Principle of Marketing and Elements of a Marketing Plan - Book Report/Review Example

?Principles of Marketing Marketing is the key behind the success of any organization. A proper and good marketing plan not only helps any organization to be profitable but also at the same time help the organization reach out to the common people across the country and understand their needs, Based on a successful marketing campaign, an organization can develop its future goal and strategies to be on the profit road. According to Blythe (2006), marketing can be defined as a management process by which organizations are able to identify, anticipate and supply the end users requirements more effectively as well as profitably. According to his point of view, marketing is a combination of planning and executing the concepts of pricing, promotion and also distribution of ideas as well as the services to satisfy the objective of both individual as well as organization.(Blythe, 2006, p.5). Elements of a Marketing plan: According to Lamb et.al. (2010), a marketing plan can be defined as a process of anticipating different events of the future as well as to determining strategies to achieve the objective of the organization. According to their point of view, there are 7 different elements related to marketing planning. These are segmentation, competitive analysis, marketing goals and measurements, planning-budgeting, timeline. Differentiated Points of Value (by segment) and Messaging and Positioning (by segment). According to their point of view, SWOT analysis as well as marketing mix also associated with the effective marketing plan. Segmentation – For the effective marketing plan, a proper segmentation is absolutely necessary. An effective and proper segmentation is always helpful to design products for the customer and also able to capitalize the market opportunities. Competitive Alternatives –With the help of competitive analysis organizations are able to figure out the competitive products that other companies are launched in the market to gain the market penetration.  The main objective of this section is to help the organization to figure out what really differentiates one organization offering offering from others in a common marketplace. These are broadly the macro elements. Differentiated Points of Value (by segment) – For each segment of the market ,This parameter helps to find out what are the top 3 or 4 differentiators that the organization offering has versus its competitor. This point is not only about technology or features of the product . It includes parameters like pricing, delivery options, ease of use,  time to value, etc. Messaging and Positioning (by segment) – This parameter is based on the previous section. On the basis of segmentation analysis, messaging and positioning creates a set of strategy for each market segment.  Marketing Goals and Measures: Marketing goal is the main part of the marketing plan.based on the goal, mission and vision of the organization, organization have to design their marketing plan and must ensure that the marketing goal of the organization is fulfilled. To ensure that the marketing plan is effective, continuous measurement of the marketing plan is absolutely necessary. Tactical Plan, Budget, Owners – Based on the above goals and measurement of the marketing plan organization have to set their tactics, budget.  The tactics are again subdivided into separate items of work (for example a tactic such as a webinar might include different parts like creating the invite list, writing/designing the mailer, sending the invite, creating the webinar content, etc.) and assigned each part to a responsible person for proper monitoring of the same. Timeline- After developing tactics, organization needs to break those sub parts into timeline to ensure that all the objectives are achieved within stipulated time. (Lamb, et.al, 2010, 15-17). Marketing Strategy: Marketing is the integral part of any organization’s success. To achieve marketing excellence, every organization needs to have an effective and well thought out marketing strategy. According to Ranchhod (2007), marketing is a process which is just a combination of planning and execution of different activities which is helpful to satisfy the individual, ecological as well as social needs both effect ethically as well as sincerely. Along with that, the objective of the market strategy is to satisfy the objective of organization's profitability.(Ranchod, 2007, p.5). Marketing strategy is the combination of the marketing mix, decision making unit as well as decision making process. Marketing mix consisted of 5 different parameters, these are market selection, product planning, pricing promotion as well as place. In order to design a successful marketing strategy organization to have to figure out the answers of the following questions related to the above 5 parameters. Market Selection: In market selection the one and only question associated with the designing of marketing strategy is to find out or identify the customer or segment of the customer base to whom the product or service will be dedicated. Product Planning: For product planning company has to understand the need of the customer, then have to figure out what will be the unique features of their product or service which will distinguish their product from the rest, how it will be packaged , branded as well as promoted in the market segment. Pricing strategy: pricing can be defined as the quantitative appearance of the price of the product or services that the organization is offering to the customer. For a marketing strategy to be effective and successful, an organization needs to consider pricing as an integral part of the product. Place: To design a successful marketing strategy organization have to decide on which market segment they want to target, which channel will be the