Articles
ACR TODAY: Marketing Plans, how Market Research is a vital ingredient
A Marketing Plan should be considered a vital tool in establishing a company´s future direction both in terms of products and markets into which these products will be sold. The discipline of a marketing plan ensures that senior management have thought through the strategic issues and have established a plan of action to achieve their marketing objectives. The prelude to any effective marketing plan is information, about the markets into which existing or proposed new products will be sold. Sources of information do include internal market intelligence about major customers and major competitors, but it also includes vital information about market trends (the growing and declining segments of a market) and even customer requirements from suppliers as well as their perception of them. This information is the bed rock of any marketing plan and it is not enough to rely on the experience of company personnel, whatever their position, since their judgement is inevitably clouded by pre-conception of what is right for the company
. The only way to obtain objective information of the type outlined is to conduct market research, whether it be of the desk type or primary type, the definitions of which were covered in previous articles.
In preparation for a marketing plan it is important to establish the information gaps and then to decide how the information required is best obtained. Information can be obtained by using internal staff but often time, money and sometimes expertise determines that this information may be better sought with external help. Examples of the information that may be required include; identification of a new market for an existing product which would include an estimate of the market size, how the market is broken down by the end user segment and the degree of dominance that existing supplier have. Previous articles discussed these issues in depth but in establishing market opportunity it is vital that this information is obtained with reliable accuracy. Another example of information required to produce a marketing plan might be the establishment of customer perception of your company and the principle competitors so that decisions can be made as to how to alter the image of and attitudes towards your organisation. This may be the result of measurable issues such as delivery performance, technical support, engineering support, etc, and in which case a specific action programme can then be incorporated to address these matters.
There is little chance that a company can develop a strategic marketing plan that does not have objective answers to these issues. Information gaps can be numerous and there is little point in cataloguing all the areas that may require market research. The point is made, however, that you only get out of a plan what you put into it, and a marketing plan that is full of assumptions not based on fact would ensure that expensive and costly decisions are made if the information into the plan is not objectively reliable.
