3 The Purpose of a Marketing Plan

The Marketing Plan* 

The marketing plan is the strategy for implementing the components of marketing: creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value. Once a company has decided what business it is in and has expressed this in a mission statement, the firm then develops a corporate strategy. Marketing strategists subsequently use the corporate strategy and mission, and combine that with an understanding of the market to develop the company’s marketing plan.

Understanding Needs and Wants**

Before completing a marketing plan, marketers need to understand what the problem is that needs to be solved, and the customer’s wants and needs; how the customer wants to acquire, consume, and dispose of the offering; and what makes up their personal value equation with regard to the solution they seek.

Marketers want to know their customers—who they are and what they like to do—so as to uncover this information. Generally, this requires marketing researchers to collect and analyze sales and other related customer data.

Marketing Is Ongoing and Continuous***

The diagram below illustrates the process of collecting and analyzing data, how it guides mission statements, strategies, operations, and delivery to the customer. Critically, note that the marketer’s job is never finished. We expect that we will have a two-way interaction with customers to get their feedback on the marketing solution (i.e., the product or service) provided to solve their pain point or problem.

The process is outlined below:

Figure 1.5: Steps in Creating a Marketing Plan, from Principles of Marketing, University of Minn., 2015

*page 28, Principles of Marketing, University of Minn., 2015

**page 29, Principles of Marketing, University of Minn., 2015

*** page 19, Principles of Marketing, University of Minn., 2015