- Marketing Plan
- Marketing Goals
- Marketing Strategy
- Marketing Tactics
Market Research:
- Market Research
- Primary Data
- Secondary Data:
- Market SegmentationTarget Market
Marketing Mix (4Ps):
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
Marketing Analysis:
- SWOT Analysis
- PESTLE Analysis
Marketing Strategy:
- Segmentation
- Targeting
- Positioning
Marketing Implementation:
- Marketing Mix
- Marketing Budget
- Marketing Control
- Additional Marketing Terms:
- Branding
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM
- Public Relations (PR)
- Digital Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
In this guide, I will help you step by step in developing and creating your marketing plan scientifically. I will use "Sonic" as a practical example; it is a company that offers an advanced device (at that time) called PDA, a type of smart portable device that represented a revolution in the world of technology. It provides solutions for device users in terms of data and information processing, as well as communication.
The plan is relatively old but is one of the classics of marketing, as Philip Kotler referred to it in his famous book "Principles." It is a published plan, so there are no issues regarding privacy, unlike many internal marketing plans that major companies do not welcome sharing. While the plan is old and the product is outdated, you may find some information in the market analysis to be obsolete. However, this does not impact the fundamental benefit of using the plan, which is to see how major companies operate in the market and achieve their goals and marketing plans. You can download the plan at the end of the article (your downloading of the file or following the plan will not affect your understanding of the guide, as I have only used some examples from it for clarification).
Introduction
The Marketing Plan and Its Importance to Your Company
The marketing plan is an organized effort by companies to succeed in their operations and achieve marketing goals.
The larger the organization, the more complex and detailed the plan becomes, along with the number of parties responsible for it, and the greater the number of ideas. Therefore, many companies resort to specialized consulting firms in management and marketing to handle the marketing plan, and in some cases, they might leave all marketing efforts to a specialized company.
The importance of the marketing plan lies in providing foresight and a future vision for the company, keeping it in a constant state of work and achievement to meet set goals. Thus, a professional company races against itself and time to achieve the established objectives. If the company maintains a correct monitoring and control system, any shortcoming at the level of deviation from the plan or failure to achieve the required profitability and market share leads to penalties, job losses, and perhaps shortcomings and deviations due to developing a weak plan from the outset, making the error fall on the plan's developers.
Occasionally, all these parties are exonerated if unexpected circumstances occur, and to absolve the person responsible for the plan, these circumstances must be impossible to foresee, as the developer of the marketing plan must anticipate many scenarios for possible circumstances.
The marketing plan is not well-received by many marketing managers worldwide, as it consumes a lot of time and effort, only for them to find that many of its contents do not materialize as expected. This often occurs due to the rapid and successive changes in the work environment. Nevertheless, the marketing plan remains the indicator and measure, serving as a roadmap to the marketing success that organizations desire.
Writing a strong marketing plan is not an extraordinary skill but simply depends on your ability to gather sufficient information and then make the right decisions based on that information.
Many sites and companies have developed a number of ready-made templates that you can easily fill in to create a professional marketing plan. However, if it were that easy, marketing experts would stay at home! This is a common misconception among marketing plan developers, believing that the marketing plan is based on a fixed, rigid, and traditional template, as if it’s something that can simply be saved and put on paper. This is why most marketing plans fail, as they do not result from practical execution.
In my initial enthusiasm and practical application in developing marketing plans, I presented a marketing plan (as the book states) that begins with situational analysis and analyzes each influencing environment separately, then I laid out the strategy, followed by the programs and main marketing ideas. In reality, the framework of the plan was suitable for being taught in the largest universities, while the content had no connection to marketing success!
Anyone who tells you that there is a certain method or framework you cannot deviate from is mistaken, because the plan is not about its form but about its effectiveness. If you want to develop a strong marketing plan, you should set aside the polished templates and start by precisely defining your goal because the goal is what the plan will be built upon. After that, you will gather enough information to build a correct marketing strategy (and not just theoretical words on paper).
Marketing plans indeed rely on four basic steps that I will introduce to you in this guide, but between the steps and during execution, the application differs according to each company's circumstances, and here lies the creativity and expertise of the marketing plan developer.
Additionally, the more flexible the plan is, while still maintaining commitment to achieving the objectives, the stronger and more enjoyable its execution becomes. This is because those working on this type of plan operate in an environment of flexibility and creativity, away from stress, allowing salespeople to work with a great deal of creativity mixed with the freedom (albeit constrained) to achieve marketing objectives.
The marketing plan varies depending on the purpose and duration. There are marketing plans for products, others for brand development, and there are marketing plans for new products or new markets for new customers, and so on. There are also strategic plans that extend over years and annual plans or shorter. In all cases, you must define your objective from the plan to make it practical and flexible, and to do so, make it detailed only to the extent that achieves these objectives.
Developers of marketing plans must understand that the size and degree of detail in the plan depend on the organization's size. A company like Microsoft or Unilever will not develop a marketing plan similar to those of startups in the market. The plan and its framework always differ based on the goal; you cannot compare the marketing plan of a giant multinational company developing a marketing strategy to penetrate a country with its new products with a small company marketing its household appliances.
Plan developers must also consider the other departments in the company, including finance, human resources, production, supply, and the rest of the departments, as coordination between the company's departments is one of the secrets of successful marketing plans and overall marketing management. Therefore, a company might develop a promotional plan and execute it brilliantly, achieving a huge number of interested buyers. However, when the crowds begin to demand the product at distribution points, the marketing managers might be surprised that the production department is unable to meet the demand and the massive pressure from buyers. At that point, companies pay a hefty price for marketing failure and lack of coordination between departments. Similarly, a common scenario occurs when marketing managers execute an intensive promotional campaign that strains the company's budget, causing harm. Here again, the lack of coordination between the marketing department and the finance department becomes evident.