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Writing a Marketing Plan
1. Marketing is a complicated activity that relies on many different tasks. For this reason, marketers create a marketing plan. A marketing plan is a formal, written document that directs a company’s activities for a specific period of time. It details analysis and research efforts and provides a roadmap for how a product will enter the market, be advertised, and sold. The specifics let managers know their responsibilities, budget, and timelines for completion. A plan helps a company monitor a company’s performance. A small retail business may develop a simple marketing plan for a year, but a large manufacturer would prepare a marketing plan that covers five years.
2. Marketing plans may differ from company to company. However, there are some basic elements that will be found in all marketing plans. Those elements include an executive summary, a situation analysis, marketing goals/objectives, marketing strategies, and implementation, as well as a system for evaluation and control. An executive summary is a brief overview of the entire marketing plan. It briefly addresses each topic in the plan and gives an explanation of the costs involved in implementing the plan. The executive summary may also be used to provide information to people outside the organization, especially those who may be investing in the company or organization.
3. Objectives let everyone know what the marketing plan will accomplish. To be useful, an objective must be single-minded (have only one topic for each objective), specific, realistic, measurable, and have a time frame. Each topic needs to be a separate objective. Specific means that the objective provides enough detail that there can be no misunderstanding. You cannot use, «to be better than a competitor» as an objective because what is «better» to one person may not be to another.
4. Measurable means that the objective includes a way to evaluate it. For example, you cannot simply say you want to increase sales. You need to identify the percentage increase in dollar or unit sales to make that objective measurable. Finally, you must include a time frame, such as in six months, or as compared to last year’s sales. Without a time frame, you would not know if an objective was actually reached.
(Gary E. : Marketing Essentials / E. Gary, Ph. D Clayton. – Interactive Student Edition / E. Gary, Ph. D Clayton. – Glencoe, McGraw-Hill, 2009)
The statement «While developing a marketing plan one should keep in mind the following characteristics of the objectives: exactness, feasibility and time frame» corresponds to paragraph number …
