Nature and Content of a Marketing Plan- Bikram Adhikari

Working within the plans set by the levels above them, product managers develop a marketing plan for individual products, lines, brands, channels or customer groups. Each product level, whether product line or brand, must develop a marketing plan for achieving its goals. A marketing plan is a written document that summarizes what the marketer has learned about the market place and indicates how the firm plans to reach its marketing objectives. It contains tactical guidelines for the marketing programmes and financial allocations over the planning period. It is one of the most important outputs of the marketing process.

A marketing plan is one of the most important outputs of the marketing process. It provides direction and focus for a brand, product or company. It informs and motivates key constituents inside and outside an organization about its marketing goals and how these can be achieved. Government agencies use marketing plan to create public awareness about health, education, environment protection, human right etc. Similarly non-profit organization also use marketing plan to guide their fund-raising and outreach efforts.

More limited in scope than a business plan, the marketing plan documents how the organizations will achieve its strategic objectives through specific marketing strategies and tactics, with the customer as the starting point. It is also linked to the plans of other departments. For example, if any company wants to sell 200,000 LED television during FIFA World Cup 2022, the production department must be ready to achieve that production level. Finance department must arrange expenses and human resource department must have proper human resource management for successful implementation of that marketing plan. Without the support of top level management, other functional management and resource availability, no marketing plan can succeed. Marketing plans are becoming more customer and competitor-oriented, and better reasoned and more realistic than in the past. They draw more inputs from all the functions and are team developed. Planning is becoming a continuous process in order to respond to rapidly changing market conditions.

Philip Kotler has argued that most marketing plans cover one year in anywhere from 5–50 pages. Similar businesses may create shorter or less formal marketing plan. The most frequently cited shortcomings of current marketing plans, according to marketing executives, are lack of realism, insufficient competitive analysis, and a short-run focus.

What, then, does a marketing plan look like? What does it contain?

A marketing plan normally contains the following sections.

Contents of the Marketing Plan

1. Executive summary and table of contents:

The marketing plan should open with a brief summary for senior management of the main goals and recommendations. A table of contents outlines the rest of the plan and all the supporting rationale and operational detail.

2. Situation analysis:

This section presents relevant background data on sales, costs, the market, competitors, and the various forces in the macro environment. How do we define the market, how big is it, and how fast is it growing? What are the relevant trends? What is the product offering and what critical issues do we face? Firms will use all this information to carry out a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.

3. Marketing strategy:

Here the product manager defines the mission, marketing and financial objectives, and groups and needs that the market offerings are intended to satisfy. The manager then establishes the product line’s competitive positioning, which will inform the "game plan" to accomplish the plan’s objectives. All this requires inputs from other areas, such as purchasing, manufacturing, sales, finance and human resources.

4. Marketing tactics:

Here the marketing manager outlines the marketing activities that will be undertaken to execute the marketing strategies.

The product or service offering section describes the key attributes and benefits that will appeal to target customers.

The pricing section specifies the general price range and how it might vary across different types of customers or channels, including any incentive or discount plans.

The channel section outlines the different forms of distribution, such as direct or indirect.

The communication section usually offers high-level guidance about the general message and media strategies.

Company will often develop a separate communication plan to provide the detail necessary for agencies and other media partners to effectively design the communication program.

5. Financial projections:

Financial projections include a sales forecast, an expense forecast and a break-even analysis. On the revenue side, the projections show the forecast sales volume by month and product category. On the expense side, they show the expected costs of marketing, broken down into finer categories. The break-even analysis shows how many units the firm must sell monthly to offset its monthly fixed costs and average per-unit variable costs. A more complex method of estimating profit is risk analysis. Here we obtain three estimates i.e. optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely for each uncertain variable affecting profitability under an assumed marketing environment and marketing strategies for the planning period.

6. Implementation controls:

The last section of the marketing plan outlines the controls for monitoring and adjusting implementation of the plan. Typically, it spells out the goals and budget for each month or quarter, so management can review each period’s results and take corrective action as needed. Firms must also take a number of different internal and external measures to assess progress and suggest possible modifications. Some organizations include contingency plans outlining the steps management would take in response to specific environmental developments, such as price wars or strikes.

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