Action Plan. Managing the Marketing Effort
Category: Marketing
Action Plan
Marketing implementation means to plan ‘WHAT’ to do, e.g.: how to do it, when to do it, who is in charge, and what are the costs (budget).
Use a simple GANT diagram to schedule the activities over the year:
Managing the Marketing Effort
Marketing strategies must be based on consumer needs, and also on the company’s industry position and resources relative to competitors. The company must continually monitor competitors’ products, prices, channels, and promotion.
In order to find the best competitive marketing strategy and put it into action, marketing managers perform four important marketing management functions: (1) marketing analysis, (2) marketing planning, (3) marketing implementation, and (4) marketing control. Through these activities, the company watches and adapts to the marketing environment.
Analysing Market Opportunities — Market Research
In carrying out marketing analysis, planning, implementation, and control, the marketing manager needs information at almost every turn. He or she needs information about customers, competitors, dealers, and other forces in the marketplace. One marketing executive puts it this way: «To manage a business well is to manage its future; and to manage the future is to manage information».
Yet marketers frequently complain that they lack information of the right kind or have too much of the wrong kind. Or marketing information is so widely spread throughout the company that it takes great effort to locate even simple facts. Subordinates may withhold information they believe will reflect badly on their performance. Important information often arrives too late to be useful or on-time information is not accurate. So marketing managers need more and better information.
The Marketing Information System
A Marketing Information System (MIS) consists of people, equipment, and procedures to gather, sort, analyse, evaluate, and distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to marketing decision makers. The MIS begins and ends with marketing managers.
A good marketing information system balances the information managers would like to have against what they really need and what is feasible to offer. Start finding out what information you would like. But managers do not always need all the information they ask for, and they may not ask for all they really need. Moreover, the MIS cannot always supply all the information managers request. Too much information can be just as harmful as too little.
Questions for assessing marketing information needs:
• What types of decisions are you regularly called upon to make?
What types of information do you need in order to make these decisions?
What types of information do you regularly receive?
What types of special studies do you request periodically?
What types of information would you like to get that you are not getting now?
What information would you want daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly?
The costs of obtaining, processing, storing, and delivering information can mount quickly. In many cases, additional information will do little to change or improve a manager’s decision, or the costs of the information will exceed the returns from the improved decision.