The Successful Marketing Plan: How To Create Dynamic, Results Oriented Marketing, 4Th Edition - Brossura

Hiebing, Roman

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0071745572 ISBN 13: 9780071745574

Casa editrice: McGraw-Hill, 2011

Riassunto

The planning guide marketers have relied on for two decades—updated and expanded

For more than 20 years, The Successful Marketing Plan has been the marketing professionals’ go-to guide for creating plans that define and fulfill the needs of their target markets. In this substantially revised and expanded fourth edition, Roman Hiebing, Jr., Scott Cooper, and Steve Wehrenberg outline how to develop proven objectives, strategies, and tactics that deliver the bottom line.

Separating the plan into 10 market-proven, manageable components, The Successful Marketing Plan explains how to:

• Find the data you need to develop your plan
• Identify growth target markets
• Set realistic sales objectives
• Position your products through a strong branding program
• Condense your plan into a workable calendar of activities
• Arrive at a realistic budget and payback schedule
• Evaluate and test the plan’s effectiveness

The authors of The Successful Marketing Plan have made extensive revisions to more than 50 percent of the book’s content—from a new planning model to a more user-friendly business review section to a complete revision of the strategy chapters including a new message strategy chapter. Plus, the book contains completely updated chapters on advertising, media content, and interactive communications, in addition to updates in information sources, planning charts, and the Idea Starters appendix, which has more than 1,000 tactical ideas tied to specific objectives.

Great marketing begins with a great marketing plan. Use The Successful Marketing Plan to build a focused “real-world” marketing plan that will enable your company to thrive and grow in today’s cost-conscious, winner-take-all competitive arena.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sugli autori

Roman G. Hiebing, Jr., is Chief Executive Officer of the Hiebing Group, an advertising, marketing, and public relations agency that has over the years provided full-service capability to a diverse clientele from small entrepreneurial firms to Fortune 500 companies. These have included Kimberly-Clark, McDonalds Corporation, and Mercury Marine. Mr. Hiebing teaches advertising and marketing in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin.

Scott W. Cooper is President of the Hiebing Group and has worked on accounts such as Coors, Famous Footwear, American Automobile Association (AAA), and Fort Howard Paper. Prior to his current position, Scott had experience in both the client and agency side of the business. He currently teaches marketing communications in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

The Successful Marketing Plan

How to Create Dynamic, Results-Oriented Marketing

By Jr. Roman G. Hiebing, Scott W. Cooper, Steven J. Wehrenberg

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-174557-4

Contents

Foreword
Preface
Introduction
PART I BUSINESS REVIEW INSIGHTS
CHAPTER 1 What You'll Need to Know, Part 1
CHAPTER 2 What You'll Need to Know, Part 2
CHAPTER 3 Problems and Opportunities
PART II BRAND PLATFORM AND PLAN OBJECTIVES
CHAPTER 4 Scope
CHAPTER 5 Targets
CHAPTER 6 Positioning
CHAPTER 7 Sales Objectives
CHAPTER 8 Marketing Objectives
CHAPTER 9 Communication Objectives
CHAPTER 10 Message Strategy
CHAPTER 11 Umbrella Strategy
PART III TACTICAL PLANS
CHAPTER 12 Product, Naming, and Packaging
CHAPTER 13 Pricing
CHAPTER 14 Distribution
CHAPTER 15 Personal Selling
CHAPTER 16 Advertising Content
CHAPTER 17 Promotions
CHAPTER 18 Advertising Media
CHAPTER 19 Interactive Communications
CHAPTER 20 Merchandising
CHAPTER 21 Public Relations
PART IV EVALUATION
CHAPTER 22 Budget, Payback, and Calendar
CHAPTER 23 Execution
CHAPTER 24 Plan Evaluation
APPENDIX A Idea Starters by Marketing Situation
APPENDIX B Worksheets for the Business Review
APPENDIX C Worksheets and Formats for the Marketing Plan
Appendices B and C can be found online at 
www.mhprofessional.com/successfulmarketingplan
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

What You'll Need to Know, Part 1

What can we learn? The insights portion of the business review provides aninformation decision-making base for the subsequent marketing plan and therationale for all strategic marketing decisions within the plan. Most important,it provides for a consumer and customer orientation to your marketingcommunications.

