Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
The Marketing Plan
It is not uncommon to be asked to write a marketing plan, often by someone senior to you and often by someone who really has no idea about what marketing is. This leads to preconceptions or a misunderstanding of what is involved in the production of a marketing plan, and often results in either a generalised list of things to do or a promotional plan surrounding promotion and advertising rather than an analysis and objective document which could be used for reference in the future. Below is essentially an outline structure or contents of a marketing plan.
Executive Summary
To Describe the Plan’s objectives and main points briefly
Current Marketing Situation
To provide background about markets and customers, products, previous plans and results, competition, external opportunities and threats, environmental trends and internal strengths and weaknesses in the context of the organisational mission statement.
Objectives & Issues
To show what the marketing plan is designed to achieve in terms of marketing, financial and societal objectives; to identify and explain ky issues that could affect the plan’s implementation and success.
Target Market
To indicate who will be targeted and how the organisation, product or brand will be positioned for the selected segment(s)
Marketing Strategy
To describe the broad strategic approach that the plan will apply in moving toward the objectives that have been set.
Marketing Programmes
To describe the set of coordinated actions that will be implemented for product, place, pricing, promotion, customer service and internal marketing.
Financial Plans
To back up the programmes with specifics about projected costs, revenue and sales forecasts, expected profit.
Implementation Controls
To show the marketing organisation needed for implementation; marketing responsibilities; next steps to indicate implementation; monitoring progress toward objectives; and contingency plans to consider if results vary from projections.
The Process Itself