best option for the company to reach most number of people, is it the wholesale market, or through retail channel etc. Promotion: Promotional strategy of any organization is the key behind the success of their product or service in the market segment. In case of promotional strategy there are four key parts namely positioning, selling, communication and support-services. Positioning: positioning is associated with the message that the organization wants to convey to the people about the benefit and features about their offerings. Selling: What is the key selling point of the particular products or service-is that through direct sales or through channel marketing or through an agency/third party. Communication: Branding is associated with this parameter. The main objective of this point is to design the method by which organization wants their offering to get highlighted among the prospective customer segment. Analyzing the market situation by SWOT analysis and Ansoff Growth strategy: SWOT analysis is a key analyzing process associated with the successful marketing strategy. According to Pehlchen(), SWOT analysis provides a good platform to examine, analyze and review the strategic positioning and direction of movement of an organization in the competitive market. SWOT analysis is an acronym of strength, weakness, opportunity and threats. Out of these four parameters, strength and weakness are the internal part of the organization where as an opportunity and threat are the external factors related to organizational success. (Pehlchen, 2007, p.28). In this part we will be focusing on SWOT analysis of IBM. Strength: First Company to introduce cloud computing solutions for different enterprises Strong brand valuation and variety of services. Wide reach across the globe with offices all around the world. Along with its presence, it also focused on acquiring companies of different sectors to have their dominance in all sectors. Weakness: The services offered by the organization are very costly therefore the small and medium scale industries are unable to have the services of IBM. As a result a large segment of the market remains untapped. Opportunity: Expand services and also expanded in the software division. It is a high time that company should look into growing their division to meet the market expectation. IBM is expecting a growth of 20% in the field of Cloud computing only. Threats : Increasing competition in the cloud computing market is a big threat for the company as different companies also coming up with the same services. Slower growth in the economy is a major concern for IBM as their business is highly dependent on the enterprises who want to invest a huge amount to build their IT infrastructure.(Jurevicious, 2013)Ansoff Growth Strategy: Growth is important for any organization to have sustainability in this competitive market. There are several theories relating to the growth strategy of the organization. Out of which one is designed by Ansoff in the year 1957 and the tool is known as the Product-Market growth matrix. Kumar(2012), is his book discussed about this matrix in detail. The Ansoff growth matrix has four different components, these are market penetration, market development, product and diversification. To ensure market penetration organization used to provide their existing product in a new updated package, according to him it is the best way to grab the new customer base. Along with the existing product organizations have to develop new offerings to hold its position. In case of market development organization have to search for new market for their existing products. Based on the customer requirement and also to capture the untapped market , companies need to innovate new product. And in case of diversification both the product or the service along with the market is new to the organization so they have to start from the scratch to grab a hold in the market.(Kumar, 2012, pp.175-176). Following is the diagram of Ansoff product market growth matrix. Market Development Diversification Market penetration (Present) Product Development (New) If this is analyzed with respect to IBM, it is very clear that, IBM is one of the topmost IT company have the substantial market penetration as they have offices all over the world . Not only that they have also acquired over 180 companies to grab a strong hold on the market. But due to high price of their service small and medium scale industries are often unable to use those, so there is a opportunity to capture. Being an old company, IBM has various kinds of product and service to offer for the industries across the sector. But over price is one of the hurdles for them which is continuously affecting them. As a result they are unable to capitalize on the small scale industries. So it is the right time to develop cheaper effective solutions for the small scale organizations as well. Finally we can say that a proper growth strategy analysis will help the organization hold its position more effectively in the market. References Blythe J. (2006), Principles & Practice of Marketing, Cengage Learning EMEA. Jurevicious, O. (2013), SWOT analysis of the IBM, strategic Management Insight, retrieved on 22.11.2013 from http://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/swot-analyses/ibm-swot-analysis.html Kumar, D. (2012), Enterprise Growth Strategy (Ebk - Epub) Vision Planning and Execution, Gower Publishing Lamb W.C. et.al (2010), MKTG 2010, Cengage Learning. Marketing Strategy,n.d., Stanford education, retrieved on 22.11.2013 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee353/marketing%20strategy.htm Pehlchen, B.(2007), Analysis of the Chilean Tourism Market - Products and Opportunities for the Destination Pucon and the IXth Region, GRIN Verlag. Ranchhod, A.(2007), Marketing Strategies: A Contemporary Approach, Pearson Education Read More