POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN

MANAGEMENT
Course: Marketing Planning (MP)

Summary of
Introduction to Marketing Planning
Chapter 1
Prepared By
Vivek Kumar Srivastava
Marketing planning is the process that leads to an understanding of an organization’s position in the
market and a series of marketing decisions and actions to achieve an organization’s goals within a time
frame. The Role of Marketing Planning Marketing planning is the process that leads to an understanding
of an organization’s position in the market and a series of marketing decisions and actions to achieve an
organization’s goals within a specific time frame.

A marketing plan is the record of the activities from marketing actions, and it should be comprehensive,
flexible, and logical. A marketing plan can be considered a manual for marketing actions that is based on
an analysis of the internal and external situations, clear marketing objectives and strategies for targeted
customers, and management of marketing activities through implementation and control.

Marketing planning forces the marketers to consider the needs and wants of their stakeholders,
especially their target customers who provide sales revenue (for for-profit organizations) or other
monetary and nonmonetary returns (for nonprofit organizations). Marketing planning helps marketers
evaluate the results to revise objectives and marketing strategies if necessary. In general, marketing
planning can prepare marketers to have a firm understating of the business, its strategies, and the
underlying factors that form those strategies.

In addition to the complexity of various marketing issues, marketers need to deal with potential barriers
to effective marketing planning. To overcome this barrier, marketers need to work with staff from other
departments such as research and development and engineering to develop new products, accounting
and finance to set appropriate budgets, production to deal with logistics and channel management
issues, and sales departments to overcome barriers to effective selling and gathering relevant market
intelligence. Top management plays an important role in ensuring that marketers receive all necessary
support and resources so they can perform marketing planning properly.

Marketers face potential barriers when departments or units other than marketing or marketing-related
areas are not interested in marketing planning. Without in-depth analysis, marketers won’t know where
their organizations stand in the market, and the consequence is a failure to provide a strategic direction.

Marketing planning should assist marketers to focus more on the important objectives and take out the
trivial ones. Understanding the potential barriers to marketing planning helps marketers to be better
prepared for the challenges ahead.

The Marketing Planning Process The marketing planning process goes through four major steps:

Step 1 – Situation Analysis: A situation analysis is an assessment of the environment in which the
organization operates and of the organization itself. The former assessment is called external analysis
and the latter internal analysis.

Step 2 - Target Market Analysis: Once the marketer understands his or her organization’s strengths,
weak- nesses, opportunities, and threats, the next step in marketing planning is to understand the
markets and customers. Two important tools are available to allow the marketer to gather marketing
information. One is marketing research, and the other is marketing intelligence.
Once marketing research has been completed, the organization must undertake the steps of the target
marketing process: market segmentation, market targeting, and market positioning.
Step 3 - Marketing Objectives Setting and Marketing Strategy Formulation: After the target market
analysis and segmentation, targeting, and positioning strategies are set, marketers can develop SMART
(specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) marketing objectives and the various
elements of the marketing mix can be deployed to pro- vide value that will satisfy the needs and wants
of the target customers. SMART marketing objectives state what products are to be sold to which
markets—addressing market growth, market share, or profits.

Step 4: Marketing Implementation and Control: The final step of the marketing planning process is
implementation and control. Without a good implementation plan, marketing objectives are unlikely to
be achieved, irrespective of how good the marketing strategies are.