Via this site we offer a good basis for writing a marketing plan. We do this with the aid of various free articles in the knowledge bank.
A marketing plan is a report wherein the commercial endeavours of an organisation are displayed. The report is based on internal and external research after which strategic, tactical and operational choices follow. By using the internal and external environment as basis for the strategy, the opportunities, threats, strong and weak points of an organisation can be addressed in a good manner.
What is a marketing plan?
Marketing is responding to the wants and needs of the client. But what are these wants and needs? And in which way can a company respond to them? In formulating an answer on these questions, the marketing plan can play an important role. A marketing plan is a report that circumscribes the way a company combines the marketing mix and attempts to satisfy the wants and needs of the client with this combination. In other words:
- There are research taking place on the wants and needs of the client in a certain environment.
- There is a plan written on the way the marketing mix can be combined in order to respond to the characteristics of the environment such as the ones that have come forth from the research (1).
In short, the marketing plan is a helping aid for a company to arrvie at a client-oriented strategy for the coming year of years.
Why a marketing plan?
In the marketing the client occupies a central position and is intended in order to respond to the specific wants and needs (in a certain environment) of this client. A marketing plan is thereby a helping aid that a company establishes in order to research, analyse, interpret and thereafter to handle the specific wants and needs within a certain environment in a marketing strategy and marketing tactic. What are the advantages of a marketing plan? Writing a marketing plan offers a company a number advantages, namely:
1. Helping aid in analysis
The marketing plan offers a clear structure which serves as helping aid in the analysis of an environment. It exposes relevant aspects of the corporate environment and takes them along into the analysis, interpretation, handling and ultimate marketing strategy and tactic. By making use of a marketing plan, there is stimulation to think over a number of important subjects and takes away the chance that relevant components are under-exposed or forgotten.
2. Internal customer focus
All marketing activities within a company are linked by the marketing plan. With a good internal cooperation the company ultimately serves the client. From market research to branding, stationery, promotion campaign and website. Therefore, the marketing plan takes care of client-oriented thinking and working within the whole company.
3. Internal function communication
Also, the marketing plan fulfils an internal communicative function. It provides answer on questions such as:
- Who does what?
- Which tools are used for it?
- What kind of results are there to anticipate?
4. Evaluation
And also, it offers the possibility to evaluate whether the fixed targets have been achieved at the end of the year.
How to write a marketing plan?
A marketing plan can be written in various ways, there is no “best” way. Brief summary implies that developing a strategy and combining the marketing mix occurs based on an analysis of the corporate environment. There is no fixed rule on which analyses, models and theories needs to be used.
In order to make a good marketing plan, we have written a practical guide with a combination of analyses, models and theories inside with which we think it is possible to write a good marketing plan. The guide follows the structure below. You can find more information about each part by clicking on the link. In these pages there is a free brief explanation of what you can do in the sub-part.
Marketing plan articles
We have written various articles in order to provide information about marketing plan. Follow this basic outline step-by-step and write a good Marketing Plan.
Management summary is an important component of a marketing plan. Here the reader is introduced to the findings of the entire marketing plan in the form of a summary. The quality of a management summary determines whether the marketing plan will be read.
The first part of the marketing plan provides answer on questions such as what and why. What is the problem? Why this marketing plan? For the reader it is a familiarisation with the company for which the plan is written.
This third part of the marketing plan is the link between the research and the ultimate choice of strategy. Information from the research is translated into strategic options and a preferred strategy.
The reporting of a marketing plan always contains the same components namely the cover, title page, preface, table of contents and summary. They follow a logical structure where each component has a specific task.
The marketing plan has now arrived at an advanced stage. The research has been performed and it is established which way the business will take in the coming years. But how can the developed strategy be implemented?