Marketing Planning

by Peter Thorne

I have always admired the definition of ‘Marketing’ created by the Chartered Institute of Marketing - “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”  So many concepts embedded in just twelve words –

• A process that spans the whole company
• Responsibilities that include looking ahead as well as selecting goals and opportunities
• Activities that include doing whatever is needed to satisfy customer requirements

This last point implies getting the right products and services designed and built, making sure prospects understand the value, and making it easy for them to buy.  The qualifier ‘profitably’ may need to be interpreted as ‘return-on-investment’ in charitable and public service organizations, but for the commercial sector, these twelve words articulate a scope and challenge for every marketing team.

 

This is the context for ‘Marketing Planning,’ the process of creating a marketing plan, the statement of how ‘Marketing’ will be delivered.  Given the broad definition of marketing as above, there is a relatively small gap between a marketing plan and a business plan.  Of course every business handles these things in their own way, but for now, I’ll use examples to indicate a boundary.  

The marketing plan will identify acquisition targets or categories, or a joint venture with a reseller, and the value of these initiatives, but the financial mechanisms will be planned elsewhere.  

 

The marketing plan will identify new product and service concepts (or a process for generating them), and the value of new capabilities in the marketplace, but the associated development will be planned elsewhere.  

 

The marketing plan will define growth and profit targets with business line and geographic breakdowns, which may lead to headcount and sales quota figures, but the associated HR will be planned elsewhere.

The marketing plan must span these strategic issues and at the same time seek improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of tactical activity.  From press releases and events to sales presentations and collateral, it is the task of the marketing plan to get best value by prioritizing the right initiatives aimed at the right targets.

 

None of this is easy to do.  For a global company, the diversity and complexity of both the external environment and also internal company structure may both represent significant challenges.  To accommodate the scope of the various inputs that must be incorporated and views that must be provided, a marketing plan requires a structure with at least three dimensions, namely:

• Company/division/product
• Geography
• Business Process/management function

Whatever is needed, it is vital to find the level of structure and granularity that achieves effective communication with key stakeholders.

 

Many companies are very good at articulating corporate objectives, and they identify policies, strategies and initiatives to support these objectives.  This package of corporate information acts as a platform that can cascade through the organization, with every group developing local policies, initiatives and strategies that are consistent with corporate.  But for this type of process to succeed in generating a marketing plan it is vital for the reverse flow to work, to allow information generated at the local level to go back up the chain to be reconciled with the corporate view.

 

One of the most difficult areas to achieve this two-way flow is quantifying market opportunity.  There are technical reasons for this, ranging from the definition of market segments to the handling of currencies, and the straightforward difficulty in sourcing or calculating numbers that offer the consistency, coverage and granularity that is needed.  But in addition to the technical issues, there are people issues.  The numbers in the marketing plan will probably establish the benchmark performance against which people, business units and products will be judged.  So it is perhaps not surprising to discover concerns that the numbers in a plan have been selected to promote a hidden agenda.

 

The holy grail of coordinated, distributed marketing planning in a managed framework that allows ‘local’ plans to both feed and be guided by the corporate plan is achievable.  It’s challenging, and the temptations to compromise are substantial (...” ..here’s the plan we submit to HQ, but the plan we use day-by-day is over here....”).  But consider some key objectives of many large firms:

• Faster decision making
• Priority of coordinated actions over localized agendas
• Involvement and commitment of stakeholders at all levels
• Focus on the most promising opportunities

A marketing plan that stakeholders accept can be a point of reference that enables significant progress against all of these objectives.  The marketing planning process deserves recognition as a core capability that drives and develops a business.

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