A simple marketing plan

This simple plan must comprise six stages that are iterative. In other words, the final measurement stage leads to a review of the situation, a new beginning and a revision of the plans.

1. Strategic marketing audit (Where are we now?)

a. Internal – total marketing investment, marketing performance

b. External – market size, penetration, and share

2. Forecasts (What is going to happen?)

a. Market trends, broad – scale influences.

3. Business/market objectives/budget (What do we want?)

a. Sales, profit, customer satisfaction

b. Overall allocation of funds for marketing effort

4. Marketing strategy (How will we get it?)

a. Target markets and objectives

b. Allocate budget to markets

c. Product strategy

d. Competitive State

e. Positioning and branding

5. Implementation (What must we do for each market or customer?)

a. Distribution strategy

b. Pricing strategy

c. CRM strategy (internal and external)

d. Communications strategy.

e. Capability strategy – systems, structure, training etc.

f. Forecast outcomes – market share, sales, profit

g. Review budget

6. Control (How can we make sure we succeed?)

a. Measure cost of marketing effort (above) by market/customer

b. Measure results by market/customer, compared with forecast and budget.

Exercise 9. Read the text once again and express the contents of every passage in one sentence.

Exercise 10. Fill in the gaps in this passage with the words under the line; learn all the new words to expand your vocabulary on the topic.