Marketing planning in inglese

Marketing Planning

Francesco Sordi Lesson 1

Marketing is giving solution to need through product or services in a profitable way (Kevin Clancy). Marketing is giving solution to need: to give important to pay attention to customers to give them solutions to their needs.

Difference between my revenue and my costs: I reach revenue if customers pay to satisfy their need. A company can stay in the market if it satisfies customers' needs.

Phases of marketing

• Analytic marketing
• Strategic marketing
• Marketing planning: we can develop a good marketing planning only if we base our work on a clear strategy, and we can have a good strategy only if we base our work on a strength analysis. We create a good planning, according to a strategy, according to an analysis.

Difference between marketing and communication

Communication is only a little part of marketing, a quart of marketing, because marketing deals with 4 sectors: product, place, distribution, and communication.

Marketing mix: Marketing defines what product or services we have to promote (product). How we can promote our product (promotion/communication). At what price we can serve our product (price) and how can we sell our product (place/distribution). Communication is only one of the 4 parts of the marketing mix.

Types of communication

• Aesthetic communication: funny, nice, clever
• Marketing communication: a communication that works (che funziona!)

Position of marketing in a company value chain

Production, R&D research and development, marketing, communication, sales, finance are all connected. But marketing is the base, it analyzes the competitor, the background and understands what is the best way to achieve the company aim. Sales are only the top of the iceberg but all the rest of the iceberg is marketing. We see sales activity but we don’t see all marketing activity.

Marketing is the starter of all company actions, because the business’s purpose is to find and keep customers, all company activities that touch customers directly or indirectly fall within marketing’s purview. NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MARKETING!

Marketing is always more and more a key asset for each company. In history, we passed from a marketing accessory at the end of the value chain, to a marketing cornerstone at the top of the value chain. If marketing has to be the center of the business chain, it cannot be managed only by creativity or experience. If marketing has to be solid, reliable, effective, it must be managed in a scientific way. The scientific marketing.

The scientific method in marketing

Old idea of marketing: I have an idea, I create it and when it’s ready, I try to promote and sell it. The marketing strategy is different: marketing can’t be managed only by creativity and experience, but it has to be solid, reliable, effective, it must be managed in a scientific way.

The scientific marketing is the application of the scientific method into marketing. I have to produce what I want to sell and not sell what I produced. (93% of the estimated new products fail within 3 years).

The scientific method helps us to manage all the marketing workflow from analysis to strategy (briefing) to planning (strategic check). We have to pass from the trial and errors model to the one-shot one kill model (first aim then shot, only if I have a clear analysis and strategy).

Scientific marketing process

• Analysis
• Hypothesis
• Test instruments
• Test administration
• Hypothesis check
• Theories
• Action planning
• Results check

Winning strategy

A strategy can be winning if it’s at the same time: sustainable (if we promote promises strongly based on our reason why, I have to guarantee my promise), meaningful (if it matches with customer’s needs or desires), and distinctive (if it’s different from competitors, I have to tell customers at least one reason to choose my product instead of the others).

Strategic factors

• The x factors are the topics. They are at the same time sustainable, meaningful, distinctive. The x factor is the drop that digs the rock (la goccia che scava la roccia). A brand is what customers have in their mind. We have to work with communication to promote our unique selling proposition. Class and elegance are the x factors of Mercedez.
• Pr factors, sustainable and distinctive but at the moment not meaningful. The aim of digital pr is to make the pr factors x factors.
• R&D factors meaningful, potentially distinctive but not sustainable, so companies have to work on products or services in order to make it better, to be able to promote promises. Here we have to work with the product and not with the communication. We have to work with an aspect of the product to improve it in order to make it sustainable.

Analysis for strategy

A good strategy is based on a good analysis, but what do I have to analyze?

• To get and understand sustainability I have to study and analyze the supply
• To get and understand meaningful I have to study and analyze the demand
• To get and understand distinctively I have to study and analyze the competition

Then we have to match the three points in order to obtain x, pr, and r&b factors. The way to match the 3 different studies into only one analysis is the strategic panel, the chart we use to match different analyses to identify the strategic factors.

