TOPIC 5

STRATEGIC PLANNING SKILLS TO

MANAGE MARKETING IN BUSINESS
OPERATIONS
Strategic marketing
Strategic marketing
Strategic marketing is one of the finest business techniques that an
organization can leverage to provide value and better service to the
customers, thereby differentiating itself from its competition by
emphasizing its strengths.

The primary goal of strategic marketing planning is to get creative with

the marketing mix by laying a framework for fundamental change
related to how a company works and engages with other industrial
sectors to attain its long-term goals.
Strategic marketing plan
A marketing plan is derived from the marketing strategy. It
outlines the specific marketing activities that will be
performed to achieve marketing strategic objectives in the
forthcoming years.

 In addition, it describes how you will reach the product’s

target market, detailed pricing models, and promotional
activities that will be carried out.
Components of a marketing plan :

1. Company’s marketing objectives:

The initiatives in the marketing plan should help the company
reach its marketing objectives. It’s essential to connect the
dots to ensure that all of your marketing planning ties to
company goals.
2. Business marketing positioning:
An examination of the organization’s present situation in
terms of the market position compared to where you want to
be.
Components of a marketing plan :

3. Marketing mix
The four Ps of marketing are product, price, promotion, and
place. These elements define how you will persuade buyers to
buy your prodauct.

4. Marketing activities:
A list of specific marketing tactics and messaging that will be
performed over the time period to reach marketing goals.
Components of a marketing plan :

5. Market research
It entails conducting an extensive study on current market
trends, client demands, industry sales volumes, and
anticipated direction.

6. Business’s target market

Demographics of the business’s target market
 Relationship between
strategic marketing planning
and strategic planning
Relationship Between Strategic Marketing
Planning And Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is intended to create a game plan or roadmap for an
organization, its divisions, and departments to attain specified goals
and objectives. It identifies internal and external threats and
opportunities to consider while developing initiatives and targets.

Developing a strategic plan involves gathering stakeholders to evaluate

data about the internal and external environments. Conducting a SWOT
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, setting
business goals, formulating initiatives, and defining metrics are all
components of the strategic planning process.
Relationship Between Strategic Marketing
Planning And Strategic Planning
Marketing strategy is more specific to the products and services you
sell. What you’ll be offering, who you will sell it to, how you’ll deliver
it, the pricing, and how your marketing efforts will help you reach
your company’s strategic goals. Defining these elements is essential to
develop detailed and effective marketing plans.

The strategic plan defines targets and objectives for the entire
organization, including operations, human resources, product
development, and sales. In contrast, a Marketing strategy outlines
initiatives to meet the organization’s sales objectives as defined in the
strategic plan.
Strategic Marketing
Planning Process
Strategic Marketing Planning Process
The strategic marketing planning process involves creating a
paradigm that outlines what your objectives are, what
programs you’ll use to achieve those objectives, who is
responsible for those metrics, and by when you’ll be
achieving those goals.

In short, developing and managing a strategic marketing

plan is crucial in reaching business objectives.
Step 1: Consult the Corporate Strategic
Plan
when it comes to the planning process, start by looking at your
organizational Corporate Strategic Plan (CSP) and other
departments. Here’s what to ask yourself before developing
and managing a strategic marketing plan:
i. What are the executive team’s top priorities for the year?
ii. What pipeline and revenue numbers are we aiming for this
fiscal year?
iii. Are any adoption rates or implementation goals being set
for the product?
Step 2. Conduct market research
After reviewing your company's mission and status, compare
your findings to others in the same market.
If your competitors are facing similar threats, you can
research how they are able to engage with customers.
As you're deciding how to launch a new product, search how
companies have released similar products in the past and
distinguish your approach
Step 2. Conduct market research cont…
Before you go further in your planning, get to know your
customers again. You may send out a survey or invite some
buyers to participate in a focus group concerning an existing
product. Ask concrete questions that test your assumptions,
such as:
i. Where did you find our product?
ii. How do you use it?
iii. Would these changes improve your experience?
Step 3. Define a target audience
Consider sketching a profile of your average customer, including
their needs and complaints. Determine their age range and where
they live, their family size, job title, lifestyle choices, money habits
and other identifying qualities.
You may even describe a typical day in their life to demonstrate
their unique behavioral characteristics like resilience, curiosity and
sensitivity toward others.
You may also want to consider the other places your ideal
customer spends money, such as gyms, theaters and groceries and
market to them.
Step 4. Set a measurable goal
Whether you're planning to improve brand awareness, drive
more sales, increase customer engagement or enter a new
market, you will need to set goals to assess the progress of
your marketing plan.

