A plan is a guide to moving from point A to point B, which helps you make more money:
- allows you to see the company in the future – how it should develop and what the result will be after a certain period of time;
- it helps to allocate resources correctly and refuse from unprofitable directions;
- helps to know the target audience and improve the customer experience.
A marketing plan allows you to keep your focus on your goals, assess where your business is at and, if necessary, “roll back” a step to correct something.
Helps the business respond quickly to customer demand: meet product requirements as much as possible, make product changes, implement cross-sale and upsale, thereby increasing sales.
Allows you to find a competitive advantage. Developing a marketing plan will make the business think once again about why its product is better than the others. Why the customer should buy from it. As a rule, creating a marketing plan does not happen without a competitive and product analysis. Therefore, as a result, and the company’s product is presented in a new way.
It helps to assess prospects. Marketing planning is accompanied by a lot of research. By studying the market, competitors and your product as much as possible, you can understand when you will achieve your goals and at what cost.
Links marketing and sales. When the marketing department studies CJM and builds a sales funnel, can quickly navigate customer needs, work through objections and sell services.
Disadvantages of marketing planning
The main disadvantage is obvious – planning is time-consuming. The plan has to be thought through, spelled out, agreed upon and only then put into action.
There are also other disadvantages:
- Inaccuracy of planned results;
- lack of guarantees that the plan will work;
- Loss of relevance of the information in the plan.
Budgets. Marketing is always a cost. Western marketers advise to invest not less than 15% of annual turnover in the development of the plan. Studies show that the growth of large companies has come at the expense of serious investment in marketing. Microbusinesses invest up to 20%, macro – up to 12%. The honeycomb in this barrel of tar is that as a company grows, marketing costs decrease.
An unstable environment. For the last 3 years, long-term planning can be completely unpromising.
The unstable situation does not allow for an objective assessment of what is happening in the market. Entire brands are leaving. This negatively affects the overall picture as a whole. Survival of the fittest, and in this situation it is difficult to identify patterns. Customer needs have changed dramatically and it is more difficult to influence the customer.
With this data in mind, you can effectively build your strategy and marketing plan.
