Marketing Management Assignment | Homework Help Websites

Read the Creating the Marketing Plan, and answer the following questions:

– A formal written marketing plan is a great way to document the planning process. It serves many purposes. First, it captures all the things you and your team have learned about the market, the competition, and your customers. This information is critical, because it becomes the supporting evidence for the strategies that you and your team decide to pursue. Second, the plan serves as a tool to help you align the organization. Marketing involves many people,so you’ll need to get everyone on board and going in the same direction.

The written plan becomes a source document to create presentations, to conduct training,and to give directions to external partners. Believe me, you’ll use it a lot. Finally, the written plan lays out a coherent and coordinated set of marketing programs with schedules and budgets, so you can run a smooth operation. Now, there are many formats you can use for the written plan, but most plans will include the following components.

An executive summary that gives a brief, high level review of the plan. The situation analysis that documents all the data about your company’s strengths and weaknesses, the market opportunity, the competition, and of course, the customer. The strategy section that outlineshow you segment the market, who you plan to target and how you will position your products and services in the market. The tactical programs, including what products you will offer, what prices you will charge, how you will promote your products, and how you’ll distribute them.

A financial section that documents your revenue projections and budget requirements. An implementation plan that outlines the timing of your programs and who’s responsible. Now, to write the plan, don’t wait until the very end of the planning process. I like to start writing it from the very beginning. Here’s a tip that makes that easy. Create a blank PowerPoint presentationwith just the headings of each component on a separate page.

Keep it with you during team meetings. As you collect information or make key decisions,write or type that into the appropriate slide. That helps you keep the document up-to-date as you move through the process. When you have enough written material, go ahead and create a first draft, but be sure to date the draft, as you’ll be making regular updates and revisions. A written marketing plan is a dynamic document, and you should expect to make changes to itas conditions in the market change.

If you create a great plan and update it regularly, it’ll help you stay ahead of the competition.

Question One

• What do you believe is the most important element of a marketing plan? Provide your rationale for this statement.

Question Two

• What do you believe is the least important element of a marketing plan? Provide your rationale for this statement.

Question Three

• Provide three reasons why a company should write a marketing plan. Provide your rationale for this statement.

Respond to Peer(s)

• Read and respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts.

Respond to Peer 1

Marketing Plan Importance

I believe that the most important element of a marketing plan is providing a strategy. To me, it is important for investors to actually see and understand how you plan on keeping a business running. The thought of the business may always be a great idea, but the though process of how to keep the business going over a period of time is important, even if it means having to have a few back up plans in place. Investors want to see what they can look forward to in the future with a business.

While financial projections are important to have in a marketing plan, I feel as though they may be the least important. I only feel this way because the financial projections have the ability to fluctuate year over year. Companies grow over time and financial projections change along with the growth of a company.

A company should write a marketing plan because:

1)     It possesses the guidelines that are visual and can be revisited to remember the focus of a company.

2)     It is something that investors are able to refer to in order to learn about your business and your vision for the business.

3)     Having something in writing is beneficial, especially in the event of one needing to make amendments. It is easier to amend a document than having to go off of memory and re-write the entire plan over.

Respond to Peer 2

Why have a Marketing plan.

As far as creating or writing a marketing plan from what I have read so far is it is the base line for everything a company will do and wants to do and accomplish. It has all the research from the competition and the strategies the business is going to follow. All aspects of a marketing plan seem pretty important.

I think that knowing the customers is one of the most important things, knowing your targeted market and keep up with wants, needs, desires and having a strong layout of customers strategies, situations, strengths and weakness of the competition to help with targeting and positioning the price and help with the promoting and distributing to make sure the products are ready and available. Any company would not be in business if they don’t know the customer and don’t have what the customers are wanting when they want it.

As far as the least important element I could not think of what this would be, every part of the marketing plan is important. Financial, directions, scheduling, goals, layout, budgets, are all important. If anyone of these areas are over looked the business is going to fail.

The three reasons why a company should write a marketing plan would be having a strong guide line of the planning process of what direction you want the business to go in. Want every channel of the business working toward the same goal, have a clear layout and schedule that the business is going to follow and most important is research and data to stay ahead of the competition. To know and understand the market changes to make sure the company is staying up with what is going to happen not just what is happening right now.