Leading Worlds

I have received the following question on Slideshare: “Can you tell me in detail what a controllable and flexible marketing plan is and how it has an impact on the following:
1- obtaining resources
2- designing the marketing organization
3- developing schedules
4- executing the marketing program”

My answer:

A Marketing Plan is a shared vision of what and how the business should operate for achieving its goals. These goals are usually financial however for some entities (like government of NGOs) it might be different. Anyway, at the end, Marketing Plan should bring clarification about different elements like Brand Promise, Hierarchy of Value Propositions (features, prices, experiences), Customer Journey, Go To Market (Promotion, Communication, Channel) and Enablers (People, Processes, Systems).

Even if we could argue that it can be read from left to right, the construction and its update can start from any of these elements depending of the history of the company and natural preferences of the Marketing responsible. At the end, all these elements should be aligned (congruent). It is important to note that:

• Marketing plans are not a one person exercise but a company wide exercise driven by marketing leaders;
• Marketing plan should be continuously reviewed and updated (flexibility) but major shifts/changes should be well planned for avoiding execution chaos;
• Marketing plan execution should be controllable (Key Performance Indicator).

Let’s assume this shared vision has been built, let’s see how it will have impacts on:

1. Resources: As the Marketing plan is containing an enablers section where impacts on people, processes and systems needed for supporting the other elements are described, the consequence on resources could be easily computed for managing the current business (in life management) and the future business. It is therefore an implicit output of this exercise
2. Marketing organization: Organization should be designed for facilitating the execution of the plan. Therefore the plan is an input for Organization design as structure in place should amplify brand promise, Value Proposition and Customer Journey. Example: if my approach is per out of pocket for the customer (price of 10, 20, 30), my market management should preferably be per out of pocket (segment owner for 10, one for 20 and on for 30).
3. Schedules: the Marketing plan as described above is containing 2 schedules: one for Go to Market (monthly plan for promotions, communications and channels) and one for enablers (monthly plan for people, processes and systems). These plans in addition with the general forecast (users, transactions, prices) are “normally” the references for all company schedules
4. Execution: Finally, as said before, the plan is a shared vision. Then execution should deliver this vision and control the compliancy of of it with the vision. If elements of your vision are not measurable, how are you sure you have executed them (if you cant’ measure it, kill it).

Each of these points can be detailed, but at least it already gives you a high-level understanding of the exercise. Finally, the discussion around a plan is already the plan but 90% of the complexity is in the execution. Nevertheless the first 10% is where you can make difference.

Laurent Bouty Some thoughts Marketing Plan