Developing and Managing a Strategic Marketing Plan

Developing and Managing a Strategic Marketing Plan

Introduction:

For proper running a business, an organization must have 3 sectors like finance, operation and management and marketing. Finance is the main sector because without any money a business it is quite impossible to start a business. After finance, next come operation and maintenance. For this tasks employer employ some skill people to run the business then come the marketing, marketers sell, promote and distribute their products to the market place and the revenue is most probably depends on proper marketing. All three sectors need to work jointly otherwise lack of harmony will cause a great damage and company will face a great loss. For proper running, an organization need to do marketing planning at regular basis otherwise it will be really tough to compete in the present market place. Every CEO and top marketing executives work on long term prospective of the organization at regular basis. Strategic planning is very important because it helps to know the present market conditions and weakness, strength, opportunities and threats of the internal and external environment of the organization. Strategic marketing helps to know customer demands and satisfactions, and then need to change the operation and act upon strategic plan and need implementation and control. Here I will discuss about the marketing strategy of Upper Crust Company.

Principle of strategic marketing:

Strategic planning is the procedure of maintaining and developing a strategic fit between the firm's goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.

Strategic planning for marketing depends on several factors. Those factors are describing below:

1. What will be condition of the company after 5 to 10 years?

2. What is the reason for exiting and what are the goals of the organization?

3. Which sector of the market it should serve?

4. Which products should it offers to its customers?

5. Should they enhance the reputation of brand production?

6. What resources are needed for successful future?

7. Who will be the future customers or which group will be the targeted customer? [1]

Role of strategic marketing in an organization:

[2]

Role of marketing is divided in two parts, one is strategic marketing and another is marketing management. Strategic marketing is divided in three parts, marketing philosophy execution, analysis & information and corporate, business & marketing strategy decisions. On the other hand marketing management have 2 parts, one is develop product marketing plans and executive products marketing plans.

Now I will describe strategic marketing:

First: Marketers act like a middle man between the customers and organizations. They are very much responsible for helping the firm to perform a marketing idea all over the strategic marketing procedure.

Second: Marketers always go to market palace and observe the market condition and gather information and collect data for future experiments and analysis. Those data is very vital which treat as input for marketing strategic plan, business and corporate.

Third: Marketers are always doing works for increasing reputation and improvement of corporate, business and marketing strategic plan. Marketing activities have great impression in an organization. Strategic marketing planning directly focus on marketing philosophy to achieve its goal. [2]

Processes involved in Strategic Marketing:

The strategic marketing processes have 3 phases like planning, implementation and control. The most important and crucial phase is planning phase which determine the future activities. All three phases are describing below:

* Planning Phase: first need to do the SWOT analysis which will help to know the present market condition, demand value of product, customer demand, internal and external factors those make the organization favourable or unfavourable. Marketers will find out the strength, weakness, threats and opportunities of the organization. The main goal is to set up a plan which will provide maximum opportunities with minimum threats.

Second step: In this stage marketer do the market research regarding customer demand and needs. Most of the time customers don't like monopoly, they like variation in test and choice. For that reason marketers do frequent market research. Sometimes organization needs to change their strategic plan, operation and technology. Like previously customers like glass bottles of coke or pepsi but now they like plastic bottles, so manufacturer must change their philosophy. In this stage analysis help to understand future marketing, predict who will be the future potential customer and how to attract new customers.

Third step: In this stage marketer decide marketing process and marketing mix. They concentrate on 4Ps or 4Cs for determining the future plan. 4Ps are product, price, place and promotion on the other hand 4Cs are customer intention, cost, convenience and communication. They make the final strategic plan in this stage.

* Implementation: In this stage all the strategic marketing plan is implemented. Scheduled tasks are accomplished and marketing programs are performed. All the products are ready to use and it is available to the customers. Promising prices are maintained and regular regulatory task is done to check proper market operation.

* Control: In this stage result or outcome are compare with defined targets. Here organization evaluates the procedures, outcomes and customer satisfaction. It depicts the gap between result and goal. If the gap is too high, necessary steps need to take to mitigate the problem and find out the proper solution for good profitable business.[3]

The link between strategic marketing and corporate strategy:

There are three kind of marketing, corporate marketing, strategic marketing and functional marketing. Strategic marketing is interlinked with corporate marketing. Corporate strategy has four fundamental elements; primary target customers, the competition, tools of marketing and advantage. In primary target customers, need to know the target group for any