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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

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..., Strategic Marketing. 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.