Human Resource Knowledge

Marketing strategy in market planning

Marketing strategy

The marketer now outlines the broad marketing strategy. This section contains inputs on sales growth plan A marketer has the following options to achieve an increase in the firm’s sales turnover:

· Increase in the price of the SBU.
· Convert non-users into users.
· Convert competitor’s customer to firm’s customers.
· Increase consumption of the SBU in existing customer groups by identifying new use situations or new applications of the existing products.
· Launch new product for different customer groups.
· Improvements in service strategy.

The marketing strategy should also reflect positioning of the product in the target market, pricing policies, distribution alternatives, sales force operations, advertising and sales promotion programs and customer service policy.

Implementation programs

At this point the marketer now turns to converting strategy into an action plan .The marketer creates deadlines to achieve certain objectives, develops action programs and assigns responsibilities to individuals .This makes the entire plan more meaningful

Projected profit and loss statement

A marketing plan is meaningful to top management only when it has a statement of projected or anticipated profit and loss. On the revenue side, it contains forecasted sales in physical quantities and price to be realized .The expenses show cost of production, distribution and marketing. This can be made on product and customer group basis. Once the budget is approved by the top management ,it then becomes the basis for developing plans and schedules for material procurement, manpower planning, production scheduling and marketing operations.

Control Systems

In order to ensure that performance is as per planned schedule, it is necessary to evolve control systems which can help management take corrective mid-course action, if so required. In some companies this involves monthly and quarterly reports from field sales managers, product managers and advertising managers and market research data .ORG retail store audit and brand share data on a monthly basis is an example of a useful control system. In yet other companies contingency plans are integrated in the control system. These plans become operational in emergencies like a strike in the factory or dealer boycott, etc. This is analogous to the control systems, for example in Airbus A320 aircrafts, which are highly automated and represent the state-of-the art technology . Called? fly by wire? planes , in these air machines if the computerized control panel fails, mechanical ones become operational immediately and the pilot is informed about it In case these also fail, the plane can be manually controlled. A good marketer is one who is able to foresee future scenarios and prepare himself adequately.

Finally, in writing out a marketing plan, a marketer should remember to:

1. Establish his and/or the marketing department’s credibility
2. Document supporting facts
3. Be optimistic but always truthful
4. Emphasize uniqueness
5. Make sure that the plan is workable.
6. Keep reviewing and updating the plan

Labels: Marketing

posted by Paresh @ 10:32 PM