The strategic marketing plan

Marketing practitioners often find themselves so preoccupied with the hard work of running marketing programs, supervising staff and sales force, and attending to the day-to-day grind that they lose sight of the Big Picture. However, it is essential every once in a while to step back, gain a little perspective, and engage in some serious strategizing.

The broad scope of strategic planing encompasses:

• All the products/services your company offers
• All the markets you serve
• Both environmental and internal variables
• Production, research, finance, and other organizational elements needed for success

Strategic planning looks beyond the immediate circumstances, in the process clarifying where you want to be in the future. This strategic perspective can be contrasted to the tactical level (which looks at performance of specific products or markets over a shorter time frame) and operational planning (which focuses on the nitty gritty of getting the job done). Following is a somewhat oversimplified but hopefully useful overview of the strategic planning process.

Some Basics

Start with a thorough analysis and clear understanding of the strategy and objectives of your company. What is the corporate development strategy? This broad understanding is essential for at least three reasons. First, marketing expertise is required to implement abstract corporate strategy. Second, key marketing decisions such as which market niches to address, product distribution channels, and direct marketing tactics flow directly from business strategy. And third, top management philosophy and mindset should provide the foundation for developing the strategic marketing plan.

Begin by identifying your strategic business unit (SBU). This might be an entire company, a division, a product line, or a single product, as long as that unit is a separate entity for planning purposes (i.e., has its own management, access to resources, competitors, positioning strategy, and customers). An SBU must be large enough to be a meaningful unit for strategy formulation and evaluation, yet small enough for effective planning and marketing management.

There are four key elements to strategic planning at the SBU level:

• Identification of the business
• Situation Analysis
• Selection of strategies
• Establishment of controls

What business are you in?

In "Marketing Myopia", his classic 1975 article published in Harvard Business Review, Theodore Levitt pointed out that many companies have gotten themselves in deep trouble because they failed to understand just exactly what business they were in. Railroads went under in the states in part because they stubbornly kept thinking of themselves as being in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the transportation business. Don't make that mistake yourself! Focus, analyze, reflect, and come to a consensus about what business you are really and truly in.

After clarifying the nature of your business, move to a Situation Analysis, which might also be referred to as a marketing audit. You should conduct such reviews regularly to capture a "snapshot" of your current status. Your situation, of course, includes both external and internal components.

External Review

A periodic review of the business environment is essential.. Typically you would want to cover the following areas.

• Economic-demographic variables. Economic forces are always important; for example, an expanding economy has fundamentally different implications than one that is in retrenchment. You must also understand demographic factors, and especially demographic shifts.
• Technological variables, which now change at warp speed. New processes, new products, and new markets for previously unimagined products are the norm. Indeed, the demand for new products/service can force you into obsolescence if you don't keep up. You simply can't afford to ignore this dimension.
• Political-legal variables, including regulatory and tax issues, reporting requirements, and the myriad other issues that impact your business. The relative impact depends on your sector, as government policies that are good for one sector can do significant harm to another sector.
• Sociocultural variables, the subtle market and psychological forces that alter demand patterns and market dynamics.
• Internal review. Then turn to a comprehensive review of internal processes, including information systems, product lines, competition, distribution channels, market planning, sales compensation, marketing costs, and expense budgets.
• This "snapshot" gives you an objective platform from which to dive into the meat of the strategic planning process.

Marketing Strategy Analysis

1. Customer analysis answers important questions about each specific product/service market. Among the factors you should assess are:

• Estimated annual purchases
• Projected annual growth rate
• Size of market (# of customers/organizations/purchasing units)
• Demographics/socioeconomics of customers
• Geographic concentration or dispersion
• Customer buying motivations
• Information they base purchase decisions on
• Purchasing practices

2. Key competitor analysis for each major competitor:

• Estimated business strength
• Market share and market trend
• Financial strengths and weaknesses
• Profitability
• Quality of management
• Technology position
• Marketing strategy (target market strategy, program/product positioning, product line strategy and distribution, pricing strategy, promotions strategy)

3. SWOT analysis:

What are your own distinctive competencies? Whether in a group context or sitting alone at your desk, work your way through your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Enumerate them, reflect on them, analyze them, and evaluate how they interact with one another. Maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses, take advantage of your opportunities, and counteract your threats. What direction does your analysis lead you in? The output of a solid SWOT analysis will help you formulate your marketing objectives.

Pulling the Plan Together

As Hannibal Smith, the leader of the old A-Team television show used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together." The figure below provides one possible format you can use to pull together your own Marketing Plan. Add as many rows as you need for various products/services and marketing/promotional activities. By completing the information in the table, you address the key issues of product, populations, price, place, production, and promotion.

Marketing Objectives: The first step in pulling your strategic marketing plan together is to use the output of your Situation Analysis and SWOT work to establish specific marketing objectives that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bounded. Enumerate those objectives in the first section of the worksheet. From there you move smoothly through the table, completing each section in turn.

Marketing mix analysis for each product/service: Focus on each product/service category. For each one specify the target population, pricing, places for product/service delivery, any changes you'll need to make, and key features and benefits to promote. Log this information on the worksheet.

Marketing activity analysis for each product/service: Focus on each marketing activity. Identify the responsible party, the timeframe, and the budget for each activity and record that information on the worksheet.

Promotional activity analysis for each product/service: Repeat the process, but this time focus on specific promotions. Identify specific techniques, marketing/promotional messages, and actions you are trying to get your target markets to take.

Make this planning process a team effort. Ask everyone involved in implementing the plan for suggestions. Strategic market planning must be a living, breathing process, so expect to periodically reevaluate your status. Keep all members of your marketing and management team informed about progress in implementation, and revise the plan as new opportunities and ideas emerge. You'll soon discover that the Big Picture approach can help you better manage your marketing activities and increase sales.

Marketing Objectives

What are your (SMART) marketing objectives?

Marketing Mix Analysis

For each product/service, what is your planned marketing mix?

 

Product/Service	Target Populations	Planned Price	Place to Deliver	Changes in Product Needed to Meet Demand	Features and Benefits to Promote
Product/Service A
Product/Service B
Product/Service C

Marketing Activity Analysis

Activities	Responsible Party	Timeframe	Budget
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3

Promotional Activity Analysis

Promotional Activity	Promotional Technique	Message Desired	Actions by Targets
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3

Clarence Henderson is president of Henderson Consulting International, Manila, Philippines. He also contributes the monthly Pearl of the Orient Seas column on the Asia Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine.

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