Introduction

Overview of a Marketing Plan

A strategic marketing plan fuses effective marketing decisions with ­efficient management practices, thereby providing a roadmap for success. Aspiring entrepreneurs use a strategic marketing plan to evaluate a new business idea. Others use it to qualify a business for financing, influence investors, improve marketing decisions, motivate workers, and attract buyers.

Who Needs a Marketing Plan?

Each profit center needs a strategic marketing plan. This includes divisions, brands, product lines, and branches. A business compiles their plans into a company-wide strategic marketing plan that becomes a major section of its business plan.

The mission of a business determines its overall goals—where the business is going and how to measure its effectiveness. Possible measures include market share, profits, or return on investment. Goals must be clear, specific, realistic, and congruent with the mission, yet challenging.

The goals of a higher level in the hierarchy determine the objectives of the next lower level. Objectives specify how to reach the goals, what steps to take, and when to take each step. According to Doran, objectives should be SMART, an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive.¹ By taking these steps, the business achieves its objectives, reaches its goals, and thereby fulfills its mission.

Who Is Its Audience?

The audiences of a marketing plan include buyers, workers, financing sources, investors, and managers. For example, aspiring entrepreneurs use a marketing plan to evaluate a new business idea relative to these criteria:

1. The target market perceives its products or services are beneficial and solves an important problem.
2. This opportunity is timely and appropriate for the marketplace.
3. The business can obtain the necessary resources.
4. The management team has the necessary experience, capability, ­persistence, and connections.
5. The business is likely to sustain its unique strength and thereby ­generate long-term profits.

What Is Its Scope?

The marketing plan does not change, but various audiences or ­stakeholders rely on different amounts of the entire document. Table I.1 sequences ­various audiences by their need for information. The scope of the marketing plan accumulates as follows:

Table I.1 Audiences of a marketing plan

1. Prospective buyers browse the Company Overview on its website when considering a purchase decision.
2. Job applicants and ambitious employees surf publicity about its Business Strategy and Action Plan when planning their career moves.
3. Outside sources such as financial institutions, family members, and friends analyze the Financial Review when qualifying a business for a loan. They seek evidence that the business will repay the loan.
4. Investors may be venture capitalists, partners, suppliers, ­strategic partners, shareowners, or acquirers of the business. They delve into information about its Growth Potential, Management Team, and Opportunities when seeking a business that will provide a high return with little risk.
5. Managers focus on its Unique Strength when starting up or running an ongoing business.

What Are the Purposes of a Marketing Plan?

The components of a marketing plan are designed to benefit a business in these ways:

• The mission statement inspires, guides, and unifies ­employees and suppliers to fulfill the mission of the ­business.
• SWOT analysis (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) predicts how macroenvironmental trends will affect a ­business and define its strengths and weaknesses.
• Its target market consists of key customers who face a ­problem that the business helps them solve.
• Competitive analysis clarifies its unique competitive ­advantage and plans how the business will specialize in this strength.
• Strategic alliances help a business to compensate for its ­weaknesses so the business can specialize in its strengths.
• Positioning is the process of envisioning long-term, big-­picture strategies for the business.
• Marketing mix decisions specify its products and services and how the business will distribute, promote, and price them.
• Prospecting targets those who are similar to its key customers with a direct marketing campaign.
• Customer service policies reward key customers and ­encourage dissatisfied customers to switch to a competitor that can satisfy them.
• Budgeting allocates money, time, and efforts to delight key customers and thereby obtain the highest return on its ­investment.
• Action plans assign responsibilities, define standards, set ­deadlines, and sequence steps for implementing strategic marketing decisions.
• Control is a process that monitors results, resolves gaps, and revises the strategic marketing plan as needed.

What Are Its Sections?

Sophisticated marketing plans have three parts:

1. Current marketing situation
   SWOT analysis evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of a business plus its opportunities and threats. Opportunities inspire the mission of a business, whereas threats delineate the key customers of a business. A successful business specializes in its strengths and delegates its weaknesses.

2. Marketing mix decisions
   Based upon its SWOT analysis, a business makes strategic marketing decisions about its products and services and their distribution, promotion, and pricing.

3. Taking action
   The final part clarifies how a business will target prospects, establish policies, budget funds, and assign responsibilities. Taking action involves implementing marketing decisions, monitoring results, and revising the marketing plan as needed.

What Are Its Chapters?

Each chapter opens with a vignette that resonates with today’s businesspeople and updates one of Aesop’s fables. Aesop’s wisdom relates to a key decision in a strategic marketing plan. Each chapter predicts results, conveys examples, and closes by coaching how to apply this wisdom to a specific business.

The first four chapters guide you through a SWOT analysis of the ­business. This analysis clarifies its mission, target market, specialty, and use of suppliers. The next four chapters lead you to make ­profitable ­marketing decisions about its products and services, and their ­distribution, ­promotion, and pricing. The final four chapters set these decisions in motion by creating action plans for a specific business. These plans involve prospecting, setting policies, budgeting, and assigning responsibilities.

These 12 chapters and six templates of marketing plans coach you to make wise marketing decisions for a specific business. You will enhance its profits when the business implements your strategic marketing plan.

Summary

Each profit center can use a strategic marketing plan as a roadmap to success. The three most important requirements for a successful business are to solve a problem for its target market, have a unique strength, and generate long-term profits.

The three major parts of a marketing plan are SWOT analysis of the current marketing situation, marketing mix decisions, and action plans for implementing these decisions. SWOT analysis evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of a business plus its opportunities and threats. A ­business uses SWOT analysis to choose its positioning in the marketplace through its products and services, distribution, promotion, and pricing decisions. The action plans clarify how a business will target prospects, establish policies, budget funds, and assign responsibilities.

A strategic marketing plan fuses effective marketing decisions with efficient management practices. Implementing these key marketing decisions will enhance the profits of a business.