An explanation of the basic process of creating a marketing plan.

1. Developing a Marketing Plan
The Foundation of Marketing Excellence

2. Three
Fundamentals
of a Marketing
Plan
There are three basic building blocks for a good
marketing plan.
1. Planning
2. Implementation
3. Control
These three phases are the basic division of a
marketing plan.
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3. Planning
Planning is key to any operation. There are two basic
steps in the planning phase.
1. Define business mission and objectives.
2. Conduct a SWOT.
Once these two steps are completed you have the
base layer for your marketing plan.
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4. Planning: Step
One, Defining
Your Business
This is arguably the most important step in the entire
marketing plan process. This step creates the backbone of
your business, the thing that holds it together when things
are hard. Without a good business mission statement, your
operation will not last.
The other piece of this step is the business objectives.
These are what your company intends to provide the world
with. For example, a business objective for a lighting
company might be to sell a quality of lights that is
unparalleled in the market and to make them safe and
convenient. This statement doesn’t do anything by itself,
however. It needs to be followed with action to accomplish
this goal. In a way, the mission statement defines how the
objectives will be accomplished.

5. Planning: Step
Two, SWOT
SWOT is also called a situation analysis and it
stands for; strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. These four areas are divided in half.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal, and they
are used for evaluating your own company. This is
called the internal environment. The external
environment deals with other companies and
markets. Opportunities and threats are used to
identify where caution is needed and where there
is potential for growth.
All these steps help a business to define its
position in the marketplace. Only with an
accurate knowledge of its position relative to its
surroundings can a marketing plan succeed.

6. Implementation
The implementation phase of the marketing plan has
two separate pieces.
1. Conduct STP.
2. Implement marketing mix and allocate
resources.
This phase is where the objectives and mission
statement turns into action. These two things
combined are called the marketing strategy.

7. Implementation:
Step One, STP
STP stands for segmentation targeting and positioning.
Segmentation is where markets are divided into
similar customers. An example of this is separating
young adults in college from people near retirement.
Targeting comes in when you decide what market
segments you are going to specifically market
towards. In the case of a modern laptop company,
they might choose to target college students rather
than those near retirement.
The last part of STP is positioning. In this segment, the
marketing mix is defined in such a way as to give
potential consumers the best and most accurate
information of the picture. In essence, it is the angle,
or the position, from which the product is seen.

8. Implementation:
Step Two,
Marketing Mix
and Allocating
Resources.
In the second step of the implementation phase,
product, price, place, and promotion come into
play in a more serious way. In this phase, product
value creation is used. This is where the firm
creates products and services that consumers
perceive as valuable. The price must also reflect
what the consumers think it is worth. The place
must be convenient for the consumer, and the
promotion must communicate clearly and across
a wide audience.
The allocation of resources is directly tied to the
marketing mix and where the firm has decided to
put its assets. The decisions of where resources
will go are vital to a firm’s success.

9. Control
The third stage of the marketing plan control. In this
section, the firm analyses its performance and tries
to understand why some things it implemented
worked and why others did not.
1. Evaluating performance using marketing metrics.
This is the las stage of the marketing plan and
encompasses the rest of the phases and steps in an
overall review.
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10. Control:
Evaluating
Performance
Using
Marketing
Metrics
The evaluation of a firm’s performance is a vital
step to the firm’s future success. Metrics are the
measuring sticks by which a company measures
its success. Some only measure success in
financial terms, however, there are many other
ways to succeed as a firm. The objectives that the
company set itself are the real test of their
success. Internet site traffic is one metric that is
becoming much more common since the amount
of marketing online is increasing at such an
exponential rate.
These evaluations of performance are key to any
business’s marketing plan. Without these
evaluations, a firm would be unable to identify
where it needs to improve and where it has had
success.

11. The Marketing
Plan
1. Planning
a. Define business mission and objectives.
b. Conduct SWOT.
2. Implementation
a. Conduct STP.
b. Implementing marketing mix and allocating
resources.
3. Control
a. Evaluating performance using marketing
metrics.
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12. Sources Cited:
1.
https://learning.mheducation.com/static/awd/ind
ex.html?_t=1645409320843#/