Planning encourages thinking about the future, provides direction and purpose, and can improve performance. Developing and implementing a marketing plan is an inherent part of growing your business. Although many companies develop plans, many of these plans fail for various reasons, and managers lose sight of the importance of the planning process and working a plan.
What is it that causes so many plans to fail? There are many reasons including poor implementation, inability to modify the plan, and unforeseen changes in the marketplace, among others. Whatever the reason, many failed plans (and companies) have a common element: the failure to link specific objectives to explicit strategies. Despite the simplicity of the concept, the lack of discipline or knowledge to create a measurable, time-based objective and link it directly with a strategy to achieve the objective has left many companies wondering what went wrong.
The Plan Begins
Most marketing plans include three distinct sections called situational analysis (realities of the moment), objectives and strategies, and expected results. These elements can be posed as questions to help simplify the idea of a marketing plan.
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Where are we now?
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Where do we want to go?
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How do we get there?
This simplified view of the plan is a very powerful tool for businesses to set the stage for creating the marketing plan. The first part of the plan is a review of the current situation, and includes items such as a brief history of the firm, customer analysis, competitor analysis, and market environment review. Including a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis helps to better understand both the internal and external environments in which your company operates.
For many organizations, a SWOT analysis provides ideas for developing objectives and can make it easier to identify areas to improve within the company. The strengths and weaknesses focus on issues internal to the organization such as company reputation, quality of product, market share, manufacturing costs, sales force effectiveness, capacity issues, R&D innovation, profitability, and other areas. This internal analysis is an excellent way to identify areas where the company may be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. A similar exercise can be completed for your firm’s competitors. Analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and developing strategies that enhance your company’s strengths, minimizes your weaknesses, and exposes the weaknesses of your competitors.
While the strengths and weaknesses analysis focuses on the internal organization, the opportunities and threats are external to the firm. Opportunities may be found in emerging markets, growing economies, extending your service network, or capitalizing on your competitors’ weaknesses. Threats include the entry of new competitors into the market, changing consumer preferences, shifting demographics, competitor alliances, etc. Opportunities are areas where you can use your company’s strengths to improve your position in the market, increase sales revenue and profitability. Threats are related to internal weaknesses but are generally beyond a firm’s immediate control. The successful marketing plan leverages the company’s strengths while minimizing weaknesses.
Once the situational analysis is finished, the next step is to take this information and determine where you want the company to be in the next three months, six months or year. Are you looking to expand your market coverage, increase awareness, double revenues, triple profits? Using the SWOT analysis information, you can exploit your strengths and develop strategies that will assist in meeting your goals.
The Heart of the Matter
The heart of the marketing plan is found in the objectives and strategies. And this, unfortunately, is where most plans begin to lose steam and become weak. Objectives are often written for failure. Not on purpose, but due to the lack of understanding of how to develop, implement, measure, and modify the strategies as the marketplace changes or new information is found. The most common error when writing objectives is that of vagueness—making broad statements that cannot be measured.
If you are not able to measure if you met the objective, how do you know if you arrived where you want to be? What indications are there to know if your plan was solid and the strategies and tactics implemented were correct?
The answer is you do not know unless you are able to measure the results. Simply stating that you want quality to improve or sales revenue to grow does not give you the ability to measure the results of the investments in your business. How do you know if quality improved? How long do you continue with the same strategy to improve quality? Is it improving fast enough? These questions can be answered by creating specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based objectives.
Developing Intelligent Objectives
Commonly referred to as SMART objectives – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based—these types of objectives can be monitored and measured. Using this approach, you will know if your strategies and tactics worked and be able to conclude if your plan was a success. The best part of this technique is that it is not difficult to do. Creating specific and measurable goals takes more effort, but the end result is a robust set of clear objectives that can be linked with specific strategies.
Making the Connection
The situational analysis is complete and you have developed your intelligent objectives. Now the success of creating a working plan comes to fruition with linking specific strategies to each one of the objectives. This portion of the plan answers the question“how do we get there?”
To develop winning strategies, the firm must consider its strengths and weaknesses that were identified in the SWOT analysis. Knowing in which areas the company excels, specific strategies that are centered on the company’s strengths can be written for each objective. It is important that strategies be written for each objective and not included as a separate portion of the plan. This forces the planner to specifically indicate the ways the objectives will be met. Assigning a strategy to each objective requires the planner to fully explain how the objective will be achieved. It is also important that the strategy is clearly tied to the objective. As mentioned earlier in this article, a primary reason that most plans do not work is the failure to link strategies to specific objectives.
What can you expect?
As with any project that requires investments of time and money, it is important to show the expected results if the plan is implemented and the objectives are achieved. Expected results is the concluding section of the marketing plan and details the expected financial results including sales revenue and profits. This section also includes forecasts of market share, unit sales, new market potentials, and other items related to the objectives. It answers the question, “If we achieve these objectives, what can we expect?”
Conclusions
The difference between a good plan and an average plan is the specific and intentional link between strategies and objectives. When objectives are defined in a clear, easy-to-understand format, the ability to measure the performance and success of the strategy used benefits the company. Knowing if you reached your objectives for market share or awareness levels in the market allows you to understand what is required to succeed, or what should not be repeated.
Creating a marketing plan that works can be done. The secret is making the link between your strategies and objectives. Using the information from the situational analysis—particularly the SWOT analysis that details your company’s internal capabilities and external environment—solid objectives can be established. The marketing plan is a tool that encourages thinking about the future and provides direction for successful marketing. Use it to improve your organization's effectiveenss and profitability.
Original publish date: 2002
Revised: 2008 |
