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Lesson 2: Marketing Strategy Planning
Marketing Strategies and the Marketing Plan
Chapter 2 in our textbook contains a detailed description of a marketing plan. Review it carefully. This is what you will be asked to do for your own project. You will create a marketing plan based on the blueprint provided in the book. You can also look at the marketing plan outline on the QuickMBA site.
The logic of developing the marketing plan is exactly the same as any other plan:
- analyze the situation,
- decide on objectives,
- decide how to reach your objectives,
- decide on a particular tactical mix,
- identify timetables for implementation, and
- set controls (ways to know if you are achieving your goals).
Once you are done, you should make a straight forward summary of the whole plan so that a busy executive can read it quickly and know what you are suggesting. The summary should appear first in the plan document.
Because we are talking about marketing, the objectives should be marketing-related (typically, either in terms of market share or sales/profits). Reaching the objectives involves choosing the target market and positioning to it, and the tactical mix involves your familiar four Ps of the marketing decision variables:
- product (its quality, both concrete and abstract),
- price,
- promotion (how and where the product will be promoted, whether there will be sales promotions, and social media use), and
- distribution and supply chain management (which outlets you will use to market the product, and which types of processes are put into action).
Situation analysis involves understanding your strengths and weaknesses (i.e., internal company analysis), as well as the opportunities and threats (i.e., external market analysis) stemming from your customers, competition, and market environment.
A marketing plan describes a business's current position in the market place and its strategy for achieving its objectives over a certain period of time. The purpose of creating a marketing plan is to clearly show the steps you will take to achieve the business' marketing objectives. In other words, when you write your plan, explain how the prepared plan will enable to reach your target market and why it will work.
Please note that the plan must be written as a business document for business professionals. Do not use colloquialisms or informal language. Do not pretend this is a promotional brochure. Proofread very carefully for spelling, grammar, and language.
The plan has to be specific. Do not ever say anything like "We will carry out segmentation and target the appropriate segment with the right offer." Vague language like this will have a negative effect on your grade. Name the segment and describe exactly what you plan on doing.
You should follow the structure explained in the textbook (Ferrell Hartline and Hochstein, 2022, p. 37). Basically, you need to include the following components:
1. Executive Summary
This is a concise explanation of what you are trying to achieve and how. It is there so a busy executive can read it and know at a glance exactly what you are suggesting. This section is, by necessity, written last, because you have to summarize everything else in the plan. It is like the introduction to an English essay!
2. Situation Analysis
Describe the
- industry level analysis (including trends, developments, and economic outlook, as practical),
- competition (their positioning and branding strategies, their four Ps, and how can you compete against them), and
- customers (who they are, what motivates them to buy a product like yours, when they would buy them, and how would they use the product).
This section needs to be based in research. At Penn State University, you can find excellent industry reports in IBIS and other library sources, such as ProQuest and ABI_INFORM data banks (consult with the library if you need help using the databases).
You need to do both secondary (library) research and primary research (focus groups, customer surveys, and marketing analytics).
3. SWOT Analysis
This follows the previous section. A SWOT analysis summarizes your situation analysis in a simple matrix that makes it easy to decide what to do, which lucrative market opportunities to pursue, and how to pursue these opportunities.
4. Goals and Objectives
In the case of your class project, this section will probably be very short. You will need to come up with numerical estimates of how much you will sell within one year and later (annual planning period), medium (1 to 3 years), and long-term (5+ years). That estimate, of course, will come from the previous sections.
5. Marketing Strategy
This is where you explain exactly who you are targeting, your positioning or re-positioning strategy, your brand, what your brand is all about, and state your four Ps. This section needs to flow logically from previous sections. Include samples of your advertising in an appendix.
6. Action Programs
The action programs describe what you will do and when. For example, if your product is best rolled out for Christmas shopping, it has to be in stores by Black Friday at the latest, and advertising for it needs to have started a few weeks before. If you want to first start selling your fashion item in a few select major metropolitan areas and then expand, describe that. If you market children's toys, a majority of toys in the U.S.. are sold between September and mid-December. Therefore, you must start supplying toy stores in early September and engage your promotional strategies between the months of September and December to create public interest and desire for your toy product.
7. Budgets
At the very least, you should have a profit-and-loss statement that includes revenue, costs, and marketing expenses and still shows some profit, even if it doesn't start the first year. You need to operate within the budget set aside by the client.
8. Evaluation and Control Procedures
This section will address the question "How will you know that you are doing well?" In your case, this section will likely be rather short. You need to specify how the company will go about measuring whether its strategy works. In addition to straightforward financial considerations, you can suggest measuring the effectiveness of different activities (for example, identifying whether the advertising campaign resulted in brand awareness). Refer to what you learned in MKTG 342, Marketing Research. You will apply all the methods you learned in that course to measure and evaluate how well the business is doing.
9. Citations
Most marketing plans do not include citations, but this is a part of your coursework, so cite your sources in a proper manner.
References
Ferrell, O. C., Hartline, M. D., & Hochstein, B. W. (2022). Marketing strategy (8th ed.). Cengage Learning, Inc.