2_Hard_Marketing Planning and Management

• Key tasks are required for both company and business unit planning in marketing planning and management.

Corporate Mission

• Defining the corporate mission clarifies why the organization exists, including its core purpose and long-term goals.
• Key questions to ask when defining the corporate mission:
  • What is the business?
  • Who is the customer?
  • What do customers value?
  • What will the business become in the future?
• Characteristics of a good mission statement:
  • Focuses on a limited set of goals
  • Emphasizes major policies and values
  • Identifies the main markets or customer groups served
  • Takes a long-term view
  • Is short, memorable, and meaningful

Corporate Culture

• Building the corporate culture involves shared experiences, beliefs, norms, and values that define how an organization's members interact and work.
• A customer-centric culture can be a key differentiator in rapidly changing markets.
• Culture strongly influences employee behavior, attitudes toward innovation, and commitment to serving customers.

Strategic Business Units

• Defining strategic business units (SBUs) involves recognizing a single or group of related businesses that can be managed separately from the rest of the company.
• SBUs have their own competitors.
• SBUs are led by a manager responsible for strategic planning and profit.
• Each SBU needs its own strategy consistent with the broader corporate mission.
• SBUs may have specialized (narrow) or diversified (broad) product portfolios.

Resources Across SBUs

• Allocating resources across SBUs involves companies with multiple SBUs with varying potentials, where top management must decide how to invest in, grow, or "harvest" each SBU.
• Key factors include:
• Market Attractiveness
• Company's Competitive Position
• Synergies among SBUs
• Tools & Approaches
  • Portfolio Models (e.g., the BCG matrix) which can be used to compare SBUs and guide investment decisions
  • Generalized Resource-Allocation Strategies (grow, hold, or divest SBUs depending on performance).

Developing a Market Offering

• Strategy specifies the target market (who you will serve) and the value proposition (why they should choose you).
• Tactics (Marketing Mix) are the specific attributes that bring the strategy to life, often called the 7 Ts (product, service, brand, price, incentives, communication, distribution).
• Design tactics like product features, pricing, and promotion after identifying target customers and the value you intend to provide.
• Once strategy is defined, one can then create an offering to fulfill those needs better than the competition.

Target Market Identification Using 'The Five Cs'

• Customers: Identify the needs to address including whether you are serving individual consumers (B2C) or other organizations (B2B).
• Collaborators: Which partners can help create, deliver, or promote your offering, these collaborators provide resources or expertise you don't have internally.
• Competitors: Identify who is targeting the same customers and trying to satisfy the same needs, including beyond direct, category-based rivals.
• Company: Identify the available resources and capabilities of a company. In large firms, each strategic business unit (SBU) may act as a "company" within the broader enterprise.
• Context: External forces such as social, technological, regulatory, economic, or physical aspects that affect operations.

Value Proposition (3-V Principle)

• Customer Value: Why the target market should choose your offering over the competition.
• Collaborator Value: Why potential partners would prefer to collaborate with you.
• Company Value: Why this particular offering is worth your firm's investment versus other possible uses of resources.
• Optimal value means aligning happy customers, profitable partnership deals, and strong company returns.

Marketing Tactics (The 7 Ts)

• Product: The actual tangible or intangible item or solution offered where customers gain ownership.
• Service: Value delivered without transferring ownership, where some offerings can be product or service (e.g., software).
• Brand: Identity that distinguishes your offering from competitors, which can carry emotional and psychological benefits.
• Price: The amount of money customers pay and collaborators receive which influences perceived value and can signal product/service quality.
• Incentives: Temporary boosts to enhance value that can target customers or channel partners.
• Communication: Informing or persuading customers, collaborators, and other stakeholders about your offering.
• Distribution: How the offering actually reaches customers (e.g., online platforms, retail stores, direct sales), including logistics, supply chain, and all forms of channel partnerships.
• The 7 Ts influence the offering's attractiveness, awareness, and availability, which are keys to whether people ultimately buy.

Market Value Map

• Visualizing the business model (strategy + tactics) in a market value map links the target market, value proposition, and market offering.
• Specialized maps can be created such as Customer Value Map, Collaborator Value Map, and Company Value Map.
• All three maps must align to create lasting success.

Marketing Planning Process (G-STIC framework...Goal-Strategy-Tactics-Implementation-Control)

• Goal: Define primary success criterion like monetary or strategic.
  • Quantitative and Temporal Benchmarks: A numeric target to be achieved by a certain deadline
• Strategy: Defines who your target market is and what value you intend to deliver.
  • Target Market: Select customer plus analysis of competitors, collaborators, company resources, and context
  • Value Proposition: How you will create value for customers, collaborators, and your own company
• Tactics: The concrete activities that execute the strategy.
• Implementation: Turning the strategy and tactics into reality, including:
  • Resource Development: Acquire or building competencies and assets needed
  • Offering Development: Create the product design and set prices
  • Commercial Deployment: Rolling out the offering
• Control: Tracking performance and market conditions:
  • Performance Evaluation: Compare actual outcomes to benchmarks.
  • Monitoring the Environment: Keep an eye on external changes.
  • Adjusting the Plan: Refine the strategy, tweak tactics, or rethink overall approach if there's a "performance gap" or major shift in the environment.

Key Components of an Actionable Marketing Plan

• Executive Summary: A brief, "elevator-pitch” style overview of the entire plan.
• Situation Overview*: Includes internal and external conditions affecting the company like Company Overview and Market Overview
• G-STIC Framework: See above
• Exhibits: Appendices, tables, charts, and detailed data that support the main discussion
• Specialized Marketing Plans: Product Development Plan, Communication Plan and Segment-Specific Plans

Modifying the Marketing Plan

• A marketing plan should be revised whenever shift in internal or external market factors affect the plan's viability, including the the Five Cs.
• How:
• Revisit the G-STIC Framework
• Conduct a Marketing Audit if needed
• A marketing plan needs updating whenever changes in one or more of the Five Cs make the current plan less effective.

Explore the key tasks in marketing planning, focusing on defining the corporate mission and building a strong corporate culture. Learn how a customer-centric culture differentiates businesses. Understand the characteristics of an effective mission statement and its long-term impact.