| Typical to most marketing planning are a series
of stages that are usually followed in the sequence outlined below.
Of course each organisation will adapt their marketing planning
to suit their own unique set of circumstances so the following
should be seen as a guideline only.
| Figure 3.3 Stages of marketing
planning |
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
Mission Statement
All businesses should be able to say concisely what their main
reason for existing is, to define their purpose. This should be
accessible to all of the company's stakeholders (that is people
who have an interest in the organisation), indeed today many companies
display a mission statement in their Head Office.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution for example has decided
its overall mission can be summed up with this: 'To save lives
at sea'. Of course many organisations may not be able to sum up
their purpose quite so easily but all should develop a straightforward
statement of some sort. They should, according to McDonald (2001)
define the business the organisation operates in and refer to
the company¨s distinctive abilities (things it can do better than
others). Many of the most useful mission statements are motivating
to staff and customers.
To get an idea about what mission statements look like you might
visit some of the following (note that they are not all labelled
as mission statements, sometimes that are called "philosophy",
or "aims")
 |
| Heather
Moore, Marketing and Promotions Officer
Marwell Zoo, Hampshire |
|
 |
|
| Jon
Weaver, Marketing Manager, Bournemouth
Borough Council |
|
 |
Corporate objectives
The marketing department is a part of the company and so must
'fit in' with what the overall company is doing. As such it needs
to appreciate what the corporate objectives are and ensure its
own actions and decisions support the overall objectives. So what
are corporate objectives?
A set of the most important goals the company wishes to attain
in a given period of time, often one to five years. So they are
concerned with the big important issues and are ways an organisation
makes explicit the targets (often financial) it has set for itself.
For example, corporate objectives might be about return on investment;
gearing; debt and investment finances or company growth. For an
example of corporate objectives see Anglesey Council.
|
| Jon
Weaver, Marketing Manager, Bournemouth
Borough Council |
|
|
Mission statements and corporate objectives occur at an organisational
level (i.e. the Board of Directors will usually determine them).
The rest of the marketing planning process occurs within the marketing
department. All of the actions the marketing department makes
must be justified by referring to the companies' stated mission
and corporate objectives.
Marketing Audit
To audit something is in effect to take stock. If for example
you ran a retail shop and audited it you would count the different
types of products you buy, sell and still have left on the shelves.
So a marketing audit is a way of checking all aspects of the business
directly related to the marketing department. It allows you to
answer the question 'Where are we now?' As Baker (2000) says,
it is an unbiased review of the companies marketing operations
and the environments in which the company operates. This action
is closely linked to section three (The Marketing Environment).
By answering the question "where are we now?" audits
clarify what the real problems are. They should also highlight
the strong and weak points of the organisation. Going through
an audit process also prevents busy people from just doing urgent
tasks and forces them to take a step back from the frantic day
to day jobs (just occasionally) and question whether what they
are doing is right.
SWOT
SWOT stands for:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
It is a way of organising the material and issues gathered in
the marketing audit under four separate specific categories. To
carry out a marketing audit well the findings need to be carefully
considered by determining whether they are a current strength,
weakness or potential opportunity, threat.
- Strengths and Weaknesses relate to things
inside the company (internal), things that can be directly controlled
by the organisation. For example a leisure centre might consider
its large swimming pool to be a strength whilst a zoo might
think its lack of exotic animals is a weakness.
- Opportunities and Threats relate to things
outside the company (external), things the company does not
control directly. For example a Pub might consider the soccer
world cup to be an opportunity as they can show the games on
a big screen and so attract customers. See also The
Marketing Environment section.
Marketing Objectives and strategy
For marketing departments the objectives and strategies relate
to the companies products/services and brands and to the markets
you currently/ propose to operate in. By markets we mean the groups
of consumers you intend to sell to and attract as your customers.
So objectives are about deciding what you are offering (selling)
and to whom. Strategies are about how you are going to achieve
these things. These are also covered in more detail in The
Marketing Environment section.
Example: An Airline
An airline might decide that its marketing objective is: to become
the largest UK airline offering low cost flights to Mediterranean
holiday destinations within two years.
How might it achieve this stated goal? Perhaps by adopting the
following strategy: introducing daily flights to the top 10 most
popular Mediterranean resorts ensuring that their lowest seat
prices are at least 10% cheaper than any rival airline. Thus appealing
directly to cost conscious tourists who prefer to holiday in well-known
resort areas.
In this simple example we see how the strategy is determined
by the objective, in other words the route you are taking must
be determined by the final purpose. Some organisations allow the
routes they are taking to determine where they are going, this
is generally not a sensible way to run an organisation.
Many airlines currently seem to be adopting a similar marketing
objective and strategy to the one outlined. See the following
for examples.
|
| Heather
Moore, Marketing and Promotions Officer
Marwell Zoo, Hampshire |
|
|
Marketing Mix plan
See also section five dedicated to the Marketing
Mix . To ensure the marketing planning process is carried
out properly it is important that decisions about the mix are
made only after the earlier stages in the process have been carried
out. It is easy to fall into the trap of starting with the mix
because it is very familiar to marketing staff. The danger in
starting your planning at this point is that you will not consider
the broader, bigger issues and are likely to lack innovative ideas
because you focus too much on what you are already doing.
Budget
Setting objectives and choosing a strategy means you are going
to develop a plan of action. This will involve using resources.
