Ten steps of the strategic marketing planning process

Marketing is an extremely important feature in business since it provides very much to the achievement of goals the organization. Departments which are totally co-ordinated by marketing are production and distribution. It is generally understood by many individuals that sales and marketing work the same. However, there are many differences in both departments. Marketing deals with advertisement, advertising, promotions, public relations, and sales. At the other hand, Sales would be defined as act of buying where customer purchases the product.

What are the strategic planning objectives for an enterprise and how a plan can be formulated to achieve them? In essence it is a process for determining what a business should become and how it can optimally achieve that goal.

A company which provides services regarding how to achieve a marketing objective and plans is called Marketing Process Company. It gives innovative ideas on how to build a market inside. Following a strategic marketing planning process using EXMAR software, EXMAR users find they are able to help marketing plan work more effectively and so recognize profitable growth areas. Better investment decision could be made. Increased profitability from concentrating on the most favourable opportunities and reduced costs from withdrawal from ill-chosen business soon repay the investment in a robust strategic marketing planning system and processes.

The ten steps of the strategic marketing planning process

In Phase one Goal setting

Mission  

Corporate objectives  

In Phase two – Situation review

Marketing audit  

SWOT analyses  

Assumptions  

In Phase three – Strategy formulation

Marketing objectives & strategies  

Estimate expected results  

Identify alternative plans & mixes

In Phase four – Resource allocation & monitoring

Budget  

1st year detailed implementation program  

A marketing strategy can serve as the baseline of a marketing plan. A marketing plan has a set of specific requirements to successfully establish and implement a marketing strategy. For instance a low cost product can be used to attract customers. The time product has been introduced and its price has been set low, consumers relationship developed then the higher margin products can be introduce to cover up impact of previous low cost product.

To make a marketing plan more attractive and effective a strategy full of tactics is required. Marketing strategies stand as baselines of achieving marketing objectives.

Marketing strategies will totally depend on the circumstance under which there is a need for such strategy. Besides, generic strategies can be grouped; a brief description of the most usual grouping or categorizing schemes is presented below:

In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are four types of market dominance strategies:

The Leader

The Challenger

The Follower

The Nicher

Generic strategies of Porter- These strategies are on the dimensions of strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope means market penetration whereas strategic strength means the firm’s bearable competitive edge.

We can make distinction on the basis of low cost leadership on two dimensions. One being the low and other being the broad.

Differentiation of product (broad)

Leadership cost (broad)

Segmentation of market segmentation (narrow)

Innovation strategies – This deals with the firm’s rate of the latest product growth and business model innovation. It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation. There are three types:

The Pioneers

The Close followers

The Late followers

Growth strategies – In this scheme we ask the question, “How the firm can get growth and advancements?” This question can be answered in many ways but the best four answers would be as follows.

Horizontal integration

Vertical integration

Diversification

Intensification

 

The McKinsey matrix / General Electric Matrix

After comparison between the GE / McKinsey Matrix and BCG matrix, we come to know that BCG is better in three ways:

 

1. When a market looks attractive then there is a possibility that it is moving towards growth. Market attractiveness would include many things to be considered other than market growth rate which can find out attractiveness of any market.

2. Market shares are replaced by the competitive strength. Competitive strength similarly contains a wide variety of factors except just the market share that can ascertain the competitive strength of a SBU ( Strategic Business Unit)

3. Lastly the GE / McKinsey Matrix work out with a 3*3 grid, whereas the BCG Matrix has only 2*2 grids. More sophistication is allowed by this.

The external factors which exert direct influence on any Market Attractiveness

– The Size of the market

– The growth rate of the market

– Profitability of the market

– Trends of pricing

– Intense competition

– Industry’s risks and returns

– Barriers to enter the market

– Favourable conditions to differentiate products and services

– Variable demand

– Segmentation

– Supply structure

– Growth in technology

 

Internal factors which might influence competitive strength

– Asset strength and individual’s competencies

– The strength of brand

– Share in market

– Growth of market share

– Loyal consumers

– Cost comparison with competitors

– Profit margin comparison with competitors

– Supply strength and manufacturing capacity

– Innovation and technological records

– Quality

– Investment and financial resources in access

– Strength of Management

Many times the units of strategic business are illustrated as a circle plotted in GE McKinsey Matrix where:

– Circle size shows the market size The size of the circles represent the Market Size

– Market share of SBU’s is visible in the pie chart The size of the pies represent the Market Share of the SBU’s

– SBU’s movement in the future is denoted by an arrow which represents its direction.

The strategy which involves dividing a big market into segments of markets for the ease of identification of consumers who have common needs, so that consumer market can be more focused. The demographics can be studied, applied to those segments of markets to see which type of demography that area represents and applying marketing strategy accordingly. Marketing campaigns are designed and implemented based on this type of customer segmentation.

Market segmentation is the recognition of parts of the market that are not similar among each other. The segmentation facilitates the firm to identify the needs of potential consumers.

This gives the chance to a company to be able to better manage their suppliers.  Market segmentation refers to how a company divides up its material and merchandise requirements and what suppliers will be used.

c. Market segmentation helps a business better manage their accounting records, monitor expenditures and sales.

d. Company gets the benefit to see the potential consumer markets in the smaller groups and identify their needs so that a better strategy can be developed in respect of marking strategy.

