Marketing Plan

Marketing plan is a written document that details the actions necessary to achieve a specified marketing objective(s). A marketing plan lays out a campaign that aims to fulfill a company's market strategy. At the business unit or product level, the plan aims to transform a product or service concept into a successful offering that meets the needs of target customers and fulfills the company's expectations for sales, market share, and so forth. The plan states exactly what the company will do in launching new products and supporting older ones. It indicates the timing of sales and promotional activities, pricing intentions, and distribution efforts. How the plan will be controlled and the results measured are also part of the plan. Plans are contained in binders and are treated with confidentiality lest competitors use their details to deploy counter efforts. It can be for a product or service, a brand, or a product line. It can cover one year (referred to as an annual marketing plan), or cover up to 5 (sometimes referred to as five) years.
A marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan. Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, a marketing plan without a sound strategic foundation is of little use.

A formal, written marketing plan is essential; in that it provides an unambiguous reference point for activities throughout the planning period. However, perhaps the most important benefit of these plans is the planning process itself. This typically offers a unique opportunity, a forum, for `information-rich' and productively focused discussions between the various managers involved. The plan, together with the associated discussions, then provides an agreed context for their subsequent management activities, even for those not described in the plan itself.

Most plans include the following (for the company or for a product line):
• An executive summary.
• A table of contents.
• A summary of the current situation. This contains all relevant data, including SWOT analysis (analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and competitive threats).
• A focused assessment of the market opportunity. This includes a statement of target market segments, a customer and needs assessment, and the competitive challenges faced by the company and its products (or particular product line).
• Financial and marketing goals. Financial goals are usually expressed as incremental revenue improvements, and expected profits at the end of the planning period. Marketing goals are expressed as unit sales or market share.
• A summary of the company's marketing strategy. This summary identifies the target market and indicates how the product or product line will be positioned, distributed, and priced. It also enumerates the specific actions that will be taken to achieve the stated goals. Those actions may include reorganization of the sales force, the use of customer rebates, a national ad campaign, direct mail programs, and so forth.
• A month-to-month marketing budget.
• Forecast month-to-month unit sales and revenues.
• A plan for monitoring and evaluating action plans in progress and at the end of the plan period.

The marketing plan begins with customer targeting. After the target customer segments have been identified, the plan addresses them through the marketing mix. The marketing mix--also called the four P's of marketing--includes product, place, price, and promotion.

Measurement of Progress
The final stage of any marketing planning process is to establish targets (or standards) so that progress can be monitored. Accordingly, it is important to put both quantities and timescales into the marketing objectives (for example, to capture 20 per cent by value of the market within two years) and into the corresponding strategies.
Changes in the environment mean that the forecasts often have to be changed. Along with these, the related plans may well also need to be changed. Continuous monitoring of performance, against predetermined targets, represents a most important aspect of this. However, perhaps even more important is the enforced discipline of a regular formal review. Again, as with forecasts, in many cases the best (most realistic) planning cycle will revolve around a quarterly review. Best of all, at least in terms of the quantifiable aspects of the plans, if not the wealth of backing detail, is probably a quarterly rolling review - planning one full year ahead each new quarter. Of course, this does absorb more planning resource; but it also ensures that the plans embody the latest information, and - with attention focused on them so regularly - forces both the plans and their implementation to be realistic.
Plans only have validity if they are actually used to control the progress of a company: their success lies in their implementation, not in the writing'.

Even when companies are prepared with a cohesive plan, adequate resources, and all the right skills, there are still several unexpected events that companies will face during implementation of marketing plan. This happens because business, like life, rarely plays out according to plan. Here are a few examples of the many surprises that companies may experience according to Harvard Business School Press:
• Customer demand is lower than what your market research led you to believe.
• Consumers use your product in ways you never intended.
• The cost of an ad campaign is higher than you estimated.

Constant monitoring and control of the firm's marketing activities can help company responds effectively to these kinds of unexpected events. And below are the examples of how to control the marketing plan according to HBS Press:
• Annual plan. This type of control aims to assess whether planned results have been achieved. Company can analyze sales, market share, marketing expense-to-sales ratio to control their marketing plan.
• Profitability. To see where the company is making and losing money by measuring profitability by product, territory, customer, segment, channel, order size; or measuring ROI.
• Efficiency. To improve the spending and impact of marketing dollars, for example by measuring efficiency of sales force, advertisements, sales promotions, and distributions.
• Strategy. To ask whether the company is pursuing the best market, product, and channel opportunities by reviewing marketing effectiveness and company's social and ethical responsibilities.