Writing Your Marketing Plan

Now that we have discussed the unique characteristics of successful marketing plans, the next big issue is where you should begin in developing your marketing plan.

Your first step should be a thorough review of the market for your productsor services, so that you know as many details as possible of the market in which your plan will be operating. Next, you must develop a detailed understanding of the consumers who will be buying your products and services. Then, develop a similar understanding of the retail environment in which the marketing plan will unfold. With an understanding of these fundamentals, you can develop your planning assumptions, objectives, specific elements, and financial projections for the marketing plan.

Part 2 of this book includes a series of detailed successful marketing plans that can serve as examples of what your marketing plan should look like and what it should include. Part 2 also provides you with a number of key information sources for developing a market review and an understanding of consumer and trade attitudes. These sources will help you in gathering the information required to write your marketing plan. The following specific methods of obtaining information are included.

Secondary Research to Develop Market Reviews

If you are faced with the task of writing a marketing plan from scratch, one of the best ways to start is by reviewing the available data. As outlined in Chapter 7, this includes data written up in secondary sources such as magazines, trade publications, and government publications . This information will generally provide you with a framework of the market and how it breaks down into major market segments. You may want to round out this information with data-gathering field trips such as conducting store checks for the purpose of writing down prices, shelf facings, and other observations about your product category.

Telephone Surveys to Complete Market Reviews

It is not unusual to find that the information on your market that is available from secondary sources alone is insufficient. A good way to develop new information on your market is through a telephone survey. The marketing plan for the Executive Conference Phone in Chapter 8 is a good example of a market review that was done by combining data from secondary sources with a telephone survey. This plan will show you how a market review based on primary and secondary research can be structured.

Market Reviews Completed with Online Surveys

Chapter 9 outlines how the Internet can also be used to gather both primary and secondary marketing information. (Given the global nature of the Internet, this can sometimes be more effective than other methods of gathering information.) One example of this is online surveys. An online survey is similar to a telephone survey, except that rather than answering questions on the telephone, the respondent simply completes a questionnaire on the computer screen.

Focus Groups as the Key to Understanding the Consumer

Focus groups can be very effective in identifying customer practices and attitudes. Chapter 10 explains how focus groups can be used to develop an understanding of consumer usage and attitudes. It also provides some examples of how focus groups can best be done in order to provide a clear understanding of what the consumer is really thinking, as well as some specialized techniques for formulating questions for focus group discussions.

Online Consumer Qualitative Research

Chapter 11 gives you an interesting alternative for conducting qualitative research. When research respondents are sparse or difficult to find because they are scattered in many different locations, Internet qualitative research can be very useful. When the marketing plan for Eagle central air conditioners presented in Chapter 11 was developed, there were very few central air conditioning consumers in Taiwan, and they were located all over the island. Clearly the most efficient research method in this case was over the Internet, as conducting focus groups would have been very difficult. This chapter demonstrates the value of obtaining Internet addresses by region.

Ethnographic Research for Consumer Understanding

In Chapter 12, ethnographic research was used to develop a summary of consumer usage and attitudes in the baby shoe category. The objective was to understand in detail the habits and practices of mothers of infants as related to the purchase and use of baby shoes. The procedure included inhome discussions with respondents about their habits and practices, with videotaped observations of where they kept baby shoes and how they were used. This approach can be very effective for hooking into subtle emotional dimensions that are almost impossible to uncover by simply asking questions.

Trade Research in Marketing Planning

Knowing what the trade is thinking can be critical to the success of your marketing plan. Chapter 13 shows how Zion Housewares Corporation went to great lengths to identify trade practices and attitudes. The process included a series of in-depth face-to-face interviews with retailers. Because these people were quite busy, these interviews took place in the retailers office. You will see in Chapter 13 that the company conducted these trade interviews through a process outside of the normal sales operations. The interviews were conducted by consultants and marketing managers. This separate interviewing process was used to give importance to the meetings, and to eliminate any political factors related to the ongoing operations.