What is a Marketing Plan? Types, Importance, Factors 

Introduction 

A marketing plan plays a significant role for the company to achieve its goals and objectives and reach its destination. It allows the company to analyze its customer market, their needs and wants, and develop strategies accordingly. Today, we’ll discuss what is a marketing plan; its types, importance, and various impacting factors.

What is a Marketing Plan? 

The marketing plan is the process of setting goals and objectives for the company’s marketing activity and outlining the steps for the company to achieve them. The first step of marketing planning is market activities and it comprises sales promotion, advertisement, product planning & development, purchase sale, and program and policies to launch these activities as planned. However, some of the main functions and components of the marketing plan are as follows;

• Conducting the market research to know the new market entries and supporting the price decision
• The advertisement message should be relevant to the geographic and demographic areas
• Choosing the platform for the promotion of your product/service like a trade magazine, internet, radio, digital media, TV, or using the platform mix for the campaign
• Using the metrics to evaluate the performance of your marketing efforts

Marketing Plan vs. Marketing Strategy

Often people use the term marketing plan and marketing strategy synonymously, but you develop the market planning based on the company’s strategic framework. You can incorporate planning and strategy into a single document for small companies because they run only a few campaigns. The planning could be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually, and the focus of the strategy is the value proposition.

Types of Marketing Plan 

Short Term

The duration of market planning is less than one year for the company’s promotional activities, and the short-term marketing planning could be semi-annual or annual. It won’t be possible to develop a short-term plan if you don’t have a long-term plan. It helps you to solve problems that are repetitive and recurring, and medium-level management develops short-term plans.

Long Term

If the duration of the market planning is longer than one year, it comprises developing strategies and objectives to guide the future efforts of the company. The long-term plan offers the overall framework, and short terms plan subdivides and implements it. However, the top management of the company develops long-term plans and it comprises of analyzing various options like sale promotion, advertising media, pricing strategy, distribution channel, and research program.

Importance of Marketing Plan 

Achieving Organizational Goals

Market planning helps the company to set standards, evaluate performance, improve the efficiency of processes, and help the company to achieve its goals.

Customer Satisfaction

The focus of every organization is to reach its goals and satisfy the needs of customers. The market planning allows the company to thoroughly study the needs and wants of customers, and then develop the product. However, the goal is to perform various marketing activities properly in order to satisfy the needs of customers.

Helping Control

Planning and controlling are very important functions and you can’t use them separately, and they’re like the two different sides of a single coin. It helps the company to evaluate the performance of the company and check whether the company is following the standards or not. However, market planning helps you to control and you can remove the unfavorable variation in the next plan.

Coordination

Market planning allows you to develop coordination among different departments and various operational activities. Planning helps the company to have coordination among various departments in such a way that the company would achieve the overall goals and objectives of the company.

Economy in Operation

Market planning allows the company to be efficient to achieve optimum results with limited effort by utilizing the resources to the maximum extent. The company can achieve economies of scale in various functional areas of the business like financing, purchase, sale, and production.

Dealing with Uncertainties

The uncertain environment presents a lot of challenges and difficulties to the company. Market planning helps the company to face uncertainties and difficult challenges effectively. The analysis of the current situation would help the company to establish goals and objectives for the future.

Factors Impacting Marketing Plan 

Natural Factors

Some of the main natural factors that would impact the company’s market planning are;

• Trade policy
• Industrial policy
• National economy
• Regional development
• Regional distribution
• National Income
• Population distribution

Industry Factors

Every company is operating its business in the area of some type of big industry, and it impacts all the businesses in the industry. The change in the industry would impact the market planning of the company;

• Relationships among companies in the industry
• The severity of industry competition
• Technological change
• Changes in the industry

Internal Factors

The internal factors start within the company and they comprise of following internal factors that would the market planning;

• Distribution channel
• Marketing personals
• Organizational structure
• Financial resources
• The risk-taking capability of the company

Conclusion: What is a Marketing Plan? Types, Importance, Factors Impacting 

After an in-depth study of what is a marketing plan; its types, importance, and impact factors; we have realized that market planning is very important for a company’s growth and development. If you’re working on it, you should keep in mind the impacting factors.