The e-Marketing Plan - Brief overview and Working task
I. Summary of a marketing plan
The e-Marketing Plan - Brief overview and Working task
The marketing planning (concretized in the marketing plan) is an considerable organizational activity, inspecting the hostile and complex competitive business environment. Our quality and skills to perform profitable sales are affected by hundreds of internal and external factors that interact in a difficult way to evaluate. A marketing owner must understand and build an image upon these variables and their interactions, and must take rational decisions.
Let us see what do we call a "marketing plan"? It is the corollary of the planning activity, a document that includes a describe of the organization's place in the market, an diagnosis of the Step factors as well as a Swot analysis. A faultless plan would also formulate some presumptions on why we think the past marketing strategy was flourishing or not. The next phase shall present the objectives we set, together with the strategies to perform these objectives. In a logical sequence, we will supplementary need to value the results and formulate alternative plans of action. A plan would consist in details of responsibilities, costs, sales diagnosis and budgeting issues.
In the end, we should not forget to specify how the plan (or plans) will be controlled, by what means we will quantum its results.
We will see how to build the marketing plan, what is its structure: after we will see how to build the original marketing plan, we will take a look at the e-marketing plan and see how the unique features of the internet will need some changes in the approach of writing a marketing plan.
But, before we continue, we must understand and accept that steps of the marketing plan are universal. It is a logical approach of the planning activity, no matter where we apply it. The differences you meet from a plan to someone else consist in the degree of formality accorded to each phase, depending on the size and nature of the club involved. For example, a small and not diversified business would adopt less formal procedures, because the managers in these cases have more palpate and functional knowledge than the subordinates, and they are able to perform direct operate upon most factors. On the other hand, in a business with diversified activity, it is less likely that top managers have functional facts in a higher degree than the subordinate managers. Therefore, the planning process must be formulated to ensure a spoton discipline for every person complex in the decisional chain.
Ii. The normal marketing plan
The classical marketing plan would corollary the following scheme of 8 stages:
1. Declaring the mission: this is the planning stage when we manufacture the organizational orientations and intentions, thus providing a sense of direction. In most cases, this is a normal presentation of the company's intentions and approximately has a philosophic character.
2. Establishing current objectives: it is considerable for the club to try to rule with preciseness the objectives to be reached. These objectives, in order to be viable, must be Smart. Smart is an acronym and stands for "Specific", "Measurable", "Attainable", "Realistic" and "Timed". The objectives must also carry the normal organizational mission.
3. Conference information: this stage is based on the idea of marketing audit. After performing the audit of the macro-environment by analyzing the Step factors (social, technologic, economic and politic), we should turn the focus upon the immediate extern environment (the micro-environment) and analyze the competitive environment, the costs and the market. Finally, we will quit with the Swot analysis, by this way we will have a normal view upon the internal environment compared to the external one. The Swot diagnosis consolidate the two perspectives, from the inside and from the outside, because the Strengths and the Weaknesses are internal issues of an organization, while the Opportunities and Threads come from the outside.
4. Re-formulating objectives: after the close exam of data gathered in the previous stage, sometimes it is needed to re-formulate the preliminary objectives, in order to address all the issues that might have come up from the previous stage. The length between the preliminary objective and the re-formulated objective will be covered by accepted strategies. We must ensure the re-formulated objective is Smart as well.
5. Establishing strategies: any strategies are to be formulated, in order to cover the length between what we want to perform and what is inherent to achieve, with the resources at our disposal. As we would normally have any options, we should analyze them and chose the one with more chances to perform the marketing objectives.
6. Plan of actions: consists in a very detailed description of the procedures and means to implement the actions we want to take. For example, if the strategy implies a raise in advertising volume, the plan of actions should manufacture where the advertisements will be placed, the dates and frequency of the advertising campaigns, a set of procedures to value their effectiveness. The actions we plan to take must be clearly formulated, measurable, and the results must be monitored and evaluated.
7. Implementation and control: consist in the series of activities that must be performed in order to run the marketing plan in accordance to the objectives set by the marketer. At this stage, it is considerable to gain the preserve of all members if the organization, especially when the marketing plan is due to affect the club from its grounds.
8. operation measurement: constitutes the last but not the less important stage of the marketing plan, since we can perform only what we can measure. In order to quantum the performances achieved straight through the marketing plan, we need to constantly monitor each previous stage of the plan.
The marketing plan that has a feedback cycle, from 8th stage back to the 4th. That is because sometimes during the planning process, we might need to perform stages 4 to 8 any times before the final plan can be written.
Iii. The e-marketing plan
The e-marketing plan is built exactly on the same theory as the classical plan. There is no different approach, but there might be some formal differences given by the uniqueness of the internet environment. Many of these differences come from the necessity to ensure a high rate of responsiveness from the customers, since the e-world is curious faster and requires faster reaction from its companies, compared to the original offline marketplace.
Even though it is perfectly accepted and is a base custom to use the 8-stage excellent model for the e-marketing plan as well, you might want to consider the simplified version proposed by Chaffey, who identifies four major steps to build the e-marketing plan:
1. Strategic analysis: consists in continuous scanning of the macro- and micro-environment. The accent should fall on the consumers' needs that change very rapidly in the online market, as well as on surveying the competitors' actions and evaluating the opportunities offered by new technologies.
2. Defining strategic objectives: the club must have a clear foresight and manufacture if the media channels will complement the original ones, or will replace them. We must define exact objectives (don't forget to check if they are Smart!) and we must also specify the gift of the online activities to the organization's turnover.
3. Formulating strategies - we do that by addressing the following considerable issues:
- manufacture strategies towards the target markets;
- positioning and differentiating strategies;
- manufacture priorities of online activities;
- focus attention and efforts on Crm and financial control;
- formulate strategies for stock development;
- manufacture business models with well-established strategies for new products or services, as well as pricing policies;
- necessity for some organizational restructuring;
- changes in the structure of communication channels.
4. Implementing strategies: includes particular operation of all considerable steps to perform established objectives. It could refer re-launching of a website, promo campaigns for a new or rewritten site, monitoring website efficiency and many more.
Note: a base strategy to perform e-marketing objectives is the communication strategy. The steps to built a coherent communication plan will be presented within a supplementary article.
Iv. The e-marketing plan (sample titles)
1. Administrative Summary
a. Summary upon present conjuncture;
b. Key aspects of the strategic e-marketing plan.
2. Situational Analysis
a. Characteristics of the e-market;
b. Possible factors of success;
c. Competitors' analysis;
d. Technological factors;
e. Legal factors;
f. Social factors;
g. Possible problems and opportunities.
3. The e-Marketing Objectives
a. Product profile;
b. Target market;
c. Sales objectives.
4. The e-Marketing Strategies
a. Product strategies;
b. Price strategies;
c. Promotion strategies;
d. Distribution strategies.
5. Technical Issues
a. Website content;
b. Website "searcheability";
c. Logging safety (for customers and staff);
d. Customer registration procedure;
e. Multimedia;
f. Autoresponders;
g. Order forms and feedback forms;
h. Access levels to online resources;
i. Credit card transactions;
j. Website hosting;
k. Website publishing;
l. Technical staff (size, requirements)
6. Appendix
7. Bibliography
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