FROM THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL LEARN

• Suggestions for preparing a business review

• How to develop an outline to use as a road map for completing your businessreview

• The steps necessary to complete a business review

• How to utilize primary data (developed through your own company's research anddatabases) and secondary data (existing data from trade journals, governmentpublications, syndicated research) in the development of your business review

• Where to find the information necessary to complete the charts and answer thequestions in each step of the business review

OVERVIEW

This chapter explores why marketing information is not a nice-to-have but amust-have. It also introduces some basic business review terms and the keyelements of developing a business review.

WHY MARKET INFORMATION IS IMPORTANT

Today, consumers have more product choices than ever before. They also have moreinformation about the choices. The combination of more competition, from smallniche marketers to large dominant category killers, and a bombardment ofcommunication from many competitive alternatives means that marketers have towork much harder to affect target market behavior. Thus, it is more importantnow than at any time in the history of marketing to really understand yourtarget market and to let this understanding drive not only the marketingdecisions but impact the entire decision-making framework of your company.

It is our opinion that many of the business successes of the past 30 years havecome about not because of great business management but because of individualslike Sam Walton who have had tremendous consumer insight—insight developedthrough their deep understanding of the target market, the business environment,and the competition. Walton realized that the rural consumer was underservedfrom a retail standpoint. He consequently built his business on a uniqueconcept: while the standard doctrine of the day said that there had to be100,000 people within a 10-mile trading area to support large generalmerchandise stores such as Walmart, Walton put his stores in small towns such asViroqua, Wisconsin. He succeeded because consumers in rural areas were willingto drive much greater distances to avail themselves of the deep selection ofmerchandise and reasonable prices that in the past had been found only in thelarger cities.

Many industry leaders such as Best Buy, Famous Footwear, Apple, Starbucks, andNike have similar stories, stories based on consumer insights that were thefoundation for dominating success.

Much of the marketing innovation in today's environment is coming fromretailers, service firms, packaged-goods companies, and business-to-businessfirms that are interacting with their target markets with a new level ofurgency. Technological innovations in the retail industry, such as "smart" cashregisters and customer databases, have increased the use of customer insightsand have provided marketers with a wealth of behavioral information. Inaddition, firms like Networked Insights and MotiveQuest are mining socialnetworking websites on the Internet to track and interpret the millions andmillions of unbiased consumer conversations that are happening daily.

The more successful business-to-business firms are spending less time sellingwhat they have and more time defining their customers' needs in order to sellwhat their customers really want. And packaged-goods companies, facing productparity issues and a sales promotion environment, are exploring ways to buildbrand equity and add value to their products. Marketers who are on the frontlines, engaging in dialogue with the consumer on a daily basis, are the ones whoare often closest to the consumers and target market demands. This "closeness"is bringing about a change in the way many marketing-oriented companies aredoing business.

These marketing-oriented companies are now in a position to define specificmarket segments based on the segment's unique needs or consumption behavior,which in turn allows them to set realistic marketing objectives to affect thesegment's behavior. Companies today have the ability to know whether productrepurchase rates are different for new versus old customers or for customers ofdifferent ages. They have the ability to determine exactly how many customersthere are for each unique purchasing segment, and they know what the averageexpenditure per purchase and the average number of purchases are for thesegments. More important, they know what each segment of customers is buying,when and, often times, why. With this type of target and customer information,the marketing-oriented company is able to set objectives that have a morerealistic chance of positively affecting consumer behavior. Marketers writingthe plan know they have a good chance of achieving the goals because theseobjectives have been set with the consumers' needs in mind.

For example, an objective to increase the repeat purchase rate might bedeveloped due to a knowledge that the consumers have the desire and the abilityto purchase more if the company were to make some basic changes in the way itdoes business. This might require changing the product to satisfy shortcomingsin important attributes in order to stimulate increased repurchase. It mightmean changing the packaging to allow for easier storage, adjusting price toencourage multiple purchases, or improving customer service to increase after-sale purchases and repurchases. While all these involve strategic decisions, itis consumer insights that provide the marketer the confidence to set obtainablemarketing objectives and to determine the appropriate strategy for achievingthem.

