STRATEGIC MARKETING PLANNING

Companies that adopt the marketing
concept realize that marketing efforts are more successful when they are carefully planned. Strategic
marketing planning is the process of examining a company’s market
opportunities, allocating resources to capitalize on those opportunities, and
predicting market and financial performance that is likely to occur. From this
definition, you should understand that the aim of strategic planning is to
shape the company’s businesses
and products so that they yield target profits and growth.

THE DIMENSIONS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

The strategic planning process rests
on two important concepts. In the first place, the scope of strategic planning
is broad. For instance, it considers all the products a company offers
and all the markets the company serves. Strategic planning considers both
environment factors on the outside and organizational factors on the inside.
Like marketing concept, strategic
planning also implies functional integration. In this manner, strategic
planning incorporates
production, research, finance and the organizational elements necessary for success.

In the second
place, strategic planning looks beyond immediate circumstances, trying to project market conditions five or ten
years into the future. It is therefore important for marketers to be prepared
for changes in the marketing environment, whether the changes are political,
cultural, technological, or economic. Any organization that is aiming at a
shorter span, say only 6 or 12 months down runs the risk of being caught off
guard, and hence might not be able to respond to environmental changes before
competitors do.

Let us look at another side to this
long-term perspective: As a strategic marketer, you will not only
consider where the world is going to be in 5 or 10 years, you should also weigh
the long-term consequences of
the decisions you make today. This may actually mean skipping an immediate market
opportunity that might box you in later on, or perhaps you will have to forgo
short-term profits to invest in long-term technologies.

LEVELS OF PLANNING

Strategic planning does not happen in isolation at the
top layer in the organization. It is supported by planning and execution
throughout the organization. There are three
levels of marketing planning: Operational planning looks at the shortest
time frame and has the narrowest scope; and strategic planning takes the
longest and broadest view: while tactical planning falls between the two.

As already explained, tactical
planning is of narrower scope and shorter time frame than strategic
planning, and it is usual y the responsibility of middle management. Although
tactical planning looks at the performance of specific products or markets over
a shorter period of time than strategic planning, it must actually be tied to
strategic planning.

Moving closer
to the customer, supervisory managers engage in operational planning, which is narrower in scope and concerned with
matters of the shortest duration of all the formal planning activities of the
business. Operational planning focuses on meeting objectives such as
immediate improvement of the market position of a particular size of product or
improvement of the current period’s sales of a single product.

Within the business world, the use of the terms “top-down
planning” and “bottom-up planning” are used to refer to planning
processes that start at the top and the bottom of the organization,
respectively. Each of these has its advantages. Top-down plans are usual y
developed by the people in the organization with the broadest perspective and
the most experience. Bottom-up planning, on the other hand, is started by
people on the “front line” of the organization. It has the advantage
of being close to where the action is. 

For instance, people in sales and customer
service positions, who interact most frequently with customers, have the best
idea of what customers are thinking and doing. The ideal planning process
combines both the top-down and bottom-up approaches, which consequently results in plans that take
advantage of an organization’s experience, and which also respond to customer
needs and expectations.

It is a fact that the
marketing group has the primary responsibility for analyzing the environment
and understanding customers. However, as we already noted under the marketing
concept, everybody in a market-driven firm should be aware of customers and
competitors. Hence, for the firm to be successful, all the departments must be
coordinated by an overall strategic business plan. 

In this regard therefore,
other departments in the company should also have planning processes similar to
the one in marketing. For instance, the finance department needs to engage in
broad, long-range planning to make sure the ‘company stays financially healthy from year to year.