Why Marketing Planning Is Necessary

student Robert Schwartz was written up in Entre- preneur magazine while still an undergraduate. He started a million-dollar chain of pizza restau- rants. The basis of his success was also a mar- keting plan, and the concepts are explained in this chapter.²                                                    •

Marketing Planning____________________________

Why Marketing Planning Is Necessary

Marketing planning is needed because top management time and talent as well as money and other company resources are always in short supply. A marketing plan saves this time and these important resources by making it unnecessary for many hours, days, or weeks to be wasted on daily short-range, firelighting-type decisions. But firms that fail to develop and use marketing plans lose far more. It is much more difficult for them to take advantage of opportunities compatible with the firm's resources; as a result, changing environments lead to missed opportunities. And frequently threats build to crises that cannot be avoided or overcome other than by wasteful "firefighting" or sometimes not at all.

Less tangible benefits of marketing planning that are also important include

1.  Systematic futuristic thinking by management.

2. A better coordination of company efforts.

3.  Development of performance standards for control.

4.  Sharpening of objectives and policies.

5.  Better preparedness for sudden new developments.

6.  A more vivid sense by the participating executives of their interacting responsibilities.³-⁴

Objectives of the Marketing Plan

The marketing plan itself has certain objectives that will be achieved if the plan is done properly. All marketing plans should accomplish the following:

1. Act as a roadmap. A marketing plan should act as a roadmap and tell management how to get from the point of initiation of the plan to reach the plan's objectives and goals. Like a roadmap, the plan

must describe the environment in which the company will find                                                45

itself along the way. A roadmap might describe terrain and the The Marketing Plan and class and types of roads, as well as times, distances, and emer-                                Planning Process

gency stops for gasoline, food, car repairs, or lodging. A marketing plan will describe the varying environs of the marketplace, including the company and its competitors; neutral environs with which the company must contend, including the government, media, and special interest and financial institutions; and the situational environs, including politics, laws and regulations, economic and business conditions, state of technology, demand, social and cultural factors, and demographics.

2.  Assist in management control and monitoring of implementation of strategy. Every time an airplane flies outside the local area from where it is based, a pilot is required to prepare and file a flight plan with federal aviation authorities. A flight plan lists the distances, fuel, and the time between important points along the flight path as well as emergency air fields, identifiers of different navigational aids, radio call signs, forecasts weather, and so forth. This information permits a continuing monitoring of changing environmental conditions during the flight. Thus, if headwinds are greater than anticipated, a glance at the flight plan can be used to tell the pilot, whether sufficient fuel exists to arrive at the destination planned or whether the flight must be cut short and a landing made at an alternate destination. Similarly, if some other environmental change occurs or an emergency occurs during the flight, use of the flight plan will immediately indicate the pilot's available options, and a decision can be made easier and more rapidly. In the same fashion, a marketing plan assists a marketing manager in management control and allows better decisions to be made and to be made much more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

3.  Inform new participants in the plan of their role and function. Marketing plans describe the use of resources, and while these resources may be things or money, they are primarily human re sources and have to do with people. In most cases, all individuals involved in the marketing plan should be familiar with the plan in its entirety. In other situations, because of the nature of the plan and security, individuals should only have access to the portions of the plan that apply to their activities and what they are required to do. But in all cases, individuals being assigned to activities involving the plan must be brought up to date on what it is that, they are responsible for, what actions they will be required to take, and how what they do will fit in with everyone else's actions. The marketing plan permits informing all these participants as to what the objectives of the marketing plan are, and exactly how they will be accomplished.