Marketing is a broad discipline in which multiple decisions must be made such aswhich customers should be targeted, through what specific combination of productfeatures, with what price, through what distribution channels, with what type ofservice, and via what type of communication. Unfortunately very few companiesoperate in a competition-free environment so these decisions need to be made notonly with the consumers and customers in mind but also with the actions of thecompetitors and the realities of the business operations in mind. A systematicreview of all known facts and insights affecting these decisions greatlyimproves a business's chances for success.

Industry Category Comparisons

To gain insights into marketing planning direction, look not only inward at yourown company but also outside it, to the industry in which you are competing. Abusiness review will help you compare trends within your company to those ofyour industry category and key competitors. The industry category is theoverall business in which you compete. For example, Sub-Zero makes foodfreezers, and it is in the kitchen appliance industry.

Consumers versus Customers

Throughout the business review, we use the terms consumers andcustomers. In order to analyze company trends, we need toinvestigate the behavior of company customers—that is, thosepeople who have purchased a company's product. If we are to compare companytrends to industry category and key competitor trends, we also need to look atthe purchase behavior of consumers—that is, people who havepurchased the industry category product, a subset of which are companycustomers.

PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF THE BUSINESS REVIEW

A well-developed business review should be utilized as a daily reference source.Your business review should be updated each year to reflect the most recentchanges in your industry and company. Therefore, if this is your first businessreview, don't be overwhelmed. If you don't have time to complete all sections,work on those that most affect your business. Then, next year, update thosesections and further complete some of the others for which you didn't previouslyhave time.

Completing the business review can be more than a one-person job. Requestassistance from other people in your company to help compile the information.This step-by-step process is intended to help the marketer to more easily managethe information gathering process.

There are seven sections to a business review, as shown in Exhibit 1.1.

STEP 1 Company Background

Where you've been provides a foundation for where you are going. Additionally,if your company goes through a strategic planning process, the strategicdirection of the company should be summarized in this section where it can serveas a bridge to the marketing plan.

STEP 2 Product Review

Your products and services are your major touch points to your customers. Thissection provides ways to objectively analyze and assess your products andservices portfolio.

STEP 3 Sales Analysis

This section provides a first view into both the industry consumer and yourcustomers. This section also establishes a comparison of your company toindustry benchmarks. Additionally, sales trends provide you with tremendousinsights to your customers' and consumers' evolving likes and dislikes.

STEP 4 Trend Analysis (PESTLE)

This section helps bring to the forefront major trends that will affect yourmarketing decisions. The PESTLE analysis allows you to anticipate the likelymajor external influences on your business: political, economic, social(consumer)—social is defined here as cultural norms, demographics,and shifts in consumption patterns—technological, legal, andenvironmental.

STEP 5 Consumer and Customer Review

This section helps you gain understanding of the various target market segments'awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. This work provides the foundation fordefining your primary and secondary target market segments; creating your sales,marketing, and communication objectives; developing your positioning; andfinally, deciding on your umbrella strategies in Part II of the plan,"Brand Platform and Plan Objectives."

STEP 6 Competitive Review

Know your enemy to know yourself. This section provides a step-by-step question-and-answermethodology to help you understand your company's strengths andweaknesses relative to its key competitive set.

STEP 7 Problems and Opportunities

This last section is a summary of the business review. It covers the keyproblems you need to solve and the key opportunities you will need to takeadvantage of in your marketing plan.

PREPARING THE BUSINESS REVIEW

Six tasks make up the process of preparing the business review: creating anoutline, developing questions, developing data charts, developing referencepoints for comparisons, conducting data searches, and writing summarystatements.

TASK 1 Prepare an Outline

It is important to understand that the business review, as presented in thisbook, is broad and attempts to be all encompassing. You must tailor the businessreview to your specific needs and situation, in terms of both the informationyou gather and the format in which you provide it. An auto parts manufacturermight include both business-to-business information and consumer information ifits products have both original equipment manufacturer (OEM) market andaftermarket components. A packaged-goods manufacturer may include both a channeland consumer market analysis. Further, the availability and quality ofinformation may dictate the ultimate form of your business review. The outlinegives you a framework for gathering the information. Expect the business reviewto evolve as you go on.

Start your business review by developing a written outline. The outline shouldbe as specific as possible, and it should cover each major area of the businessreview. The outline helps you stay focused and ensures that you will obtain, ina disciplined and sequential process, the critical data you need for anactionable marketing plan.

In the discussion that follows the outline below, each task section discussesand explains the topical points so that the reader will have a fullunderstanding of how to gather and organize this information for use in themarketing plan.

