Thread: Why is marketing planning essential?

Businesses operate in hostile and increasingly complex environment. The ability of a business to achieve profitable sales is impacted by dozens of environmental factors, many of which are inter-connected. It makes sense to try to bring some order to this chaos by understanding the commercial environment and bringing some strategic sense to the process of marketing products and services.

A marketing plan is useful to many people in a business. It can help to:

• Identify sources of competitive advantage
• Gain commitment to a strategy
• Get resources needed to invest in and build the business
• Inform stakeholders in the business
• Set objectives and strategies
• Measure performance

yup you are right but the marketing plans helps to know the business area properly.proper location,competitor,cash flow and all.the marketing helps to promote the business and creates the awareness about the brand.

Whether it is marketing or any other field planning is more important. Without a proper strategic plan any kind of business won't become successful.

1. Plan for expenses. While there are many free and low cost ways to market your business, some marketing costs money. How much are you willing to commit to your total marketing budget? What is a realistic number for all the marketing activities you hope to accomplish?
2. Understand your target market. One of the biggest mistakes small-business owners make is believing that “everyone” is their target market. There’s no one product or service that appeals to everyone alive. Even Coca-Cola, which targets most people and whose products are available virtually everywhere, has different marketing messages and different products they advertise to different market segments. Decide who is most likely to buy from you. Who are they and what factors influence their decision to buy? Look at their demographics. How old are they? Are they married? Kids? Where do they live? What job titles do they have? Next, look at their psychographics. Why do they buy? What problems do they want solutions to? How bad is the problem? Yes, you can have multiple target markets, but keep in mind that you will need a separate marketing campaign for each market. It’s better to stick with one, initially, and expand as your company grows.
3. Determine what media to use. Which marketing tactics (direct mail, word of mouth, TV, radio, internet) you use depends on your marketing budget and your target audience. Choose one to start with, get your campaign working, and start bringing in customers. Once you have one marketing campaign in place, add another. If you try to juggle too many things at one time, you dramatically limit the time, money and resources you can devote to each.
4. Stick to a schedule. Too many business owners get trapped in a vicious cycle. They start marketing when business is slow. Then, either because of their marketing campaign or because someone referred them business, they end up with a client or two. All marketing halts as they focus their attention on serving their clients. As the client projects come to an end, the business owner realizes he or she is in the same boat as before – with no prospects – so he or she starts marketing again. And the cycle repeats. For your marketing to be successful, you need to stick to a schedule and keep your marketing activities going through slow and busy times.

Planning is important because, as with most things in life, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

without planning you can't get success. so you have to get some plans before you start your business or marketing it will help you to bust up your business.
thanks

All markets are opened and if you want to be good sales of products than essential marketing planning must be required

Hello,
Planning is something that is used in every step of life. We need planning when it comes to our life, we need planning when it comes to our work. So surely planning is very important what it comes to marketing. Through marketing we are trying to spread the word of the business across. So we will surely need to sit down and plan as to how would we need it to be.
Here is what you will need to include in your marketing planning:-
There are many ways to develop and format a marketing plan. The approach taken here is to present a 6-Part plan that includes:

1. Purpose and Mission
2. Situational Analysis
3. Marketing Strategy and Objectives
4. Tactical Programs
5. Budgets, Performance Analysis and Implementation
6. Additional Consideration

Every marketing plan has to fit the needs and situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can’t do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget.

• Situation Analysis: Normally this will include a market analysis, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and a competitive analysis. The market analysis will include a market forecast, segmentation, customer information, and market needs analysis.
• Marketing Strategy: This should include at least a mission statement, objectives, and focused strategy including market segment focus and product positioning.
• Sales Forecast: This would include enough detail to track sales month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales by product, by region or market segment, by channels, by manager responsibilities, and other elements. The forecast alone is a bare minimum.
• Expense Budget: This ought to include enough detail to track expenses month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales tactics, programs, management responsibilities, promotion, and other elements. The expense budget is a bare minimum.