Marketing Planning
Do you need help…Setting prices…Understanding your customers…Forecasting future orders?
Some people believe Marketing is just about selling, creating promotional material or advertising, but it is far more than that.
Making a product or providing a service is relatively straightforward. The hard part is ensuring that you can offer it to your customers and potential customers at a price they are willing to pay and makes you a profit.
I believe the key to great Marketing Planning is:
- Understand Your Value Chain
- Conduct Robust Market Analysis
- Produce Realistic Forecasts
- Appreciate The Wider Business Context
With extensive experience in this area I know how difficult it can be to do this, especially if this is in addition to your core activities or if you haven’t had sufficient training.
That is why I have developed workshops to give you some real practical help and advice on how to become more confident and proficient when it comes to Marketing Planning.
Downloads
Marketing Planning click here
Workshop Objectives click here
Example Agenda click here
Course modules…
The Value Chain (Costs-Prices-Profit)
It can be described as…
- The sequential set of activities (primary & support) that a business performs to turn inputs into value-added outputs for its customers/consumers
- It was developed by Michael E Porter in 1985 (he made his name at the Harvard Business School)
Simply put it means…
- What does it cost to make or provide what your business does
- What to charge for it and how much profit that will make
Analysis & SWOT (What-Where-Why)
It helps us to understand…
- What has happened and what might happen in the future
- What to dial up or indeed what to stop doing
Sometimes we need to look at…
- Input metrics – things such as Distribution, Price or Space available
- Output metrics – includes the likes of Volume or Rate of Sale (RoS)
Forecasts & Projections (Future Sales)
What are forecasts…
- They are informed projects
- By definition they are never 100% correct
- They can be volume or financially based
- They can be short, medium or long term
Three basic reasons for forecasts…
- Value Based – what a business has to sell
(to cover its overheads etc.) - Resource Based – what can the business produce
(usually where output is limited) - Market Based – what could the business sell
(the most common for established companies)
Business Context (No Surprises)
Business context is about…
- Monitoring & acknowledging major trends, events etc. beyond your category which may influence behaviour
- Understanding what may have a direct or indirect impact on what you are trying to do
- Appreciating that you don’t operate in a vacuum
Structured approaches which can help with this…
- PEST – Political, Economic, Social & Technological
- PESTLE – as above but with Legal & Environmental added
- STEEPLED – more recent and includes Ethics & Demographics