Strategic check

Control of strategic check to see if we are right to reach our strategic aim. Only with a strategic check can we understand if our strategic communication is right, we can be sure of our good job only if we test it with our customers. A strategic check is an activity to test if our idea is correct with our strategy. A brand is what customers have in their mind and customer’s perception is always right.

Evaluating communication

How can we evaluate a communication? A communication is good when it works; it works when it says the right things to the right people in the right way. And what is right? It’s right what the strategic panel says it’s right.

The strategy tells me where I have to go, the marketing plan tells me what I have to do to go there. The marketing plan is the set of marketing activities necessary to bring the company from the “as is” to the strategic “to be”.

Marketing activities

• Activities on the product lever: product plan
• Activities on the price lever: price plan
• Activities on the promotion lever: promotion plan
• Activities on the place lever: place plan

Lesson 2

Marketing workflow

Coopetition and demand analysis. Then we match them into business opportunity analysis. We identify strategic factors, we create the marketing planning, then we do the strategic check. If the check is right, we can proceed with the implementation (realizzazione del processo), if something goes wrong, we have to do the fine-tuning (rimodificare il progetto to match it with the customers’ desires). It's important to understand the weakness of my project to adjust it

Examples

A good example: Blockbuster

• Product: films, organized for categories, many copies of each one, co-marketing with Pepsi and Pizza
• Price: low, loyalty policies
• Place: big retails, parking areas, location near big streets
• Promotion: TV ads show simplicity to organize an evening with Blockbuster

A bad example: Smart

• Product: small category of car, slam car similar to disabled persons
• Price: high, too high for a small car
• Place: cars are shown in transparent towers
• Promotion: ads don’t show the entire car and don’t explain the main characteristics and benefits

Marketing planning development

The first step in the marketing planning development is the definition of the set of marketing activities: The necessary activities on the product/price/promotion/place lever to move from the “as is” to the strategic “to be”. To define all the things to do we create a to-do list.

A power instrument to start a marketing planning is the laddering analysis, divided into 4 different steps: we analyze a product or service by its attributes, functional consequences (caused by attributes), psychological consequences (benefits the user has because of the functional consequences), values.

Es: car: attributes (it’s 300 cm), functional consequences (my car is fast because of its attributes), psychological consequences (I can run fast because of functional consequences, I can feel sure always because of functional consequences), values (sportsmanship, safety).

If I want to promote a product I can decide to focus on different values, i.e., sustainable promise because I can demonstrate them starting from the attributes of my product. Attributes and functional consequences are the reason why of my service.

I have a product and I have to define all the possible ways to communicate it. We use the laddering analysis to define all the characteristics of my product to sustain my product/my x factor. We have to invert the laddering, from the values to the attributes, to find the attributes we have to work to promote the service.

We make the laddering analysis to develop the R&D factors, starting from the x factors. Then we have to define the experience the customer has to live thanks to the product and finally we have to define which characteristics the product must have in order to guarantee the customer experience we project. Marketing doesn’t do everything in the company but it gives the guidelines to do the best product possible for the customers.

Priority in marketing planning

The second activity in the marketing planning development is the priority degree assignment that must consider two different variables: importance degree (how much important the activity is in order to create the planned customer experience?) and urgency nature (is the activity urgent because of factors independent from its importance degree?). To each activity established in my to-do list, I have to assign a priority degree from 1 to 5.

Budgeting

The third activity is budgeting: we have to assign a budget, time, and money: how much time I invest in each activity and how much does it cost to me. The budgeting is divided into 2 phases: preliminary budgeting: the marketing expert estimates the minimal and maximum cost for each activity. Then we do the evaluation of the accurate budget. We want to know the real cost for each activity. We define the sustainable budget and then we attribute a sustainable budget for every single activity. We don’t have to do the best project ever, but we must do the best project according to our resources.