Marketing Plans
Marketing Plans
Marketing plans are extremely important for both organizing the internal activity of an organization and for representing it in front of external representatives such as investors. Marketing plans can facilitate the understanding of a company’s approach of the market, customers, and competitors. They can therefore motivate employees to perform better or encourage venture capitalist to contribute to provide financial support to a company with a clear sense of direction for growth. While there are different ways in which marketing plans can positively impact the overall performance of an organization, there is no doubt that when designed and implemented correctly, they always have a positive that impact.
The ancient Greek aphorism ‘Know thyself ‘ applies not only to human beings but also to companies. A proof for this comes from the fact that marketing plans usually start to be prepared before the company or the product they are prepared for comes to existence.
Marketing plans’ role is decisive in the beginning since it is always better to assess the market and its needs before investing too much in terms of efforts and resources. If a company will ever end up with the conclusion that its product or service will not be a success, it is always preferable to get to that finding earlier than later in the process. Furthermore, while investors are happy to support an enthusiastic entrepreneur and its innovative ideas, not being able to transpose the enthusiasm into a well-structured, realistic plan, can represent the cut back that will make the difference between a successful or a failed negotiation.
The ‘know thyself’ principle is also reflected in the fact that companies possessing good knowledge about the strengths they posses and the opportunities existent on the market, can adopt a proactive strategy that allows them to become leaders of the market, to become the exclusive providers for a niche market, or at least to increase their profitability.
Marketing plans also play a critical role in organizing the internal activity of an organization, in managing the company’s internal and external performance, integrating its marketing efforts within the other efforts of the organization (at both strategic level and implementation level).
A marketing company can provide the adequate advice for this strategic alignment. Also, a specialized marketing company can facilitate a successful design and implementation of the marketing plan. Furthermore, a marketing company can put into place the mechanism that ensure end results such as low marketing expense to sales ration or an increase in any of the following: employee productivity, total productivity, sales volume, profitability, brand loyalty and brand awareness, or cash inflows from financing, operations, or investing.
An important way in which marketing plans impact the organization comes from the decisive role they have in establishing budgets such for sales administration, advertising, market research, and public relations. By establishing the foundation for theses budgets and also through the financial forecast and the evaluation and control sections they contain, marketing plans also establish means for assessing performance of the organization, which is the most effective catalyst for its progress and growth.
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