Market Planning

Market planning or marketing planning refers to a procedure that involves organizing a business’s marketing goals besides accumulating tactics and strategies to achieve them. This process aims to increase sales, strengthen relationships with existing clients, improve brand awareness, and increase retention.

This procedure includes different aspects, like marketing mix, budgets, future predictions concerning the business, historical data, programs, policies, and current market position. It aligns and informs an organization so that all the teams that face customers are in sync. That said, one must note that planning cadence varies across companies. Marketing planning is of two types – long-term and short-term.  

• Market planning refers to a systematic approach to establishing marketing strategies, goals, and execution tactics. If businesses conduct this process efficiently, they can improve their sales.
• A key feature of this procedure is that it is an analytical action, requiring foresight and critical thinking.
• There are various benefits of market planning. For example, it makes organizations more proactive rather than reactive. Moreover, it offers organizations a more organized way to evaluate the future.
• Short-term and long-term are the two kinds of market planning procedures.

Market planning refers to a process offering the framework of marketing and advertising efforts made for an organization. It describes a marketing manager’s responsibilities and roles to fulfill the company’s objectives. Moreover, the procedure provides prominence to the economical and pleasant distribution of marketing resources besides giving a creative direction for the organization’s marketing operations.

Marketing planning may involve a couple of main phases. In the first phase, businesses carry out an analysis of the current situation to determine the area requiring additional focus. Moreover, during this stage, organizations assess prior promotions to verify the success. Then, in the second phase, companies develop and create marketing strategies. During this phase, organizations need to form relationships between the activities put forward to implement the plan efficiently.

Some elements of marketing planning are as follows:

#1 - Strategic Analysis

At its core is the scenario in which an organization carries out its operations. Some vital issues that businesses must address are as follows:

• Customer Analysis: What are the target groups and their buying behavior?
• Market Analysis: What is the service or product’s market potential?
• Competitor Analysis: Which competitors are conducting operations in the market, and how are they operating?

Lastly, businesses must address competitive advantage, i.e., ‘What sets apart the business’s offer from the rest?’

#2 - Establishing Goals

One must note that financial goals are distinct from those related to customers and the market. Let us look at them.

• Financial Goals:  These are the goals that one can measure straightforwardly with hard data, for example, market share, sales growth, etc.
• Goals Related To The Market And Customers: These refer to the goals that are challenging to measure utilizing data, for example, innovation capacity, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and engagement, etc.

Companies must not only depend solely on financial goals as usually there’s a delayed reaction to deteriorating figures.  

#3 - Select A Strategy

A strategy determines how a business will fulfill its objectives. Moreover, it establishes a competitive advantage. Three basic strategies are defined by Porter’s competition matrix - specialization in the niche markets that have not been explored, cost leadership through a price advantage, and differentiation via service and quality.

#4 - Strategy Implementation Or Marketing Mix

A marketing mix has these four cornerstones:

• Product policy
• Distribution policy
• Communications Policy
• Pricing Policy

The main objective is to execute the strategy in the most effective and efficient manner.

#5 - Performance Review

The last crucial element is the performance review, which involves checking how much the market instruments are helping to fulfill the set objectives:

• Early detection of the shortcomings in the implementation of the strategy
• Optimizing and checking teams’ performance.  
• Adjusting the marketing mix or taking counter-measures if deviations from specific probability ratios for market segments, distribution channels, markets, products, etc., occur

Let us look at the steps involved in the marketing planning process.

#1 - Comprehend The Business’s Current Situation

In the first step, individuals must comprehend the organization’s current situation and objectives. For that, they can consider analyzing the opportunities of different audiences or markets, research the brand, and conduct client-related research to know how they make purchase decisions.

#2 - Identify The Target Audience

This step involves creating a simple profile of prospective customers, such as the influencers they usually follow, the websites they visit, the products they purchase, and more. Knowing these things will help organizations create successful marketing campaigns.