While marketing a product, it is to bear in mind that there are certain stage of product life cycle and each stage has a different style of marketing needs because demand and competition vary at each stage.

Marketing Strategies Change

During Products Life Cycle:

Introduction Stage

The first stage of the product life cycle is the introduction stage. This is the time when you market should build demand. The prices can be set higher in this stage because the product is latest and has been brought by means of innovation. So by doing that, the initial big costs like research and development can be covered.

Demand and competition would stay low at this stage so there is a need of more marketing which should bring demand of that product in the market whereas making the product ready to compete in growth stage.

Marketing Strategies Change

During Products Life Cycle:

Growth Stage

In the stage of advancement and growth the marketing strategy must make sure that the new product gets familiar with the target market because if that happens there is fair chances that marketing goal will be sustained and profits would go higher.

At this point in time, demand is more likely to get steeper as the new product is introduced to people and they want to try it. A competition would become more serious as others will want to jump in the market as well. So competition and demand would go higher.

Moreover, key factor at this stage would be to introduce the new products in as many new markets as possible and continue making efforts to make the brand more competitive.

Marketing Strategies Change

During Products Life Cycle:

Mature Stage

When product reaches mature stage of the product life cycle, demand level and competition still keeps growing whereas marketing should maintain market

In the first stage where you charged higher prices to get the most out of your initial sales, in this stage you are required to do just opposite of that. To make your product better and more competitive, this could be done by setting the price of your product lower, giving more incentives; the brand name would already be strong which will help to distinguish the product among other products.

Marketing Strategies Change

During Products Life Cycle:

Decline Stage

This is the fourth stage of product life cycle where competition as well as demand of the product goes down.

After reaching at this stage normally businesses tend to discontinue the making of their products or at least it’s making. If business can bear this temptation, it can seek out the last few sales for your product. Sometimes limited sales will continue for years.

Marketing Strategies Change

During Products Life Cycle:

Conclusion

Although you have to make the marketing of your product at all stages however there are different needs of each stage so marketing should be done just accordingly.

By proper understanding the demand and competition for each stage will help you to create better marketing for each stage.

Lean enterprise is a set of collaborated and jointly encouraging activities. At the base of the Lean effort is scrutiny of current processes to unwanted waste and eliminates the effort which is not necessary in the production lines but also as well as in the organization. In a Lean manufacturing place, without demand no materials are bought nor is any production made until consumers reach out for orders. This idea has been around for long time, but technological advancement have taken place more recently, Web-based exchanges, and the ability of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to plan for and reply to special customer demands. Even companies with brilliant ideas are also using the information technology viably to bridge a channel between different departments like productions, supply and distributions.

One of an innovative method of quality management is TQM, which deals with different business functions at different levels. These are the main features of TQM:

1. Target:

The main target of TQM method of quality management is to achieve a target which revolves around maintaining the Quality; customer must be aware of Quality policy. This could be done by reaching out to customers at their level and fulfilling their needs but without compromising quality standards. Innovation should be a non-stop function which would keep brining newer ideas of making qualities better and better.

2. Scope:

To make sure the quality of the products is of high standard, TQM, its system requires reaching out to suppliers and subcontractors. Usually, the direct material becomes the seventy percentage of the costs of final products. That is the reason why, quality of that material is an important issue, because if it would not be of a higher quality, the labour would take more time to handle the material. In addition to that, waste would be more than normal standards which is again a cost. Along with that, it is also very important to establish a system of quality control

3. Form:

TQM lays down a plan which helps prevent problems in the production process rather than controlling quality of the end product. Statistical tools are used to watch, quantitatively analyse the outcome as well as problems affecting the quality, consider the reason and take appropriate prevention methods.

4. Basis of TQM system:

TQM practice is all about human involvement. If we take quality for example, it’s not the product quality which matters most but also the quality of employees is also the main concern of TQM. Money, equipment and machines are the critical factors of any business, or we can say hard factors. At the other hand, Soft factor would be methods, secrets and information. These are Human factors; Whereas Human is of the first issue to TQM.

The foundation level of TQM says that employees should have proper qualifications and they should be given training, delegations of work and should make their development.

Two levels of managers (high and middle level) participation are required in TQM. Duties would be given to those who require at adequate level. Hence, TQM should have a new management model, having different characteristics from the previous model.

6. Management skills and tools:

Ways of implementing the principal is to perform the duty in the right way from the very beginning. Application for Demming circle is required so that foundation should have continues quality improvement.

Supply chain management is the network which connects business together to form a management network of interconnected businesses. Supply Chain Management deals with all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from procurement to issue for work in progress.

After the interconnection of manufacturing and marketing strategy, best product and best products mix could be decided easily than before. Decision are taken between production and marketing managers together about the positioning the of the product, price setting of product, features of the product, the way in which product will be marketed and what should be the level of quality at all levels. In fact, the relationship between manufacturing capabilities and marketing requirements is absolutely basic to the competitive position of the business unit or firm, and key to its competition environment.

Not for profit organisation also market their services at some degree, for example, emailing a newsletter to a bulletin board. No matter which marketing strategies are to be applied by non-profit organisations, their marketing budget is always low.

Issue: To maintain the competition in the industry, SME needs to apply various marketing techniques which would give them an extra advantage over their competitors. In addition to that, after looking at the initial questionnaire results it was obvious that if company could use proper marketing techniques the company would reach at a level where maximum growth is possible hence consequently will gain more market share and will be more profitable.