance of a marketing plan

The specific product, specific market, or a plan for the entire organization describing the activities involved in achieving targets set in the marketing within a specified period. The market begins with identifying (through market research) of the specific needs of customers and how the organization is intended to fulfill them while generating an acceptable level of performance to the company.

This includes analysis of the current market situation (opportunities and trends) and detailed action programs, budgets, sales forecasts, strategies, and projected financial statements among others. Items to consider while initiating the marketing communication plan are: which consumers need to be targeted for inclusion into an aggressive communication plan? Who is the competition? And where should CE aggressively target efforts to get the product promoted in an effective manner (Fleischner, 2012).

The planning process begins with an extensive situation analysis. The factors identified in the situation analysis are woven into the economic webs surrounding the new product.

Marketing plan applied to a new product launch.

When thinking about the different environments in which a company operates, five basic environmental forces deserve attention: political, behavioral, economic, social, and technological. Each of these forces affects different aspects of the product development process.

A second major trend is that customer “care” will become increasingly important. There is increasing evidence showing that organizations which become market-oriented will tend to be more profitable than non-market-oriented firms (Narver and Slater, 1990).  Technology and advertising are the most important thing in the launch of a new product, how to get attention of public and established the customer satisfaction is primarily the success of the product.

Marketing plan in the launch of a new product based in the market how to caption customer needs to satisfied this need, if is technology or services; customer is very demanding. For the technology for example is oriented in the need of play accurate satisfaction make people shorten their time, being faster to reach the result skipping some steps in the process.

Goals, strategies, tactics, and objectives for a new marketing plan.

Marketing strategy in general is supposedly the result of a firm’s segmentation, targeting and positioning choices at the level of the Strategic Business Unit (Webster, 2005). Objectives need to be clear and how you will achieve them. A good marketing plan sets clear, realistic and measurable objectives, includes deadlines, provides a budget and allocates responsibilities. A plan can consist of these elements: analysis of your current market; need and satisfaction of the customers. Business objectives; money is the primary but we got through it meet the needs and find satisfaction to achieve the objective which is to marketing the product and make possible profit for the business.

The key strategies; attract new customers, focus on satisfying their needs and build lasting relationships. Take the critics and analyze them in favor of the product to improve. Justify the price and proposed budget; taking in balance the improvement and needs of the customer. Communicate with customer to establish the better plan and profits. Always work with a deadline, necessary to focus in the launch at the time that customer needed the new product. Remember that your marketing plan should remain an ongoing process throughout the life of your business.

Conclusion

Marketing plan is the road map to achieve specific marketing objectives such as product specific, market specific, or company-wide plan. The plan commence with the investigation, involving market research, of customer and needs. Hence, achieving customer satisfaction while generating acceptable level of return,

There needs to be an analysis of the current market situation through opportunities and trends and detail action plan. This includes budgets, sales forecasts, strategies, and projected financial statements. A marketing plan needs to be simple and succinct. Needs to have the right breadth and depth, having the right balance between completeness.

The plan needs to be specific, concrete and measurable which provides clear course of action. Specific activities, each with specific dates of completion, person’s responsible, and specific budget. Marketing plan needs to be realistic. Sales goals, expense budgets, and milestones dates must be realistic (Berry and Wilson, 2000). A marketing plan usually contains the following sections: executive summary; situation analysis; marketing strategy; marketing tactics; financial projections and implementation controls.

References

Business Link UK. (2009). Write a Marketing Plan.  Retrieved from http://www.infoentrepreneurs.org/en/guides/write-a-marketing-plan/#5

Fleischner, M. (2012). 10 Key Components of a Marketing Plan. Advertising, Sales and Marketing.

Kotler, P.T. & Keller, K.L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hal

Lavinsky, D. (2013). Marketing Plan Template: Exactly What to Include. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2013/09/30/marketing-plan-template-exactly-what-to-include/#6f2c427a3b82

McQuerrey, L. (2016). Consequences of Not Having a Marketing Plan. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/consequences-not-having-marketing-plan-50097.html

Strategic marketing planning for radically new products. Cooper, Lee G. Journal of Marketing 64.1 (Jan 2000); 1-16.

Tim Berry and Doug Wilson, On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Palo Alto Software, 2000).

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