One way to do this is to write a SMART goal (Specific,

Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound).
Step 4. Set a measurable goal cont..
This set of criteria may help you visualize your goals, assign
them to the appropriate team members and use them as an
ongoing source of focus and motivation.
 It may also help you identify shortcomings in your plan,
such as achieving an unrealistic number of email signups in a
short timeframe.
Spotting and correcting this error in advance helps a
marketing team pursue appropriate goals and stay positive in
the process.
Step 5: Create marketing goals that align
with the CSP of the business
Whether you're planning to improve brand awareness, drive more sales,
increase customer engagement or enter a new market, you will need to set
goals to assess the progress of your marketing plan.
One way to do this is to write a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, and Time-bound).
Now that you’ve understood the business goals, you’re more informed on
how to plan a marketing strategy.
For example, how many accounts today engage with our marketing content,
get passed to sales, are qualified, have a demo, and then book? If the
percentage is 10%, then you need 100 contacts to get transferred to sales in
order to close about 10 new clients.
Step 6: Determine which campaign
planning will achieve that marketing goal
In order to generate 100 engaged contacts for sales, you want to look at
your existing programs and determine the success of each at driving
engagement. For example, let’s say you ran four webinars last quarter.
Each had 100 registrants, and 30 people attended. Of those 30 people, 10
requested a demo and five were from qualified accounts. Once passed
over, sales closed one lead.

If that’s the average data, then you now know that you can expect a
webinar to result in five contacts and one deal. After that, replicate the
process across your campaigns to plan out which activities will actually
support your company’s growth goals.
Step 6: Create a marketing campaign
calendar that aligns with your goals
Now that you have focused goals that are strategically
aligned with business objectives, you can create a calendar
of activities, from content marketing to events.

 The best part? You won’t have someone asking “why is

marketing running that webinar again” because you’d know
the answer—it’s to drive X number of leads to sales.
STEP 7. Get budget approval
Depending on your company's resources and processes, you
may need to seek budget approval after you decide your
marketing strategies rather than before.
 If you know your budget will be limited, it may be helpful to
present the material you've gathered from the first four steps
in order to find out how much you will assign to the plan.
You can then determine your strategies based on what is
financially realistic. Whichever step you take first, it may be
helpful to see these steps working in tandem rather than as
two separate steps.
Step 8: Implement your plan (Let it run!)
Here it’s time to execute on your plan and start
achieving business impact.
Knowing how to strategize marketing plans is a critical
part of the marketing process. Now that you’ve
completed the six steps of strategic marketing planning,
you’ve set yourself and your team up for success.
Step 9. Evaluation and Control
While you execute your strategic marketing plan, keep in
mind that you should revisit the business goals quarterly.
It will help you see the difference between what was
planned and the actual performance of the organization and
adjust where necessary to keep you on track.
 Evaluation and Control keep you on the right track to
ensure the marketing organization continues to drive toward
overarching corporate goals.
Objectives and Benefits Of
The Strategic Marketing
Planning Process
1) Forecast future uncertainties and
minimize them
The main aim of the marketing plan is to close the gap
between the current status of the business and the
anticipated position. A marketing plan should be one of the
best options to forecast the possible uncertainties and issues
that you may come across in the future.
A perfect marketing plan should provide you access to take
the right decisions even before any eventuality strikes you so
that you can minimize the losses to a greater extent. Thus,
one of the major objectives of marketing plan is to minimize
the losses and effects of future uncertainties.
2) Better Coordination within teams or departments

A successful business is possible only with effective

coordination between multiple departments. A well-placed
Strategic marketing plan can help you achieve the best
possible coordination between the departments and
divisions of the enterprise.
The coordinated efforts of all the departments would help
improve the efficiency of your business and marketing
strategy as a whole. A Strategic marketing plan also ensures
that the quality of work also stands improved.
3) Streamline processes and control operations

A marketing plan ensures that all the activities of the multiple

departments are streamlined and controlled. A marketing plan will
focus on setting up the objectives for achieving the standard goals in
terms of marketing, and the actual performance is measured against
the planned standards.
Periodical measurement of the achieved marketing standards against
the pre-determined standards will help you analyze the results and
apply any corrective actions if needed. These periodic checkpoints will
help the teams and departments stay focussed on the tasks and goals.
4) Maintain healthy competition within the
organization
A well-laid marketing plan will help you configure the tasks for each
of your employees. The marketing plan will also be helpful in
establishing a relationship between the employees and departments.
This will set out responsibilities and duties for each of the employees
in specific and certain terms.

This will help have a cordial and healthy relationship between the
employees and departments. Since the employees are suitably
rewarded for the efforts that they have put in, this can bring about a
considerable level of healthy competition between the
5) Minimize Wastage
As we already made clear in the above discussion, it both
specifies the responsibilities and outlines the control
mechanism for the activities efficiently.

The efforts are streamlined towards ensuring the maximum

results. This will ensure that wastages are minimized to the
least possible level. In addition to helping you streamline
your efforts towards a focused business focused, it also helps
you check all the wastages in the enterprise.
6) Keeping customers happy & satisfied
• The ultimate customer satisfaction and maximization of
profits to the maximum possible extent are what would
make a marketing plan more efficient.

• The marketing plan should ideally focus on making an all-out

effort to ensure that the regular supply of the products and
services is maintained in the market. Reasonable pricing that
ensures a reasonable profit is key to a good marketing plan.
It will also help provide efficient after sales services as well.
7) Increasing employee efficiency
A Strategic marketing plan helps your employees achieve
the best possible efficiency levels. Having understood what
objectives the marketing plan tries to achieve, it should be
understood that it is more than just a document containing
bits of information.
A Marketing Plan is designed to achieve short term goals
with a view to winning over the long term achievements. A
good marketing strategy is designed for building a marketing
plan with SMART objectives.
ASSIGNMENT:

Develop A Simple Strategic

Marketing Plan