Differences between Marketing Strategy and Marketing Planning

Differences between Marketing Strategy and Marketing Planning:

Marketing Strategy: It is the explanation of the goal an organisation needs to achieve with its marketing efforts. Marketing strategy is shaped by organisational goal.

Marketing Planning: Marketing planning is the way an organisation is going to achieve marketing goals.

Overall it can be said that strategy is explanation (thinking) and planning is doing (how strategy can be implemented).

Example:

Objective: To gain broader market adoption.

Marketing Strategy: Introducing into new market segments

Marketing Plan: Developing marketing campaign that reaches out, identifies with and focuses on that specific segment.

Marketing Planning-1

Marketing Planning

The overall purpose of marketing planning and its principal focus is the identification and creation of sustainable competitive advantage.

Implementing the marketing plan is probably one of the most challenging and often fraught areas of business strategy. Marketing planning can be a key contributor to effectively and efficiently managing the business.

How do marketing plans accommodate the future?

A decision made today about allocating resources is dependent upon an interpretation of a known set of variables covering some or all of existing and potential future-

-          Customers

-          Products

-          Prices

-          Costs

-          Production

-          Technology

-          Distribution

-          Competition

-          Regulations

Managers must have an awareness of these variables, even if they do not have complete information. However, today’s know variables become tomorrow’s unknowns, and the only thing certain about tomorrow is that it will be different from today. Thus the marketing planning process must also consider the possible shape and nature of these variables in the future. This is generally sufficient to make good decisions about the optimal allocation of resources to generate today’s business and make us equally competitive for tomorrow’s business.

Benefits of planning:

A good marketing plan will-

-          Help to identify and develop the new skills and procedures that will be required in the future

-          Prepare the company for change so that it can take a commanding lead over those companies that merely react

-          Provide a vehicle for communicating the changes and their effects in an open and non-threatening manner

-          Evaluate and reduce the available options to achieve the best chance of success and the least chance of error.

-          Provide a method for handling complexity

-          Identify the role of reach department and offers the means to co-ordinate their activities

-          Ensure that the company is proactive in its approach to acquiring the capabilities it needs.

Marketing planning process:

Marketing planning process consist of four basic questions-

-          Where are we now?

-          Where do we want to go to?

-          How will we get there?

-          How will we know when we have arrived?

Figure: Marketing planning process