Marketing Plans, 9th Edition

An important note to the reader from the authors

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“I spend almost all my time on people, strategy, and execution, and most everything else falls from these. If you have the most brilliant people, wicked smart people that collaborate well together; if that strategy is right; and if you're executing like crazy, there's some things that still arise, but the world is a great place.”

Tim Cook, CEO, Apple, 2020*

Since the eighth edition, digital marketing has continued to become more important to strategy development and implementation. That is reflected in every aspect of marketing practice, as is clear from just a glance at the chapter headings in Part Two on the major elements of marketing. Once structured simply around the ‘4 Ps’, this part now has chapters on integrated marketing communications, multichannel management and customer relationship management – all topics involving taut integration between online and offline channels and media. And the remaining chapters on pricing and sales are fundamentally transformed by digital practices.

No marketer can deliver without a fundamental understanding of these and other areas of digital practice. It would be a great mistake, however, to only focus on these, as wonderful execution, however digitally sophisticated, is only as good as the foundational strategy which it executes. We are in danger of forgetting the wise warnings of our predecessors earlier in the digital revolution. As long ago as 2013, Nicola Kemp wrote in Marketing ...