Successful Businesses

Successful businesses require a very focused and dedicated marketing plan. This assignment is targeted towards providing information about a marketing plan and will try to provide detailed information about how a marketing plan is defined, what is the relation between a marketing plan with the business plan, what role does a marketing plan play in business, how the marketing plan should be structured, what elements are contained in it and how these elements are relevant to the overall plan.  

A good marketing plan becomes a catalyst for a successful path for the company. It should contain the essential parts that can define the future of the company, be it failure or success. It’s a very basic knowledge that, every business idea should start with the study to determine customer needs. And to be able to understand customer and their needs, organizations utilize Marketing as a tool. Through marketing, organizations can utilize a systematic approach to reach out to their target customers, understand their need and try to fulfil their need by providing products or services while making profits for the organization. Marketing is a great tool to understand the needs of customers, which then can be used to create a detailed marketing plan. The marketing plan then should contain complete and positive information about the real needs of the customer which the company should fulfil while making profits.

A good marketing plan should at-least address the following topics:

1. Target Audience
2. Objective
3. Mission
4. Marketing communication and strategy
5. Budget and Finances
6. Future steps and Timelines.

Target Audience: The marketing plan should contain information about target customers and market. This section of the target plan provides a very detailed information about the targeted customers.

Mission: Details in this section should contain what the organization’s goal that needs to be achieved, be it awareness of the products, and sell products or services.

Objective: This section of the marketing plan should detail a precise, specific and quantifiable objectives of the company.

Marketing communication and strategy: This is the most important section of the marketing plan which details how each objective of the marketing plan will be achieved. This section also details how and using what tools will be used to effectively relay the message to the end customers about the product or services.

Budget and Finances: This section contains details about different types of costs which might be involved in implementing the marketing plan. This will also contain detailed analysis of how the finances will be utilized so that implementing the marketing plan will be under the allocated budget.

Future steps and Timelines: This section will contain the future steps to be taken if the marketing plan becomes successful. Timeline section will contain information about the amount of time it will take to execute each marketing activity.

Marketing plan should provide information about the current market conditions and describe the current market elements of interest. Clear goals and objectives of the marketing plan provide the impetus to succeed with the plan and keeps the organization marketing department focused on executing the marketing activities.

While discussing the elements of a marketing plan, it is fair to determine what differences are between business plan and marketing plan.

The business plan includes details about the marketing and financial perspectives of the business. This defines the vision and goal of company and this determines the competitive strategies (Smith, 2012). While the marketing plan details the actionable items through which the company plans to achieve its goals and objectives. It also details the different activities which are planned to be able to engage the customer and help increase customer participation. The marking plan also contains detailed market analysis and strategies which are associated with business forecast or predictions.

Marketing plans are used to make sure that the planning process is structured and target population group can be easily communicated with the message. This helps using marketing plan for strategic purposes too. This way the message to understand the customers can be broadcasted to study the customers properly. Any planning for a business should start with a strategic plan. A strategic plan is a long-range plan, but not all long-range plans are strategic.  In  strategic planning you start with an analysis of the markets relative to what you are doing now and you attempt to determine what you could be doing in the future for maximum profitability (Luther 2011).

Marketing Plan Structure:

Mostly, the marketing plan structure details internal audit based situational analysis based on internal audit and researched objectives. The marketing plan should contain smart and proper objectives to successfully lead the market. This makes sure that the strategy is evaluated and with the feedback from customers and retailers, increases the sales data.

Apart from all these information, the marketing plan can also contain detailed competition analysis. Analyzing a competitor starts with identification of current and potential competitors. This analysis of the competitors informs about the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor.