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• What is it?

  Marketing planning is a road map which consists of strategic and tactical (day-to-day) organisational marketing activities that are required to drive your company forward, both efficiently and profitably. Comprising of evaluating, planning, implementation and control; marketing planning is fundamentally a key business process, covering areas such as;

  •    Company objectives and marketing’s role in achieving them.
  •    Target audience descriptions for each segment, the associated USP’s and the insights. that led to those USP’s.
  •    Movement and management of customers through each of the buying stages throughout the customer lifecycle.
  •    Management and implementation of the 7Ps.
  •    Customer Relationship Management.
  •    Infrastructure requirements including changes to sales practises, database development and understanding of any research required.

• When to use it?

  Marketing planning is used to;
  •    Understand the economic and competitive features of a market sector
  •    Identify target markets
  •    Identify segments within a target market
  •    Identify most appropriate strategies
  •    Commission, understand and act upon Market Research
  •    Understand competitors, their strategies and likely responses
  •    Develop new products

• What does it achieve?

  Well constructed and professional marketing planning will help to clarify the purpose of organisations in terms of; where it currently resides in the minds of the consumer; where it wants to be, how it will be perceived; what does it need to do to get to a suitable position and then evaluate the progress to see if the objectives have been met. Successful Marketing planning achieves;
  •    Auditing of customers’ brand experience
  •    Establishing environmental scanning for opportunities and threats
  •    Understanding of an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
  •    Creation of a sustainable competitive advantage
  •    Understanding where a brand needs to be in the future
  •    Establishes management information systems to identify progress

• Key steps:

  Step 1 – Where are we now?
  •     Marketing audit
  •     Financial /ratio analysis
  •     Competitor analysis
  •     Customer analysis
  
  Step 2 – Where do we want to be?
  •     Mission (Vision, values and purpose)
  •     Objectives
  
  Step 3 – How might we get there?
  •     Direction of growth
  •     Which markets to compete in
  •     Which customers to target
  •     How to position the offering
  •     Nature of growth
  
  Step 4 – Which methods should we use?
  •     Marketing Mix
  •     Promotional activities
  •     Media mix
  •     Activity plans, budgets, schedules
  
  Step 5 – How can we ensure arrival?
  •     Monitoring and Management controls
  •     Measurements
  •     Evaluation

Contact us for further information, or help with any of your strategic marketing planning

Tags: customer lifecycle management, marketing planning, target markets

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 9:14 am and is filed under How To Do.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.