10.2 Marketing Plan
What is a marketing plan? What are the qualities of good marketing plans?
DEFINED A marketing plan is a document that includes an assessment of the marketing situation, marketing objectives, marketing strategy, and marketing initiatives.
A marketing plan can be an independent document, or it can be contained within a business plan. The marketing plan outlines those actions that are intended to communicate value, generate interest, and persuade target customers to purchase specific products or services. Many of the inputs to the plan come from consumer insight, market intelligence, marketing research and strategic thinking. There can be one or more marketing plans depending on the product or service portfolio. A marketing program is a consolidated plan of all individual marketing plans. A marketing program is intended to ration and optimize in resources across brands, products,or services in a portfolio. The marketing plan consists of six basic sections:
·Executive Summary
·Company Description,Purpose,and Goals
·Marketing Situation
·Forecasting
·Marketing Strategy
·Measurement and Controls
Creating and updating the marketing plan is the responsibility of the marketing department. Just as with business plans, this breadth of activities and levels of management represented in the marketing plan process are essential. Implementation of the marketing plan requires support of the entire business.

Executive Summary
The executive summary provides a brief overview of the primary goals, recommendations, and planned actions included in the marketing plan. The executive summary is intended to communicate essential information to senior leadership and business stakeholders.
Eg: p109
Company Description, Purpose, and Goals
The company description identifies the history of the business. Its portfolio, and value proposition. The core competencies of the business, those characteristics that create a competitive advantage, are identified in this section, as is the purpose for the business to exist and its goals, both financial and non financial.

