Marketing Plans, 9th Edition

CHAPTER 2THE MARKETING PLANNING PROCESS: THE MAIN STEPS

SUMMARY

• Planning terms and definitions
• What marketing planning is
• Why it is essential
• The difference and the connection between a strategic and a tactical marketing plan
• Budgets and associated problems
• The marketing planning process
• What a marketing audit is
• Why marketing audits are essential
• Their place in organizational planning
• Who should carry out marketing audits
• What should be done with the audit results
• What the relationship is between strategic marketing planning and corporate planning
• Positioning marketing planning within marketing
• What the key components of the strategic marketing plan are
• How strategic marketing plans should be used
• What the link is to the budget
• Exercises to turn the theory into actionable propositions
• Definitions
• Corporate objectives
• Corporate strategies
• Marketing objectives
• Marketing strategies, for example:
  • Communications objectives
  • Communications strategies
  • Communications tactics

From the above you will observe a hierarchy of objectives, strategies and tactics. Thus, corporate objectives are mainly about desired levels of profitability. At this level (i.e. corporate planning), strategies are about which markets to address with which products, the size and character of the human resource base, corporate financing, and so on. At the next level down, these corporate strategies become marketing objectives, production objectives, HR objectives, etc. In the marketing plan, marketing ...