Peter Lane

Practical Marketing Planning

Marketing, Whats It All About? - Market Appraisal: The Internal Audit - Market Appraisal: The External Audit - Market Appraisal: Research - Market Appraisal: The Marketing Mix Matrix - Market Appraisal: SWOT Analysis - Marketing Planning: Establishing Objectives - Targeting - Pricing for the Market: Pricing Policy - Marketing Planning: Forecasting - Marketing Communication: Sending the Message - Sales Promotions - Marketing Service: Customer Care - Planning: Putting the Numbers Together

Pricing for the Market: Pricing Policy

‘How do I know what’s the right price to charge for my product or service?’ This is one of the questions most often asked — but one which frequently remains unanswered!

The Marketing Planner

The forms in this planner have been prepared by consultants who between them have accumulated almost fifty years of experience of providing advice to businesses and organisations of all types and who have prepared literally thousands of marketing strategies, business plans and other reports for businesses of all sizes.

Market Planning: Forecasting

In this chapter we will explain some of the techniques used when forecasting, how to use the Boston Matrix as an analytical tool to aid decision making and — once you have prepared your forecasts — how to identify the key monitors that will help you keep on track.

Planning: Putting the Numbers Together

In the preceding chapters we have discussed most of the components of the planning process initially illustrated in Chapter 1. In this chapter we will look at the numeric elements of the planning process and explain the principles behind those numbers.

Marketing Service: Customer Care

In earlier chapters we discussed how good marketing involves knowing your customers and treating them appropriately to ensure the maximum return on your effort

Market Appraisal: Research

If you have questions that need answering or you want to find things out you need to do some research. There are two main forms of research: desk research and field research: Desk research is sourcing information and answers from printed publications, electronic media and your own internal resources. This is always the first place to start any research process and you may be surprised at the amount of relevant information revealed. Field research is invariably more expensive than desk research and careful planning is needed at all stages to ensure that the research project is actually proceeding without bias, within budget and is likely to produce informative answers. The two main types of field research are quantitative research and qualitative research. As their names suggest, quantitative research counts things (how many? how often? and so on). Qualitative research elicits opinions, ideas to help identify trends or develop new products.

Marketing Communication: Sending the Message

Good products or good ideas will probably fail if you talk to the wall! No matter how creative your advertising is or how good your proposition, if you cannot transmit your message to the right target audience your campaign is likely to be ineffectual and a high proportion of the budget will be wasted. Therefore, now that we know who or what we are trying to reach as our target we must decide how to communicate with them, and what to say.

Marketing Planning: Establishing Objectives

Every business and organisation needs to establish an overall objective, agree the marketing strategy that will help achieve it and prepare the tactical marketing plan that will move the organisation step by step towards the chosen objective. As progress is made the plan is reviewed, the strategy is regularly modified, and when appropriate the objectives are redefined.

Market Appraisal: The Marketing Mix Matrix

Each marketing mix is unique to a particular business. Because strategic objectives and available resources will differ it is highly unlikely that any two businesses, even direct competitors, would consider the marketing mix in exactly the same way and consequently develop identical marketing plans.