Marketing activities can be very expensive, advertising costs,
for example, go up far faster than inflation each year.
The budget is the process of documenting the expected costs of
the proposed marketing plan. In an ideal situation a budget would
be developed from a blank piece of paper, in other words you decide
what needs to be done and then cost each part (this is called
a zero-base approach). In reality budgets are often incremental,
that is, they are based on what was spent in the previous year.
Other ways of setting a budget include; percentage of sales, comparative
(i.e. to competitors), all you can afford and task method (see
Blythe, 2001 page 219 for more details).
Clearly when a marketing department begins to set objectives,
select a strategy and a plan to meet the objectives they must
recognise the limitations imposed by budget restrictions.
|
| Stuart
Perl, Regional Director of Marketing
(EMEA), Cunard Line Seaborne Cruise Line. |
|
 |
|
| Spencer
Brace, Sales & Marketing Manager,
Bournemouth International Airport. |
|
 |
Implementation
This is the point that a marketing team is ready to actually start
putting their plans into action. This may involve spending money
on advertising, launching new products, interacting with potential
new customers, opening new retail outlets etc.
Most authors writing about marketing suggest it is important to
ensure the people responsible for carrying out the plans are also
involved in the earlier stages of the marketing planning process.
This way they understand why things are to be done in certain
ways and the logic of decisions made. Early involvement in this
process might take the form of asking for their suggestions and
opinions and holding regular update meetings with them to keep
them informed.
The best marketing plans should also have some flexibility built
into them (Blythe 2001). If they are to rigid, or to strict they
will not allow those carrying them out to respond to unexpected
events and changes in the external environment in which the organisation
operates.
For example the marketing plan might say we will launch a new
product range in October but you might hear in June that a major
competitor intends to launch something very similar to your planned
new product in September. What do you do? Your plan should certainly
allow for the possibility of a change in that plan.
|
| Heather
Moore, Marketing and Promotions Officer
Marwell Zoo, Hampshire |
|
|
Evaluation
Marketers should be careful not to believe the evaluation part
of the process takes place only at the end of the activities in
question. If its left that late to check how things went, you
risk missing lots of opportunities to modify and adapt the plan
and so increase your chances of success.
Good marketing plans are evaluated by referring to the objectives
set earlier. Remember we said these should be SMART and the M
stands for measurable.
One way to ensure evaluation is taking place as the plan is being
implemented, is to build in opportunities for collecting feedback
along the way. This can include both informal meetings/conversations
with the people carrying out the plan to more rigorous formal
ways of gathering data from sales teams, consumer groups and other
agencies (see Marketing Research
section).
Good evaluation systems will capture lots of useful material
to help with future planning by forming part of another marketing
audit (4.4.3. above). This is why marketing planning is often
referred to as a planning cycle because the last parts of one
process feed into the early parts of the next process.
|
| Spencer
Brace, Sales & Marketing Manager,
Bournemouth International Airport. |
|
|
Contingency
If we could be absolutely sure about what the future holds and
what the consequences of our decisions and actions were we would
not need to be prepared for the unexpected and unintended consequences.
But in reality much of what marketing deals with is full of uncertainty
and risk. The best plans include contingencies and so mean the
organisation is, for example, at least prepared if there is an
emergency.
Contingency planning can get difficult. You have to be able to
argue why the plan you adopt is better than any contingency plan
you also have, otherwise the question can be asked, "why
not go with the contingency plan straight away?". This means
a contingency plan should not be an alternative plan radically
different to the one you implement. Instead it should consist
of small subtle deviations based on the plan you are implementing.
Remember the airline example in section 4.4.5 (Marketing objectives
and strategies). A contingency for this airline would perhaps
be concerned with changing the exact resort locations offered
rather than suggesting that low prices should be abandoned altogether.
Marketing planning: a critique
The marketing planning process is adopted in some form by many
organisations suggesting it must have some merit. It is logical
and quite straightforward to follow making it manageable. However
there are some concerns and issues that people raise with it.
Firstly it can be rather inflexible some organisations stick
strictly to each part of the process before moving to the next
and so lose the ability to respond to sudden and urgent changes
either inside or outside their organisation. They allow the plan
itself to determine what they should do rather than seeing the
plan as an aid to good decision making. This is usually apparent
with regard to the budget section which can quickly become 'set
in stone'. It can thus lead to an organisation becoming less not
more responsive.
Secondly the marketing plan is based on gathering and interpreting
a lot of data/ information. Some of this may be inaccurate and
or interpreted incorrectly. As a result an organisation may make
faulty decisions. Modern computer database systems reduce some
types of inaccuracies but can not determine the right decision
for us, this is still a matter of human judgement.
Thirdly some organisations can become too dependent on the planning
process and so begin to lose the ability for innovative thinking,
creativeness and risk taking - particularly useful attributes
in a marketing environment. For more about innovation look at
www.innovation.gov.uk/
Finally there is often a large gap between those who prepare
the plan and those who implement it. Senior managers tend to distance
themselves from implementation and more junior people tend to
feel the plan has been imposed on them. This can lead to many
marketing plans being grand in the design phase but never really
being fully put into operation. As a marketing manager you will
have to ask yourself how you will ensure that your big marketing
ideas are actually implemented. This will mean gaining the goodwill
and co-operation of many others inside and outside the organisation.
You will clearly need to be a good team-player! |