The following is an example outline for a business review.

Step 1. Company Background

• History and heritage

• Mission

• Corporate and product or service goals

• Organizational structure

Step 2. Product Review

• Assessment of product strengths and weaknesses relative to industry categoryand key competitors

• Product life cycle

• Product portfolio

Step 3. Sales Analysis (Five-Year Trends)

• Total sales for the company and industry category

• Company's sales by product or service line compared to sales in the industrycategory

• Market share

• Seasonality for sales by the company versus sales by the industry category

• Channels of distribution

• Sales representative or broker network

• Price influence and price line analysis

• Geography: Company's brand development versus brand development in theindustry category indexes

Step 4. Trend Analysis (PESTLE)

• Environmental trend analysis: PESTLE

• Political

• Economic

• Social (consumer)

• Technological

• Legal

• Environmental

Step 5. Consumer and Customer Review

• Target market segments

• Heavy users

• Decision makers versus influencers

• New versus repeat buyers

• Customer tenure

• Demographics

• North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code (businessclassification)

• Dollar size

• Product usage

• Awareness by target market

• Unaided awareness (first mention and top of mind)

• Aided awareness

• Knowledge

• Attitudes

• Emotional

• Rational

• Relevancy

• Esteem

• Behavior

• Trial

• Retrial and/or loyalty measures

Step 6. Competitive Review

• Company background

• Sales analysis

• Product review

• Trends

• Media strategy and spending

• Customer service

• Overall brand positioning

Step 7. Problems and Opportunities

• Key problems to be solved in the plan

• Key opportunities to be taken advantage of in the plan

TASK 2 Develop Questions

List questions that need to be answered for each section of the business reviewoutline. The questions will provide direction in determining what specificinformation you need to accumulate.

TASK 3 Develop Data Charts

Develop data charts with headings to help structure your search for relevantinformation. When completed, the charts should enable you to answer the majorquestions pertaining to each section of the business review outline.

The first part of this task is to organize the headings and columns of thecharts in order to determine what information you need to find prior to the datasearch. This preliminary work forces you to look for data and numbers that willprovide meaningful information for your specific situation, and it keeps youfrom gathering random data and information. Remember, if you look for databefore developing your charts, you may tend to construct the charts around whatwas easy to find, not what should have been found.

TASK 4 Develop Reference Points for Comparisons

Always develop charts that have reference points for comparison so that the dataare actionable. For example, when you analyze sales growth for your company,compare this against the sales growth for the industry. In this manner, thecompany's sales growth can be judged against a reference point.

To summarize, a business review, whenever possible, should do the following:

• Provide reference points of comparison within the company (past-year trends).

• Provide reference points of comparison between the company and the industrycategory.

• Provide reference points of comparison between the company and its keycompetitors.

The following sections provide some basic reminders that are applicablethroughout the business review and pertain to the collection and organization ofthe data you gather.

Compare Five-Year Trends

It is important to review trends whenever analyzing data that will directmarketing decisions. Five years is a good amount of time—long enough toshow trend movement but not so burdensome that it will discourage you fromcollecting the data. Looking at five-year trends allows the marketer todetermine not only increases and decreases from year to year but also shifts inthe marketplace over a period of time. For example, while any given product ortarget market segment may account for the greatest sales volume in one year, areview of five years' worth of data might show that the leader has had flatsales and that another product or target market segment will soon dominate thecategory if the trends continue. Therefore, it is important to look beyond astatic one-year number to get a true feeling for the data trends over a periodof time.

Compare Trends within the Company

The marketer must be aware of the trends within the company. For example, whatcustomer market segment accounts for the most volume? Has this same companysegment been growing, flattening, or declining in volume over the past fiveyears? Has another company segment been growing faster, and will it be servingthe dominant target market segment in the future? If you have a large company,it is also very insightful to compare regions of the company to the overallcompany system data. This regional review is helpful when determiningdifferent local target markets or marketing objectives versus company systemtarget markets or marketing objectives.

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Successful Marketing Plan by Roman G. Hiebing Jr., Scott W. Cooper, Steven J. Wehrenberg. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: McGraw-Hill
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0071745572
• ISBN 13: 9780071745574
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 4
• Numero di pagine: 608
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; 0039 0245774342; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italia