IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING PLANS

Importance of Marketing Plans

Importance of Marketing Plans

Marketing Plan

It is a structured selection of advertising and marketing opportunities built to utilize your small business marketing spending budget to its greatest edge. It includes itemized charges for production and media buys for your chosen advertising venues. Additionally, it includes a work schedules for the launch of promotions, advertisements and in-house logistics needed for the execution, monitoring and follow-up of marketing and advertising campaigns. The most credible plans are those that incorporate breakdown of its target markets, products and services to be promoted. Regardless of how big or small the company is, a marketing plan needed to become successful. What is marketing plan? How vital is it in the success of companies? Whether you are starting a small or large company, you need it to guide you in your daily operation.Significance of marketing plan:

It is a detailed analysis of the internal components of a business enterprise.

It presents an overview of the external forces which affect the company and ways of dealing with them.

It sets goals to guide the firm in whatever direction it undertakes.

It provides a benchmark for achieving the future marketing incentives.

It offers strategies on how to launch a new product or service.

It presents ways on how to address or how to fix a problem.

It ensures that all your resources properly utilized and properly targeted.

As a whole, marketing plan is a platform that establishes where you want to go, what you want to be and what road you like to thread. When formulating your personalized marketing proposal, always remember to consider the current business scenario, your goals and strategies and your target market. It should be logical, goal-oriented and realistic (Workman, 1998, 21). More so, you need to consider the elements of the marketing mix such as the product, packaging and methods of distribution. You need to consider the five parts of a marketing plan such as:

Purpose/Mission - You have to explain the purpose of formulating your marketing plan. It should be concise and clearly worded for everyone to understand. To have an excellent mission statement, it should answer the following questions like: What services does the company provide? What is your business creed? What is your standard of doing business? What types of products you sell? Why are you in business?

Strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis - As the phrase implies, you need to provide information of your strengths, weakness and the threats.

Marketing objectives - This part is crucial and important in the development and marketing of products and services. In this part, you need to identify your financial objectives, overall marketing objectives and marketing tactics.

Strategic marketing programs - It is the longest portion of the document because it details the strategies you need to implement to achieve a designated marketing goal. In this part, you need to consider the product, price, promotion and place.

Budget analysis and implementation - It is the final section of the document which analyzes and scrutinizes the company's financial ability to carry out its marketing ...