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Marketing Planning: The Only Thing More Important than Marketing
There are many things in life that require preplanning. Certainly, a skilled cook, experienced builder, or team coach do not enter their respective activities without first doing some research and planning.
Without planning, a successful outcome is merely a coincidence.
Marketing is one such activity. It is interesting how human nature guides us to just plow ahead, when even a plowman knows he has to do at least a little planning. Marketing planning, without a doubt, is an essential part of business success. To move on and make commitments and expenditures without a plan is unwise.
Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
Not everyone possesses the necessary combination of logic and creativity to be a good marketer.
Marketing, an often-misunderstood activity, is essential to the survival and growth of a company. Marketing is a company’s main element for success. Having a product that is misunderstood or unappreciated for what the product can do defeats the benefit of having developed a fine product. Without the main element - marketing - sales and profits do not arise. In the world’s top corporations, the director of marketing planning is among the most prestigious. The creative marketer who holds this position can achieve much success simply because he holds the keys to the company’s ongoing favorable position in the marketplace. However, not everyone is suited for it. Those who are not, employ those who are because the value of such creative thinking is recognized as is the need for planning. A good, creative marketer can more than pay their way in profitable returns.
The key element in a good plan is good research.
Market research is the intelligence gathering process of planning that will guide a company in how to differentiate itself in a marketplace. It is the first step in creating a solid marketing plan. The first items to understand are:
- the product itself
- the costs in preparing the product for market
- information on the competition
- information on potential new customers.
The primary source of marketing research information are interviews and surveys and by asking questions. Think of this as just staying close to your customers. Secondarily, documentation on previous experiences and sales data can demonstrate prior success (or failures) and show what works in marketing and what anti-competitive strategies have worked previously.
A Marketing Plan can be the roadmap to greater success.
A marketing plan should provide you with exactly what you hope to do for the upcoming year—it is the road map to your future activities. Creating a marketing plan in advance allows well-thought decisions made by cool-thinking minds. Marketing planning is an intelligent, pro-active activity.
A typical marketing plan should contain a discussion of each major market research point in relation to how you plan to address each. Included among these would be which audience responds best to which attributes of the product and which promotional avenue has been the most efficient at creating a solid return on the investment. A thorough marketing plan should also contain a tactical plan - a schedule for implementation of the individual sales promotional elements and the audience being targeted. Promotional money needs to be mapped out to be effective. Hit and miss promotion is expensive and produces little. Without proper planning promotional spending can soon run away.
Who can help?
It happens that sometimes a company can get too close to its products and markets to see new opportunities or “see outside the box.” In such cases, external consulting can be of great help. Marketing is an activity dependent on intelligent memory and abstract interpretation of events and patterns. The primary activity of a good, intuitive marketer is one of creating new ideas out of old fragments of information. For the superior marketer, they are not only comfortable thinking in that mode but find it well within the comfort zone.
Successful companies know that good, thorough planning by an experienced marketing professional has no peer in contributing to the growth and success of a company.
To learn how we can help you develop a Marketing Plan, request a Proposal.
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