A Marketing Plan Essay

Firms that are successful in marketing invariably start with a marketing plan. The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, and customers come and go. In many respects, the Marketing Plan is the most important document produced by marketers as it not only helps to justify what has occurred in the past, but is critical for explaining where a company intends to go in the future. The first step is the Situation Analyses. The purpose of the situation analysis is to indicate to a company about the organizational and product position, as well as the overall survival of the business, within the environment. This allows for the evaluation of the company’s objectives, strategy and capabilities. These areas indicate to an organization about the strength of the product or whether there are areas for improvement, as well as how well an organization will fit with the external environment. I will take as particular case, one of my company’s products, namely, the book I’ve written â€Å"Unique and Different†. Considering the concept of the entire project we are carrying and that is to start making some changes around, to start, step by step, being satisfied by the world we live in, we begun by outlining our own experiences and perceptions in our first book. If we look at the things around us from a reserved point of view, the situation is difficult enough due to the external factors, such as: – Continuous change – people deal every day with novelty and need to keep up with the changes and often forget to answer their true body and mind needs. Continuous technology development – due to this type of development people tend use every day, more and more the smart technology forgetting the â€Å"old fashioned† way to broaden their universe. – Demanding society – society demands more and more, forces the humans to act like robots and despite some hidden desire to give time to such relaxation moments, choose not to – out of capping to every day schedules. Decrease of the life quality – enslaved to a robotic life and forced to act as the society requests the quality of people’s lives is decreasing every day, being hard enough to start taking it from the beginning and understanding that above all they count the most These are just a few of the aspects that could harden the fulfillment of the set goal. The second step would be the SWOT analyses which is a structured planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business. Setting the objective should be done after the SWOT analysis has been performed. This would allow achievable goals or objectives to be set for the organization. Identification of SWOT is important because they can inform later steps in planning to achieve the objective. †¢ Strengths: the strength of the product could be characterized as mentioned above through: novelty, will to change, perspective, broaden the universe, awareness of one’s needs, discovering truths about one self and so on. This is considerably a step ahead of any other â€Å"writer† because this is intended not to be a novel well sold but a book that teaching you to get to know yourself in a different playful way. Weaknesses: contrary to the strengths mentioned above – a weak side would be exactly this – the fact that people forgot how to live their lives and became robotic, enslaved by the demands of a poor society. People have closed their eyes to the exact truth that lies before them. †¢ Opportunities: in my company’s case the elements that the project could exploit to its advantage would be exactly the point where we, as a society stand right now. The society is weaken, is confused, does not know whom to obey anymore or if it is of any purpose to do it and thus, this would be the perfect time to start doing some changes and create their own path. Threats: the basic elements in the environment that could cause trouble for our project are thin lines that lay between our project and those who just want to become some type of over night writers, by selling what everybody sell these days. It is difficult to explain to people right now that something could be different if they just gave it a try. The third step is building a strategic marketing plan and here most people fall into the trap of thinking that â€Å"marketing† just means advertising, PR or promotion. But marketing and a marketing plan is so much more than that, and includes everything from understanding the market to which you’ll sell your products and services, to choosing specific tactics you’ll use to reach that market. Building a strategic marketing plan is know where to place your products, when to place it, to whom start addressing and how to address exactly. The forth step is marketing mix strategy. Marketing mix is a strategy that has been formulated after taking into consideration the 4P’s of marketing: product, price, place and promotion. This marketing mix comprises four components namely; Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These four components are popularly known as the 4P’s of marketing mix. A marketer has to use a combination of these 4P’s to develop a profit-yielding strategy. The 4 Ps – establish the exactly the place of the product, where is situated, the targeted section of market and to whom is addressed. Promotion carries a high importance especially considering the fact that we are talking about a book. And of course The fifth step is the marketing budget is an estimated projection of costs required to promote a business’ products or services. A marketing budget will typically include all promotional costs, including marketing communications like website development, advertising and public relations, as well as the costs of employing marketing staff and utilizing office space. The costs in a marketing budget will be allocated according to the campaign and the media to be utilized. Some prior research will be necessary for the cost estimates to be as realistic as possible. Knowledge of key industry and market factors must be taken into account when developing your marketing plan. Your plan will also be influenced by researching your competition. You will want to allot funding in a way that exploits the weaknesses of your competitors and emphasizes your strengths. Considering that fact that our project is just starting and that the book is just one of the products it offers, it would be hard enough to analyze exactly the costs of just promoting the book, because generally we consider that the best way to present yourself is face to face, thus we are assisting as many fairs as possible – this way having the chance to meet people personally and present them the opportunity we offer, directly. Concluding – for the book, for now have been used online socializing networks and the presence to all the possible books fairs organized around the country. The sixth step is the marketing perform plan which may be part of an overall business plan. Marketing perform plan can function from two points: strategy and tactics. Behind the corporate objectives, which in themselves offer the main context for the marketing plan, will lay the â€Å"corporate mission,† which in turn provides the context for these corporate objectives. Having the same objective, performing a well established plan represents the basic step in achieving the set goal and acting in the direction of the future, seeing beyond today and developing a better tomorrow. The seventh step would be the perform evaluation. Annual performance reviews are a key component of employee development. The performance review is intended to be a fair and balanced assessment of an employee’s performance. Annual performance reviews are a key component of employee development. The performance review is intended to be a fair and balanced assessment of an employee’s performance or of the achievement of a set goal. Everybody engaged in the entire process of the platform has well established goals to achieve and of course, well established terms to present their situation, Being about a platform the activity of the employees could be even more, analyzed and characterized by public – the public being the key factor that would position the project or that would situate it according to a percentage. And the eighth step is considered when adjusting the marketing plan as necessary after reviewing the annual balance or after analyzing the results of the set goals. After ongoing certain stages with a well planned goal – there is the need to and analyze the results of the goals and the exact position where we stand and if necessary start rethinking and adjusting the marketing plan or the spects which clearly didn’t answer our needs or expectations. Some aspects that could be rethought are: the way we address to people, the aspects we are trying to reach, the chosen moment /period, the benefits offered and a lot of other aspects – in this field having the possibility to joggle a lot with the way we put thing into action. Overall a marketing plan should state exactly what a business, company, project tries to emphasize and reach.