Paper Example on Marketing Plan: Overview, Significance & Entailments

Introduction

Several times marketing plans mark part of an organization's overall business plan. Most of the time, successful organizations have been praised for displaying a solid marketing strategy. A solid marketing strategy is only a result of a perfect marketing plan. It is from an ideal marketing plan that a perfect marketing strategy comes from, thereby making an organizational goal get achieved. In this paper, the focus is to analyze what a marketing plan is, its significance, and what it entails. In the second part of the article, it contains an analysis of elements of a marketing plan that can be converted into an operational marketing strategy that could help in achieving the goals of an organization.

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A marketing plan is a document produced by the marketing department of most companies. Within the report lies important information regarding advertising and marketing efforts. For most companies, the record is set within a time frame of between six to twelve months. The document contains all the business activities the company has to get involved in to achieve a profitable market. The report can be used formally or informally, depending on how it suits an organization. While most of them are designed to suit the needs of an organization, most of them contain the following essential elements.

Essential Elements of a Market Plan

Firstly, a market plan has to contain a situational analysis. A SWOT analysis is a competitive analysis that outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to an organization's marketing. A SWOT situational analysis helps the organization through the marketing plan predict the market forecast, its segmentation, the customer information, and needs analysis, which informs the company on the returns the amount to spend in marketing.

Another element contained within is the marketing objective. The objective includes a mission statement, a purpose, and a focused strategy. It is through this element that an organization finds a market segment focus and product positioning.

Another crucial element of a market plan is the sales forecast. Sales forecasts is an element within the marketing plan, which include product by product analysis for companies that have more than one product. For an organization with one product, this element contains analysis on region and market segment. It is this element that also includes each of the managers' and leadership responsibility.

Lastly, a marketing plan should have an expense budget. An expense budget is a financial plan that contains sales tactics, programs, and advertisement management. The expense budget also includes a predicted plan on how the marketed products will contribute to the company's returns.

After analyzing the essential elements of the marketing plan, it is crucial to focus on the benefits of having a market plan. A market plan defines the direction a company is supposed to take in getting their products to their customers. It also acts as a perfect framework and as a starting point to becoming a great institution, especially for SMEs (Mansouri, & Hosseini, 2018). For large corporations, a marketing plan is a way to advise clients and stakeholders to understand an organization's business planning, offering, and position. A proper marketing plan also serves as an opportunity to win advertising and promotional opportunities and deals even with media firms. The explained notions are ways in which a marketing plan becomes beneficial to an organization. Below is an analysis of how marketing elements can be converted into effective marketing strategies that work for a company.

Part 2: Execution of marketing strategy

The first element of a marketing plan that many organizations use for the execution of a marketing strategy is the organization's objectives. The objectives of an organization determine the creative campaign each of the marketing managers have to get aligned. Even if the company produces more than one product, each of its marketing strategies has to strive to align with the objective. It is objectivity that streams creativity and innovation to identify a company's originality and differentiate a company's product from local players (Kita, & Kollá, 2019). A case, for example, is Coca-Cola, whose major competitor is Pepsi. With its objective of refreshing everybody, Coca-Cola derived a creative marketing strategy where the bottles were labeled with names that societies all lovers the world could relate. Every customer felt part of the targeted customers. That year (2014), the "share a coke" campaign, which was the name of the marketing strategy, benefitted the company with a market profit of a 5000-dollar (Melton, Damron, & Vernon, 2017), deposit bonus. The success story of Coca-Cola shows the extent to which objective can contribute to executing a strategy.

Another element is the SWAT analysis. SWAT analysis is a situational analysis that helps an organization determine various marketing strategies and their effectiveness. During a SWOT analysis, different perspectives are analyzed accordingly. Innovative ideas come up during the time managers analyze the opportunities to promote the growth of an organization. The concepts exchanged are explained, and the best one that makes it to a marketing execution will make the organization a success. A case in point where SWOT analyses as an element promoted the implementation of a marketing strategy is the case of the English Premier League. The English Premier League is the top tier football league in Britain. Before becoming the most-watched league in the world, the marketing managers identified an opportunity in Asia. Asia, as a continent, has the highest population in the world. The managers figured out that with the community of Asia, it would become a perfect target market. The leaders of the organization marketed the English Premier League in Asia, a continent with the largest population. Analyzing such an opportunity has worked in the positive flor of the company. Currently, the English Premier is the football competition with the highest number OF viewership, all thanks to the Asian population. Apart from that, they are the sporting activity that receives the most elevated earning from Tv rights (Olson, Duray, Cooper, & Olson, 2016). These earnings can allude to the large Asian community, which the Premier League managers identified through SWAT analyses.

The last element that contributes to marketing execution is campaigns or projects. Projects are sided with global initiatives that are launched by an organization to help a needy community. In the end, they usually benefit the city and the organization. Participating in community-based projects is one way through which marketing strategies can be executed. A case in study is when Coca Cola empowered customers to discuss the share a coke product on social media. The discussion that was going to get the highest number of recognitions would become the automatic winner. The winner was awarded by choosing a charity of their choice where some funds would be donated. This strategy worked since customers felt part of the company and not just promotional tools. It also worked as the company received lover 50000 shares on social media, proof of how far the campaign had gone.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the fundamentals of marketing include SWOT analysis, the company's objectives, projects, and the managerial execution of each of the marketing elements. However, any organization should realize how they are unique in their way and should strive to come up with creative and original innovative ways of marketing their products to their unique customers.

References

Kita, J., & Kollá, P. (2019). Place of Emotions in Marketing and Its Importance in the ELM Model. International Journal of Technology for Business, 1(2), 1-8.

Mansouri, S., & Hosseini, M. (2018). E-commerce, Marketing Strategies, and a Variety of Pricing Methods. Journal of Management and Accounting Studies, 6(02), 55-59.

Melton, A., Damron, T., & Vernon, J. (2017). A Marketing Strategy from Corporate Social Responsibility: Lessons from Unilever and Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Olson, E. M., Duray, R., Cooper, C., & Olson, K. M. (2016). Strategy, structure, and culture within the English Premier League. Sport, Business, and Management: An International Journal.