#3 - Position The Brand

A successful positioning makes the brand appealing to consumers and provides a competitive advantage. Businesses can start by knowing the differences between their differentiators and competitors. The differentiators need to be provable, relevant, and true. Once organizations identify them, they may write messages to the audience. One must remember that all audiences are not seeking the same aspects of a brand. Hence, all businesses must adapt messages by concentrating on the advantages the target wants.

#4 - Define As Well As Refine The Order

As clients require change, businesses may consider adapting their offer and answering the requirements. The prior analysis of the business’s current situation, clients, and competition guides this step.

#5 - Select The Marketing Techniques

Once businesses understand the target audience, they may select a particular channel they prefer to reach out to them. This enables them to make their expertise and brand more visible. Experts recommend utilizing both offline and online marketing methods to enhance the visibility. Businesses may also utilize diverse content for different levels of sales funnels.

#6 - Utilize New Skills And Tools

If businesses realize that they require a new method for their marketing planning process, they may require new tools. Such tools include search engine optimization (SEO), social media, marketing automation, or a website. Businesses may also need to build a new strategy.

#7 - Write Down The Plan

The final step involves translating the strategy formulated by the businesses into a written plan that details all actions to be taken with a timeline. Such a plan enables businesses to assess their progress. It includes a marketing budget and a marketing calendar. The former covers the duration in which the business implements the plan, often a year or quarter. It details all scheduled actions, helping businesses to stay consistent.

The marketing budget details the required costs to cover all the tools identified earlier by the organization. One must note that businesses should ensure to leave some space for contingencies.

As noted above, there are two types of marketing planning. Let us look at them in detail.

#1 - Long-Term

It refers to a marketing planning process that lasts for over a year. A company’s top management is responsible for it. This process involves setting the company’s future strategies and objectives besides preparing a framework for creating short-term plans. For instance, this type of marketing planning may include choosing a distribution channel, a price policy, and media advertising.

#2 - Short-Term

It is a marketing planning procedure that lasts for a duration of less than one year, for example, annual or bi-annual plans. Carrying out this process is the responsibility of an organization’s mid-management. This type of marketing planning helps in resolving recurring issues.

Let us look at a few market planning examples to understand the concept better.

Example #1

Planful Inc. introduced Marketing Plan Builder in June 2023. It is the first and only marketing planning software that allows businesses to execute, measure, and build marketing plans. This software brings guidance, standardization, and guidance to how companies’ marketing teams prepare marketing plans. Some of the new capabilities include –

• The flexibility to support all market planning procedures, thus providing customizable budgets, metrics, goals, campaigns, etc.
• The generation of a marketing plan’s presentation slides through a click, thus eliminating manual slide creation, which can be time-consuming.  

Example #2

Suppose Company ABC aimed to set certain marketing goals and achieve them in an efficient manner. For that, it carried out the market planning process. As part of the process, the organization analyzed its current situation, understood the target audience, and positioned its brand. Then, it selected certain online and offline marketing methods and certain tools like marketing automation and SEO to build a market plan.

ABC implemented the plan successfully. As a result, its revenue increased, and it strengthened its relationship with existing customers besides acquiring new clients.

One can understand the importance of the market planning process through the following points:

• It obliges a company’s management team to assess the future in an organized manner.
• The process harmonizes activities, expediting the fulfillment of targets.  
• It enables companies to focus more on market expansion rather than market maintenance.
• Another key benefit of market planning is that it enables organizations to examine performance, make the most of strength, minimize risks, and open up opportunities.
• It makes a business’s management team more accountable for offering adequate resources.
• This process makes businesses more proactive.
• It helps in ensuring customer satisfaction.

This has been a guide to what is Market Planning. Here, we explain its examples, elements, process steps, importance, and types. You can learn more about it from the following articles –

• Scenario Planning
• Finance Vs Marketing
• Total Addressable Market