Millennium Marketing Research®

Tom Schori DBA Millennium Marketing Research®, 808 Ironwood, Normal IL 61761, 309-532-8466

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The best marketing plan is usually a simple marketing plan.

By Thomas R. Schori, Ph.D., and Michael L. Garee, Principals,  Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239. Tel. 309-532-8466 -

Over the years we’ve been involved in or charged with developing and implementing annual marketing plans for all kinds of business units, products and services. Some of these plans were highly complex and quite detailed, while others have been essentially quite basic, straightforward and simple. Looking back, we can categorically state that, in our opinion, the plans that proved to be the most workable, the most effective, were those that tended to be basic, straightforward and simple.

As is the case in most human endeavors, there will always be those within any organization who simply don’t trust anything that seems too "simple," including of course a marketing plan. After all, they will argue, if it is that simple, it probably doesn’t have much value, right? Not necessarily. It is these individuals, if they are involved even tangentially in the preparation of the annual marketing plan, who will continually strive to build in to the plan as much complexity and detail as possible. They should be resisted at all costs, if your organization is to produce a plan that is to be understandable to everyone in the organization (very important) and is to be an effective, i.e., workable, plan (equally important).

How does a company go about developing a marketing plan that is both simple and effective? Here is an approach we’ve found very workable over the years. Maybe your company can benefit from using this, or a similar, approach.

Identifying strategic goals

Any company that is serious about marketing has very definite strategic goals, or at least should have. Let’s suppose, for example, that a company, which we’ll call Company A, is in the business of selling software aimed at the legal profession. Let’s further suppose that Company A is the number two player in this market niche, with Company B being the market leader, with 50 share points to Company A’s 35 share points, while an array of other competitors split the remaining 15 share points. What would be a reasonable strategic marketing goal for Company A to adopt in an annual marketing plan?

The "obvious" answer might seem to be for the company to seek to become the number one player? But, unless the market for their product is very, very elastic and quite dynamic, this wouldn’t be a realistic annual strategic goal at all. On the other hand, an eminently reasonable annual strategic goal might be, say, to gain at least one additional point of market share this year. (Of course, a long-term strategic goal might indeed be to become the market leader, but that’s a different issue entirely and has no practical place in an annual marketing plan.)

Another strategic marketing goal might be, say, to develop software for and expand into a brand new market segment, perhaps the medical profession.

Identifying marketing tactics

After Company A’s strategic marketing goals have been established, the next step in the planning process is specifying exactly how the company intends to go about attaining these goals. In other words, what specific things, i.e., tactics, will the company employ to make that which it seeks, i.e., strategic goals, to actually happen by the end of the year-long marketing plan.

In the case of Company A, tactics might include repositioning itself to maximize its market share. That is, through appropriate research, Company A could determine how, in the minds of the target market, i.e., the legal community, its products and services differ not only from the market leader, Company B, but equally important, from the ideal (assuming it isn’t Company B). Once this is determined, Company A could take the necessary steps, both from an internal operational standpoint and an external marketing approach, to bridge the gap that may currently exist between its products and services and those which would represent the ideal.

Of course, subsumed in this approach are far more detailed marketing tactics, but those couldn’t be determined accurately until the positioning research was completed. That is, the company wouldn’t know what to "fix" until the actual specific "problems" were identified through a positioning study. All of that said, however, it would be to Company A’s best advantage to focus on fixing just a few of the most important problems that are identified, and not attempt to fix everything at once.

The resulting marketing plan

The actual marketing plan document that would emerge for Company A, given the scenario just outlined, should indeed be relatively simple, straightforward and effective. It would present two strategic goals: 1.) To gain at least one market share point during the next 12 months; and 2.) To expand its software products into a new market segment, the medical community. Specific tactics might include refining its current legal software, to make it not only the equal of Company B’s software but even better. (Let’s assume, for example, that research revealed that the target market perceived that some key tools were inadequate in Company A’s software vis-à-vis Company B’s software.) Tactics might also include a broad-based marketing effort to inform the target market of the key improvements incorporated into Company A’s new and improved software products.

Insofar as the other strategic goal is concerned¾expanding into a new market segment¾most, if not all of the tactics probably would include internal development and market testing of the proposed new product.

In any case, Company A’s plan would be comprehensive enough in scope, yet adequately detailed as well, so that everyone in the company, from the highest executives to the lowliest employee, would be able to quickly grasp the goals the company planned to achieve in the upcoming year, and what, specifically, the company planned to do in order to achieve those goals. It really can be¾and we believe, should be¾that simple!