Chapter 02 - Developing Marketing Plans

 


Any business organization that exists in this global market, do their businesses to gain profits through delivering the desired customer value by using their products or services. In the present day context, delivering the value to the customer is not an easy task since, todays' customers are well - educated and informative about the products and services and their qualities. Hence, every strategical marketer should be able to understand the real requirements of the customer and provide with the most suitable product or service with desired value. 


Customer - perceived value 

It is "the customer's evaluation of the difference between all the benefits and all the costs of a marketing offer relative to those of competing offers" (Kotler et al,. 2018, p38). In good old days customers just looked for products and services which fulfilled their needs and wants. As a result of technology development and number of innovations in the business world, today's customers have a wide range of products and services which influence the customers to make a choice over them based on different criteria. On the other hand, marketers have to take extra effort to create value to the customers through their product line. 

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, delivering value to the customer is not an easy task since most of the customers are well - educated about the competitor offerings for the same need. Hence,  marketers should strategicaly and tacticaly reach the customers with their products or services before the competitors do. A successful marketing plan will help the marketers to reach new customers effectively and to retain their existing customers for a another few years. What type of a marketing plan will work for this?, What should be included in that marketing plan?, How many steps to follow? all those questions will be covered throughout this chapter. 


What is a marketing plan? 
In my opinion, a marketing plan is a document which showcase the stategic approach of a particular organization to reach new customers and retain the existing customers by delivering the perceived value to them. This plan consists of two (2) aspects such as Strategic marketing and Tactical markrting. In the strategic level, the organization understands the potential segments that they are going to serve while in the tactical level they are going to strategies into actions. In a marketing plan the matketers should clearly mention the ultimate goals and objectives of the organization which should be SMART. And also, it should include the strategical steps going to take to enhance the marketing goals, resource allocation, time scales, past experiences in marketing programes etc. 


A good marketing plan includes the following steps 
 
1. Describe your business
2. Conduct a situational analysis
3. Define your customer
4. strategize your market entry
5. Forcast your sales or demand measurements
6. Define your marketing budget
7. Intergrate your marketing communication
8. Identify sales channels
9. Track marketing activities (implement)
10. Evaluate your progress

Any marketer should follow these 10 steps to construct an artistic and scientific marketing plan to achieve the desired goals and objectives of the organization.

During our lectures, we were assigned withing our teams to construct a marketing plan for our future business. These days we are working on it by following the above steps. It is a good opportunity and also a good experience for all of us to participate in such kind of an assignment which will be very useful for our future professional life. Our dream business is a restaurant in Kajaani city, and we are planning to enhance our business by attracting more customers to our restaurant by providing various tasty home made cuisines with different tastes like Indian, Italian and Finnish. Since, there are few established restaurants in Kajaani, we have to take extra effort to make a difference than our competitors. Hence, we are going to have a comprehensive marketing plan to attract new customers in Kajaani city to our restaurant and to serve them with the best tastiest cuisines which made of fresh ingredients.

Here is a useful link on how to make a marketing plan successfully Link 


*** In my opinion, while we are having the main marketing plan, we should have a plan B as a precaution. Because, If some thing goes wrong with the plan A, definitely we have to execute the plan B immediately, otherwise, our customers will leave our organization and join with our competitors. 


References
1. Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (2018). Principles of Marketing, Seventeenth edition. Pearson.

2. Avgeropoulos, I (n.d.). Marketing Planning: Marketing Plan Creation (PPT) Chapter 2 - Marketing Plan Creation.pptx (sharepoint.com)
 







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